How is it that some people can hold worlds in the smallest of movements, Melanie wonders.  

Josh, to her and her alone, embodies art. Brushstrokes in his glances, heartbreak and tragedy in the smallest flinches and smiles. 

He sits staring off at blank walls in his office, laughing in some strange way that makes her feel grieved. His hands and arms draped over his knees in a rendition of the thinker. He must think something profound, she reasons, even if he sounds mundane sometimes. There is skill in his humor, a majesty in his use of irony, as if everything were orchestrated in advance. 

She doesn't think she has high expectations when it comes to him. It isn't so much the exciting aspects that appeal to her either, quite the opposite. It's the mundane that captivates. 

'Can you imagine a person being genuinely interested in what you have to say, to listen with care and take note of each word as if it were to be captured and deciphered, mulled over and picked at until they grasped your thoughts and essence through conversation as if it were your soul,' Melanie types before pausing and adding with a smile, 'Goodness, perhaps I do expect a bit too much. But honestly Mariah it's not like I'm looking for perfection. I've noticed a good deal lately and i'm not ashamed to admit it. I notice the way all love seems madness at one point until it starts making sense in the head. 

He puts dandelions in as bookmarks between parchment pages when he carries my books. He bought a camera and it broke within a week. We sit under canopies of constellations talking about schedule planners and Walt Whitman and what makes us so different than the million others who walked this Earth before.

He doesn't make excuses or apologize for doing what he needs to when it comes to helping someone. He isn't haughty, he shows his faults and acknowledges them. And there is no shame either when he helps himself or is overwhelmed. He knows when someones hurting and stands up for them. It's as simple as that. And when it comes down to it, isn't that the simplest definition of love? I suppose I could rant on and on about his qualities and humor, the way he smiles and laughs. But I will reveal a secret Mar, we do have the best of conversation, and sometimes I dare to think he loves me as much as I love him. Of course all that is bottled up and away after a while. I don't mind the fact we aren't like most. It's different, us. 

It's better. 

The basement at the theater is cold and dark, and a bit of water dribbles like a leaking faucet from the crack in the ceiling. We're working on getting it patched.

He works in this way- as far as I suppose there are levels to him. Levels that are kept locked in their order and never surpassed in one way or another. I found it the other day Mari, the newspaper clipping he keeps plastered under ten textbooks at a time and banished from ever seeing the light. But I think it's the only picture of his parents, his biological parents he has. 

Local Father aged 47 Commits Suicide last Thursday Evening in Home.

His Mother died in a house fire, electrical, a simple accident that plagued his father enough to hurt so far and wrong.

No wonder he hides, God Mari I don't even know what to say. I just hid it back and never mention it. Except that for these reasons now I don't question him when he stares like he doesn't understand what i'm saying. I don't question when he needs to leave the room and all of his words are just purely gibberish on new science articles and formatting. He's here, he's kind and wonderful, and that in itself is a victory I'm only beginning to understand.

In perfectionism there is purpose. And in having purpose there is no reason for him to turn back. Like highway signs his tasks direct him ever forward to the horizon, to a place where maybe if he chases the sun enough its warmth won't elude him. It's a calloused measure, each beat meticulously planned and dictated. But the truth is he feels deeply about a lot of things Mariah. He's frightened. But lately I think he's discovered that fear is a fleeting thing, loyalty however, isn't. Not when it's true. I'm to prove it to him, if it's the last thing I do. I want him to hope. I want him to know that even when the numbers don't add up and fall to chaos and get swallowed up by disasters, there will always be people. People who while full of hurt and confusion, will care, will give their hearts to set right all the wrong that we suffer in a lifetime.

I want to be in every photograph from now on, I want to share every detail of my past until there are no new memories that we haven't shared together into one blended painted scene. Dark and lonely on canvas and yet maybe someone will look at us, all messed up and broken in all our pieces, and think it a bit lovely we're despite it all. I've found it quite nice to have someone to be lonely with.

I'm content as I am, I am content alone with my function and place. And yet in those glances and in those quiet moments of conversation i'm quite taken by a feeling that for once the great machine that drives time on is headed somewhere, that we might the chance for change and achieve something after all.

He looks very young, and is very thin, and he isn't what others would consider attractive at least, not most.  His suit jackets never quite fit right and he refuses to wear anything but the tan material that scratches. I've graphed the curve of his profile onto my keypad, my cursor drawing long half circles of varying sizes in a nonsense no one makes out except me. I know immediately as I draw it I'm trying to put him down on my screen. Stupid isn't it?

I've seen him come in with dirt on his socks before and I think sometimes like me he goes out just to feel the rain. I won't ask him, certain feelings like that have the right to remain secret and yet I wish I could know. I wish he would let me stand a foot away and just watch. Watch all those barriers disappear. His eyes will flutter close, small dew drops like a gentle mist lacing his eyelashes and eyebrows as the rain pours and the grey covers like a filter across the scene. The edges of those pink and chapped lips would curve ever so slightly as he head angled upward to the sky. He put those arms out to the side, forty five degrees or so as always with his thumbs tucked in, and then he'd sigh.

 I've seen the sigh, I've seen it after panic attacks and after bad memories. It's a sign of comfort as his thin fingers lace through tangled hair. He'll laugh a little, and it'll break my heart. Those dark brown eyes will look back at me, and he'll see me watching, and he'll know I've caught a glimpse of what I'm not supposed to.

I suppose he already knows though, he's caught me a couple times while we were driving and the chill it sent up my spine made me question for a second what it is he really thinks about. Honestly, I'm starting to doubt all he says about calculations and organization. I think his heart beats sporadically, that his heart sputters out words and ideas too fast and complicated for him to truly understand.

He sits sometimes on the hardwood floor, under the sink with his phone flashlight upward in a shaft of light straight up to the ceiling. I think he makes believe it's a candle, his bit of magic that isn't the fire that so scares him. I see the way he looks up at the stars, the way he talks about the burning on and on. The truth is, and he knows, some of those stars are long gone, their light is a ghastly memory of something now stone cold in a dark void. But that flashlight, it goes and lights up pages of comic books and manuals, tax return forms and catalogues. And in those pages I think something long since dead is able to shine a bit after the fact.

Nothing is ever really gone, not if it's never forgotten.

And so he clings to little details, worships them as code. Doctrine in his belief that even if one little speck of data and memory is out of place, the entire narrative will fall to bits. After all, facts keep him grounded in a world he tries so hard to escape from. They prevent the hurt that could at any second combust the lie of normalcy he so carefully crafts.

So he wrings his hands, swallows hard as he frowns and writes out security reviews on napkins at dinner. He twists the earbud cord in a crazy eight around his thumb and pointer finger, winding against the knuckle, his eyes wandering their curvature in order to steady his breathing.

Through every shadowy corridor of his memory she brings peace. He has never spoken to her a word about his past, about the crawling claustrophobia that come during the day at certain sights and sounds, about the grief that drives him into a madness some nights. The kind he has to fight with his whole soul.

No, nothing is ever really forgotten. But a bit of healing might be possible after all. As long as there are little things to count on.

Why do they go together?

It is simple psychology, it is patterns and circumstance, environment and timing. But it's friendship, strong at it's foundation.

His definition perhaps wasn't so wrong after all. He believes in loyalty, trust and code. But now he realizes that this means love, not proof to the contrary.

Her hair is dark blonde and cropped at the shoulder. Half of it cascades in tangled waves while from the part and the middle it falls straight and sticks to her face, a curtain against her smile and in those moments when she is alone, that blank expression of concern. She has made her life a study of others, of what makes them work and love and live. So far there have been very few conclusive answers. Books open up those worlds and people who seem to shut her out. She is quite content in her life, in her ways. She is confident in who she is, or rather who she wishes to be and who she is working toward. She is strong shouldered and mellow voiced, clothed in blouses and oversized sweaters that hide what she calls jokingly an unfortunate disproportion. She has no misconception about her looks, in fact she has rather happily accepted that while by no means hideous, there is nothing particularly compelling in her features. They are mathematically symmetrical she supposes, and such usually lends itself to beauty. But math is hardly forgiving when it comes to human instinct. She has decided she does not need to be loved by anyone or anything to make others feel appreciated, and within a second Josh was hit by a complexity and stamina of character he for once could not decipher. 

On that Friday night three things happen. 

Lying awake in his room Joshua Taylor receives a phone call that chills his blood. 

Sitting in a cell on the Eastern Sea Board awaiting transfer, a man by the name of Eli Whitney opens his laptop and types in a few simple sentences and sends an email to remove Steele from the picture. To orchestrate a car crash that will put an end to his injustice and force one on another. Hurt after all is never eradicated, just shifted slightly. 

Or shared. 

And Melanie Steele, finishing writing all these things into a Google Document- deletes her words.