Chapter 4
Just Passing Through
JAMIE
This was not good. Not good at all.
When I left to get my friend and quasi-father-figure a blanket, there was a nice little family in front of me. When I got back, there was a woman laughing so hard her glasses nearly slipped off her nose.
I wanted to ask Roger why the Patel family had left. Why these women were in front of us now. Why anything had to change when everything was just fine as it was.
Normally, I considered anyone under forty friends of Seamus, my thirty-year-old son.
They were kids, as far as I was concerned.
But then the woman with the slightly messy dirty blonde hair and oversized sweatshirt had scrambled to her knees, as giddy as the kid in front of her when the sky started lighting up.
I tried not to stare. Truly I did. I kept the old telescope up between us like a shield, trying to focus on the celestial party overhead.
Checking on Roger to make sure he had what he needed.
It had been a hard year since my older friend’s dementia diagnosis.
But it wasn’t too bad yet, and right now, he appeared to be having the time of his life.
But then—fuck me—she’d started crying.
Seeing this woman who’d radiated joy a moment ago nearly sobbing? My insides tore apart like wet paper. I’d rubbed my hand over my beard, my heart smacking at my ribs.
I knew exactly what those kinds of tears were like. They were the ones that came at you like a rogue wave. That catch you when you’re minding your own business, just loving something, thinking they would have loved this, too.
I knew that pain so well. I felt like I had to do something about it. So here I was, handing her my telescope as she looked up at me with those doe eyes, oversized through the glasses.
“Thank you,” she said.
I grunted, unable to speak.
She smelled faintly of sunscreen and cherries. And she was close enough that when she turned around with my telescope, that soft, tousled hair brushed my hand.
I tried to focus on Roger once more, but when I looked over, I saw his head had slumped forward. The binoculars sat in his loose hand, and a soft snoring sound came from his lips.
Fat lot of help he was. At what, I wasn’t sure.
The woman turned back to me. I was still standing behind her. I’d forgotten to sit back down.
What the hell was wrong with me?
Fuck, she was pretty. And maybe a little older than I’d first thought. Maybe I could speak to her without feeling like a dirty old man.
“Do you see the section of sky over by Cassiopeia?” she asked.
She had a mischievous smile on her face that made me want to smile back.
I wasn’t a smiler.
Her smile deepened into a smirk as I stayed silent. She thought I didn’t know where Cassiopeia was. This was a test.
“You think I don’t know stars?” I said.
“Most people don’t know stars.”
“I’ve been looking at the sky since before you were born.”
I regretted the words immediately. They were a reminder of how much older I was than her. Maybe not twenty-five years older like I first thought, but surely twenty. Fifteen at best.
She didn’t seem to care. She grinned. “You’re stalling.”
I moved next to her and immediately regretted it as that cherry scent filled my nostrils. But it was too late now. And Cassiopeia was on her side of the sky. I clenched my jaw and stretched my arm out past her, pointing to the distinctive W shape of the constellation.
When she looked over at me, I realized how close we were.
I stepped back, and was going to return to my chair, when she said, “How do you know your constellations? Is it a hobby? Or were you a fisherman or something? You kind of look like Captain High Liner. The updated version, I mean. The silver fox.”
I slanted a confused look at her.
She gave an embarrassed giggle that undid something in me.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not normally like this. I need to slow down with the Prosecco.”
What are you normally like? I wanted to know.
“What’s a silver fox?” I asked instead.
“You don’t know? It’s a handsome older man.”
My breath got stuck in my throat.
“Sorry.” She grimaced. “Didn’t mean to make things weird.”
What would be weird would be for me to tell her she’d made a mistake. I was a smudge of dirt compared to her. There was only one beautiful person here, and it wasn’t me.
I focused on the original question. “Roger taught me about stars.” I indicated my sleeping friend. “He used to like them, anyway.”
She laughed.
I thought of another lifetime, one where Roger and I were next-door neighbors, my wife and I hardly more than teen parents, him a seasoned older dad with nearly grown kids.
That time in my life held both his catastrophic loss, then later, mine.
That was a time of pain so deep my marriage collapsed under it.
Now we were both lonely old men who liked stars.
“It’s important to know about the world around you,” I said into the silence I’d made. “That’s why I know about stars.”
She smiled. “What else do you know about?”
“Try me,” I said.
She considered. Then aimed her telescope at the taller hills at the edge of the valley. “What’s that mountain called?”
“Doesn’t have a name.”
“I guess it’s not really a mountain,” she said. She lowered the telescope. “Isn’t it weird there’s no word for something between a hill and a mountain?”
I’d always thought so too. This woman was a constant surprise.
This young woman, I reminded myself sternly.
We watched as more meteors danced across the sky. Her face lit up the same with each one, their frequency not diminishing her excitement even a little. I had to force myself not to keep sneaking glances at her.
When the burst was through, she tapped her chin. “How many pounds in a kilogram?”
We were still playing the game. Good. It was mostly neutral territory. Not like silver fox, which I was still stuck on.
“2.2.”
“What’s the capital of Hungary?”
“Budapest.”
“How old am I?”
“Too young for me.”
The words came out before I could stop them. And just like that, I’d made things not neutral again.
“I’m thirty-six,” she said. “So not that young.”
“It’s young.”
She laughed softly. “How old are you?”
“Fifty-two.”
She nodded as if taking that in. “Well, if you live to a hundred, you’ve still got half your life left.”
When I glowered at her, she laughed.
The sound tickled down my spine.
“Are you a dog or a cat person?” she asked.
“I have a cat.”
“Hmm. Well, it wouldn’t work out anyway. I love dogs.”
I didn’t say I didn’t like dogs. I was okay with dogs.
They just hurt too much for me personally.
But she’d said it wouldn’t have worked out, like there was a circumstance here in which it would.
Then I was fucking spiraling again. On the inside, anyway.
On the outside, I frowned, not saying a word.
She grinned. “Are you one of those people who think you know everything?”
“Not even close.”
“Do you ever make mistakes?”
“I prefer planning to avoid them.”
She leaned over, hand on my arm, and whispered, “You can’t avoid all of them.”
I had to close my eyes. It was the touch on my arm; the feeling of her warm breath tickling over my ear. What she’d said.
I didn’t say anything to that, either. I couldn’t.
She finally turned away when her friend got her attention.
The night went on like that, her teasing me, me trying extremely hard to keep from saying or doing something stupid.
I don’t know how long passed. Long enough that Roger’s snoring became rhythmic.
Long enough that her friend joined the group of people next to us, and I accepted the glass of sweet bubbly liquid she passed to me.
Longer still, that the little inadvertent touches stopped feeling accidental.
When she stood in front of me to show me another constellation between shooting stars, I found my hands brushing her hair over her shoulder.
And when she sighed and leaned back against me, I said, “What’s your name?”
She tipped her head back to face me, bringing her fingertips up to rest like butterflies on my jaw. She smiled, but whispered, “I’m not going to tell you.”
She told me she was just passing through.
She rose up onto her tiptoes and whispered, “Let’s just let this be magic.”
That sentence would be etched into my brain my whole fucking life.
At some point, her friend left with the tour group. Roger didn’t stir when I readjusted his blanket. Families started trickling away. One moment, we were in a sea of people, the next, we were alone. Or at least, there were no eyes on us at all from the few scattered groups remaining.
I didn’t want to go, but I couldn’t keep her here.
“Can I walk you to your car?” I forced myself to ask.
“No way,” she said. “It’s not over.”
She was right, there were still meteors in the sky. But the longer we stayed, the worse this became.
I should have been fine with it. These were exactly the kinds of interactions I preferred having with women: brief and as close to anonymous as possible.
But I never had them where I lived. And not with total strangers.
I usually kept them to work trips, with women my age, who I could verify weren’t married or interested in more than I had to give.
I didn’t know a thing about this woman. All I knew was she was nothing like me, but that the contrast felt like a perfect fit. She was soft to my hardness; happy to my terseness.
But more than that, she wore her pain and laughter and joy on her sleeve. The evidence of seeing this not crush someone was a balm to my ancient, deeply-scored battle wounds.
She pressed her hands to my chest and gently urged me backward, and it was then that the last of my rational thoughts vanished. I dropped down into the chair. She stepped between my legs, her bottom lip slipping between her teeth.
I was done for. I couldn’t do anything but reach up and hook my fingers through her belt loops, tugging her gently toward me.
She laughed softly as she dropped onto my lap.