33

And the Stars Look Very Different Today

Hudson stood in the hallway, his back pressed to the wall and his face toward the ceiling, waiting. I paused to take him in before stepping out of the elevator, my breath catching in my throat. He was in a suit. Why was he in a suit?

“Hey,” I said. I felt my stomach flip as his head snapped in my direction.

“Hey.” He smiled his megawatt smile as he pushed off the wall to face me. I felt my entire body flush as he took me in. He was in a black tuxedo. A full-on bow tie and cummerbund tuxedo, both accessories in navy blue.

“Room four-fourteen?” I asked, motioning to the open doorway to his right.

“Unofficially,” he said. His words coming out breathy as he watched me. I could feel his eyes as they skimmed my body. Took in my bare shoulders, my exposed back … potentially the top of my butt crack. “Come on, you made it just in time.”

“Hudson,” I said as I moved past him and toward the open doorway, my dress gathered in each hand to keep it from dragging. “Why am I here?”

He searched my face. His eyes not leaving mine. “Can you just come with me?” His hands were in his pockets, and he twisted his wrist to see his watch. “Just trust me, okay?”

I dropped my dress to pull out my phone. I still had an hour until grades would be posted. “Yeah.” I nodded. “Okay.”

“Après toi.” He smiled, ushering me in.

After you. I hesitated as I translated in my head, watching his face before moving. His eyes were just as I remembered. Blue and gray and beautiful, and looking into them now was the answer to a question I didn’t think I could ask.

I stepped through the doorway.

The room was dark, with a panel of lights glowing in a rainbow of colors. Brightly lit squares and circles. Buttons, sliders, and knobs. A control panel. The room hummed with a mechanical buzz. The air circulation system whooshed. There was indistinguishable clicking and ticking. Vibration to my left. A whisper of soft music to my right.

“Edie, you remember Tom?” Hudson said, acknowledging the guy sitting at the control panel. He was one of the guys Hudson had been walking with that day we met on the way to my dorm. “He’ll be our captain for this evening’s flight.”

Captain for this evening’s flight? Did I hear him correctly?

“What?” I asked. I didn’t have the energy to guess, and knowing Hudson, he would just laugh and tell me it didn’t matter.

“This is ground control to Major Tom,” Tom said. “Take your protein pills and put your helmet on.”

Take your protein pills. What? Where had I heard that before?

“Commencing countdown, engines on,” Hudson said, patting his friend on the shoulder before turning to me.

I looked between the two, neither seeming to notice my confusion.

Hudson’s hand hovered at the small of my back, urging me toward a door on the opposite side of the room. I could feel the heat from his palm on my exposed skin. I wavered, the darkness of the room ahead sending my senses into high alert.

“If you don’t go in, we’ll miss our flight,” he whispered so close to my ear I could feel his breath. My body responded with goose bumps down both arms.

“Flight?” I asked, stepping into the room. I rubbed my ear against my shoulder, trying to wipe away the shivers his warm breath left on my skin. “What—”

The second room opened into a circular space with a domed ceiling. I knew exactly what he meant now. He had said captain. He had meant flight. We were in the planetarium, and we were about to go into outer space.

The room suddenly felt vast and confining at the same time. I couldn’t believe he’d brought me here. This was more than anything I had expected. This was so much more. My face was turned to the deep blue expanse above, my mouth hanging open in awe. I was like a little kid, and it felt great.

“Come on,” Hudson whispered, reaching for my hand. “The best spot is this way.”

I turned my eyes to him, pulling my hand away as his fingertips brushed against my palm.

He moved toward the middle of the room, and I followed. We shuffled between rows, passing dozens of empty chairs. This was our flight. We were the only passengers tonight.

Hudson sat, unbuttoning his tuxedo jacket before crossing his arms and tucking his hands into his sides.

I looked down at him before sitting. I looked at his calm face and bright eyes and kissable lips and didn’t know what to say. I’d had a plan.

Go to Paris. Stay in Paris. Don’t fall in love. Don’t leave with any regrets.

This was not part of the plan.

“It’s a bumpy ride. You should probably sit,” he said. He reached for my hand again, but I tucked it into my side, crossing my arms as I sat.

“Tom is giving us the whole show,” he said, his eyes now on the domed ceiling. I couldn’t help but look at him. I’d met him in outer space. We were going into space.

My heart swelled, and I couldn’t stop it.

“Hudson, I…”

What little light that had filled the room when we entered was suddenly gone. We were plunged into darkness.

He shushed me. “No talking.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “Outer space is soundproof, you know. I couldn’t hear you if I wanted to.”

“Does that rule go for you, too?” I asked, knowing he’d never be able to keep his mouth shut. I smoothed my dress against my legs, wondering how it looked while I was seated. I pressed my hand to my stomach, the belt, feeling for any folding or creasing. It was smooth under my touch.

I felt him turn in his seat toward me. I couldn’t see him and he couldn’t see me, but I knew he was looking right at me. Seeing me, like he always had. I pressed my hand to my stomach for a different reason now.

“I’m willing to try,” he said. A light tinkle of piano started a beat before the lights in the ceiling began to move and shift. “Are you?”

He wasn’t talking about keeping his mouth shut, I knew that. He was talking about us, and that was a question I couldn’t answer.

“The universe was born over thirteen and a half billion years ago.…” A deep, smooth male voice spoke softly as the stars moved in an explosion above our heads. “In the beginning, the universe was just energy—”

“Can I put my arm around you?” he asked.

I looked at him and his eyes were on me.

“Yes,” I said, slouching in the seat. “You can put your arm around me.”

He leaned forward as the lights above shifted, pulling off his jacket and laying it on the chair next to him. He slid his arm behind me, his fingers leaving a blazing trail as they skimmed against my bare back. He cupped my shoulder, pulling me in, and I let him.

We watched the show in silence. His arm around me and my head slowly moving toward his shoulder. I wanted so badly to rest my cheek against his chest, explore outer space with him.

“Come here,” he whispered. When I looked up he was already looking at me. I moved closer and he pulled me in. I rested my cheek against his chest, and we watched the universe evolve around us.

The ceiling exploded in colors: blues, greens, and reds. The voice-over calling them protons, neutrons, and electrons. The colors swirled and moved until they were joined, forming bright purple atoms.

The atoms whizzed above our heads. The ceiling was crowded with them, bouncing and colliding until there was no more room for them to move.

“Regarde les étoiles, comme elles scintillent pour toi et pour tout ce que tu faishe,” he whispered. His lips were moving against my head. “Don’t fall asleep.”

I yawned, my eyes heavy. It was the first time in days I felt relaxed. “I won’t.”

“Menteuse,” he whispered.

“Liar,” I said, translating. I smiled against his chest.

“Do you know what happens when you fall asleep in outer space?” he asked as the voice-over talked about stars being born, shining brightly for millions of years and then exploding. The ceiling lit with reds and oranges, then bright white light. The room fell into complete darkness once again.

“No, what?” I asked, feeling his smile against my head.

“You float away.” He raised his free arm and wiggled his fingers lazily, floating off into the twinkling stars above us.

I tilted my head to look up at his face. Into his eyes. “Maybe I want to float away.”

The lights on the ceiling were cycling through sunrise and sunset. Sunrise. Sunset. The colors, as they lit his face, were incredible. Oranges and pinks turned into yellows and then blues. Then back to oranges and reds, bright blues, pinks and purples, and finally ending on the dark, dark blue night.

“Can I come with you?” he asked.

I looked into his eyes. At his lips. Could he come with me? Or I with him?

My phone buzzed in my pocket. My alarm. It was already midnight. It was already time to face my fate.

I sat up and pulled my phone out at the same time. I could feel Hudson watching me. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly as I clicked the class link.

Seventy-six.

I passed. I passed. Oh my God. I passed.

“I passed,” I breathed, pressing my phone to my chest as the night sky lit Hudson’s face once again.

“I could have told you that,” he said.

“What? You made me sit here for an hour, knowing all along I had passed?”

“Yeah. I mean, I figured if you wanted to know you would have asked.…” He smiled and shrugged, and I was once again torn between punching him and kissing him.

“I might kill you,” I started, but stopped as the ceiling moved again. The lights transforming and shifting into something I recognized. The place we’d been headed all along. The place I knew we would end up.

I pointed to the ceiling. “We’re here.”

Hudson looked up. “Where are we?” His words so faint that had I not been looking at him I would have missed them.

“The entirety of the Milky Way,” I said, looking up at the swirl of our galaxy with him. “We made it.”

“I know that,” he said. “But where are we?”

Not the physical where are we, the emotional where are we.

I watched his face. Questioning all that had happened, good and bad. I questioned the future and the right now.

“I don’t want to alarm you, but our galaxy is on an inevitable collision course with the next closest galaxy, Andromeda…,” the voice-over stated playfully. “This collision, set to take place within four billion years, will change everything. It will merge the two galaxies into something brand new, something larger, something scientists can’t even begin to predict, and nothing will ever be the same.…”

“Galaxies colliding,” I said, barely a whisper. That’s how I felt when I was with him. I felt like he was unstoppable and I was unstoppable and together that put us on a collision course.

He pulled my hand into his, and I let him. “What?” he asked, leaning into me.

We were two forces that were on a course for inevitable collision. When the Milky Way and Andromeda collide, in four billion years or so, it will be catastrophic, but Hudson and me, could we avoid catastrophe? Could we collide to create something brand new? Something different, but better?

“Wes, I…,” I started, but stopped as a shooting star caught my eye. And then another. And then another.

“Meteor showers, or shooting stars, are often…” The soothing voice interrupted my thoughts.

“Look,” I said, pointing to the shooting stars behind him. “Make a wish.”

I made a wish as I watched the stars move. And then another as I watched Hudson’s face, enchanted by the swirling glow from above.

“Edie,” he whispered, his face lit by the meteor shower. “Do you ever see us together again? I just need to know.”

“Yes,” I breathed, closing my eyes to hold the image of the way a particularly bright shooting star had lit his face. The way the ceiling lit up when the two galaxies collided. The way I felt when we were together.

He cupped my face in his hands. “Yes to what?” I opened my eyes slowly, wanting to cherish and hold this moment forever.

If I could freeze time I would do it right now. In this very moment with this exact boy as the chaos of the universe settled around us.

“Oui, à tout,” I whispered.

“Yes, to everything,” he whispered back, translating for me this time.