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But she doesn’t stop. “You gave me good memories, remember?”

“Then why does it feel like I failed you?”

That makes her flinch, and it destroys me more than if she hadn’t reacted at all.

“You didn’t,” she says.

“Then tell me what I was supposed to do,” I rushed out. “Tell me what I missed. Tell me how to make this hurt less. Tell me how to live in a world that doesn’t have you in it.”

She looks down for a moment, like the answer is somewhere on the ground and not in her. “I don’t know,” she whispers. “If I knew, I would’ve stayed and told you.”

I step closer again. “I don’t want you to go,” I say. “Just stay until sunrise. One more hour. Please. I’m so tired of missing you.”

Her breath catches slightly. “Damien.”

“I can’t do this again,” I admit. “Every time I close my eyes, you’re leaving. Don’t make me wake up like that again.”

She looks at me like she understands exactly what that costs me. “I can’t…”

“But I spent so long trying to find you,” I beg pathetically for her to understand me, to love me enough to change the ending. To stay with me. “If you go, there’s nowhere left for me to look, I wasn’t even done loving you. I–I don’t want only a memory of you. I want you.”

Something changes in her face then. Sorrowful sad eyes filled with peace.

“When do I get to stop missing you?” I ask, quieter now.

She answers almost immediately. “When you stop loving me.”

A broken laugh escapes me before I can stop it. “Never.”

Her smile returns, small and destroyed at the edges, feeling like apology and love and goodbye all at once. I reach for her hand, but I can’t touch it. It’s so far away yet so close.

“I want to hold you so badly, to hug you, to love you,” I say, and I don’t even realize I’m crying until I can’t see her properly anymore. “Please don’t go.”

She looks at my hand, then at me. “I’m right here,” she says.

“No,” I say immediately, shaking my head. “No. Not like this.”

She takes a step back, and then another. And I move forward at the same time, like I can still close it, like this is something I can still fix if I just reach far enough.

But she doesn’t stop.

She only looks at me like she already knows I won’t be able to follow her where she’s going. And her smile… her smile stays even as everything else about her starts to feel like it’s slipping away from the world.

She’s slipping away from my fingers again.

“Do you still have the star I left for you?” she asks.

“I do, I always have it with me.”

“Open it.”

I find the small star paper in the back pocket of my pants and do so.

912321 written in blood. Hers.

“I–” her words come out of her lips as tears follow each of her words. “I’m with you, always.” She takes the final step back, and I run to reach her, the star falling following her to the cruelest place in the universe, a place I can’t touch. And she mouths, “Never stop making wishes for me.”

I scream, so loud I can feel it in my chest, but she disappears in the vast ocean, and the star floats there. Everything turns blurry.