38. Isabelle
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
isabelle
A re you sure? This doesn’t seem safe.” Reid’s voice dripped with hesitation, and his eyes had a wary look as I opened the window to climb out onto the roof below it. His earlier admission to being cautious started to make more and more sense as I tried to get him to sit on the roof with me.
“It’ll be fine. I do this all the time at home.” I gave him an encouraging wave to follow me as I sat on the windowsill and swung my legs out. “Live a little, Cowboy.”
The night air provided a cool breeze off the water, and I shivered a little, goosebumps already covering my arms.
“Wait, before you come out here, bring two of those blankets.” I pointed to the basket of shag blankets in the corner of the room.
He handed me the first one, and I laid it out on the roof like a picnic blanket, patting it after I sat. The roof was slightly slanted downward, but I wasn’t worried about falling as I lay on the blanket on my back.
Reid followed, bringing the second blanket with him. When he sat down, he shook it out so he could cover us with it.
“Lay down and look up,” I said as I pointed up at the sky. There wasn’t a single cloud, and being out of the city, there was hardly any light pollution, so all of the stars were visible. “It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?”
He let out an agreeable hum, and his hand reached for mine, our fingers interlacing.
“That one’s Hercules.” I pointed at the stars above us. “And that one’s Ursa minor.”
“I never would have pinned you as an astronomy girl,” Reid teased. “But I noticed your tattoo yesterday. I like it a lot.”
“I used to love astronomy as a kid. And Greek mythology too. I got that tattoo when I went to college. I used to tell my little sister that no matter how far away I was from her, whenever she missed me, if she looked up at night, she would be able to find comfort in the fact we saw the same stars and know she wasn’t alone. And that whenever I missed her, I could also look up and see what she was seeing. No matter how far our distance, we would always be connected somehow.”
“That’s beautiful.”
“You see the really bright star above us?” I changed the subject away from my sister, pointing out Vega, one of the brightest stars in the galaxy.
“Yeah.”
“It’s called Vega. And it’s part of the Lyra constellation, which represents the lyre, the instrument Orpheus played.”
He looked over at me, but I was unable to read his expression.
I couldn’t tell what he was thinking at that moment, so I continued. “Orpheus and Eurydice is one of my favorite Greek myths.” I told him the full story; how when Eurydice died, Orpheus went into the underworld and made a deal with Hades that they could both leave, but only on one condition: Orpheus doesn’t turn around to look at Eurydice. And I told him how Orpheus eventually failed because he turned around.
Reid kept his eyes trained on me the entire time, completely engrossed in the tale.
“Isn’t that sad?” he asked when I had finished. “Why would he look? Seems like a lack of self-control.”
“That’s the thing. It wasn’t a lack of self-control, it was love . In every interpretation of the myth, Orpheus turns because of his love for Eurydice, not in spite of it.”
“That makes a lot of sense. When you put it that way, it’s beautiful. Beautifully sad, but still beautiful.”
I turned my head toward him, away from the stars, slightly in shock. No one had ever really understood what I meant when I told them about that story. They’d always just brushed it off, or said, “cool,” and moved on. But Reid, he always listened to me. He always understood .
I leaned into him and rested my head on his shoulder, a warm feeling bubbling up inside of me. He made no comment as he put one arm around me and with his free hand, stroked his fingers through my hair.
They say to be loved is to be seen, and sitting there, in the dark with Reid, looking up at the stars, I’d never felt more seen.