Trigger Warning: Character Death and Implications of Suicide
She is watching the night sky as the world fades.
Pieces of asphalt, homeless after being dislodged from their place in a parking lot, press themselves into her back as if wishing to become one forlorn entity. She humors them as she closes fists around shards of gravel because, like them, she is derelict and dust. She belongs here, in this empty lot somewhere off of Alligator Alley that exists between the slumbering and the restless and the racing memories that stain the brain with inky black fingers.
Her phone rings. Pebbles quiver in harmony with the staccato vibration until she opens her palms to allow them release. She doesn’t answer.
Do you know how to tell the difference between planets and stars in the sky?
There was no longer a need to differentiate – to her, the sky was a lifeless void. But he wouldn’t have liked that. So she tries to turn the thoughts into dust, but they persist.
—
James loved taking her stargazing in the winter.
He puts pillows and blankets and snacks in the bed of his truck, and drives them out to where the city becomes swamp.
“It’s dark enough here to actually see,” he tells her.
She jokes, “I wish I could at least see you.”
He replies by turning on fairy lights and grinning at the look of wonderment on her face.
James turns the lights off when he gets serious. His fingers trace vague shapes out of stars that she pretends she understands.
“That’s Venus,” he says. “She’s particularly bright tonight.”
She asks him, “Do you think she’s blessing us?”
He responds with a kiss that leaves her breathless.
—
“Did you know that the stars are so far away that some have died by the time we see them?”
They are in his truck bed again, parked in an empty airboat rental lot. The song of cicadas and the warning growls of gators envelopes them. James sits beside her, snuggled close under a threadbare quilt that offers little protection from the damp cold. This is of no concern to her. Being with James, his head tilted skywards and gaze pensive, is all the warmth she needs. A breeze rustles the tall grass surrounding them and kisses the top of his hair with an intimacy that leaves the tresses a tangled mess.
“That’s depressing,” she finally says, swatting away a mosquito.
“Why?” he asks. “Everything has to die — even stars.”
—
A car pulls into the lot. She does not move. Its lights illuminate the void before shutting off. They are invisible to each other. The smell of pot smoke and the sound of laughing teenagers stirs her. She envies their carefree joy. Though the heaviness of slumber weighs her down, a part of her rouses at the hope that this pain is a dream and she will wake in her bed besides James.
“Are you okay?”
A face peers through the darkness. It is familiar and her hands ache to feel warm skin – but her fingers touch nothing but wet air.
With great difficulty born of booze and sedatives, she tells the phantom that she is not okay – she will never be, and she has accepted that.
Her phone vibrates once before dying in her pocket. She shuts down.
She knew she would follow him anywhere, even through the gates of Hell, regardless of whatever lamenting worry he'd have. She is far too stubborn for her own good, and he knew this. He always knew.
—
“I’m okay,” he tells her. “I promise.”
She hates him for this. How can he make such shallow commitments? He is no fortune teller and cannot predict their future. When she opens her mouth to argue, he flashes a smile that renders her brain into mush.
He gives her hand a gentle squeeze, to let her know that this is the tender pulse of life beneath her fingertips and not the screams of a dying man’s pain.
“Even stars die,” he whispers.
—
She says her daily I love yous to him, her satin sweet words of cherish that feel like a prayer to god. They dance upon the air like ballerinas before settling around them in a perfume of night and day and grisly imperfection and fear. His essence slithers around her wrist, travels the expanse of her arm, wedges itself into her heart.
She had never been as blindsided as the day she realized she had taken a nose dive into love, sans parachute. She isn’t the love type. She’s run away from everything her entire life, too broken for anyone to adore – she didn’t need a glittering star trailing in the polluted fragments of her wake.
But then they were falling faster than eyes perceive light. One moment she’s on top of the world, and the next? She’s just happy he’s alive. Content to be wrapped in his frail arms that reek like decaying swamp rot.
It shouldn’t be like this – there shouldn’t be days where death hangs over their heads as if the Grim Reaper sharpened his scythe in a corner vacated by hope.
Even stars die.
But not hers. Not now, not like this. Not ever.
Everything dies.
—
“I named a star after you.”
It’s their anniversary and he presents her with a certificate. His hand points to some vague spot in the sky. This time, she follows.
“That’s you,” he says. Pointing just a smidge to the right, he adds, “And that’s me. We’ll always be together.”
She considers this for a moment. She considers them existing in the cosmos for all of eternity, long after their hearts and flesh have withered. “Forever?”
James beams at her, twinkling like a star. “Forever.”
