The Brightest Star in a Constellati... - Chapter 54: Chapter 54

☆ Evan ☆
I turn over in a daze, reaching for the bedsheets. The feeling of the satin sheets hugs my body. I drag them closer to my neck and grumble under my breath when I hit a snag.
I pull again, a little harder this time. Peter's gentle snoring subsides for about three seconds when he flips over, relinquishing the blanket.
Although we start on opposite sides of the bed, the space between us is effectively breached. I was worried he'd get the wrong impression if we shared a bed, but he didn't. Even after I brought up my feelings on asexuality, he just shrugged and told me we'd take things as slowly as I needed to.
And I feel safe with him. And not just with having boundaries, but emotionally safe.
Light spills in from the window. I turn my eyes to the ceiling and trace the lines in the tiles, multiplying the length times the width.
Peter, still asleep, nestles into my chin. His legs hang off the bedside, twisting through the sheets. He smells faintly of spearmint and coconut aftershave. I breathe it in, all of it, and I try to photograph a memory.
I toss my arm over him and lean my cheek against him. My eyes seal shut. I could stay like this for as long as he allows me to—for as long as I hold him here.
Listening to the rise and fall of his breathing, I manage to fall asleep for a while. When I wake up, I know he's awake, based on the lack of methodical snores.
I open my eyes a smidge. My vision doubles with the proximity, although he isn't facing me. He slides out of the bed silently and descends to the kitchen.
I stretch out across the bed, popping my knuckles one by one. Groaning, I pull myself out from underneath the sheets and fix my hair in the mirror. The unruly strands curl around my ears as I twist them.
When Peter comes back into the room, he's carrying a plate decorated with blue stripes and bordered with flowers. A stack of waffles and strawberries sit atop it.
"Your hair looks fine," he says, and somehow it sounds like, Good Morning.
I smile, fiddling with the hem of the pyjama shirt he let me borrow. Printed on it is a fading shadow of a roller coaster against a contrasting blue and red background—from an amusement park. He must have visited a few years ago, by the date written at the top. I take a bite of the waffle and the decadence of the burnt edges mixed with melting butter and chocolate chips is enough to make me second-guess his cooking skills. "These are fantastic."
"Those are from a box," he points out. "You saw me pick it up. I only had to put them in the toaster, and somehow—I couldn't quite get that right, either, so don't compliment me."
"Too late." I shove the rest of the waffle into my mouth, licking the chocolate residue from my fingers. "I already did, and I'm not taking it back."
He's looking at me. More specifically, at my lips. My heart drums in my ears like it always seems to do around him. It's this desire—he makes me dizzy. In the way a carousel ride would be like, although I've never been on one. It moves in a blur, when my head spins and I look back to find my body has left the ground. It's so fast, and yet it isn't fast enough—I don't know how to make sense of this passage of time.
He says, "Are you keeping that shirt?"
"Of course," I say, rolling my eyes like the idea is ridiculous.
"At this rate, by the end of the week, you'll own half of my wardrobe."
"Not my fault." And I head to the bathroom to take a shower. The bathroom of the lake house is themed like a garden; a plush carpet in the shape of a leaf is set out in front of the ivory tub, and the towels hanging from hooks against the wooden walls are in various shades of emerald.
A few minutes later, I finish getting ready. I trace a star on the glass as it fogs up before I move back into Peter's room. He's seated with one leg crossed over the other, staring at a tiny handcrafted box. It's filled with sparkling sand, arranged like it's a miniature dollhouse, only using sand dollars in the place of figurines.
"What are you doing?" I ask.
He picks up a bright red shard of sea glass. It's the size of his index finger, jagged at the edges and frosted at the centre. "This is my mother's collection. It's sea glass weathered by the saltwater. This shape probably took somewhere between forty years to a hundred to become this flat. The colours"—he points to the assortment of clear white and green pieces sitting in the box—"depend on where it comes from, originally. Green is from glass bottles. White is from windshields, and sometimes windows."
I perch on the bed next to him. Peter continues, "And then there's red. It's pretty rare—like from dinner plates and car taillights."
I stare at the piece he's holding. "Rare?"
"Yeah. Orange is the least common. It's only found once in ten thousand pieces of sea glass," he says, setting it back into the box and closing the lid. "Sorry. It probably doesn't seem that important."
"It's a collection. That's why it matters." I smile at him. "What are the other rare colours?"
His eyes light up, and he tells me where each colour comes from, and what beaches he's gotten them from, and that beach glass from freshwater has a different pH balance. I listen intently, entranced by the soft look on his face as he continues to ramble.
"It depends on the place. Maybe someday I can find one," he concludes. As if remembering, he drifts through the room and shows me a leather-bound journal. He flips past numerous pages filled with his handwriting in black and blotted blue ink.
I watch him as he writes for a while, content. He asks me if I want to read the entries, which are letters to his future self. I tell him doesn't have to share it with me. I ask, "Where would you find it?"
"Orange sea glass?"
I lean forward and capture his chin in my hands. I swipe my finger across his cheekbones, lightly tracing my touch across his features. "Yeah, like is there one specific beach that has it, or—"
"I don't know." He shrugs, his shoulder knocking against mine. "Europe, maybe? I think I've heard that it's easier to find there."
"Really? Maybe you should go. You've been working nonstop since, like, forever."
He laughs, all quiet and honeyed. I migrate to pressing my shin against his side, and with his free hand, he ruffles my curls. "Don't you have to work this week?"
"Yeah, in about..." I search for the time, but the walls of the lake house are devoid of clocks. My phone is somewhere in the kitchen—I left it down there, and I didn't think to get it. "What time is it?"
Peter closes the journal and pulls me closer to him. "I have no idea. I didn't check. Why, do you have somewhere you need to be?"
"No," I admit, slipping into his grasp. His dark brown eyes examine me, with all the softness I don't quite understand. "I was just wondering."
☆ ☽ ☆
I cover my yawn as I head to my locker for lunch. I manage to pry the locker door open before Nicole ambushes me from nowhere. She throws her hands around me, squealing.
"Evie!" she cries, lowering her sunflower-shaped glasses to stare at me. "I can't believe this!"
I shove my textbooks into my locker and close it. "Can't believe what?"
Her stare sharpens. She smacks me on the arm with the flowing sleeves of her tie-dye sweater. "You and Peter," she says, at a volume I've deemed to be far too loud.
"Would you be quiet? Somebody is going to hear you."
She ignores me. "What was it like?"
"Sorry, are you seriously asking me—"
Her sleeve hits me again. "I literally texted you a hundred billion times, and you didn't answer. You, uh, you like him, don't you? It wasn't... it wasn't a one-time thing?"
"Jesus, can you chill out?" I lower my voice and we fall into step as she skips through the hallway. "Yes, I like him. I really like him, and I don't want to mess it up, okay? I'm not ready to tell anyone, and I don't think he is, either."
"Oh." Nicole drags a finger through her hair. "He told me."
"Yeah, but he tells you everything," I point out dully. "If he didn't tell you this, I would be shocked."
A beat of silence passes between us. A minute. Sixty seconds. Sixty thousand milliseconds. "You really like him?" she repeats, like it's a shock. "Good. Because if you were just messing around, I would have to kick your ass. Please be nice to him, okay? You're... you're his first boyfriend, so..."
Boyfriend. I didn't even think about it, but the night of the eclipse—that was probably Peter's first kiss. And it was with me.
I come to a halt at the stairwell, expecting that she's going to head towards the cafeteria. Instead, she rifles through her pocket and removes a handmade bracelet, like the one she was making with Willow before the eclipse. Pale blue and lavender threads are woven with beads spelling out the word sunshine.
She has a few on her wrist already, one with her name and the other two with dream and marigold. She explains, "I made one for each of us. Now, we match."
"You didn't have to—"
"Nonsense," she interrupts as she ties the bracelet around my wrist. "We're friends. So, friend, what are we doing for lunch?"
I point my thumb behind me to the stairs. "I was, um, going to the basement. I have... a class there." The lie stumbles out of me before I can stop it. Guilt races through me immediately, attacking me from every angle.
Nicole's eyebrows draw together. "Oh, I see. You'd rather become co-dependant with your boyfriend than hang out with me."
"We aren't..." I gulp down a breath. She's right, though—I've been clingy. There's no way Peter isn't annoyed with me by now. "Okay, okay. That's a big word, but fair enough. Where do you want to go?"
She smiles brightly and drags me to the nearest exit. "Thank gosh, because I've been dying to go outside. Pierre likes the library, and sitting in silence all day long is... it can get boring."
We step outside. The birds are chirping underneath a cloudless cerulean blanket. Nicole dashes ahead of me without waiting for me to catch up, twirling in excited circles as she travels along the sidewalk. After sending a quick text to Peter to tell him what I'm doing, I speed up to match her pace.
"You don't seriously think I'm messing around, right?" I ask.
She tilts her head at me. "I love Pierre, like, a lot. Our parents are friends. We're yearbook friends." When I shoot her a questioning look, she drags her finger through the grass, letting a caterpillar crawl across her hand, and explains, "Our pictures are right next to each other in the yearbook. Anyway, I know what he's like. I want him to be happy. I can see how much he cares about you. It's pretty obvious. You've been smiling since you came to school this morning."
I touch a hand to my lips. "And how would you know that?"
"I'm an amateur investigator," she says.
"An amateur stalker?"
She shrugs, leading me to a field that lies behind the school. A gust of wind rustles the grass and the tiny dandelions sprouting through the holes in the fence behind her. "Same thing."
"No, it really isn't. Not even close."
She steps towards me and kicks me in the shin. I reach over to punch her arm, and before I realize it, she's tackled me to the ground. The wet grass tickles my hair. Nicole lets out a satisfactory shout. "I have defeated a sporty boy in battle!"
"This is why I don't play football," I say with a groan. "And shut up. You could never dream of winning against me in a fight."
"I will accept that challenge. Gladly." She sits with her legs crossed, picking at tufts of grass and tossing them in my direction. "These nails are sharper than they look. I almost stabbed Willow's eyes out the other day."
"I believe that. You were talking to Willow when we were in the student council room, weren't you? She didn't try recruiting you to help with another dumb event, did she?"
The pink-tinted lenses of her glasses cast a patch of light as they slip down her nose. "No, she just wanted to see if I'd come to GSA. She handles the club with Lucas Azan sometimes, but I guess it's mostly straight kids now."
I blink at her. Like a kitten searching for affection, she blinks back. As carefully as I can manage, I say, "And that club meets on... Tuesday?"
"Yeah." She tries to keep the grin off her face, but it hardly works. "Not like you're going to go, or anything. You're just messing around."
"Right," I confirm. "Definitely not. Just asking so that I can make sure I don't go. Wouldn't want to make things worse for... my"—I feel a bit dizzy as I taste the word in my mouth—"boyfriend."
Nicole scoffs and kicks me backward, onto the ground. "Now, that's a big word."