The sun is now completely tucked away and the moon is doing its thing. There’s a picnic blanket on the ground held down by the cinder blocks; this was Thomas’s doing, and it’s a surprise to both me and Gen. “So you’re likely wondering what the hell we’re doing here.”
“I always suspected you were psychic,” she says, still holding on to my hand like she’s dangling from the edge. She looks up and finds some stars hanging out up there in the faraway sky, but I’m about to beat them.
We sit on the blanket and I press the proper buttons on the projector and CD player. “Okay, my plan to take you to the planetarium was a no go because of reasons you would punch me for getting worked up over. So I figured if I couldn’t take you to some constellations, I would bring them to you.” The projector whirs to life and a light beams onto the chimney. An ominous-sounding female voice says, “Welcome to the known universe.” Thomas downloaded the star show from online and even got the audio onto the CD player for us.
Genevieve blinks a few times. There are tears forming in the corners of her eyes, and you shouldn’t be happy when your girlfriend is crying, but it’s okay when they’re Aaron-did-something-right tears.
“From here on out you’re in charge of my birthday,” Genevieve whispers. “The picnic blanket, the pottery session, the stars, and now this woman who sounds like God.”
“We both know God is a dude, but nice try.”
She punches my arm. I pull her close to me and we lie down for our trip across the universe. It’s pretty strange feeling sucked into the stars in front of us when there are actual stars above us. Artificial satellites orbit the planets and I act like I’m flicking them away, clicking my tongue each time. Genevieve punches me again and shushes me. I would’ve shut up anyway after seeing the planets fall into the distance so we can admire constellations, like the twins for Gemini (which she whoops at), the Pisces fish, the Aries ram, and the rest of the zodiac family. The constellations fall away. The captions tell us that we’re a light-year away from Earth when boring radio signals zoom in . . . on and on until we end up in the Milky Way galaxy 100,000 light-years later. This feels like something straight out of a video game.
We travel 100,000,000 light-years from Earth—into other galaxies, where we see lots of greens and reds and blues and purples glowing against the black of space, like splattered drops of paint on a dark apron. I don’t know how we’re not space sick once we hit 5,000,000,000 light-years away from Earth. There’s something shaped like a butterfly, and we discover it’s the afterglow of the big bang, which is pretty damn beautiful.
Everything begins zooming away, space and time undoing its present to us, my present to Genevieve, and it throws us out of the cosmos. This trip changes everything for me. Or maybe doesn’t change anything, only makes clear of what I can find here on Earth, my home. Space is pretty damn unreachable for most of us. I turn to Genevieve, to the girl I brought to the stars and back, who waits for me through times dark as space. I hold her hand and say, “I think I sort of, maybe kind of . . . I think I love you.”
My heart is pounding. I’m so dumb. Genevieve is out of my league, out of this universe. I wait for a reaction, for her to laugh at me, but she smiles and blows all my doubts away—until her smile falters for a second. I could’ve missed it if I blinked or rolled my eyes back in relief.
“You don’t have to say that,” Genevieve says. I check her hands to see if the ax she just slammed into my chest is as big as I think it is. “I don’t know if that’s what you think I want to hear.”
“I’ll be real. I didn’t think kids our age could do this, you know, but you’re more than my best friend and definitely more than some girl I like sleeping with. I’m not waiting for you to say it back—in fact, never say it. I’ll be okay. I just had to tell you.”
I kiss my girlfriend on her forehead, untangle our hands and legs, and get up. It’s hard, seeing as there’s this crushing weight in my chest that makes me feel like that time I tumbled under the waves at Orchard Beach. I follow the orange cord to the ledge and look down at the street: two guys are either shaking hands or swapping money for weed, a young mother is struggling to pop open a baby stroller and a couple of girls are laughing at her. This world is full of ugliness like drugs and hate and girlfriends who don’t love you. I look over at my building a couple blocks down. I could really go for being home now.
Genevieve grips my shoulder and hugs me from behind. In her hand is a folded piece of paper. She shakes it until I take it from her.
“Look at it,” she says, slightly muffled. This is a goodbye hug that comes with a goodbye letter with goodbye words. I unfold the wrinkled sheet and it’s an illustration of a boy and a girl in the sky with a backdrop of many, many stars. The boy is tall and when I examine it more closely, the girl is punching him in the arm—it’s a constellation of us.
Genevieve turns me to her and looks me in the eyes and I almost want to turn away. “I drew that after our first date and have carried it around a lot wondering when I could share this with you. All we did was walk around and it was easy, like we were hanging out for the hundredth time.”
Then I realize our first clumsy kiss was the inspiration. “I laughed after we kissed and you didn’t get offended or anything. You smiled and punched me in the arm.”
“I should’ve punched you in the face. I guess I like hurting the boy I love.”
I don’t move. I told her to never say it but I’m damn glad she did. We’re locked in some strange staring contest and our mouths are curving.
This is still an ugly world. But at least it’s
one where your girlfriend loves you back.
7
THAT TIME I’M ALONE
It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours and I miss Genevieve. I would sell our firstborn child—a little guy I think we’ll name something ironic, like Faust—just to have her back to punch me.
I didn’t even change clothes when I woke up because the shirt had her fist print, not that I would ever tell my friends. I tried distracting myself with some Sun Warden sketches. Funny how I was so big a distraction to Genevieve that she had to fly to New Orleans just so she could get some work done.
I never do anything right.
These are bad thoughts for me to be thinking. That shitty therapist Dr. Slattery told me to speak to someone—friends, a stranger on the subway, anyone—whenever I find myself in an unhappy and lonely place: obvious advice and not worth the bank we spent on him. I go outside and search for Brendan since there’s no one home for me to talk to. Not that I’d be chitchatting with my mom and Eric anyway. I try calling Brendan; he doesn’t pick up his phone.
Outside, Skinny-Dave is playing handball. He lets me join him, which is great because it keeps me busy enough to suffer through his small talk about “procrastination masturbation,” where you save a porn link for later because you can’t be bothered with the cleanup at that moment. But it’s not long before he stops playing so he can check on his laundry, leaving me alone with a handball I “better not fucking lose” or he’ll castrate me and my future sons. (Sorry, Faust.)
Twenty days.
I only have to survive twenty more days without her.