... and again...

Somebody has to speak up for that poor boy!
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It turned out to be way harder than he thought. The old man at the corner shop was right to warn him: Fingers will hurt for a bit, though - but he was so wrong about the "a bit" part. He willed his fingertips to touch the steel strings right where blisters had formed, but as if through conditioning, they took a mind of their own - stiff, reluctant, afraid.

He threw himself and the guitar on the bed, pressed the remote. A voice all too familiar rang from the TV. He knew exactly who it was, and thought to himself: stop listening, turn it off, go away. But he couldn't help it - he sat up, and indeed, there she was.

A superstar.

Her extravagant dress, her heavy makeup, her energetic dancing resembled none of her old self, the one he knew and performed with on the streets for years. She was the lead, the girl whose beautiful smile and beautiful voice attracted crowds; he accompanied on his versatile keyboard, singing the occasional background harmony if the song required it. They wore jeans and T-shirts. They went to underground stations and park fountains. They performed together, ate together, watched movies together, spent their days together. The world was their stage. Or so he thought then.

No, she belonged to the real stage. On TV her audience cheered, screamed, chanted her name. Her background as a street busker was well known. She was discovered by a big shot who'd stopped to listen to her singing, leaving her a big tip, a name card, and a handshake that changed everything. She left, disappeared. She worked hard and got what she deserved: a contract, stage, an audience. Cinderella, they called her.

But how would they ever know her the way he did? How can they claim to love her when all they knew was her singing? They only knew the popular singer, not the girl who reads Jane Austen and loves chocolate ice-cream. They only saw her limbs move in a dance, not how she tucks her hair behind her ear. They only loved her voice. Not her silence - the perfect silence in which she would sit next to him, and rest her head on his shoulder.

She was with him once, but that's not where she meant to be. On TV, that's where she belonged. He turned it off, pressed hard into the guitar strings, doing the same chord progression over and over again, until his eyes stung as much as his fingertips did.