There’s something about feeling small that puts things into perspective for me, and no better way to do that than to gaze at billions of stars in an infinite universe.
“I lied to you last night,” I say as we head down her grandmother’s picturesque residential street.
“What?” Her attention whips to me as she adjusts her dress over her legs.
“You asked if I ever miss anything when I’m over there,” I say. “I miss Pringles. And Starbursts. And peanut butter M&Ms.”
Her fist meets my shoulder, though it hardly hurts. “Ass.”
“What?”
“I thought you were being serious.”
I chuckle, coming to a stop at a red light. “I am. I miss those things. You can’t get them over there. Not that easily anyway.”
I know there are other things I should probably miss … like the feel of soft lips, the smell of sweet perfume, the wash of contentedness I get when a beautiful girl looks at me like I’m something special. Soft things. Comforting things. Distracting things.
We don’t have those over there.
But I try not to think about that. And I try not to think about what it might feel like to be thousands of miles away from here, missing Maritza.
If the past has shown me anything, it’s that I’m a shit boyfriend. I’m terrible at communication. I’m bullheaded and rash. And I’m not quite ready to lace up my boots for the last time.
This is why I can’t go deep with her.
I can tell her that I miss candy, but I can’t tell her that I might miss her …
We pull up to the observatory forty minutes later and find a place to park.
“Stargazing, Corporal?” She laughs through her nose, shaking her head as she checks her phone, silences it, and slips it into her purse. “Like that’s not romantic.”
We get out of my car and I meet her by my dented, scratched-up bumper. “I knew you’d read into it.”
She walks beside me, arm grazing mine as the soles of her sandals pad the concrete sidewalk. “Just keep your hands to yourself and we should have ourselves a nice, non-romantic evening.”
We head inside, and I hold the door for Maritza and the couple entering behind us. They’re dressed to the nines in a navy suit and little black dress. Diamonds glint from the woman’s ears and the man presses his hand into her lower back before muttering a quick “thanks.”
We find an available telescope a few minutes later, and I stand back as Maritza crouches slightly, peering into the eyepiece.
“You have to look at the moon,” she says, waving for me to come closer. “That’s so crazy. You can see every little detail.”
I take a look for myself, though it’s exactly what I expected. Growing up, one of my brothers had a telescope. He’d use it to spy on the girls next door when they were outside sunbathing, but I actually put it to good use, checking out stars and neighboring plants as best I could.
The moon was always my favorite though.
Even through our cheap telescope it looked so tangible, like I could reach up and touch it, crumble it in my hands.
“What’s your favorite constellation?” I ask her.
She stands straighter, gazing up at the clear sky as she blows a breath through her red lips. “I don’t know? The Big Dipper?”
“Ursa major,” I say. “That’s the proper name.”
“It’s the only one I really know.”
“When’s your birthday, Maritza?” I ask.
“August fourteenth. Why?”
Placing my hand at her lower back, I pull her closer to the telescope. Bending, I peer through the eyepiece and locate the Leo constellation.
“We’re in luck,” I say. “Take a look.”
She bends, squinting as she glances in. “What am I looking at?”
“See that cluster of stars that kind of looks like a clothes iron with a little hook coming out of it?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s Leo. Arguably the easiest constellation to find, but there you go.”
Maritza stares at it a bit longer before backing off, and when she looks at me, she clasps her hand over her heart. “Isaiah, that was really sweet what you just did.”
“I wasn’t trying to be—”
“Hush.” She swats my arm. “When’s your birthday? I want to see your constellation.”
Dragging my thumb and forefinger down the sides of my mouth, I chuckle. “April first. Fool’s day.”
“You’re joking.”
“Yeah, no.” I roll my eyes, like I haven’t heard that a million times before.
“So that makes you, what … an Aries?”
I nod. “Yeah, but you can’t really see the Aries constellation this time of year. It’s easier to find in the winter, right around Christmas.”
Maritza stands in awe of me, quiet, eyes wide. “Seriously, Isaiah.”
“What?” My brows meet.
“There’s so much more to you than you let on,” she says. “All week I thought maybe I was scratching a little bit of that surface of yours, and then you spring this on me.”
“I’m not springing anything on you.”