I squinted, totally lost as I stared at the countless stars. “I don’t think so.”
He took a couple of steps closer, then pointed again. “Do you see those four stars that are kind of in a row? Right at the edge of that cloud?”
Still unable to see where he was pointing, I gestured. “Come here. Show me.”
Shawn hesitated before he took a few steps. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, exactly, except that I wanted to see what he was pointing at, and the idea of being close to him again felt good.
For fuck’s sake, I figured, he’d already seen me jerking off. There wasn’t much reason to be shy.
“Where?” I asked, looking up.
Shawn leaned in the rest of way. He was standing behind, a little to the side, and I could feel the heat off his slim, compact body. When I leaned back, his outstretched arm came into my vision, pointing straight ahead.
I could feel my heartbeat, steady and strong. “Right there,” Shawn whispered, and I followed the line of his arm to a white smudge in the sky.
I extended my own arm, pointing at the spot. Our hands brushed together, and neither of us moved. “Right there,” I repeated.
That moment, it suddenly felt like Shawn and I were the only two things rooted to the ground in that whole universe. Like that little bit of dirt we were standing on was solid while everything else spun and crashed around us, my relationship and my drumming career and all those asteroids. It reminded me of a really good set, beating the drums onstage and getting lost in something bigger than just me.
“That’s it,” Shawn answered. He lowered his hand and stepped back, and I felt a wave of disappointment as the moment ended.
I shook my head and tried to ignore the feeling rumbling behind my ribs. “What’s that smudge around it?”
Shawn smiled at me, then turned to the telescope. “It’s called the Beehive,” he said. “Now come here, take a peek through this.”
When I peered into the telescope, I saw more stars than I could count, blue and yellow and white, tight and close together, all glittering against the dark sky. For a few minutes, I was entranced just by looking at them. In that one little bit of a sky, I felt like I was seeing as many stars as I did glancing up at the sky on a normal night. And they were bright, too, brighter than I thought a star could shine.
When I got my fill, I turned back to Shawn, who was watching me with an expectant, happy look on his face. “That’s the same thing?” I asked.
“It’s a star cluster,” he answered. “One of the closest ones to our planet. You can’t see all the stars with my telescope, and more are being born all the time, but there are over a thousand right there, all spinning together. That’s why it looks like a smudge usually, because of how bright the baby stars all are together.”
I turned back to the sky, casting my eyes around until I found the blurry white spot. It still looked the same, but my imagination filled in all the other details. “Star clusters,” I repeated.
Shawn laughed lightly, his voice soft and musical. “It’s pretty common. Most stars exist in big clusters like that. Our sun is kind of weird. We’re floating through the universe all on our own. Even when we do fly close to another star, eventually, we fly away again.”
I thought about that for a second. It seemed lonely, but there was something comforting about it, too. The whole planet was on our own path through the universe, and in a weird way, it made me feel like I was in the right place. We might all have been on our own journeys, but we were travelling together, too.
“What are you thinking?” Shawn asked gently.
I turned from the sky and realized I must have had a pretty distant look on my face. “Just appreciating this weird world,” I said. “Monica always accused me of wanting to drift away. Now I know I’m not the only one.”
Shawn laughed. “You can’t be a total loner. Your band is on stage at least once a week, right?”
“I left my band a couple months ago,” I admitted, almost embarrassed that I hadn’t told him before that. Maybe I was more bothered by it than I was letting myself acknowledge. “I haven’t been on stage in a while.”
“Oh,” Shawn said. His hand danced at his side, and I could tell he wasn’t sure what to say.
I took a swig of beer. “They just signed a contract with a major label, too,” I added with a raspy laugh. “Talk about stars. They’re about to hit the big time.”
“Oh,” Shawn said again. He drank from his own bottle, then spun it in his hand. “How do you feel about that?”
I considered it for a second. Monica and Leo had gone straight to pressuring me to join the band again, just assuming it was a big mistake to leave. Shawn was the first person who had bothered to stop and ask what I actually thought about it.
“I feel okay,” I answered. “I’m a little worried about money and what I’m going to do when I get back to Nashville. But I was never trying to be a rock god or anything like that. If my bandmates want that, hell, more power to them.”
Shawn laughed. “An astronomer who isn’t very good at math and a drummer who doesn’t want to be famous. We’re kind of misfits, aren’t we?” His eyes got wide, and if there were more light out, I’m pretty sure I would have seen his cheeks turn pink. “Not that I’m calling you a misfit.”
I pushed my hair back, then cocked up a grin at him. “A couple of misfits,” I said. “Sounds right to me.”
