A crowd of fans breathlessly shrieked out their adoration for him, leaving Billy to back up in hesitation as his fans attempted to shove their way through the flimsy piece of rope. He looked down and watched the little girl in front of him furiously blush and incoherently mumble praises. He cautiously took the CD from her tiny hands and signed it, terrified that she might detonate at any given minute. Once she stumbled away, he exercised his jaw muscles and wondered when he got so jaded.

Suddenly, a photograph was slipped into his hands; he snapped out of his reverie and prepared his black sharpie and fake smile for the awaiting fan.

"And how are you?" Billy asked without glancing up. He leaned forward to sign the picture and immediately froze. It was a picture of him when he was seventeen, he was sitting on his skateboard, his arms resting on his knees and his head was turned away as if he was deep in thought. There was a black five year old fingerprint on the edge, one that he left when he forgot his fingers were stained with dark chocolate. He remembered when this picture was taken, the moments surrounding it, and who took it. How could he forget her? His head shot up, and for the first time in months, a genuine smile emerged. He frantically searched for her, but he was afraid that she was swallowed up by the massive crowd. After a few seconds of frantic searching, he finally found her standing right in front of him. He grabbed her hand with decisiveness, permanently making her an extension of him.

Elle stood there, five years older than when he last saw her. Everything about her was exactly the same - her shoulder length hair that barely grazed her shoulders, her eyes perpetually bright with excitement, and the camera that remained grasped in her hand.

"Remember?" she asked. He remembered everything: her, that moment, his teenage ideals. His sharpie dropped from his hand and he pulled her close and engulfed her.

"I missed you. I miss everything," Billy said, still clinging onto her. He finally let go and held onto her hand, afraid that she would cease to exist. He was scared to death of being left alone again.

"Your fans are waiting," she said, her bright eyes slightly dulling. She wasn't immune to the piercing glares the neighboring girls sent her. Dozens of 'who is she' dispersed among the crowd.

"Please wait for me?" he pleaded. She nodded and snatched up the photograph.

"I would've killed you if you actually wrote on this," she said, her eyes narrowing with jest.

She turned to walk away, but he reached out and grabbed her hand before she left. He pulled her close and whispered, "Wait by the back parking lot, through the red back door. I'll have to sneak out," he said. A slow smile formed at the memories that broke through the dam she had built five years ago.

"Just like old times," he said. Just like when they were teenagers, him sneaking out of his window and her waiting at the end of his driveway in her dilapidated car.

She kissed his forehead, a gesture that he had missed.

"Try not to get caught," she warned.

After Elle left, none of the congeniality was forced. The thirty minutes quickly flew by because most of his thoughts were spent recollecting every moment they ever spent together, excluding the very last conversation they had - he tried his best to forget that entire day. He racked his brain to give a proper label for their relationship, but he couldn't label what they were to each other. Childhood sweethearts implied a passing memory, transitory love, a relationship built around nostalgia.

It was more than that.

They've known each other long before they learned that A came before B and that pounding hearts and sweaty palms were symptoms of crushes.

But, she left him five years ago, though the time span without her felt like decades upon decades of waiting for her to realize that he would never change, that he would always be the same teenage boy that loved her with an intense fervor.


Billy instantly recognized Elle's old car. It was the same car she had gotten when she first turned sixteen. Even though he practically lived on his tour bus, he estimated that he had spent more time in her car than he had in that bus. Once he entered it, he immediately forgot about his rockstar status.

He had his old life back.

"Can I see the picture again?" Billy eagerly asked. Elle nodded and handed it to him. Billy smiled as he examined it.

"What were you thinking about?" Elle asked, a question she had been meaning to ask for the past five years.

"I was thinking about how content I was. Everything was perfect then, that moment especially. It was twilight, I was seventeen, and I was with you," he said, smiling. "The band had just started, high school was almost ending, and the future was so unpredictable. I was just excited about everything. I remember thinking about how I wanted to remember every detail about that exact second. There was an old couple slowly making their way to the Italian restaurant, the wind kept causing your hair to spill into your mouth every time you spoke, and you smelled like the gardenias from your mother's garden. If I knew the future was going to turn out like this, I never would've left that parking lot, I never would've gotten off that skateboard." he said, drifting off.

Elle remembered every aspect of that memory, she remembered how he said he didn't want to go back, and they spent the subsequent moments in silence, because neither of them wanted to leave that moment. They wanted to freeze time and live in it for lifetimes.

She broke out of her trance as they pulled into an old diner that they had frequented as teenagers. They got out of the car, prepared to charge through the chilly night air, and rushed into the cozy restaurant that perpetually smelled like cigarettes and black coffee.

A waitress seated them in a worn booth next to the window. Without even glancing at the menu, Billy ordered vanilla ice cream and apple pie for them to split, an order he stated by rote.

They were silent for a few moments, and Billy just looked at Elle and took in all the new details and contours age had given her.

"Five years," he said, astounded. It felt like lifetimes.

"What have you been up to?" He asked. Elle shrugged, obviously disinterested in her own past.

"Nothing much, really. I graduated with a degree in Spanish last year, so now I teach at our old high school. The hall monitors keep asking me for my hall pass," she said, rolling her eyes. He smiled; but he was pained because they had always planned to go to college together. Besides wanting to become a rockstar, he wanted to become a music teacher. A few seconds of an alternate past flashed through his mind – him being a music teacher at the same high school, visiting each other during lunch breaks, carpooling to work everyday.

"The past five years of my life can't even amount to a day in yours," she said, breaking him out of his trance.

"But I was non-existent for these past five years. It was like…watching someone else up on stage, appearing on television, being interviewed, touring Europe. All of the stories I told, everything I ever said I felt, I was like an outsider watching some asshole rockstar take everything for granted. But then I think, what is there to take for granted? Music has become an obligation, my image manufactured. I realized that I'm not living life for myself; I'm not even living my life. It's all for other people. Then I think that the music industry, these teenage girls, they can all do without me. I'm not stable, I'm not permanent," he said, breathless after his seemingly endless rant.

"Pretend like you can start over, like your fame never existed – what would you do then?" she asked. He welcomed the hypothetical situation.

"I would major in music and get back with the old band," he said. The band he was currently with was not the original lineup. The original lineup was the reason he developed a penchant for music. It was just him and a bunch of childhood friends writing songs from a broken heart's vantage point. The original band slowly transformed into a completely new band when original members left and new ones were added. His friends gave up on the materialism that was associated with music. It wasn't the same. They were writing music to stay on top of the charts.

"They miss you," Elle said, further breaking Billy's heart.

"Do you still keep in touch with them?" Billy asked. Elle nodded.

"Dave has a baby girl now; she just turned one last year. Chris finally broke up with Sheila, his psycho girlfriend, and his new girlfriend is the epitome of sweet. Oh, and Parker is engaged to June now," she said. Billy nodded and immersed himself in all the new milestones his best friends had reached.

"I'm so glad you're back," he said. The waitress then brought their apple pie and ice cream right when she was about to respond. She took a bite of the ice cream and smiled at what he used to call her.

"I am your palindrome, after all," she said.

It dawned on him during statistics class in high school - when they were talking about variables and constants, all he could think about was how she was the only part of his life that he was dependent on.

"What are you to me?" Billy had asked her.

"I am your constant. Your palindrome," she had said, smiling, kissing his forehead to emphasize her point.


It was around 4am when they left the diner, and the sounds of birds chirping were heard at a distance. Elle started the started the car and put the heater in full blast.

"Our entire first CD was about you, you know," Billy said.

"I never bought any of your CDs," she said. Billy's heart broke; it was, after all, his love letter to her.

"I mean, I still have the mix tape that you made for me," she said, reaching inside her glove compartment and pulling out the worn cassette tape.

"They're the same songs, right?" She asked and he nodded.

"It's just… I like to listen to the mixtape you made for me because it was for me. I don't like to think of you as a rockstar. I just like to remember you as that fumbling teenage boy who would sing me love songs whenever I was about to fall asleep, because you hated when I fell asleep without you. And I know it's horrible to say, but I just don't want to share you with anybody," she said, her eyes focused on the road.

"I was never anybody else's," he reassured her. She smiled at the comfort of knowing that he would always be there.

"You still have it," Billy eagerly said, reaching towards the backseat and pulling out the old guitar he used to play when he was younger. It was worn and beaten, the edges of the neck and body lacked angles because of its constant use and abuse. Billy tuned it and played while Elle drove on.

The sound of Billy's soft voice singing Jawbreaker, the lingering scent of apple pie and vanilla ice cream, the empty roads that were only occupied by streetlights - all of these details were seared into Elle's memory.


They pulled into the parking lot of the hotel while everyone slept. The sunrise slowly yawned and stretched over the horizon, and he remembered how much he detested sunrises. Sunsets were always the idyllic time of day because nights felt like they stretched on forever. They got out of the car in silence and walked towards the entrance of the hotel. Elle hovered by the curbside of the hotel entrance, not intending to go inside. Billy noticed this and sat down on the curb, resting his arms on his knees. Elle grabbed the camera from her chest and took a picture of him as he was looking away. He turned to her and she had that smile on her face, the same smile she had when they were seventeen, the smile of content from capturing the perfect moment. She was always looking for perfect moments.

Suddenly, Billy was young again. The hotel parking lot transformed into the vacant parking lot, and the curbside transformed into his worn skateboard. Elle was behind the camera, her hair bristling in the light breeze as she hid deeper into her oversized sweater. He was seventeen again. He was living out the moment that he had so longed for. Elle sat beside him on his worn skateboard as they tried to accommodate each other; her scent of gardenias from her mother's garden overtook him. An old couple slowly made their way towards the Italian restaurant at the end of the strip, the old man's hand guardedly resting on the small of the old woman's back. He was flooded with that feeling of never wanting to leave her, his old life.

Then instantly, his memories shattered like jigsaw pieces falling apart right before his very eyes. He was in the hotel parking lot again, Elle was seated beside him, and though years passed she looked exactly the same. The breeze caused her hair to spill into her mouth whenever she was about to speak, as if the wind was whispering for her to keep silent, that the only necessary requisite to the moment was breathing and existence.

"I don't have to go back," he said, restating what he had said when he was seventeen. Elle turned to him, his palindrome, and smiled the exact same smile that rested on her lips five years ago. It was as if that smile was in hiding for the perfect moment when he would come back home.