by Kelley York
Or did I never want to, and I’ve gotten tired of pretending?
“It’s none of your business, Chance. Either way, I’m still her boyfriend, and I’m not going to—”
He cuts me off with a sharp, bitter laugh. “You’re a shitty boyfriend, is what you are. Pretending to care more than you do when you’re secretly pining after someone else.”
God, I want to hit him. “I’ve worked really, really hard for this relationship. I’m not going to screw it up now.”
“Why, though?” He drops his arms to his sides, gesturing around us. “That’s what I want to know. Is it because she’s pretty? Good in bed? Why are you so eager to keep this going?”
“Because it’s normal,” I snap. “Okay? It’s fucking normal because everything else in my life has been so not normal. Do you have any idea how weird it is to explain half the things that have gone on in my life? The fact I’ve got a half sister my exact age because my dad cheated on my mom and had a one-night stand? How that little family arrangement has worked out all these years? Why I act like the head of the household at home, because Mom and Boyfriend Bob are too busy drinking and being wrapped up in themselves?”
I’ve hated it. I hate being at home with Mom. It isn’t that she doesn’t love me; it’s that she feels she’s paid her dues to the world and shouldn’t have to do anything anymore. On the rare occasions I made friends, I never had them over to the house because Mom always found it appropriate to share with them our family history. She would introduce Boyfriend Bob and make sure to confirm, Oh, he’s not Hunter’s real dad… His real dad is a lying cheat.
And just because she and Boyfriend Bob aren’t angry drunks doesn’t mean a goddamn thing. They’re still drunks. Mom still wakes me up at all hours of the night to chat my ear off, then kicks me out of bed early because she’s too hungover to make breakfast or go to the store.
“Or how about when people ask me why I’ve never had a girlfriend before I started seeing Rachael?” I continue. “Up until I met her, Mom and Bob would hound me about never having an interest in girls. Because I kept thinking—”
No. That’s where I stop myself. Before I say something I’ll regret. Something I can’t take back. Rachael and Ash are going to come looking for us, and I don’t want to be found standing here like this, in the heat of an argument.
Chance is watching me with a subdued sort of expression, as though none of this surprises him. Which pisses me off further. Don’t I get to keep any secrets from him? He has a million, so why can’t I have a few? Yet he looks at me as though he can see under my skin, see every muscle and bone and exposed nerve that makes me tick, and it’s not fair. “Hunter, I—”
I hold up a hand. “Don’t. Whatever you’re going to say, just…don’t.”
Chance draws in a deep breath. He picks up the handle for the cooler. I almost tell him to stop standing there and say something, except I just told him to stop talking, so that isn’t going to work. Instead, I snatch the other handle, and we carry the cooler up the stairs in silence while I try to lick away the taste of him on my mouth.
Back on the roof, Chance drops the cooler immediately, leaving me to cart it the rest of the way over to the girls. Ash spins around to face us, smiling. The brief, questioning flicker across her features tells me she knows something is wrong, but when she mouths, You okay? I only nod and flip open the cooler lid to dig out a soda.
“Thought you two got lost,” Rachael says. She startles me by looping her arms around my neck and planting a firm, warm kiss against my mouth. She’s never kissed me in public before. Though I would have thought she’d be annoyed I wasn’t here when the clock struck twelve.
I wish she’d waited, at least until Chance and Ash weren’t looking. Because Chance has the most wounded, bitter glint to his eyes, and when I awkwardly kiss Rachael back, all I can picture is Chance stepping onto that cooler and me realizing what he was about to do.
But I don’t pull away from Rachael. Maybe because I know it took her a lot to be able to do this in front of others. Or because I’m trying to prove a point to Chance—and myself. This is normal. This is where I belong. I may not be in love with Rachael, but I trust her to be honest. Isn’t that what matters most?
Once the excitement of the New Year has ebbed, we dig into our food then stretch out on our backs to stare at the sky. I’ve never had as clear a view of the stars as we do here. There are no trees in the way like at Dad’s house. No smog and pollution. Just us, the ocean, and billions upon billions of stars. When Chance begins telling us his stories about the constellations, when he looks in my direction, I swear every one of those stars is reflected in his eyes.
“It’s so lonely,” Rachael murmurs from beside me.
This statement breaks Chance out of his trancelike storytelling state, his gaze sharpening as it snaps to Rachael. “What does that mean?”
She sits up. “It’s just, I mean, they’re so beautiful, but they’re so far away. Isn’t it lonely to think how big the universe is and how displaced we are from it?”
Chance’s stare could burn a hole through metal. I should say something about the look he’s giving her—as if she’s ruining everything—but I haven’t spoken a word to him since we got back up here, and I don’t intend to change that.
He says, “If that’s how you think, then you’re looking at it all wrong.”
Of course she’s wrong. Everyone who doesn’t agree with Chance is wrong, aren’t they?
“Okay, then,” Rachael says. “Enlighten me on how I should be looking at it.”
Chance turns, pulling the hood of his jacket over his messy hair. He steps up to the edge of the rooftop. I have that natural instinct to reach out and grab his sleeve to drag him back, worried he’ll slip and fall.
“It’s true,” he begins, “that the universe is this big, vast thing, and humans will probably never explore even a tiny fraction of it. But that doesn’t mean we’re alone or we’re displaced from it. All these elements, everything around us, the building blocks of the Earth and life—even the very air you’re breathing—originated from those stars. We’re a part of them. Orion, Draco, Sirius…they’re a part of us, too.”
Just like that, I can’t keep my eyes off Chance. Even Rachael is momentarily entranced, looking bewildered and amazed all at once.
I can’t help thinking about it, how we could’ve all come from different stars, light-years away. Wondering, maybe, if Chance and I came from the same star. If that’s what they mean when two people feel they’ve known each other in a past life.
No, not in a past life—but that the building blocks of one person’s existence could have originated right alongside that of another’s.
I wonder if that’s why I can’t seem to shake him. Why so much of my life has been focused on someone like him.
“So we’re all made of stars,” I murmur. So much for not opening my mouth.
Chance twists around, a sad smile on his face as his eyes meet mine. “We’re all made of stars,” he agrees. “We burn bright, then we flicker away.”
Ashlin
We stay on the rooftop for another three hours, until the food is gone and we’ve made ourselves hoarse trying to hold conversations in the cold. Maybe we should’ve thought ahead and brought blankets or something, because it didn’t dawn on us that being as freezing as we are would make the rafting trip back to shore all the more difficult. But we manage it. We’re on solid ground again, fighting to deflate the raft enough that it can be crammed into the trunk along with the oars and cooler.
It’s nearly four in the morning when we return home, and I’ve convinced Chance to stay at our place rather than try getting back to his place.
He’s being quiet.
No, more than that, he and Hunter are ignoring each other. They played it off normally and talked on the rooftop, but thinking back, they didn’t really talk to each other. Just to Rachael and me. What happened in those minutes they were gone? I can’t ask until I get Chance alon
e.
Inside, Chance watches Rachael and Hunt retreat down the hall and into Hunter’s room as though he’ll never see them again. He doesn’t say good night. I catch him by the arm and drag him into my room.
“Okay,” I say, balancing on one leg while peeling off my damp socks. “Spill it.”
Chance casts one last forlorn look at the door before giving me his attention. “What?”
I grab some pajamas and toss them to the bed. I need to change. My clothes smell like seawater and salt. Frankly, I want a shower, but that can wait until morning. “You two vanished.”
“We were getting the cooler.” He starts undressing. He still has a pair of sweats and a T-shirt in my closet from the last time he stayed over. In fact, I think they’re Hunter’s. Hunter has lost a good chunk of his clothing to Chance over the years. I don’t think Hunter minds, though, and Dad’s never said anything about it.
“And when you came back, you would hardly look at each other. Not to mention the death-glares you kept giving Rachael all night.”
Chance pauses. Which is pretty funny-looking, given he’s halfway through pulling off his shirt and it’s still stuck on his head. His shoulders rise and then fall with a deep breath. He balls up his shirt and tosses it to the foot of the bed, not turning around.
“Why are you so worried about it? What do you want to know, Ash? Maybe you should talk to him about this. He’s the one not right in the head.”
“I want to know what’s going on between you two,” I say.
Chance groans, pushing a hand through his hair. “I kissed him. All right? I kissed him, and he wasn’t happy, and that was that.”
“You…” Deep breath, while I give myself a second to wrap my head around that. Chance and Hunter. And kissing. I shouldn’t be surprised, and yet…my heart hurts. “He has a girlfriend. Why would you put him in that position?”
“How funny, he said the same thing.” Chance casts me a wry smile over his shoulder. “But you know what he didn’t say in all of his ‘No, Chance, bad dog’ lecture?”
“What?”
“He never said he didn’t feel the same way.”
I’ll be the first to admit, there is a lot in what Hunter says.
There is even more in what he doesn’t say.
“Okay,” I murmur, unsure what to make of that. Unsure what to make of any of this, frankly. Just because I’d pieced it together doesn’t mean I’ve made sense of my feelings on it. Chance has a thing for Hunter. It’s a safe bet to say Hunter has a thing for Chance, too. How humiliated would I have been if I’d told Chance how I felt about him, not realizing the truth of things?
When I look at it from a distance, the idea completely baffles me. But when I look at it closer up, at all the little details, the stars that form the constellation, as Chance would say, suddenly…it all makes sense.
How could I not have noticed it years ago?
Sure, I was always included, but Chance and Hunter were the inseparable ones. Chance, who always wanted to go everywhere Hunter did. Chance, who always showed off the most when he knew Hunter was watching. Chance, who kissed Hunter that day at the beach as a joke, then spent the rest of the day staring at him like nothing else existed in the world. Chance orbits Hunter like the planets orbit the sun, aching to be closer but never daring.
Until now, I suppose.
Chance braces his hands on the wall on either side of the window and stares outside. My gaze is drawn to a dark, purpled bruise on the back of his arm. “He doesn’t trust me.”
I step up behind him. When I wrap my fingers around his bicep, my thumb covers the finger-shaped bruise almost perfectly. The mark of someone grabbing him, and grabbing hard. Maybe to yank him around. A bruise slightly larger than my thumb, so a hand bigger than mine. Beneath my touch, Chance’s muscles tense, a reaction so quick it can only be reflex.
I ask, “Why don’t you ever talk about your parents?”
“I have talked about them.” He lets his arms drop to his sides, sounding perplexed by the change of subject. Except it’s not really a subject-change if we’re talking about trust, is it?
“You told us your mom was a researcher and your dad played a minor role in politics, and they traveled all the time.”
“So?”
“So, I’ve seen your mom, Chance. She’s no researcher.” I’m not even sure she was sober when we saw her, but I won’t point that out. I can already tell by the detached tone of his voice, the distant gaze, that I’m about to lose him in this conversation completely. “If there’s something going on at home, you have to know Hunt and I are here for you. So is Dad, for that matter. Nothing is going to change that. But how can we trust you when you never tell us the truth?”
“I do tell the truth.”
“Like what? Like about your house? Or how your parents were sending you out of the country for college? Their jobs? How you weren’t allowed to keep in touch with us?”
“We did live in a bigger house,” he says defensively, all but ignoring everything else I pointed out. “We lost it two years ago.”
I want to believe him, but why has he lied about anything? Just because he doesn’t have a reason to lie doesn’t mean he’s telling the truth. “Okay. What about the rest?”
Chance walks away then sinks onto the edge of my bed. He picks up my camera—the old one—from the nightstand and turns it over in his hands with the utmost delicacy.
“Can I borrow this?”
I have half a mind to rip the camera out of his hands and throw it. At him, maybe. “Chance.”
“Just for a few days? It’ll come back in one piece. Promise. You have the new one now.” He nods at my Christmas camera on the desk.
Frustrated, I turn his face back to look at me in an attempt to get his full attention again. “The point I was trying to make is that the only person who can cause Hunter not to trust you is you. But a few less secrets couldn’t hurt. Maybe if you opened up to him some, tried being honest for a change, it’d make things a lot easier all around.”
Chance lifts his chin, narrows his eyes in a most thoughtful manner that makes me think that maybe he’s back on the same track as I am. Except he says, “So, can I borrow it?”
I’ve lost him. Completely and utterly. We’re having entirely separate conversations, and he isn’t even listening to mine. I sigh, shoulders slumping. “Yeah, Chance. Do whatever you want.”
January
Hunter
My morning is spent trying to help Rachael pack, until she tells me I’m making a mess of her attempt at organizing and shoos me away. I sit on the bed and watch instead, trying to make heads or tails of how I feel about her leaving. I think I’ll miss her, and yet I’m relieved at the same time. It’s been stressful trying to take one life and mash it together with another. I can’t help but wonder if Rachael is at all glad to be going back to school.
I want to tell her Chance kissed me, but I don’t know how to get the words to leave my throat. Maybe I don’t have to tell her. Maybe it’s better that I never say anything because it isn’t going to happen again, and it would only hurt her in the long run. In this case, would ignorance be bliss? We’re having enough problems as it is.
When her suitcase is zipped up, Rachael lets out a big breath and turns to me, smiling. “Well. There we go. All packed.” She slides into my lap. “I’m going to miss you.”
“You sure about that?” I wind an arm around her waist reflexively. “You haven’t been enjoying yourself much.”
She sighs. “It’s not that I haven’t enjoyed myself, it’s just… You know. This is a lot different than how we spent time back home.”
Back home. Yeah. Back home, the big difference between here and there is that there, our lives revolved around her. What she wanted to do. Who she wanted to hang out with. It’s no wonder she was unhappy up until the days she and I spent alone—doing what she wanted to do.
I stare at her without saying a word. Rachael’s dark eyes narrow thoughtfully. “You
haven’t seemed so thrilled having me here, either, you know.”
“It’s not that. It’s just…” A wry smile tugs at my mouth. “Different.”
Rachael cups my face in her hands. Her skin always smells nice. Lotion-y, but not overdone. It’s one of the few simple things about her. She can’t leave the house if her shoes don’t match her outfit, but she doesn’t need a ton of makeup, and she doesn’t need to drench herself in perfume. I wish more things about her were this simple. It would make her—us—so much easier.
Chance isn’t simple. But his complexity is of a whole different sort. Emotionally, mentally, I can keep up with Rachael in ways I can’t with Chance.
Why am I thinking about him again? My girlfriend is getting on a plane for Florida soon. I have no idea when I’ll see her again. And all I’m thinking about…
“We should get going,” I say, averting my gaze because I can’t stand the way she’s studying me. She moves off my lap with little prompting, but I know by the stiff way she grabs her carry-on and heads for the door without a word or even a kiss—because I know she won’t give me one at the airport in public—she’s not happy. I answered everything wrong. I always do. She wants reassurance I haven’t hated her being here. I haven’t hated it, not entirely, but it’s been uncomfortable and tense. I’ve been waiting for her and Chance to go at each other with claws and fangs bared, and if she isn’t willing to offer me consolation that she feels her trip wasn’t a waste, why should I be expected to? It’s always a double standard with Rachael. I’m supposed to extend courtesies and kindnesses she doesn’t have to.
Maybe Chance was right. Maybe I’m a crap boyfriend, and that’s all there is to it.
Downstairs, Rachael says her good-byes to Dad and Ashlin. Neither of them offers to come with for the drive, and I sort of wish they would so I’m not sitting in the car with her by myself for so long. Even with the radio on, the silence looming between us is stifling, and all I can think is how horrible I am for wanting to get her to the airport sooner rather than later.
