Where We Left Off (Middle of Somewhere 3)

I was glad we had a concrete activity tonight to celebrate the end of the year. Besides, I was actually dying to see how Felicity turned out. Will could say whatever he wanted about how it was unrealistic to expect life to be like fiction, but I was pretty sure most people would agree it feels better to have some kind of closure. Some way of marking a momentous occasion.

WILL TEXTED while I was in the middle of packing, a strangely elliptical text asking me to meet him at the planetarium at five. When I wrote back to ask why, he just said, Duh, what do you think you do at a planetarium.

When I got there, he took my arm and led me inside. He seemed tense and kind of irritable, which wasn’t that unusual, but he didn’t generally invite me to do stuff when he was irritable.

“I watched that scene in Rebel Without a Cause,” I told him as the lights dimmed.

“Just the scene? Oy vey, the younger generation.” But he slid his hand onto my thigh and settled into his seat as the show started. I leaned my head against Will’s shoulder and breathed in his smell, and his hand tightened on my thigh. The stars were as interesting as ever, but Will was clearly distracted, which made me unsure why he’d invited me.

After the show let out, we lingered in the park, Will still seeming fidgety even though we were outside. He kept fiddling with his phone and didn’t seem to hear me when I asked if he wanted to get food.

Finally, assuming he was just in a mood, I said, “Okay, well thanks for taking me to the show,” and leaned in to kiss his cheek, ready to go back to the dorms and leave him to his brooding. When I went for a peck, though, he grabbed my hand almost painfully. I raised my eyebrows at him as if to say What is your problem today? Finally, he jerked a folded piece of paper out of his back pocket and thrust it at me.

“Here,” he said, holding on for a second after I’d taken it so I had to tug it from his fingers. He made a sound like Ugh and a waving me off gesture, then stuck his hands in his pockets and half turned away.

I opened the paper, feeling the residual heat from Will’s body. It was a color print-off from a website. At first glance it looked like a star chart and I thought it had something to do with the show we’d just seen, but when I looked closer….

“Oh. My. God.”

“Oh, just shut up about it, okay? I just thought you’d like it.”

“Oh my god, you bought me a star?”

The paper was a certificate printed out from a website called StarRegistry, declaring me to be the proud owner of a star called The Shire.

“Wiiiiiiill,” I whined, grabbing his arm and bouncing up and down on my toes. “You made a romantic gesture!”

Will looked like he was about to vomit.

“Okay,” he said, “whatever, the point is that you should just stay with me this summer. It’s stupid to waste your money on an apartment with those guys. Besides, you’ll be so busy with two jobs that you won’t have time to do anything else, and it’s supposed to be your summer vacation, so whatever. It’s cheaper if you just stay with me.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Little bubbles of joy started to rise in my stomach and chest like champagne. I couldn’t stop bouncing, and the moment stretched out as vast as a galaxy. There was me, standing there, my arms tethering me to Will, and there was Will, holding something out to me that was as delicate as starlight and as ineffable.

Where once I would have grabbed at it, only to watch my hands slide through nothing, now I just watched it, appreciating everything it illuminated.

Will was eyeing me suspiciously, lower lip caught in his teeth. I shook my head, forcing myself to stop bouncing.

“Gonna need a little more than ‘it’s cheaper,’” I told him with a smirk, still holding on to his arm. Star or no star, I wasn’t about to impose myself on Will for three months if he was just letting me stay out of pity or because he was jealous I might live with someone who had a crush on me.

I mean, okay, I was mostly just giving him shit. Obviously, I wanted to stay with him. I just wanted him to say it nicely.

Clearly I had underestimated either Will’s level of irritation at having done anything that could be construed as romantic or Will’s level of nervousness about asking me to live with him, though, because he was not amused by my teasing at all.