She follows, both of us relaxing and looking up as we leave planet Earth and enter an interstellar cloud.
“I like the theory stuff,” she says. “Black holes and worm holes and all the crazy things physicists are afraid we won’t understand.”
“Why do you like it so much?”
“Astronomy or theoretical physics?”
“Both, I guess.”
She shrugs. “Possibility. Perspective.” She sits up again, tipping her head back and smiling. “It’s kind of comforting to realize how truly insignificant you are.”
I watch her.
She goes on. “I see the star, but the star will never see me. It’ll still be there long after me. Through millions of me’s.” She pauses and then whispers, “Life goes on, no matter if I pay the bills or not.”
I ache, looking at her, because she’s right and I hate it. Life goes on.
So, we live. As hard as we can for as long as we can, and we feel everything, because if it doesn’t kill us, something will.
But she’s too busy fighting for things I’ve never had to fight for.
And I hate that.
My throat is tight, and I clear it before taking a breath. “Should we go?”
She jerks her eyes to me. “Already?”
I laugh again, because she looks devastated.
“Live on other planets, I mean?” I tell her. “Instead of fixing this one?”
She turns back to the screens. “We can do both,” she replies. “But we’ll definitely have to leave. Having all our eggs in one basket here on Earth didn’t work out well for the dinosaurs, you know?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
We watch the film, traveling through space and time, galaxies and the birth of our own, and I feel it down to my bones. How lucky we are to be here.
“You are significant,” I say quietly, still staring up at the screen. “Scientists say that nearly all the atoms in our bodies were made in a star. And many of those atoms have traveled through several supernovas.” I pause, seeing her look over at me out of the corner of my eye. “You weren’t born here. You were born billions of years ago, Aro. You’re stardust.” I look over, meeting her eyes. “The stars don’t need to see you. They know you.”
Aro
The tears streaming down my face mix with the spray from the shower, and I lean my forehead into my arm against the wall as the water warms my back.
What is he doing to me?
Making me think I’m special. That I’m important. That kind of thinking is a disease that slowly kills people who are tricked into believing they have a chance. You can’t give hope to someone who can’t afford it.
But I can’t stop the sobs. They wrack my body harder, because I want to believe him. I want to think that I’m more than this and that anything is possible. That high school dropouts can all of a sudden have completely different lives, but that shit is for the movies.
Hope breeds disappointment, and disappointment eats you.
I don’t want to want things I’ll probably never have. It’ll hurt too much. I don’t want to know about the things missing from my life. I’m happier that way.
I wipe the water off my face, feeling the ache inside me. The ache from the damage he’d done just by telling me that I’m stardust. Such a sweet, stupid boy.
I shut off the water and wrap the towel around me, stepping out from behind the tiled wall. I dry my feet on the mat he has there and step toward the sink, the mirror foggy from the steam.
I stare at the counter. “He’s sweet,” I murmur to myself.
He’s self-righteous, a little uppity, condescending, and his playlist could use a serious update, but…
He’s responsible. Honest, compassionate, smart, driven, and he pays attention. He sees things and takes the time to process them.
And he’s sincere. He may have been telling me things I shouldn’t hear in that planetarium, but he meant every word. He didn’t like me thinking badly of myself.
He’s a good man. He won’t hurt anyone on purpose, and he won’t make kids and abandon them. The other men I’ve met in my life—would-be-fathers and classmates and neighborhood assholes—flash in my mind, and none of them are worth a fraction of him.
Whoever he finally falls in love with will have the best.
But I frown, thinking about him finding love and knowing how hard someone like him can fall. She better deserve him. He would never hit a girl, but I’d look forward to doing it for him if she hurt him.
I dry off and pull on a pair of the new underwear his cousin brought. I’m glad she didn’t get cocky and bring me thongs or some shit. Just straight black bikini briefs that actually look great with my skin tone. Not that I worried about that, but I’ll have to thank her. I’ll take it out of what she owes me. I should’ve just taken the money she offered, but I still intend to collect.