The Brightest Stars

  “Do you have a family?” I assumed he wouldn’t answer, but anything was better than silence.

  “Do I have a family?” he repeated.

  “I mean, obviously you have a family, otherwise you literally wouldn’t exist. But are they like that?” I nodded toward the house.

  “Nope,” he said, staring out the windshield of my car. “Not at all.”

  “In a good way or a bad way?” I asked.

  “Both.” He shrugged, buckling his seat belt.

  “I think it just bothers me this much because Estelle is so different from my mom. She was really fun when I was young. My mom, not Estelle,” I clarified, though he didn’t ask. “She used to laugh and listen to music. She would dance around the living room listening to Van Morrison, waving her arms around like a bird or a butterfly. It feels like a lifetime ago.”

  I was thinking back to that other version of my mom, the one who had long, flowing hair that moved in the wind. She was just as carefree now, but not even close to the same way.

  “She used to lift her hands up and push them through her hair, letting it fall around her. It always tickled my face and I would laugh and she would shake her hair and dance around me.”

  The thrum of my engine cutting through the thick Georgia air was all I could hear. I’d never noticed the sounds before; I’d never had time to.

  “And my birthday parties! She used to go all out for them. It was this huge thing, more like a birthday week. We didn’t have a ton of money or anything, but she was creative. One year she decorated the whole house in those lights from Spencer’s, do you remember that store?”

  He nodded.

  “They had these disco lights and my mom put them all around our living room and kitchen. All of our friends came over. I mean, I only had like three friends, most of the kids came for Austin. We always had a packed house. I had this boyfriend—I think his name was Josh? And he brought me cornbread. That was my birthday gift.”

  I didn’t know why I was going into such detail, but I was so lost in my own memories that I just kept going.

  “I don’t know why he brought me cornbread. Maybe his mom just had it lying around? I don’t know. But I remember getting this karaoke machine and thinking it was the coolest present ever and my mom went into her room and locked the door so we could feel older than we were and not be chaperoned the entire time. Of course, we ended up playing one of those stupid party games and I had to kiss a boy named Joseph, who actually just overdosed on heroine a few months ago …”

  I could feel Kael looking at me, but it was the weirdest thing—I couldn’t stop myself from talking. We were at a red light. The sky was pitch-black and the red lights were reflecting off his dark skin.

  “Wow, I’m talking a lot,” I told him.

  He looked over at me.

  “It’s cool.” His voice was so soft.

  Who was this guy? So patient, so quiet, yet so in touch with the moment. I tried to imagine Elodie’s husband having a conversation with him. Phillip was buoyant and friendly and Kael … well, I didn’t know what the hell to think of him.

  It had been a long time since I’d had this type of conversation with someone, if I ever had. My brother was the only person I reminisced about my parents with. But even he had stopped wanting to relive our childhood with me.

  “My mom raised me and my sister up in Riverdale.” Kael’s voice was sudden and sharp, drowning out the purring engine, the sound of the wind.

  “I love that show,” I told him and he smiled. I caught it before it vanished. I filed it away.

  “It’s all right.”

  “The show or the town?” I asked.

  “Both.” He didn’t smile.

  “How old is your sister?” I figured I’d better pounce while he was feeling uncharacteristically chatty.

  “Younger than me.”

  “My brother, too.” I wanted to ask him her exact age, but we were coming up to my little white house. “By about six minutes.”

  Most people laughed when I told them this. Kael didn’t say anything but again, I knew he was looking at me.

  The wind blew dirt over my windshield as I pulled into my driveway. Paving my driveway was rapidly moving up my to-do list. I parked and apologized again for fighting with my dad in front of him. He nodded, muttering his version of, “It’s cool.”

  I reached between us to grab my purse from the floorboard behind my seat. “At least you won’t have to go through that again. As for me, I’ll be back there next Tuesday at seven p.m. sharp.” I said “sharp” as much as for myself as for Kael. If I was late for next week’s dinner, I would never hear the end of it.

  The alley was so dark on moonless nights like this that it was hard to see the porch. A beam came from Kael’s phone and he shined it onto the porch.

  “I need to get some lights out here.”

  Kael’s body kept moving next to me and I saw him looking around the yard, down the driveway, down the alley to the side of the yard. His neck was sort of jerking. It wasn’t an alarming movement, just a quiet survey of his surroundings. I tried to imagine him in Afghanistan, a heavy gun strapped to his body and the weight of the free world on his shoulders.

  “My sister is fifteen, by the way,” he said, as he walked past me into the house.

  ELODIE WAS ASLEEP ON THE COUCH, her small body sprawled out at awkward angles. I sat my purse down on the floor, kicked my shoes off, and covered her with her favorite blanket. Her grandmother had made it for her when she was a kid. It was really worn now, almost threadbare, but she slept with it every day. Her grandma had passed a few years back; Elodie cried every time she talked about it.

  I wondered if she missed her family. She was so far from them and pregnant, with a husband away at war. She didn’t talk about her parents much, but I got the impression they weren’t very keen on her running away to the U.S with a young soldier she’d met on the Internet.

  I couldn’t say I blamed them. Elodie moved a little when I turned off the TV.

  “Did you want to watch that?” I asked Kael. I forgot that he would be sleeping out here and considered waking Elodie up to come to my bed.

  “No, it’s cool.”

  Oh, this man of many words.

  I continued, “Well, I’m going to put this pie in the fridge and go to bed. I have to work in the morning. And if you need anything from the store write it on my list stuck on the fridge,” I offered.

  Kael nodded and sat down in my red chair. Was he going to sleep there?

  “Do you need a blanket?” I asked.

  He shrugged and said, “If you have one,” almost under his breath.

  I grabbed an old comforter from the hallway closet and brought it to him. He thanked me and I told him goodnight again. I felt wide awake when I got to my bed. Through the night, I thought about how Kael had been with my dad and Estelle, how he somehow managed to make the dinner more bearable. I thought about the kind and unexpected way he filled up my gas tank on the way to my Dad’s and then, of course, because I overthink everything, I thought about how I should pay him back for the gas, even if he didn’t want me to.

  I felt so restless. I turned over, grabbed a pillow, and put it between my legs, hugging it close. I thought about how it would be really nice to have a warm body in bed next to me. At least then I’d have someone to talk to when I couldn’t sleep. Unless it was Kael. I smiled at the thought, thinking how if it was him in my bed …

  I caught myself before I went any further.

  What the hell was wrong with me that I was picturing Kael in my bed? I needed physical contact, that had to be the reason that no matter how much I tried to think about anything else—anyone else—I couldn’t help but imagine him lying next to me, staring up at the ceiling the way he’d stared out the windshield the whole ride home.

  It had been almost a year since I had human contact that wasn’t work related outside of my family and Elodie. Not that I was used to having it in large or consecutive doses, but Kae
l was making me daydream about him and I. People my age usually met guys at clubs or school or through friends, but I didn’t have much experience with any of the above.

  Brien and I had gone back and forth a little, still making out in his car after I promised myself I would never speak to him again. The last time I let it happen was in his barracks room, when I rolled over and something jabbed my side.

  An earring. I’d felt like I was in a movie because, one, who loses an earring while hooking up and doesn’t notice? And, two, I had been playing the part of the lonely, desperate-for-attention girl who knew her guy was hooking up with other girls, but it took a hideous hoop earring to make her admit it to herself.

  We fought about it. He said it must have been his roommate’s girlfriend’s earring and had nothing to say when I reminded him that I had seen his roommate hook up with multiple people, not one of whom was female.

  I grabbed my phone to scroll through social media to get Brien out of my head. I typed Kael’s name in Elodie’s friends list but nothing came up, so I searched for him again. I found a profile with less than one hundred friends, which seemed odd to me. I didn’t talk to ninety-nine percent of the people I was “friends” with, but I still had almost a thousand. That seemed excessive, having a thousand people I didn’t talk to have access to me.

  His profile picture was a group shot of Kael with three other soldiers. They were all dressed in ACUs and standing next to a tank. Kael was grinning in the picture, maybe even laughing, that’s how bright his smile was. It was weird to see him like that, his arm around one of the guys. But apart from his profile picture, I couldn’t get any information from his page at all. Everything was private. I almost requested to be his friend, but it felt stalker-ish to send him a Facebook request while he was sleeping on my chair in the living room

  I clicked out of his profile and started scrolling through my Facebook friends, unfriending people who I barely knew. I removed about a hundred before I fell asleep.

  I WOKE UP FULLY CLOTHED, with my cell phone on my chest. It felt like the heat was on and I never turned the heat on. I checked the time: almost four in the morning. I had to be up at eight so I could run to the grocery store before work at ten. I plugged my phone into the charger and sat up. I kept my T-shirt on, but unclasped my bra and slid my jeans off. It was so hot in my room and my throat was dry. I could feel the sweat on the back of my neck when I tied up my thick, curly hair.

  I thought about putting pants on before I went to the kitchen for water, but it was four a.m. and Kael and Elodie would undoubtedly be sleeping. It was so hot, I couldn’t think about sliding thick pajamas over my thighs right then, so I made sure I was quiet when I walked down the hallway and into the kitchen. I kept the hallway light off and relied on the little nightlights plugged into my kitchen outlets to see.

  I grabbed the jug of water out of my fridge and chugged it until I couldn’t anymore. I closed the fridge and almost screamed when I saw Kael sitting at the kitchen table.

  “Shit, you scared me.” I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Then I felt bad because I knew I had made him feel bad. “Sorry if I woke you. It’s so hot in here,” I told him.

  “I was up.”

  I took a step closer to him and it took his eyes raking down my body, down my bare thighs, to remember that I was only in my panties. I tried to use my hands to cover my ass, but there was no use. I should have just thrown on pants. Or panties that half my ass didn’t hang out of.

  “Why are you up? Were you just sitting here in the dark? Sorry I don’t have any clothes on. I thought you would be asleep.”

  Kael’s head tilted just a bit, like he was confused by what I was saying, and he looked down at my legs. I immediately felt a wave of insecurity, thinking about the dips of cellulite peppered across my thighs. He looked back up at my face.

  “Can I have some of that water?” he asked me.

  I flushed, not only because I was still half naked, but because he had obviously watched me chug water out of a gallon jug.

  I nodded and opened the fridge. “It’s just tap water. I buy one of these”—I held up the jug labeled Spring Water—“every once in a while, and just refill it with tap water. So, it’s not actually spring water.”

  Why was I rambling?

  “I’ve been in Afghanistan for months, I think I can handle some Georgia tap water.”

  His sarcasm surprised me. I smiled at him and he smiled back—another surprise. He took the jug from my hand and lifted it to his mouth without touching his lips.

  “So why are you up? Getting used to the time difference?” I asked.

  He handed back the jug and I took another swig. I was still hot, but the kitchen was much cooler than my bedroom. The cold tile felt good under my feet.

  “I don’t sleep much,” Kael finally answered.

  “Ever?”

  “Never.”

  I sat across from him at the little table.

  “Because of where you were?”

  My stomach started to ache from my navel to my throat, thinking about him, this quiet young man, being woken up in a war zone from shells or rockets or whatever terror he went through.

  He nodded. “It’s weird being back here.”

  Between his honesty and the vulnerability shadowing his face, I thought I could be dreaming.

  “Do you have to go back?” I asked, hoping he would say no.

  In the back of my head, an alarm was blaring, screeching to warn me, or maybe Kael, of how I was starting to feel toward him. I had known him less than twenty-four hours, yet I wanted to protect him, to keep him from going back there.

  “I don’t know,” he responded and we both fell silent.

  “I hope you don’t.” The words were out before I could care how they sounded.

  Part of me felt like I was betraying my childhood, my family lineage of soldiers and airmen, but I guess I wasn’t as patriotic as I was expected to be. Not if this is what it meant.

  When Kael laid his head down on his crossed arms and said, “Me too,” my whole body heaved. This military life was so unfair sometimes. I wanted to ask Kael if he thought about what he signed up for, or if, like most of the young soldiers I knew, he had been persuaded to join by the poverty around him and the promise of a steady paycheck and health insurance.

  “I’m sor—” I started to say, but his eyes were closed. I stared at him in the dark for a few seconds before a small snore fell from his full lips.

  “DO YOU ALWAYS WEAR YOUR UNIFORM?” I asked him in the cereal aisle. The cart we had chosen had a creaky wheel that liked to get stuck on turns. I’d handed Kael my grocery list in the parking lot, assigning him to hold onto it. He didn’t say anything, so I took it as a yes.

  “No,” he said, surprising me.

  I looked at him, pressing him to say more. “Seems like it.” I attempted to soften my words by smiling at him, but he didn’t look down at me.

  “I don’t have any of my clothes.”

  Shit. “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t think about that. Where are they? Do you need a ride to get them?”

  He grabbed a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. At least he had good taste in cereal. He was keeping his items in the basket in the front of the cart where kids usually sat while parents tried to keep them entertained and cooperative.

  “I don’t know where they are.” He looked confused. I was getting better at reading him every day. Granted, it had only been two days, but still. I was cracking him open, slowly but surely. His face was actually pretty expressive.

  “Was going to go to the mall later. Or Kohl’s. Wherever.”

  We passed an older man who kept his eyes on Kael and me just a beat too long. I noticed his lingering stare, shifting back and forth between us, and the hairs on my neck prickled. The man disappeared around the corner. When I went to mention it to Kael, I started wondering if I was just paranoid and decided not to give the grumpy old man any more attention than I already had.

  “I work until four
, but I could run you to get clothes after?” I offered.

  The Commissary was crowded as always. The low prices on groceries and the zero tax were barely worth bracing the crowd for. I would rather work an extra shift than wait behind shopping carts stuffed to their brims.

  Kael pointed down the next aisle, the beginning of the freezer section. “You know there’s Uber and cabs and stuff, right?”

  I glared at him. “I was trying to be nice.”

  “I know. I’m just fucking with you.” His voice was light, a different tone than I had ever heard come from his lips. It made my skin tingle. I looked away.

  “Ha. Ha,” I teased back.

  My throat was aching. I would always remember that, the way he made parts of me ache that I had never felt before. I would always be thankful for that.

  “So, should I take you or not? Can you grab those little pizzas? The red box.” I pointed behind him.

  “If you want? I mean, I’m already staying on your couch, imposing on your family dinners, eating your granola bars.”

  “You ate my granola bars?”

  He laughed. If I hadn’t turned around, I would have missed it. It was that quick.

  “I’m buying you another box.” He was definitely not into owing people things.

  “I would normally say it’s fine just to be polite, but my electric bill is high as hell this month, so go ahead.” I nudged his shoulder. He tensed up beside me. It was a shift as small as a pinprick, but I felt it down my spine.

  Kael took a step away from me as we continued to walk. The music overhead was louder, it had to be. I felt uncomfortable. Embarrassed. It was as if something had cracked open last night. I guess a three a.m. chat in your panties would do that. Kael was different today. More open. Almost talkative. Still, I wondered. Did I think he was flirting with me? I hadn’t actually thought of it that way, but it felt something like it.

  “Sorry,” I ended up saying a silent minute later. We were standing in the chip aisle. I was deciding between flavored pretzels and Doritos Cool Ranch chips when Kael grabbed a bag of Funyuns and tossed it into the cart.