There are some things that need to be said about going full circle, about having been to the edge of who he was, and coming back. For instance, the excuses have all been used up, and the things he used to recite mechanically sounded like business buzzwords – possessing that intriguing public-relations edge, but upon stripping them down devoid of all meaning. And God, nothing could prepare him for a life with no defenses, no misdirection, no performances. The glamor had run away hand-in-hand with the applause, and the curtains had fallen back down — backstage it was a lonely place, but it wasn’t a problem to him. He knew exactly what waiting meant.

See, he had lost his heart along the way. If you had lost your heart, how could you feel that loss? No, you wouldn’t go looking for it either, and you wouldn’t know it.

 
On a Tuesday afternoon she took a brush to the walls and the closets and it was colorful all around and she was doing her work the only way she knew how. Tough girl, but not nearly by enough (just yet). And so curious.

Over the years people had seen his soul and called it names and plastered it all over town and it had been great and it had been validation. It had been a production number. And it was good, because he learned to win these people over. See, a lot of those things weren’t true, but then again what does the customer say? It had been validation but it was a different validation. Just like denial, it wasn’t denial in the vein of ignorance it was denial in the vein of withholding things and things. It used to be, love was something that took years and years, the kind everybody else knows and so many have written the history of mankind with. Not this — he could have seen her and loved her in the space of an hour and that didn’t have to be so sad.

If he had not lost heart, he would have been glad for her curiosity and the lipstick stains on his jacket — and for once not merely know what to do with that. He might have pointed at a moon that was imperfectly shaped. And he might have noticed the bounce in her step, the one that he put there. Him.

 
She’s still painting walls. The lights go out in office buildings and the drawers are locked shut. She’ll still call him names and live in the past. And always, looming, the someday she’d finally be exactly who she needs to be.