All Stories Are Love Stories by Elizabeth Percer

and truth that a posed one cannot.
    But, like most boys his age, what Max first noticed was how beautiful she was. And miracle of miracles—she sat beside him. Sat beside him and smiled and looked him in the eye and asked if he was going to Lincoln, too. Which, by some divine providence, he was. She hadn’t seen him before, she ventured, had she? Of course she hadn’t—or rather, he hadn’t seen her. That was probably because he had only gonethere for a few months last spring, he said, and she nodded and said her dad was still driving her to school then. Who knows why, he thought, as an invisible line flew from this girl’s heart to his and sank deep and true. She was prattling along, seemingly oblivious of the effect her warm-blooded, sweet-smelling, softly curved presence had on him.
    Her dad had insisted on driving her the first week, she was saying, but now she’d be taking the bus. They’d be taking the bus together, she said and smiled, introducing him to the first of a million simple pleasures that could delight her. Was he a junior, too? She’d just turned sixteen that summer, she confessed shyly, and was a little on the young side for their class; but she was sure they could still be friends! She smiled again, leaving him tongue-tied. Was that his trumpet? How long had he been playing? Where did he live? Her laugh was silvery and soft; when he closed his eyes, he imagined ice melting after a relentlessly cold winter. She only ever took her eyes off his to laugh.
    Thinking of her, he’d forgotten again that he promised himself he wouldn’t.
    It was a bad habit, recently rekindled. It would die down again soon enough. It was only those e-mails she’d sent last September—could it have been six months already?—the ones that said she was back in town and hoped he was well. Static and chaste, as miserable as fake food after a lengthy starvation. “Hi, how are you, I hope you’re well” e-mails should have secured the seal on the grave that was their relationship, but instead they had him thinking of her anew. Struggling, if he was going to be honest with himself. For thelife of him, he still couldn’t figure out why he’d never found a way to neatly write her off, as any normal man would do when a woman left him abruptly right in the middle of love. And with so much at stake. But then, to be left in the middle of something means it’s perpetually unfinished.
    Max snapped out of it, powering off his computer and racing down the hall to catch the elevator. As he crossed the quiet corridor, the sun shining once again through the windows to the west, he reveled in the satisfaction of knowing the best part of the day was finally here. A few hours of music and children on one of those thrilling winter afternoons that hinted at spring, the kids’ voices enchanting in their unfocused way of stretching toward something beautiful, the sound of it soothing something deep inside him that he sometimes forgot was there. He caught the elevator just in time and opened the door at one minute past four, the music drifting in from below.
    Rafael at the security desk rolled his eyes in solidarity, sure to have withstood more than his share of bellyaching in the fifteen minutes since he’d buzzed Max with the announcement of the accompanist’s (some very distant relation by marriage of Mrs. Levi-Ward’s who managed to be both disinterested and judgmental) early arrival and the passing along of the message that Max was running late. “Sorry,” Max said as the harmonies kicked in. Rafael shrugged. “It’s nothing.” He rifled through his notes. “You got a few more interesting visitors in the meantime. They’re waiting inside, too, get this.” He lifted a piece of paper, squinting at it beneath a narrow desk light. “Friar Schmuck and SisterCock-a-Doo-del-Doo,” he said, raising a conspiratorial eyebrow toward