Chapter 3
A Gazillion Stars
SARAH
The crowd cheered again as the sky lit up. But for the first time that night, I wasn’t looking at the stars. I was looking at the man who’d settled in behind me.
Ellie was right. I should have looked. This man was a lot younger than Roger. But still significantly older than me. He had salt and pepper hair and a neatly trimmed gray beard; with weathered skin around his eyes, and a deep line between his thick dark brows.
But all those signs of age didn’t detract even the tiniest bit from his attractiveness. If anything, they underscored it. They were a neon sign that highlighted the sharp cheekbones. The slash of lips and deep-set eyes.
He was big, too. Huge, actually. His soft plaid flannel shirt clung to impossibly broad shoulders; his chest big enough to replace a mattress in a twin bed. I was surprised the flimsy chair he sat in was holding his weight.
When I was married, it had been easy to immediately switch off any fleeting attraction to other men. All I had to do was think of how it would feel for my husband to flirt with someone else.
But I didn’t have a husband anymore, and I was suddenly acutely aware of the missing switch, like bare wires were sticking out of a wall. I was actively getting electrocuted.
“Do you want to use it?” the man asked.
His expression was inscrutable. Was he irritated I hadn’t taken the proffered item? Did he feel sorry for me because I’d clearly been crying? Was he bored and didn’t care?
“Don’t you want to use it?” I asked, my voice slightly squeaky.
As a kid, I’d been perpetually shy and highly anxious.
I’d learned strategies to mostly overcome it as an adult, but I was still not very good around men I thought were handsome—not with that missing switch.
The fizz and pop of those wires buzzed through me unchecked, making my stomach dance with nerves.
“I’m offering it to you,” the man said.
That wasn’t an answer. But yes, I did want to use it. I was desperate to. Seeing a shower like this with the naked eye was one thing. Seeing it up close?
Tentatively, I reached for the telescope. “Maybe just for a minute.”
The man seemed to consider something. Then he said, “I know that kid.” He pointed his gaze over my shoulder, at the boy in front of us. “He’s not going to sit down again. And he doesn’t listen to his dad the way he does his mom.”
The man stood, rising to his full height. He was tall. Impossibly tall from down here. I had to tilt my head practically all the way back to see him.
He held his free hand out. On autopilot, I reached up and took it. The man’s eyes stayed on mine as he pulled me to standing. His palm was warm and dry; exactly as roughed-up as I’d known it would be.
At my full height, which wasn’t short or tall at five feet six inches, he still had to tuck his chin to peer down at me.
For a moment, I just stood there like an idiot. Then I realized the man was trying to tell me to take his seat.
My first thought was Ted would never.
My second was that this man was being incredibly kind to me, and he didn’t have any kind of ulterior-motive look on his face. He wasn’t even smiling.
Still, a warmth spread through me.
But I shook my head. “I can’t take your chair.”
His expression gave nothing away. “Then stand.”
He was just being nice, that was all. Blunt as he was. He felt sorry for me, because I was clearly having a hard time. I should have thanked him again and sat down. That’s what I would have done before. That’s what Ted would have hissed in my ear. Sit down, Sarah.
But I was done listening to Ted. I was listening to Sarah now, the one who’d been dormant since making her first gazillion-star wish.
It was only after I’m pretty sure a whole minute had passed, me still with my back to the lookout, that I realized I’d been staring.
And he’d been staring right back.
“You’re missing the show,” the man husked.
That warmth in my chest turned hot.
“You’re the one still talking,” I said.
The Prosecco was making me a little loose.
But so was the way he was looking at me.
I couldn’t get over how grown this man was compared to Ted.
He could squish Ted like a little bug. I pictured him doing it; just pressing his big paw down on Ted’s head and smushing him into the earth, cartoon-style.
I couldn’t help it, I laughed. And even though he had no idea what I was laughing about, the man’s lips ticked up on one side, like he was just so pleased to see me doing it.
A fluttering of wings erupted in my stomach.
Oh shit.