Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
where the stars still knew us
ROOK
Igot to the spot twenty minutes early because waiting at home felt worse than waiting here, and at least here I could pretend I was doing it on purpose instead of pacing my kitchen like a fucking caged animal while checking my phone every thirty seconds.
The clearing looked the same as it always had, which shouldn't have surprised me but did anyway.
The same gap in the trees opened up over the valley, and the same view of the lights spread out below like scattered stars.
The same flat rock sat there waiting, the one we'd always claimed as ours even though anybody could have used it.
Nobody ever did though, not back then. Probably not now either, judging by the way the grass had grown tall around the edges and the tire tracks leading in looked old and weathered enough to have been there for years.
I stood there for a minute just taking it in, letting the cold air settle into my lungs while I tried to figure out what the hell I was supposed to feel.
Nostalgia felt too soft for what was sitting in my chest. Grief felt too heavy.
Mostly it just felt surreal, like I'd walked into a memory that hadn't gotten the memo it was supposed to stay in the past where it belonged.
The stars were already out, scattered thick across the black sky the way they only got when you were far enough from the city that the light pollution couldn't touch them.
I sat down on the rock and immediately regretted not bringing a jacket because March nights in this part of the coast were brutal.
The damp cold sank into your bones and stayed there no matter how much you tried to ignore it.
But leaving now felt worse than freezing, so I stayed put and shoved my hands into my pockets while telling myself I'd warm up once he got here.
If he got here at all, because he'd called and agreed to meet but that didn't mean he'd actually show up, and the longer I sat there alone in the dark, the more convinced I became that I was about to spend the next hour staring at an empty clearing while feeling like an idiot for hoping.
Then I heard the sound of a car engine cutting through the quiet, and my whole body went tense with anticipation.
Headlights cut through the trees and bounced over the uneven dirt road, getting closer with every second that passed.
My heart kicked up so hard I could feel it in my throat.
I watched the lights approach and then kill as the engine cut off, and I heard the driver's side door open and close with a sound that carried in the stillness.
The footsteps that followed were slow and deliberate, crunching over gravel and dead leaves as they made their way toward me through the dark.
And then he was there, walking toward me with two paper cups balanced in one hand and a smile on his face that looked nervous and warm and so achingly familiar I forgot how to breathe for a second.
Soren was wearing a sleeveless flannel unbuttoned over a black t-shirt that fit him too well, along with tight jeans that sat low on his hips and boots that had definitely seen better days.
The tattoos I'd noticed at the bar ran down his left arm in blacks and grays, some kind of abstract design that caught the moonlight as he moved closer.
“Hey,” he said as he came to a stop a few feet away, like he wasn't sure how close he was allowed to get. “Brought ginger ale. Figured you'd still be weird about drinking anything else before midnight.”
I stared at him for a second, then looked down at the cups in his hand, then back up at the grin that was trying so damn hard to make this feel normal instead of like the world was tilting sideways under my feet.
“You remembered that,” I said, and my voice came out rougher than I'd meant it to.
“Yeah, well.” He sat down next to me on the rock, close enough that I could feel the body heat coming off him even through the cold air between us. He handed me one of the cups and shrugged. “Some shit sticks, I guess.”
I took the cup from him and immediately felt the chill of it against my palm. The liquid inside was flat and room temperature, exactly the way gas station ginger ale always tasted, and when I took a sip the flavor hit me with a wave of nostalgia so strong I almost laughed out loud.
“This tastes like garbage,” I said.
“Always did.” Soren took a sip from his own cup and grimaced at the taste. “But it's our garbage, so I guess we're stuck with it.”
The silence that followed wasn't uncomfortable exactly, but it wasn't easy either.
We sat there drinking terrible ginger ale while staring out at the valley lights below, and I tried to figure out what the hell I was supposed to say first. There were too many questions sitting between us, too many years of distance and anger and confusion piled up in the space where a normal conversation should have been.
“Playoffs got delayed, huh?” Soren said finally, and I could hear the effort it took him to make his voice sound casual instead of tight with nerves. “Snow fucked up the scheduling?”
“Yeah. League's still trying to figure out when we start.” I glanced at him sideways and took in the way his shoulders were hunched slightly forward, like he was bracing for impact from a hit he knew was coming. “Gives me too much time to think.”
“Dangerous.” He was smiling now, but the expression didn't quite reach his eyes the way it should have. “You always overthought everything.”
“You always underthought everything.”
“Balance.” He nudged my shoulder with his in a gesture that felt light and familiar, and I felt the contact like a fucking electric shock running through my whole system. “That's why we worked.”
Past tense. That shouldn't have stung the way it did, but it landed hard anyway.
“You still play?” I asked, because talking about hockey felt safer than talking about us and what we'd been or what we were now. “Or did you give it up completely after graduation?”
“Gave it up.” He said it easily, like it didn't bother him at all, but his jaw tightened just enough that I knew it did. “After graduation, life got complicated as hell. Music ended up being the thing that stuck around.”
“You're good at it.” I meant that completely. “The show the other night was incredible. You always had rhythm back when we played together, but watching you play drums was different. Better than I remembered.”
“Better than hockey?”
“Different,” I corrected him carefully. “But yeah, better in its own way. You looked like you were exactly where you were supposed to be up there.”
He went quiet for a second, staring down into his cup like the answer to whatever he was thinking might be floating in the flat ginger ale.
Then he laughed, and the sound came out soft and a little broken around the edges.
“That's generous as hell. Most nights I feel like I'm faking it and just hoping nobody notices I have no idea what I'm doing.”
“You're not faking it.”
“You don't know that for sure. You only saw one show.”
“I've been listening to your band for months,” I admitted, and I watched his head snap toward me with his eyes going wide in surprise. “I've had Static Bloom on rotation since last summer. You guys are good.”
“You're joking.”
“I'm not.”
“That's...” He trailed off and shook his head like he couldn't quite process what I'd just told him. “That's fucking surreal, Rook.”
“Yeah, well. Welcome to my life for the past week.” I took another drink of the ginger ale and immediately regretted it because the stuff was getting worse the longer it sat in the cup. “Finding you after looking for you for years felt pretty fucking surreal too.”
I watched his expression shift from surprised to something that looked like guilt mixed with grief mixed with too many other things to name all at once.
“I'm sorry,” he said quietly, and the words came out so soft I almost didn't hear them over the wind. “For disappearing the way I did. For not saying goodbye. For all of it.”
I should have said it was fine, that it was water under the bridge, that it was ancient history we didn't need to dig up anymore. But the anger I'd been carrying for too damn long wouldn't let me do that.
“You vanished. One day we were fine, and the next day you were just gone. No explanation, no warning, no nothing. Just an empty house and years of wondering what the hell I did that was bad enough to make you disappear like that.”
“You didn't do anything wrong.” He said it fast and desperate, like he needed me to believe it more than anything else in the world. “Rook, you didn't—it wasn't about you at all.”
“Then what the hell was it about?” I turned to look at him fully now, and I could see the way he flinched under the weight of my stare.
“Because I spent years trying to figure it out.
Went over every conversation we'd ever had, every time I fucked up or said the wrong thing, every single moment where I might have pushed too hard or not hard enough.
And I couldn't find it. Couldn't find the thing that made you decide I wasn't worth a phone call or a text or a goddamn explanation about why you left.”
“It wasn't about you,” he repeated, and his voice cracked on the words as he looked away toward the stars like they might save him from having to meet my eyes. “It was never about you, I swear.”
“Then what the fuck was it about?”
He was quiet for a long time after that, staring up at the stars like they might have an answer he couldn't find anywhere else. I watched him in the moonlight and tried to read what was happening behind his eyes, but he'd always been better at hiding when he needed to.
“You see that constellation up there?” he said finally, pointing at a cluster of stars I couldn't quite make out. “The one that looks like it's broken in half?”
I squinted up at where he was pointing and tried to find whatever pattern he was seeing. “I guess?”