- 38 -
November 2045
Dean
After a full day of cooking, I was nearly asleep when a very excited, very awake Hallee pitched this idea to me. Turkey-coma must’ve clouded my judgment, because there’s no way a fully conscious Dean would’ve agreed to this.
I have an idea, she said.
It’ll be fun, she said.
Fun doesn’t include scaling an old rusty ladder, but here we are. I went first, of course. There’s no world in existence where I’d let her be the adventure test subject.
I can hear her down there, second-guessing how great of an idea this really is and calculating the distance of the fall I’d take if this ladder snapped.
“You’re halfway!” she yells, coated in worry.
She’d hear it in my voice too, so I take a hand off the ladder to give a thumbs-up.
“Put your hand back on the ladder!”
To be a smartass, I throw a more dramatic thumbs-up. The momentum makes the ladder sway and Hallee, you guessed it—startles. Her startle startles me more than the ladder did.
What a mess.
Picking up my pace, I reach the rooftop quickly.
“I’m coming up!” she calls before I can even look over the edge.
Sure enough, here she comes. Stress climbs up my spine with every rung she fearlessly relies on. If she falls, I’m not there to catch her. I promised I always would . . . but didn’t expect for it to be taken so literally.
“Steady hands, speed racer,” I joke as she reaches the top.
Calm down now, heart. She’s safe.
Are any of us, though?
Woah, hell no. Now is not the time for rogue questions.
“Everything you hoped and dreamed?” I ask, pulling her into a tight embrace.
“Crazy how a perspective change can make the city go from daunting to dazzling,” she whispers. “Come this way.” Tugging my hand, she leads me across the moonlit rooftop.
“But the city is that way.”
“It’s even crazier how beauty amplifies without all the noise.”
“You don’t like the lights?” I ask, surprised because she used to love them.
“They drown out the stars.”
Without waiting for me, she sits on the edge of the roof. What a rush, dangling our legs off the edge like this. Reckless, to act as invincible as we feel. My heart skips a beat as she leans her head on my shoulder.
“I love you,” I whisper into her hair.
Time dissolves as we sit in silence. There’s no doubt she’s silently counting the stars. Her fingers are fidgeting, which means her mind is a windmill, creating loads of energy. Nervous energy, sad energy, all the energy, because this woman never stops. Never thought of it as a privilege until now—the ability to quiet your own mind.
“I love you,” I repeat, just to make sure she knows.
I’ll never say it enough.
Lately there’ve been days where she’s the happiest I’ve ever seen her, but those days have also highlighted the amount of times her shoulders have sagged under the weight of a silent burden. There’s a heaviness to her that she refuses to acknowledge, and repeatedly avoiding it has peeled back the scab before it can heal. Her face is raw, bleeding, and begging me to understand the ache of her heart, but I love my woman patiently. She’ll share when she’s ready.
Three.
Two.
“Do you think there is anything out there?”
There it is.
Can’t help but chuckle before I reply, “Do you actually think I’ve contemplated extraterrestrial life?”
The differences in the depths we think were learned long ago, but that’s what makes us work so well. She talks and I listen, which is all she wants now. She wants me to listen.
“So contemplate it now, with me. What is out there?”
“I don’t know, Hal. It wouldn’t change anything to know.”
“But maybe we aren’t alone.”
“Alone is not such a terrible thing to be.”
She shifts back and forth like a seesaw as her face deflates.
“Alone is the most terrible thing to be.” Tears pool in her eyes as she continues, “I like to think that in a different world, there’s another version of us, and they get the ending we deserve.”
Pretending to touch the sky, she drags her hand across the constellations. “Right now, they’re sitting on their rooftop, telling all of their favorite memories to the stars for safekeeping.”
A lump forms in my throat. “A constellation of memories at their fingertips.”
“The stars—our ultimate friend.” She sighs.
“I’m scared, Hal.”
“Me too.”
“We deserve better,” I finally admit.
“We really, really, really, do.”
Choking down my fear, I point to a particularly bright star. “That one will hold onto the first time I saw you at The Marmotte. And that one,” I move my hand across the sky, “will hold the stubborn stare that glared up at me through coffee raindrops.”
Her face is love, shining in the dark. Always has been, and I hope it always will be, even if it’s not for me.
“That one,” her voice cracks as she points to a faint little dot in the distance, “will hold your shock when I kissed your cheek outside of Happy Bookday.”
She got me there; that had to have been a sight to see. It was that moment that I realized I’d never grow tired of being surprised by her.
Pointing to another, I whisper, “When I saw you in the smoke-filled apartment.”
Her mischievous eyes glance at me. “The time you kissed my forehead while you thought I was asleep.”
“You’ve been holding onto that all this time and you never told me?”
“Maybe.”
“Wow, Hal. I didn’t know we were in the business of keeping secrets from one another.”
As if my words have struck her, she flinches before her eyes fall.
“I was just holding it until I could let it go. It’s the star’s now,” she mutters.
“That one,” I point left, forcing her to look in my direction, “will hold all of my love for you.”
The warm honey in her eyes sweetens the shade of heartbreak in them.
“That one,” she whispers and points straight ahead to make me look away from her, but I’m fixated on the earthside star sitting next to me, “will hold onto us.”
“Us,” I sigh, wrapping my arm around her as a kaleidoscope of moments collect between us.
Together, we hand them over to the constellations. All night, we reminisce and designate our favorite memories to their own star, wishing on every falling one that we could have a lifetime of nights just like this one.