Once We Were Starlight

He shook his head. “No, actually, but I had a meeting in the area. My place is a quick subway ride away. Tell me more about what you’re doing now.”

“Oh. Well. I have a job that I love. I work at a sandwich shop.”

He leaned against his cart, studying me for a moment. “That’s great. And Zakai?”

My eyes slid away. “I haven’t talked to Zakai in quite a while,” I said, unable to keep the sadness from my voice.

Cody let out a slow breath. “I heard he dropped out of school. I was sorry to hear it.”

I swallowed. “Yes. I . . .” My words faded away. How could I explain everything that had happened in the last three years since I’d seen Cody, while standing in the frozen food section of the grocery store?

As if Cody had read my mind, he said, “How about you put those items in my cart and we check out together and then I cook you dinner at my place?” He pointed to the items he’d already shopped for. “I make a mean spaghetti and meatballs.”

I breathed out a smile. “Tonight?”

“Yeah, tonight. Right now. Do you already have plans?”

“No. I don’t have any plans.”

“Great. Neither do I. Feels like kismet to me.” He winked and started transferring my items to his cart.

Thirty minutes later, after dropping my few groceries at my place, I accompanied Cody on the subway to his modest apartment building. We carted the groceries up to his floor and he kicked the door open as I walked through.

How strange to be walking into Cody Rutland’s apartment, to know that he lived in this place and had flown across an ocean to rescue Zakai and me and others like us. And here I was now. It felt like a mixed-up dream where you were with the right people in all the wrong places. Nothing lined up. It made little sense.

“Just put that there,” he said, indicating the one bag he’d let me carry and nodding toward his island, littered with mail and paperwork. He set the bags he was holding on another counter and then stepped to the island, picking up a few folders and piling them up as he attempted to straighten. “Sorry for the mess,” he said. “I didn’t know I’d be lucky enough to have company tonight. Some years my apartment serves as more of a transition pad between jobs. An old lady downstairs checks on it for me and collects my mail.”

I didn’t like to think about the jobs Cody referred to, even if the purpose of his work was valiant and good. The fact that he and his team had to do the job at all spoke of untold human misery and exploitation, things that were happening at this very moment. Something that had happened to me, and yet . . . my feelings were still so tangled and . . . distant somehow. The focus of my grief had been on losing Zakai, not on the fact that I’d been used, victimized. I’d been protected from the harshest understanding of that reality by my family on Sundara. Did that mean I’d never connect with the same anguish they’d felt? Or did it mean it lay in wait for me? Somewhere just out of reach. And if so, when might it make itself known?

I managed a smile as I turned my attention back to Cody. “It’s okay. Your apartment is nice.” And it was. Not as fancy as Braxton’s, nor as stylish, but it was homey and safe and filled with the light of the setting sun. I went and stood at the window, looking at the building across from Cody’s, watching people within each tiny box move through their lives. People who worked and loved and perhaps had broken hearts like mine. People who dreamed and hoped and had stories of their own. How completely my story had changed since that first night I’d laid eyes on Cody.

“What are you thinking over there?” Cody asked with a smile. I watched as he filled a pot with water and set it on a burner.

“Just how different life is here.”

“In mostly good ways, I hope,” he said, pulling a cork from a bottle of wine.

“Mostly,” I murmured. I turned to him as he walked up to me, handing me a half glass of red wine. I took it. “I’m not twenty-one yet, you know.” I gave my head a slight shake. “But on Sundara, there was no age limit . . . for anything.”

He watched me for a moment before his lips tipped gently. “I know. You grew up faster than most, Karys. Faster than you should have. But I figure one glass of wine won’t hurt as long as you don’t report me.”

I laughed, lifting a brow. “I probably won’t.”