“It’s wild. I’ve seen pictures of that kind of thing before, but it’s different to be looking at it myself. And knowing that I was seeing a thing so big, there was just something about it…” He trailed off, then raised his bottle up. “Badass, man. It’s a nice thing to drum about.”
I laughed. “I guess it’s badass. I never really thought of it that way.”
“How do you think about it?”
I pursed my lips, trying to think of a way to answer. “Seeing our place in the universe makes me feel very big and very small at the same time. And no matter what else is happening in my life, I think it’s always a good reminder that our lives are part of something so much bigger than whatever is worrying me that day.”
Cass nodded as his face darkened a little. I wondered what worries were dragging him down, and if they were the same as whatever bothered him in high school. “That is a good reminder,” he agreed.
“I’m not surprised you’re still drumming. I remember the band you had with Leo.”
“Rusty Locker?” he laughed. His face lit up, and the skin around his eyes crinkled. “Damn, I haven’t thought about that band in years.” He pushed his hand back through his long hair. “We were horrible! Did you come to one of our shows? I don’t remember that.”
“Hell no,” I laughed. “Leo would not have invited me back then. But you made a tape, and I stole his copy to listen to sometimes.”
“That’s right, we thought a tape would be cool.” We both laughed. “What are you looking at tonight?” Cass asked. “Anything special?”
“The Lyrid meteor shower,” I said. “I guess it’s special. Every year, we go a few months without any meteor showers at all at in the winter. The Lyrids are the first thing to arrive, and when they do, ten meteors shoot across the sky every hour for several nights.” I paused, self-conscious about whether I should keep talking. “Do you know what a meteor shower is?”
“Rocks in space?”
I grinned. “Kind of. The Lyrids come from a gigantic ball of ice. We can’t actually see it, but when the Earth passes close to it every year, smaller pieces of ice fall off and then burn up in our atmosphere.”
“See,” Cass laughed. “Giant flaming ice balls. Badass stuff.”
“That’s what they say about us astronomers,” I said. “Total badasses.”
We laughed together. Then Cass drank from his beer and turned his eyes to the sky. The faint light struck his features just right. “Can I watch with you? I’ll bring the pasta and some wine.”
My words died in my mouth. I didn’t even care that it meant I would miss another night of writing. Not that we were hanging out a little, I just desperately wanted Cass to stay there with me, watching the sky. “Yes,” I said, only a little too enthusiastically. “That sounds great.”
Cass nodded. “Cool. Let me grab dinner.”
I somehow managed to hold my shit together while he walked away. I don’t know how. But once he swayed his hips around the corner, I hopped up and down a few times and waved my hands around, just to shake the energy.
“Shawn?”
I landed and spun. Cass was standing at the corner of the house.
Shit, had he seen me hopping? A flush warmed my cheeks.
“You need anything from inside?”
I raised my tea mug. “I’m all set, thanks!”
Appropriately humiliated, I set the mug on the grass, then grabbed the two folding lawn chairs from the garage, where they had been safely stored for as long as I could remember. I opened them by the telescope, fretted for a minute over how close they should be to each other, and then grabbed my notebook.
I wasn’t going to have much time to think that night, but I intended to write about the Lyrids in the book, so I wanted to get some thoughts down. They were one of the oldest meteor showers that humanity had known, and for thousands of years, people had watched and appreciated them, just like Cass and I would that night. Some years, there were even big bursts, filling the sky with ninety shooting stars every hour.
Watching the meteor shower arrive always meant something special to me. The anticipation, the connection to history—it was part of feeling big and small at the same time, like I had tried to explain to Cass, and all of it filled me with an excitement that I wanted to capture in writing. When I looked up to the sky, the words finally flowed, and I jotted a few good pages, hunched over in the lawn chair.
I ran out of steam right as Cass returned. He had a bottle of wine and some glasses tucked in his arm and a bowl of pasta in each hand. “I hope spicy is okay,” he said. “I tossed a little extra red pepper in the tomato sauce.”
“Spicy works.” I set my notepad aside, then rose to my feet to accept the bowl. “Thanks! The shower is picking up. You’re right on time.”
We took our seats in the lawn chairs. Then Cass poured us each a glass of wine. “What am I looking for? Are these meteors going to be all over the place?”
“They all start from a certain point, but kind of scatter all over,” I said, gesturing into the expansive, dark sky. “They’ll get higher and higher as the night goes on, you’ll see. And if we’re really lucky, we’ll see a low-flying meteor. Those ones are much bigger, and they last longer.”
