"I wanted to be famous." She smothers a little laugh--what a great way to screw up the next dot, laughing. "It was stupid--I knew it was, but I used to watch talent shows, and..."

A shrug, a little shake of her head. She dips the needle back in the ink again. "I knew it wasn't gonna happen, but I thought it was because everybody likes to sing, and nobody's as good as they want to think they are."

That she was wrong--that maybe it could've been that, but it wasn't--doesn't need saying. She doesn't bother.

"Everything we do now," she adds, judging the curve of the petal before she sticks him with the needle once more, "it's all real. Even when we don't want it to be--feels like it means more, sometimes. "