The Brightest Stars

Where else would he go?

I microwaved the last of the leftovers from Mali. I washed a load of dishes. Sat at my kitchen table. Grabbed the paperback I was reading and tried to pick up where I had left off. I kept thinking about Kael, wondering how he would be when we went shopping. Would he be more talkative or would it be a silent excursion?

I loved to torture myself with second thoughts, so now I was thinking that maybe I had misconstrued the whole situation and that Kael was under the impression I would be dropping him off to shop by himself. Then I convinced myself that I had invited myself to shop with him, and that he probably thought I was weird or pushy. Or both.

Ten minutes later, I was back to reality. No way would Kael be sitting around overthinking our conversation—wherever he was. I was totally overreacting.

Overthinking. Overreacting. Not exactly skills I could put on my resume. I put the book down without having read a word, then picked up my phone and went through Facebook, typing Kael Martin in the search box. No change in his profile. And I still couldn’t bring myself to send him a friend request.

I clicked out of his page and went to my inbox, as if I was expecting an important email or something. I was pacing around my room before I knew it, going in circles, getting myself worked up. I stopped dead in my tracks when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. With my dark hair pulled back, my eyes wild, I looked like my mother. Frighteningly like my mother.

I lay on my bed and grabbed my book again, but soon felt like I needed a change of scenery, so I went to the living room and flopped on the couch. I checked the time on my phone. Almost seven. I picked up where I left off on my last dog-eared page—I had never been a bookmark kind of girl—and let Hemingway’s brutal tale take me to the first World War. It wasn’t the distraction I had hoped for, though. The closer I got to sleep, the more Kael’s face appeared on multiple characters. He was a drill sergeant. A wounded soldier. An ambulance driver. And he looked at me like he recognized my eyes.

I woke up on the couch, the sun bright on my face. I looked around the living room, gathering my thoughts.

Kael hadn’t come back.

IT WOULD BE THREE DAYS before I saw him again. When we finally crossed paths again, I was sitting on my front porch, trying to get my feet into a new pair of shoes I had seen on Instagram. I knew that the IG model I followed had most likely been paid to wear them, but I still had to have them. Per the caption, they were “The Best!” and “SOO comfy!!! *heart-eye emoji*” Maybe for her. I could barely get the first one on. I mean, the damn thing just wouldn’t go over my heel. I was tugging on the shoe, leaning back on the porch like some kind of idiot, when Kael pulled up in his gigantic jeep-truck-thing. Nice timing.

He must have gone shopping after all, since he was head-to-toe in civilian clothes. Black jeans, a rip on one knee, and a white cotton shirt with gray sleeves that looked almost identical to one that I had. The only difference was that mine said “Tomahawks” on it and had a picture of an actual tomahawk.

My best friend from South Carolina gave it to me. It was from her old high school in Indiana somewhere. I wondered if her Midwestern home had been like the place where my mom grew up, a little town that was hit hard by the advances of technology, causing factory after factory to close down completely. I also knew horror stories from the place, like when the hyper schoolchildren had gone on field trips to sacred Native American burial grounds—what they called “Indian Mounds”—and stomped all over them while being taught a false history of dangerous savages. No mention that these people were victims of genocide or that we had taken their land and forced them into poverty today.

Come to think of it, I didn’t really want to wear that shirt anymore.

Kael stopped just short of my porch.

“Hey stranger,” I said to him.

He tucked his lips in and shook his head, then nodded. I guess that was his way of saying hello.

“Looking for Elodie?”

Little Mama was spending her Friday night at the monthly family readiness group meeting for Phillip’s brigade. She was determined to make the other wives like her before the baby came. I didn’t blame her. She needed all the support she could get.

“I’ll tell her you stopped by.”

“No, actually. I just—” Kael paused. “I went to get a massage but you weren’t working.” He looked down the alleyway toward the shop.

“Oh.” Now that was a surprise.

I scooted over on the porch and made room next to me. Sort of. I had been blowing the seeds off dandelions in between my Cinderella act, so Kael had to move a pile of bald weeds before he could sit down. He dropped them softly into the palm of my hand.

“I could use some wishes for sure,” he said.

“There’s more if you want.” I pointed to my weed garden. I hadn’t meant to harbor all those dandelions, wild daisies, and creeping something or other, but there they were by the corners of my concrete porch. Surrounded.

“I’m good,” he told me.

He looked so different in regular clothes.

“I see you went shopping?” He was obviously okay sitting in silence, but I wanted some conversation. Plus, I wanted to know where he’d disappeared to.

Kael pulled at his T-shirt. “Yeah, sorry about that. It’s been kind of a crazy few days.”

I had to ask. “Crazy? How?”

He sighed, picking up a dandelion stem from the steps. “Long story.”

I leaned back on my palms. “Yeah.”

“When do you work again?” he asked a moment later.

A plane flew overhead right as I started to answer. “Tomorrow. But only for two hours. I’m filling in for someone.”

“Do you have any openings?”

He was looking at me, his dark eyes hooded by his long lashes. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?” He raised his brows and I laughed. He was soft today. I liked this relaxed version of him. Kael the civilian.

“I’m going to a party tonight,” I told him. “It’s at my dad’s house.” He made a face. “Yes. Exactly. Only worse because my brother is being an idiot and throwing it while my dad and his wife are off in Atlanta at the Marriott, eating lobster tails and boozing with expensive wine.” I rolled my eyes.

My dad never took my mom anywhere like that. They never had adult time without my brother and me. One of the many reasons they didn’t work out. That and the fact that they were the two least compatible people on earth.

“Your dad doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who wants a party thrown at his house,” Kael observed. “Especially when he’s not there.”

If only he knew. “Oh, he’s not. That’s why I’m going to chaperone.”

He made a noise—something between a grunt and a laugh. He was actually amused. I was really liking this, the way I was starting to read his face and guess what he was thinking.

“Aren’t you a little young to be chaperoning?”

“Ha. Ha.” I stuck my tongue out at him … then snapped my mouth shut as soon as I realized what I’d done. I was flirting with him!

And I didn’t know how to stop. Who was this person, sticking her tongue out a a boy?

“How old are you, Mr. Expert-on-Ageism?”

“That’s not what ageism means,” he corrected me with a smile.

I scoffed. I was equal parts charmed and surprised.

“Okay Mr. Know-it-All, how old are you?”

He smiled again.

So soft.

“I’m twenty.”

I shot up. “Really? I could be older than you?”

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Twenty-one next month.”

He licked his pink lips and bit on the bottom one. It was a habit of his, I’d noticed.

“I turn twenty-one tomorrow. I win.”

I opened my mouth in an O. “No way. Show me your ID.”

“Really?” he questioned.

“Yes, really. Prove it.” And then, because I couldn’t help mysel

f, I added, “I want receipts.”

He pulled his wallet out from the back pocket of his jeans and handed it to me. The first thing I saw was a picture of two women. One was older than the other by a couple decades or so, but the resemblance was there.

I looked up at him, apologizing for the lack of privacy. The picture was obviously old and important, otherwise it wouldn’t be in his wallet. Across from the picture of the women was his military ID card. I read his birthday. Sure as sin, his birthday was tomorrow.

“So you’re older than me by like a month,” I gave in.

“I told you.”

“Don’t brag.”

I leaned into Kael and repeated the awkward grocery store shoulder-bumping. Only this time, he didn’t move away from me, or freeze up. This time, on my sunny porch, in ripped jeans and with soft eyes, he pressed his shoulder back into mine.

“I HAVEN’T SAT ON MY porch in so long. This is nice.”

It was just me and Kael, with the occasional passing car for company.

“I’d sit out here almost every day when I first moved in. I couldn’t believe it. My porch. My place.” I paused for a moment. “It feels good, you know? The street in front of you, the house behind you.”

Talking to Kael was like writing in a diary, sort of.

“I’ve always loved sitting out front. Not just here. Did you notice that swing on my dad’s porch? I’m not sure if you even saw it, but we moved that swing with us when we were growing up. It came from base to base, from house to house—just like my dad’s recliner.”

I could feel Kael listening, encouraging me to go on.

“When we first moved to Texas, we didn’t have a big enough porch, so we kept it in the shed. It’s heavy wood … you can see where it’s splintered in a few places and where it’s worn down on the arms a little. It’s not like that plastic outdoor furniture you get now. What’s it called—rosin?”

“Resin,” he said, helping me out.

“That’s it—resin.” I was thinking about my mom now, how she would sit out front in the dark and stare up at the sky. “My mom practically lived on our porch, all year round. She told me once that she believed God was made up of all of the stars and that when one burned out, a little bit of the good in the world died with it.”