The morning light slanted over the bed, over Emery’s golden hair, setting individual strands alight where they spilled over the pillow. We hadn’t moved all night; she was wrapped in my arms, our bodies aligned everywhere, our fingers entwined.
I’d woken that morning thinking I’d had the best dream. That it couldn’t possibly be real. But she was here, in my bed, and last night…I’d had to move slightly so she wouldn’t feel my erection pressing into her backside, but a sobering thought hit me like a cold shower.
I can’t keep her.
Emery had the unwavering—baseless—hope that her father would finally see her for who she was and support her dreams. She pinned everything on her designs winning him over. Because she still loved him in the same, desperate and futile way that I still loved my mother. And just like my hope that my mother would return had done nothing but hurt me, I knew Emery’s hope was only going to hurt her in the end. She needed to go to California or somewhere else, far away from her parents’ toxic brand of love, if she was going to live a life full of the art and joy she wanted. That she deserved.
I shut my eyes and gathered her close to me, burying my face in her hair and inhaling deeply.
Not yet…
Emery sighed contentedly; I hadn’t known she was awake. “Xander?”
“Hm?”
“Is it true we’re made of stardust?”
“Yes.”
“Really? It’s not just something poetic Shakespeare once said?”
“Close. Carl Sagan, and it’s true,” I said, kissing her shoulder. “The atoms that make up our bodies were once part of stars that lived and died billions of years ago.”
“I love that.” She reached her hand into the slant of light. Dust motes hovered lazily as she wafted her fingers through them, sending them dancing on tiny currents of air. “I love to think we’re pieces of the huge stars that light up the universe. They came together to make us, then dissolve away when we die. But we never wink out for good. We just keep going, our little pieces of light, coming together again and again, forever.”
I nodded on the pillow we shared, held her tighter, my eyes falling shut at the ache in my heart.
Jesus, I loved this girl, who wasn’t just a collection of particles of light, but an entire star unto herself. She took the rigid science of my thinking and broke it down to its realest and richest states. The sense of meaninglessness and loneliness that can come from studying the cosmos like I did—the sense of being an infinitesimal speck in the vastness of space… Emery somehow alchemized it into a feeling of sheer awe and wonder that I, this little speck, existed at all to love her like I did. The love I felt for Emery could not be measured or formulated into an equation. It wasn’t a finite particle but an infinite wave that rippled out into forever, because that’s how long I would love her.
I’d told her last night she made me believe in magic, but EmeryWallace made me believe in infinity too.
I held her tighter. “I don’t want this to end.”
She tensed for a second, then nodded. “Me neither.”
I waited for her to say more. To tell me she’d give up all her plans and come with me to MIT. To forget trying to fix her awful family, forget her dreams, forget the prom even, and justbewith me.
Her phone chimed a text. She grabbed it from the nightstand. “It’s Jack. He says my parents are on their way home. I have to go.”
I pulled on my underwear and jeans, and Emery caught sight of my expression.
“Hey.” She stopped, kneeling on my bed, now only in her panties, her hair a tousled mess from having my hands in it. Her lips were swollen from my kisses, and a few spots of blood stained the sheets because I’d been inside her. “I love you.”
Because she believed that was enough to make everything right.
“I love you,” I said, because I wanted to believe that was enough to keep her.
We dressed, and I walked her down to her car, where she put her arms around my neck and kissed me goodbye. I watched her drive away and then sat on the stoop of my empty house, trying to tell my psyche that Emery leaving wasn’t the same. That she’d come back. That we weren’t done.
***
The Academy gym was open, even on a Sunday. There was always some event or competition for one of the elite sports. Far be it for CHA to ever encourage a day of rest.
Such were my bitter thoughts as I climbed onto an ergometer, ready to row myself into a meditative state of pure physical exertion for a few hours before I had to pick up my father from Boston.
No sooner had I sat down on the row machine than a friendly voice hailed me.
“Xander!” Dean exclaimed, coming to clasp hands. “Putting inextra hours for Friday’s regatta? Overkill, don’t you think? You’re already Coach’s favorite.”
