She sat down across from him.The serviette of cheese would have to act as chaperone.
“Would you like to eat?”he asked.
She shook her head.“I don’t think so.”
He tied up the bread and cheese and moved it aside.Now there was nothing between them.
She gulped.
He leaned back onto the cloth, his knees propped before him.Elbows at a casual angle, he laced his hands behind his neck and gazed up at the sky.“Look.The stars are coming out.”
Slowly, she lay back and linked her own hands behind her head.It should be cold.Instead, she could feel his heat.
They would be lying within arm’s reach of each other if they hadn’t quite sensibly given their arms something else to do.She tried to focus on the stars.
“There’s Cassiopeia,” he pointed out.“Her stars are easy to remember.Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon.”
She felt herself relax.“I believe you mean Agnes, Beatrice, Georgiana, Dorothea, and Edith.”
Gloria could practically feel him roll his eyes.She couldn’t keep the grin from her lips.
He gestured with the tip of his boot.“That one is Orion.I suppose you think the stars of his belt are named Tom, Dick, and Harry?”
“That’s not a belt,” she said.“Those are the buttons of his fall.They’re uneven because he ate so much Christmas pudding, his gut is bursting.”
Eyes crinkling, he propped himself up on one elbow to face her.“Why are you like this?”
“Blame my father,” she said with an unrepentant grin.“He taught me to let my imagination run wild.”
“Did he run out of time to teach you anything else?”he inquired politely.
She swatted at his arm.“Father was who taught me not to wish upon a star, but a constellation.”She pointed at the sky.“I named that oneDukeand have been wishing on him ever since.”
He shook his head.“You don’t get to just name things.”
“Somebody gets to,” she said.“Why not me?”
His gaze stayed focused on her.“What is it you wish for?”
She kept her eyes facing the heavens.
“For most of my childhood,” she said at last, “I wished for Father to come home safely.It worked every time.Until it didn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.“That must have been hard.”
She gave a bitter smile.“He was a navigator, and then a Navy Captain.He told me the stars were for finding one’s way home.When he didn’t make it back, I feared it was because he was seeing the wrong things.That the names and stories he’d been taught were wrong.When it mattered most, none of them helped him home.”
To her relief, he did not try to give her platitudes aboutthese things happenandit must’ve been his time to go.According to the society pages, he had lost his own father a few years back.He knew what it was like.
Instead of words, he slid his hand across the tablecloth and linked his pinky finger with hers.
Her heart clenched.It was the most perfect thing he could have said.
They lay there gazing upwards in silence until a streak of white slashed across the sky.
They both sat up at once.
“Did you see that?”she gasped.“It looked like a comet.Do you know its name?”
