11. Glitter & Stardust
Glitter & Stardust
Rafe
The cold air hits me first, then the scent of wet cement from the parking lot and a too-bright morning after a gig.
All I feel is her. It’s her I’m still breathing in.
My pupils are the size of planets, throbbing, the whole world smeared at the edges.
But somehow her face remains burned into the center of my vision.
Every other light bleeds, every other shape dissolves but she stays in focus.
She had to tilt my face toward hers to get those drops in and I swear something in me forgot how to hold my body upright.
I step onto the bus, hand fumbling on the rail because my balance is gone.
My head was pounding from the fall. Now it’s pounding from something else entirely.
Her voice. That soothing register she used like she’d been trained to pull chaos apart stitch by stitch.
No gushing or asking for selfies. No fanfare, just: Are you hurt?
Are you seeing stars? Don’t move, now look at me.
Look at me? Right. As if I could look anywhere else.
I press the heel of my hand to my forehead.
It’s useless, she’s everywhere. The trace of her accent curling around my name when she read the chart.
The way she corrected my attempt at Sawadzka, almost embarrassed, like she thought she’d offended me.
She had no idea she could’ve said it backwards and I’d have called it gospel.
I can’t get a proper breath in and my chest won’t unclench.
The door shuts behind me and the noise of the bus rushes in, the ancient refrigerator, the driver’s shoes thudding in the bathroom, Rithy singing off-key in the kitchenette, but it feels far away, like I’m underwater.
“Ashton,” Kiri calls from the sofa. “You blind? Did the floor break your eyes too?”
I try to answer but my throat’s sandpaper, voice gone.
Heart hammering like I’ve just sprinted on stage for an encore.
I toss myself into the seat opposite him, missing the armrest by an embarrassing margin.
Whatever this is has fully murdered my depth perception.
Great. Brilliant. Perfect timing. But that’s not what’s got me off kilter.
“Fuck, you look utterly destroyed,” Rithy says, poking my knee with his socked foot. “Did they give you pain meds or did the pretty doctor fry your circuits?” He nods in the direction of her car outside the window.
Pretty doesn’t even come close. She looked…
real. Real in a way that knocked the breath out of me.
Glitter smudged from dancing, eyeliner crooked from sleep.
Scrubs slightly wrinkled, her hair in a bun that kept trying to escape and those eyes, dark, full of stardust, focused, locking on mine like I was just another man in her chair.
Not Obelus or a celebrity. Not anything larger than the two feet of examination space between us.
She didn’t blink when she met my stare. That’s what did it, that tiny thing. She didn’t look away, she stared right into me. Not the myth or the noise. Me.
“She’s definitely hot,” Ronan adds, flipping a drumstick between his fingers. “Did you flirt? Or did the fall ruin whatever charm you think you possess?”
I shake my head, but it’s pointless. They can smell it on me, the way dogs smell rain.
“I didn’t flirt,” I mumble, rubbing my temple. “I… couldn’t.”
Because what I felt wasn’t flirtation. It was something terrifyingly close to intimacy, which sounds insane even to me. Maybe the concussion has rewired me from the ground up and I’ve completely lost the plot.
Kiri squints.“Why do your eyes look so big? Did she drug you?”
“That’s the, uh, dilation, I think she called it?” I mutter. “To check for tears or something.”
“Well, something is torn,” Rithy mutters. “Your composure seems rather ripped at the seams, Rafferty.”
“Shut up,” I say, but it has no heat. How could it?
I’m still caught somewhere miles behind, her voice anchoring me while she pressed an instrument to my bloody eye.
She’d said, you’re not being difficult if you want to stop, in such a soft and human way, not impressed or intimidated, just...
kind. No one speaks to me like that anymore.
Her hands had brushed my face, the gloves were cold, her fingers warm underneath and I swear the whole world went silent except for her breath.
She leaned so close I could see that tiny fleck of glitter refusing to leave her cheekbone.
It killed me, the thought of her at our gig last night, sweating, shouting, maybe caught in the lights, not knowing I’d be in her chair five hours later.
But somehow she looked at me like she hadn’t watched me last night.
Not a performer or the shadow-drenched creature she saw on stage. Just… a man in pain.
My pulse spikes again. I swear it’s audible.
“You’re doing that thick breathing thing,” Rithy notes dryly. “The one that means you’re either about to faint or write a ballad.”
I drag my hands down my face, elbows on my knees.
“It’s nothing.”
It’s not nothing.
“She didn’t even ask for anything,” I say, mostly to myself. “No photo or signature. She was just making sure I could see.”
The bus goes still. Kiri lifts a brow. Rithy stops chewing his cereal. Ronan's expression softens like he’s clocked the real issue.
“Ohhh,” Ronan says, leaning back with a wicked grin. “Our boy’s smitten.”
I let my head fall back against the seat, eyes closed because honestly? If I look at anything else, I’ll see her anyway.
“Whatever,” I breathe out, helpless. “I’m just tired, that’s all.”
I can still feel her thumb at the corner of my eye and hear her laugh when I joked about making people cry.
I can still see the way she froze when our fingers touched over the card.
That wasn’t one-sided. That was… something.
Something I’ll have to wait to feel again and it already hits me like it’s torture.
Two weeks?
Fuck, two weeks suddenly feels like a lifetime.