Present
ONLY IN THE DARKNESS CAN you see the stars. I knew that better than anyone. He did, too, only for different reasons.
He lived in the dark.
I worshipped the stars.
What a pair we were.
I’d praised them, basked in their twinkling lights.
He’d hidden among them, covered in the shadows of their night.
I’d danced under their glittering radiance.
He’d concealed himself in the darkness surrounding them.
A sky of dreams. That’s what they were to me.
But he was adamant that my dreams were just clouds of helium, hydrogen, and dust that began to collapse under their own gravitational attraction. He’d point to the sky, his face serious, his eyes grave and tell me that as that cloud collapses, the material at the center begins to heat up. Me snuggled between his legs, our behinds to the hard ground, he’d say “A star’s born right there at that hot core in the heart of a collapsing cloud, Luna. That cloud had to die for your dreams.” He’d sneer.
He says science and I say dreams.
I was silly, then. Just a young girl with too many ideals, too many wishes, and I depended on all of those twinkling lights to make them happen. Oh, how I’d matured the last year.
Then, I thought it so beautiful how much we were like the stars. He and I. Our light and dark. Only, now, I realized how unfortunate it was for us how much we had in common with the stars I loved so. How we united under the most strenuous of circumstances. Carefully, slowly and even though we may have tried to fight it, we couldn’t. We were helplessly pulled and twisted together by some unknown, magical force. And we formed. When we finally came together, it wasn’t just hot. It was fire. We could have burned the world down. Maybe we did. Maybe we’d burned too bright. Too big. Until we’d just snuffed out.
But how could that be? I still burned for him.
A star was realized.
A dream was born.
But even stars and dreams die.
And God, my heart ached because of it.
Tick. Tick. The clock on the wall read 3:25. Five minutes and I’d be free. Not free to leave. Or free to love. Or really free at all. But free from this classroom and its eyes. I swallowed the lump of emotion in my throat and saliva filled my mouth even as my stomach rolled. I felt sick. But I couldn’t think about him here. Not where people could see me. Not where I had to share him.
I stared at the calendar next to the whiteboard as my knee bounced restlessly beneath the desk and my heart raced.
Don’t cry, Livvy. His voice slid through my mind so effortlessly, so freely, it could have been my own. My lips trembled even as my pulse slowed. Even though he was miles and miles away, his calm washed over me like a wave rolling up on the beach.
Four days. Four days since I’d been here. My own personal hell. Four long days since I’d seen him. Since I’d smelled him. Since I felt him. Closing my eyes, I took a calming breath. The galaxies behind my eyelids made me snap them back open.
The screech of a chair across the tile floor drew my attention and my gaze inadvertently landed on the girl next to me. Her eyes widened, and I lowered my head as I heard her rushed whisper to the girl next to her. “What the hell is wrong with her?”
There was a hell of a lot wrong with me. Wrong with the world.
The not quite familiar bell rang and still I shot to my feet and practically ran from the classroom and then the building, the sense of suffocation making me fly. My flip-flops slapped against the pavement angrily as I crossed the courtyard to the entrance of the dormitory where I paused and looked up the four floors to my window. I hated that window, this building. I gulped in big breaths, praying for the ability to breathe that never came.
The memory of my stepmother’s always contained voice washed over me. “This is for your own good, Livingston. He’s just a phase. It’ll pass. You’ll see.” She’d patted me on the head, like an animal, not a daughter. “You’ll thank me later,” she’d said right here in this very spot. Her pale pink cardigan had blown in the breeze over her perfectly ironed-to-death white blouse.
I’d stared at the pearls around her neck past the point of pissed off and right into enraged territory. “If he’s just a phase and it’ll pass then why the hell am I here?” I’d gritted from between my teeth.
“You’ll watch your mouth, Livingston. Young ladies do not speak that way.”
He wasn’t just a phase. He wasn’t just anything. How could he be anything when he was everything?
Even at seventeen, I knew. He was my one—the star that shined brightest in my sky.
I skipped the elevator and the people I knew would occupy it and headed for the stairwell. I couldn’t deal with the new-girl stares. Climbing the stairs quickly, I felt them. The tears I worked so hard to keep at bay all day. They hit my eyes like twin pools before trailing down my face and down my neck. There were too many tears to count. Too much sadness to carry. I pressed my hand to my chest hard. I wanted to reach in there and grab my heart, toss it down the stairs. How could it be the source of my life and yet hurt me so badly, too? Instead, I pushed the door open at the top of the stairwell and dashed to my bedroom on the fourth floor. Throwing the door open, a sob hit my throat. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. It echoed throughout the room and only made the ache in my chest worse. Relieved and equal parts devastated I was alone, I fell onto my bed face first, clutching my pillow to my face. My tears quickly soaked the fabric and my pillow barely muffled my cries.
This was it. I was going to die of heartbreak. That’s what this was, right? I’d never experienced something so debilitating. So excruciating. So awful. I hadn’t felt this way since I’d lost my father.
How would I go on without him? Would he forget me? About us? About the stars? Where was he now? Was he okay? Was he as torn up as I was? I rolled to my side and pulled my legs to my chest and held them there, rocking my body.
And I did what I’d done for the past days I’d been here. I thought of him. Of his clear blue eyes framed by the thickest, darkest lashes I’d ever seen. I thought of the tiny crinkles around those eyes when he bestowed one of his rare smiles on me. Those smiles that made me feel like the only girl in the world. I pictured his wide, pink lips when he smiled, that one crooked tooth in the front of his mouth that stole my damn heart over a year ago.
I went back to Adam Nova and his bad boy attitude. His one-word answers that drove me crazy. His too-long dark hair I loved to run my hands through. His way of loving me that compared to no other.
I went back to our space and time. To the field that separated our lives as much as it did our hearts.
To the beginning. To the beginning of the end.
I lay there in that dorm room remembering us. Remembering when I lay beneath our stars. When I lived beneath his stars.