“Nothing!” Gerard holds up his massive hands, the perfect picture of innocence. “Just chatting with my bestie!”
“You’re interrogating him.” Oliver reaches the bottom of the stairs and crosses to me in three long strides. His equally massive hand lands on my shoulder, warm and grounding, and some of the tension in my chest releases.
“I’m sorry about them,” he says, low enough that it’s almost private. “They have no concept of boundaries.”
“It’s fine.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “They’re just curious.”
“They’re nosy.” Oliver shoots a glare at his teammates. “We’re leaving now. Don’t wait up.”
“Use protection!” Gerard calls as Oliver steers me toward the door.
“Gerard, I swear to God?—”
“Love you, Ollie!”
The door closes behind us before Oliver can deliver his threat.
The night air is cool against my flushed cheeks. I take a deep breath, letting it settle me.
“Sorry,” Oliver says again. It’s not lost on me that he hasn’t removed his hand from my shoulder. “They mean well, but they have the subtlety of a cow in a field of mice.”
“It’s okay. Really. They care about you. It’s sweet.”
“They care about the drama. I’m just a convenient source of it.” He’s smiling now. That’s a good sign. “Come on. The astronomy tower awaits.”
We walk across campus,side by side, the path lit by old-fashioned lampposts that cast pools of golden light against the growing darkness. The astronomy tower sits at the edge ofcampus, a narrow brick structure that most students forget exists. But I’ve spent countless nights up there, alone with the stars, pretending I could hear Mom’s voice in the silence.
The door is unlocked during the summer, and we climb the spiral staircase to the observation deck. It’s small, even more so with a beefy hockey player in tow.
“Wow.” Oliver steps onto the deck, his neck craning until his Adam’s apple juts sharply against the skin of his throat. His jaw slackens as his gaze travels upward into the vast darkness punctuated by pinpricks of ancient light. “You can really see the stars here.”
“Light pollution is minimal on this side of campus.” I set my bag down and start unpacking. “The eclipse won’t start for another hour, but we should be able to see the moon clearly once our eyes adjust.”
Oliver lowers himself onto the curved wooden bench, the old boards creaking slightly under his weight. His hand pats the empty space beside him, fingers drumming once against the weathered grain. I stand frozen for three heartbeats before my legs carry me forward. As I sit, our thighs nearly touch. I unfold Mom’s blanket—the one with the constellation patterns she’d hand-stitched along the border—and the fabric settles across our knees. Oliver’s arm stretches behind me, his fingertips grazing the metal railing. His ankle slides over his knee, settling into place as the flip-flop dangles precariously from his toes.
“This is nice,” Oliver says quietly. “Peaceful.”
“That’s why I come here. When everything else gets too loud, this is where I go to think.”
“What do you think about?”
“Space, mostly. The scale of it. How small we are in comparison. It’s comforting, in a weird way. Knowing that whatever problems I have, the universe has been spinning for billions of years and will keep spinning long after I’m gone.”
“That’s either very Zen or very nihilistic.”
“Probably both.”
We sit in silence for a while, sipping water and watching the sky grow darker. The moon emerges, hanging fat and full above us, silver white and impossibly bright. In less than an hour, it will begin to darken as Earth’s shadow creeps across its face.
“Can I ask you something?” Oliver’s voice drops to a whisper, the words catching slightly in his throat. “How did your mom get into astronomy? You mentioned she passed the passion on to you, but you never told me the story.”
I’ve guarded this story since the funeral, kept it folded away in the farthest corner of my mind. But sitting here with Oliver, the night wrapped around us, I find myself wanting to unfold it for him.
“She was an Army nurse. That’s how my parents met—they were stationed at the same base. But before that, before the military, she wanted to be an astronaut.”
The memory surfaces unbidden: Mom at the kitchen table, late at night, her chestnut hair draped over star charts while the rest of the house slept. She’d trace the constellations with her fingertip, naming them softly, as if they were old friends she was catching up with.
“When I was six,” I continue, “I asked her why she looked at the stars so much. She pulled me onto her lap and pointed at the moon through the window. Told me that when she was young, she dreamed of walking up there. Of leaving footprints in the lunar dust.”
