He decides on the latter. “So that was it, then. We found the moment. One spilled snakebite.”
“One spilled snakebite. And it changed everything.”
“So rock and roll saved me?” His expression is good-humoured, but the words pierce.
“I guess it did.” Because he’s not broken. He’s not careless. He’s warm, and he’s like the home I’ve spent years wishing I had. Because he fell for music, and he fell for Jon, and somehow, even if that hurt him, that’s also protected him. And standing here on the crest of this hill, I could fall into his arms so easily if he’d only reach for me one more time.
Instead, “Turn around,” he says softly.
I do. And there’s all of London spread out below. Me and August, at the top of this hill in the dark, surveying a million shining jewels, the whole city in the distance and all around, sparkling.
“And look up,” he says.
And there, the night crisp and clear, every cloud swept away, reveals an expanse of flickering stars, glowing, pulsing, existing, just for us.
If this were a date, if he’d planned this, he couldn’t have done it better. Because of all the stars in the sky, and all the lights of the city, and all the winter air and the grass and the trees and life all around, everything pales in comparison to him up here on this hill. To August, sweet and warm like a song.
When he steps a little closer, the heat of his body is like a quilt I’m desperate to wrap myself in.
“I’m sorry for everything you’ve been through. But even if it’s selfish, I’m glad you’re here with me. I’m glad you made it to my world. Even if it’s just for a little while, I’m glad I met you, and that you’re in my life.”
I freeze. Because it’s the only thing I can do. I bite down on my tongue, and I roll my fingers into fists, and I don’t say a word.
And August’s face slips. He looks down with a wrinkled brow before he drops to the ground. So I drop with him, and I sit next to him in silence.
I don’t want to leave him.
I don’t want to hurt him.
“It must have been amazing to study astronomy,” he says, changing the conversation deftly. He’s relaxed back onto his hands, staring up at the sky. And he’s prettier than every sight the whole galaxy has to offer, I’m sure of it. “I know what you said, that I’m better off not having gone to university. But I think I will always regret it.”
I mirror his pose, leaning as close to him as I dare to let myself, a hair’s breadth from contact. “It was incredible,” I tell him honestly. “It never stops being fascinating. The more you look into things, the more beauty you find. The more order you find, the more chaos, and deep within that chaos, order again, and on and on all the way down until you don’t know what’s what anymore.”
“It’s terrifying,” he says, staring deep into the night. “There’s something that makes me feel so small about the idea of a drop of methane rain into a puddle on the moon Titan. The way no one’s there to see it. No one hears the sound. No one experiences it. Snow drifts on Pluto, all the beauty and the grandeur, and it’s just lost in the dark.” His gaze turns wistful, long eyelashes reflecting the glowing night. “It’s too vast. It makes me want to cling on to Earth.”
I glance down at his beautiful fingers, deep in the dewy grass.
“But it makes me want to let go too, you know? It makes me feel alive to know I’m so close to death. That all of everything out there has such beautiful promise, but that it would kill me in a heartbeat. That it’s so violent. That it’s so careless.”
“Careless?”
“Uncaring? Cold?” He looks over at me. “Why am I so attracted to that?”
Please don’t look at me like that.
I’m drowning in him.
“Maybe it’s worse than you imagine?” I suggest.
“I don’t think so. Sometimes I think it would be worth it.” He stares back out at the infinite expanse. “Do you remember a few years back they called for people to go on that mission to Mars? A one-way ticket, they said. You’d go, start a settlement, and you’d never come back. Never set foot on Earth again. I thought really hard about that.”
“It would be suicide.”
“It wouldn’t be. Not really. I wouldn’t be doing it for that reason. But just imagine that whole world existing, forming in the black of space, having storms and oceans and maybe even life. Billions of years of it, cyclones and tides and ice and springs. Then all of it drying up, the core cooling down, the planet dying, and no one to witness its passing up close.”
“You want to witness it?”
“I don’t know. I just feel like someone should be there, I guess.”
