One Boy. One Girl. One Story.

It's a vicious cycle, really.

A story begins with a boy and a girl. They sit down for coffee. They go for a drive. They meet unexpectedly on the subway. Whatever.

The story always begins with one boy, one girl and limitless magic. 
It's unexpected, refreshing, unlike any other story and it makes for a good read.
These are the kinds of stories that fail to mention the ugly things, like the boy's crippling paranoia and the girl's consistently retreating tenderness. He tells lies and she smokes cigarettes and they drive one another away with their massive insecurities. She runs away, feeling moved to run as he pushes to know more of her. It's then a tragedy, a mistake, a misinterpretation of what could have been and while the entire thing burns to the ground, they will turn their eyes, waiting for the smoke to clear so that a new boy and a new girl can eventually be integrated into the act.

Of course, the stories I read are generally pages filled with the highlights, the beginning, the sunrises and sunsets; they tell nothing of shattered glass and violent words. 

Decidedly, I am involved in one such story, struck by the perplexing thought that perhaps - every once in a while - this is really how it goes: the good might outweigh the bad. For once, it might be worthwhile. One boy. One girl. One story of things working the way that they should.

A boy and a girl sit on opposite sides of the table from one another, each recording images of the other's face. He through a camera lens, she with ink. A boy and a girl wake up and it's raining, but for the moment they care nothing of the world outside one another's arms - for the moment there is no other world. Together, they laugh and tell secrets; they marvel at their likenesses just like every other boy and every other girl will do. There is nothing wrong. There is no pain, but that felt for their future days apart.

But when the girl cannot concentrate on her personal affairs, she brings her fingers to her lips and considers all the reasons why this cannot be so. This time, just this once, a story is different from the others. This time, she tells her friend, it is spontaneous and unexpected, but it doesn't feel reckless and it only seems good. There's something different this time, she thinks. But she bites her fingernails anyway.

Because, one time, a girl sat on the floor and a boy sat at a drum set. They sat in a car. They drove places in the middle of the night and created things together. They spent years, they made plans and then one day, they were on opposite sides of the universe while he sat on the edge of her bed. With tears in his eyes, he wondered how it could be that she just left and never came back. With a pain in her stomach, she wondered how he could be within arms reach but buried beneath so many blankets, so many years of highly saturated emotions and substitutions, now disposable and depleting and sweeping the history of love into a scrapbook entitled "past."

That was before, and this is after. That was a different boy. A different girl. A different story. This time, it's a different one. This time, the girl wasn't planning on getting caught up in things. But, she says, amidst the exceeding happiness she has encountered, she feels clear-headed and certain.

That is why it is different. Because he is a different boy. And she is a different girl. This time, it seems, it is a different story.