He was fond of stories, stories of conquerors and sinking ships, dishonored pianists and girls in love. He was fond of telling them too, stealing phrases from poets and plots from those scented magazines. They met alone at a coffee shop, and over a matter of hours, they were convinced of each other's stories, and of that age-old idea that "there is something out there that is bigger than the both of us and we have to find it, you and I, we'll find it.

She kissed him in New Orleans, he remained startled through Autumn, and just as suddenly the stories ended. And that something out there remained bigger than the both of them. In a fit of sadness, he canceled all his magazine subscriptions and those individual dreams seemed like performances lost in their own cinema. But stories remain, whether of winged heroes or O. Henry's criminals, and those shared between a boy and girl remain more iridescent than most.

Aching is a happiness," he read somewhere, and he realized that it would outlive his soft, melting heart and the lack of defense was perhaps the best defense to its presence. And as the months passed by, he began to smile with ease at the melodies of the Winter nights that begin too early, stretching, to seemingly never end.

On a southern Sunday drive, he remembered her as the radio sang, at some exact, misplaced moment, "Listen to the girl, as she takes on half of the world, moving up and so alive, in her honey-dripping beehive." And on one mythic, fabled night, he looked at her, those soft cheeks, and whispered to her rosy lips, "Dear girl, tell me those stories again."

With a mischievous look on her face, she began, "There is something out there...