If I was obsessed about anything, it was the quiet. But you made sure I never got it, even when I begged. You were always there—hovering, shining, being so true to yourself. It was hard to picture you as anyone else, especially when you sidled next to me on the stairs and asked me another question.

"What do you want to be?"

I unplugged the music from my ears to look at you. Since then, I have always wondered—how could I have seen myself through your eyes? How could I know what went in your mind when you watched me climb to and stay in the fire escape even though it was outlawed? But I had no way other than to look back at you and see you.

I wish I really did see you back then.

But I did not.

Instead, I looked to my feet, admiring the peeling plastic off my years-worn shoes and the sheer mediocrity of yours. They were not new. At least a year old, but mine...

Mine has walked a million steps without moving.

So I leaned back, ignoring the way your shoulders brushed against mine through our sleeves. "Happy," I answered. "That's it."

I tilted my head to the side. "How about you?"

Without missing a beat, you leaned closer and smiled. You seemed to find something funny on my face, but it was okay. A lot of other people do. Maybe you were a late bloomer and realized your misguided errors then.

"I'll get away from here," you replied.

It was a foreign concept to me then. So, I asked you for reasons. This was a good town, with good people, and good opportunities—it was what my parents told me. They were never going to leave, so why would you?

And as much as you loved your nonsense, you delighted in dreaming too. Maybe making false promises because you thought it was what most people did at our age as well. You told me you were going to the city, to make it big. With nothing but your guitar or your piano or both—why not? as you had said—you would make the world love you before you even open your mouth. They would care, oh, they would, because you would be so damn irresistible. Your smile would move mountains and your hands entire worlds.

You would have nothing to do with your parents who told you they would rather die in vain rather than raise an ingrate like you. An ingrate who would rather go off chasing burning stars rather than pay off the unwanted debt of being reared by getting a job packed with money. But you would run, you told me as much, and you were going to make it. Because if you did not, you would be proving your parents right. You would be a disaster waiting to happen. A disaster who went looking for love in strangers because your own could not give it to you.

"If that's what you're going through," I remember saying. Every corner of my mind relished that memory, that past, because for once, they agree. "Then, I wouldn't mind going with you."

I smiled which is something I never do. "Let's run after falling stars," I said. "Together."

Because I would not mind leaving this hell for another. Because I could not care less if I throw away my life of failure and inadequacy as long as you were with me. Because, maybe—just maybe—I loved you.

I was another stranger, another faceless being in the tapestry of your dreams. And you held my heart like a guitar peg, twisting and twisting until I snapped. Playing with my strings until my sound tore to shreds and I vanished into the mere noise of the world.

But I did not mind it then as much as I do now. Because when you met my eyes back then, I thought I saw myself reflected in yours. Knowing what I knew now, it was not me who was there. It was my own hell.

And maybe we kissed just as the sun started to set. Maybe you would have run your hands through my hair or told me I was someone you could not lose. I could have told you the same thing—that my heart would forever burn and burn for you, that my words would only speak and sing for your sake, that I would be yours for the night and maybe for as long as you would have me. It would be my own foolish promise, my own loved nonsense.

But when we were young, it would have been everything. It would have set our worlds in motion, trying to prove everyone who laughed at us wrong. When I told you about singing and recording the songs I would write for you, it stopped you for a second.

"I can't make any promises with the instruments, but I'd try. Dear God, I'd love to try," you said. "What have you got so far?"

I sang.

Slowly, at first, twining my hands against yours and resting my head against your shoulder. Then, louder. And louder.

And louder.

Up in the sunlit landing, as the moon swallowed whatever light there was, I sang. I used to hate my voice, my face, my hands. But never once did you tell me the things I kept hearing in droves. In multitudes.

You were my restoration as much as my undoing.

"Let's come back here in autumn," you said after I ran out of verses to spout. "Maybe I'd have your song ready to hit the radio."

You were never going to leave me alone, I realized. I was obsessed with the quiet because I thought it was better, but you introduced a different noise, a new sort of cacophony. One where I had no choice but to listen to because it was you.

And if I can return the quiet I craved back to where I got it, I will.