Page 26 of Born to Run Back
Theo
Date Three: Sacred Gallery
The Van Gogh exhibition at LACMA pulsed with tortured genius, each canvas a window into a mind that had seen too much pain and too much beauty to contain in flesh alone. Wendy stood before “Starry Night Over the Rhône” like a pilgrim at an alter, her breath fogging the protective glass as she leaned closer to carefully study the brushstrokes that had been laid down by hands which had shaken with both inspiration and madness.
“Look how he constructs light,” she whispered thoughtfully, her voice carrying the reverence reserved for holy things. “Each star explodes like a tiny sun. Most painters try to capture light by making everything brighter, but Van Gogh understood you have to paint the darkness first. You have to honor the presence of the shadows before the illumination has any meaning.”
I observed her in her element, a smile spreading across my face. God, she was beautiful. “Is that your method?”
“When I paint landscapes, I always begin with what hides in the darkness and work toward what dares to catch fire in sunlight.” She glanced at me, color blooming delicately across her cheekbones like watercolor on wet paper. “Forgive me, Theo. I become insufferable when discussing technique.”
“Never apologize for passion,” I said. “I could listen to you dissect beauty for the rest of my life.”
“Dangerous confessions, Mr. Garner. I might hold you to that promise.”
“I’m counting on it.”
Wendy
Date Four: Kingdom of Learning
Roosevelt High after the final bell felt like a cathedral emptied of congregation, our footsteps echoing and reverberating through the hallways that held ghosts of a thousand teenage dreams and disappointments. Theo’s classroom appeared to be a shrine to curiosity, with walls papered with student projects that spoke of minds awakening to the vast tapestry of human experience. Timelines of Renaissance and revolution, essays that dissected the rise and fall of empires, photographs from field trips where history had been touched with trembling hands.
“Your students must adore you,” I said, my fingers tracing the edge of a detailed map of medieval trade routes that some teenager had crafted with obvious devotion. “I can see it in how they write about these ancient souls. They trust you with their intellectual hearts.”
“Trust is the true currency of education,” Theo said. “You cannot counterfeit caring about these young minds. They can see right through you.”
He opened a folder thick with essays, his face illuminated by that particular joy that came from witnessing a transformation. Page after page of thoughtful analysis, creative interpretation, the building blocks of critical thinking laid down like foundational bricks for the adults these children would become.
“You’re building more than knowledge,” I realized, watching him flip through the evidence of the lives he’d touched. “You’re constructing hope. Teaching them that the past matters because it’s still writing itself through their choices.”
“History isn’t dead, Wendy. It’s breathing. It’s alive. In every decision we make, every pattern we repeat or choose to break.”
Standing there in his domain, watching him speak about his calling with the fervor of a true believer, I felt myself falling not just for his kindness or his devastating hands or the memory of how he’d anchored me in my darkest hour. I was falling for the man who spent his evenings crafting lessons that would make teenagers fall in love with forgotten wars and dead emperors, who believed that understanding our yesterday was the key to choosing our tomorrow.
And tomorrow, maybe all the tomorrows I had left, I wanted to choose him.
Theo
Date Five: Temple of Words
Booked & Bewitched smelled like intellectual seduction, of coffee beans and aging paper, the particular perfume of stories still waiting to be discovered. The kind of independent bookstore that hosted poetry readings by local mystics and sold books based on the recommendations of passionate staff who read like they breathed.
Wendy browsed the art section like a scholar researching old sacred texts while I gravitated toward my usual haunts among poets and historians who had tried to capture the human condition in language.
“Treasure hunting?” she inquired, materializing beside me with arms full of books on color theory and contemporary masters whose names I recognized from museum walls.
“Always. Mary Oliver today. Some Pablo Neruda to balance the sweetness with fire.” I showed her the slim volume cradled in my hands. “Do you commune with poetry?”
“Not often enough. Perhaps you could serve as my guide?”
I selected Billy Collins from the shelves, my fingers finding one of his pieces that had sustained me through the worst of my sleepless months. “This one. He has the gift of making the ordinary feel like revelation, like grace hiding in plain sight.”
She read in the amber light filtering in through the dusty windows, her lips moving almost imperceptibly with the rhythm of words, and I found myself memorizing her profile—the elegant curve of her thin neck, the way her eyelashes painted delicate shadows across her cheekbones, the small furrow of concentration between her brows that made me want to soothe it away with my thumb.
“Read it aloud,” she said, her voice carrying a request that felt dangerously intimate.
“Here? With all these strangers?”
