Catching Stardust

by Heather Thurmeier

  “You can. We’ll run away. We’ll find somewhere remote to live where even Orion won’t be able to find you.” He knew he sounded desperate and bordering on pathetic, but he didn’t care. He needed Maia.

  She rolled off of him and lay on her back beside him. “I knew this was a bad idea. I can’t stay. Orion won’t stop until he has me.”

  “What if I go with you? Then maybe you can come back here. We can be together after all this other stuff is over.” He hoped she’d accept his offer. What would he do if she didn’t?

  She shook her head. “It’s not that simple. Nothing about our situation is simple.”

  “I know that, but that doesn’t mean it has to end. I gave up a lot to be here with you today. I want to be able to be with you this way tomorrow.”

  “So this is about sex?”

  “Of course not. That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

  “Oh really? So what did you mean then?”

  He rolled over and propped himself up on one elbow. “I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want us to be separated by a million stars. I’ll do whatever it takes for us to be together, even if that means I have to give up my life here to live with you on Pleiades.”

  “You’d really do that? You’d really give up everything here to be with me?”

  Why was that so hard to believe? Of course he would. He would do anything for her. “Yes. I’ve already screwed over my best friend by lying to him about you and I’d do it again in a heartbeat to protect you if you needed me to. I would do anything for you. Without you, I won’t have a life worth living here.”

  Tears spilled from Maia’s eyes. What had he said that was so wrong?

  “I’m sorry. Why are you crying?”

  She sat up and pulled the blanket around herself. Wiping the tears from her cheeks, she was quiet for a few moments. “I want to say yes, Zander. I really do. But I can’t. The universe doesn’t work that way. You’ll go crazy if you come home with me. People from Earth aren’t supposed to live in the stars. You’re not cut out for life up there genetically, mentally. I can’t risk what it might do to you.”

  He cupped her face with his hands, forcing her to really look at him. “It’s a risk I’m willing to take if the alternative is living the rest of my life without you because that’s not a life I’m willing to live.”

  Why did she have to make this harder for him than it needed to be? He wanted to be with her. He would give up everything to go with her. That had to be enough, didn’t it?

  Pressing his lips to her mouth, it was as if he’d finally found home. He’d finally found that discovery he’d always been striving to find. And now that he had, he didn’t care if no one else ever knew about it. Maia was so much more than a discovery to him. She was everything. She was real and tangible and beautiful—and she filled the void he hadn’t even known he’d been trying to fill.

  She pulled back from him, breaking their kiss. Resting her forehead against his, she spoke with her eyes closed as if really contemplating her next words carefully. “Please don’t make this harder for me than it already is. You can’t come with me. I can’t stay here with you. This—whatever this is between us—is over.”

  ***

  She sat cross-legged with the blanket wrapped tightly around her. It didn’t matter if Zander saw her naked again, she just wanted to stay warm. And she didn’t dare glance back at him to know if he was watching her sit there wrapped in her blanket. She could feel the anger and disappointment radiating off of him from here.

  Maia could practically hear the cracks in his heart breaking apart from the words she’d forced herself to speak. It was deafening.

  She knew it sucked. She knew he wanted to be with her. Of course, that was what she wanted too. Breaking it off with him now was hard, but it was better than going on with something that might really hurt him in the end. Change him in ways he could never come back from. She’d made her decision, knew what had to be done whether she liked it or not. Now she had to stick to it. No room to second-guess.

  Pulling her bag into her lap, she unzipped it. As her quick inspection earlier had led her to believe, the things inside seemed to have remained dry. She pulled out one of her sparkly silver stilettos and admired the twinkling surface.

  As she placed the shoe gently back inside the bag, a bright light suddenly surrounded her. A vibration of electricity pulsed in the air around her. Panic spiked inside her as she stared at Zander, who peered back at her with shock and concern in his eyes.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  She thought she’d been okay with her decision, but now that this was really happening, the fear inside made her second-guess everything.

  Zander.

  She’d never see him again. Certainly there was another way, there had to be. She needed more time to figure out what it was.

  “No!” she cried. “No, I’m not ready yet.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Tears sprang to Maia’s eyes as Zander and the bedroom disappeared. Blackness and distant twinkling stars swirled around her—a stark contrast to the bright light she’d seen only moments before.

  Hugging her bag to her chest, she rocked back and forth, crying out for Zander, but he didn’t answer. He was gone. No, she was the one who was gone—zapped from the room as easily as if someone had blown out a candle.

  But it wasn’t their choice to blow out that candle. It should have been her choice.

  “Maia. Are you okay?” The sound of her father’s voice filled the space around her, warm and comforting like a hot bath.

  Atlas knelt in front of her, obviously taking in her messy hair and the knit blanket wrapped tightly around her body. She must look a mess. The expression on his face was one of worry and confusion.

  Good. He should be worried.

  “Send me back. You had no right to take me yet. I wasn’t ready to go.” Her voice was surprisingly steady, despite the current of anger and betrayal boiling under her calm exterior.

  “What do you mean send you back? Haven’t you been trying to get home? Isn’t that why you called out for help?”

  “What are you talking about, Dad? I couldn’t call you, remember? The intergalactic operators were mysteriously unavailable for the first time in—ever.” She practically spit the last word at him. If she could have shot daggers out of her mouth, she would have.

  “I’m sorry. I did what I thought was best. I know you couldn’t get through to us up here, but I also knew it meant Orion would have trouble getting through to any of his contacts on Earth too. I thought it would help protect you. But after your call to me earlier, I guess I was wrong.”

  Maia tried to shake the confusion clouding her brain. “What call? I couldn’t get through. Then Orion found us—me, and I’ve been on the run ever since.”

  “I heard you ask me for help. You said you didn’t know what to do.”

  At the statue of Atlas, across from the church, she had talked to him as if he were there since that statue was about as close to her father as she thought she would get for a while. She had no idea it would actually get through to him.

  Atlas looked off into the distance as if lost in his own thoughts. “Perhaps in hindsight, I should have consulted you girls before taking an action so drastic.”

  “You think?” She wasn’t above sarcasm.

  “Your sister has already been up one side of me and down the other.” He shook his head and chuckled to himself. “I don’t know why I ever thought you girls couldn’t handle yourselves. You’re all much feistier than I give you credit for.”

  “You bet I’m feistier,” Maia said, climbing to her feet. “Now send me back this instant. I wasn’t ready yet. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

  “Goodbye to who?”

  “No one. Never mind. Just send me back.”

  “I can’t do that. It isn’t safe to go back there if Orion had already found you. What happened down there that you’re not telling me?” Her father’s voice rattle
d with a hint of authority in it, as if he could still boss her around as an adult.

  “I met someone. He helped me escape from Orion. I didn’t want to leave things with him the way I did when you zapped me back here.”

  Atlas put his strong, reassuring hands on Maia’s shoulders. His concern for her was etched in every line of his face. “Did you have feelings for this boy? I thought you were stronger than that. I thought you knew how this worked for us. I thought it was safe to send you there and then you go and find some boy and develop feelings for him?”

  “I’m not a child, and he’s not a boy. He’s a man and I’m a woman and I can’t help it if I have feelings for him anymore than I can help it that I live here and he lives there. But it doesn’t matter anymore does it? You zapped me up here, right out of that room, and the only way I’ll ever see him again is if I go back to Earth.”

  Maia squared her shoulders and took a step back from her father. That’s exactly what she was going to do—go right back to Earth. Right back to New York to find Zander. And if she had to spend the rest of her eternity on Earth so she could be with him, then that was fine with her. She would happily give up her life here if it meant being with him.

  “I’m going back.”

  “Maia, honey. I know you think you can find a way to live down there permanently, but you can’t. It’s too hard for us.”

  “Yes I can. I saw all kinds of people down there just like us, living among the mortals. I can be one of them.”

  “Did any of them look happy?”

  She thought back to the people she’d spotted on this or other visits to Earth. Were they happy? She thought back to her visit to Café Cosmos on her first visit to Earth with her friends, back when it had still been open. The people there had all been alone or sitting beside people at the bar, all of them hunched over their drinks not speaking. Maybe they hadn’t been as happy as she thought.

  “They try to make it in the normal world with mortals and then when the inevitable time comes and the mortal dies, they can’t bare to leave the planet and come back home. They waste away down there as time passes. We’re different. We’re not meant to live on that planet.”

  “Maybe it won’t be the same for me.”

  “Or maybe it will be the same and you won’t recover from it. Stay here. Find someone here to love. Be happy for your eternity.”

  “I’m not sure I can be happy without him.”

  Tears spilled down her cheeks again. She was so tired. Her body felt heavy, her bones weary after running away and the stress of everything that had happened in New York.

  “Go take a bath and then get some rest. You’ll feel better soon.”

  Maia turned away from her father and walked out of his meeting chambers, her ugly pink zebra-striped bag still clutched to her chest. He didn’t know what he was talking about. She could live on Earth and be happy. And when Zander—died, eventually—then she would come home brokenhearted. But that was a better alternative than being here brokenhearted now and missing out on what could be an amazing life with Zander.

  As she stepped out of Atlas’s house, the familiar smells of Pleiades hit her. Nothing on Earth—or anywhere else in the universe for that matter—smelled as good as it did here. Scents of stargazer lilies and galaxy magnolias drifted on the breeze. She smiled, inhaling the fragrant winds. People on Earth didn’t even know where the names of these flowers came from.

  The grass beneath her feet was soft and fluffy, not a true green, but with undertones of blues. It tickled her arches with each step. How she loved lying on this grass, listening to the roar of the waterfalls. She’d never been anywhere more peaceful and comforting. And yet somehow, she felt emptiness here now that she’d never felt before.

  The walk to her house took only a few minutes. She didn’t linger along the way. She wanted to slip into the tub, then into some of her own pajamas and into bed. Her father was right about one thing, after she had a chance to rest, she’d be able to think clearly and would be able to make a decision about what to do from this point on about Zander.

  And she’d have the energy to kick Orion’s ass.

  Chances are, he’d already sensed she wasn’t on Earth anymore. If he hadn’t yet, it would only be a matter of time before he did. Then he’d come looking for her here. Again.

  And this time she’d be ready for him.

  She pushed open the door to her house and flipped on the lights. Everything looked as she remembered it. Her books still sat open on the little table in her sitting room, waiting to be read. The flowers she’d collected before vanishing were withered in the vase after weeks of not being watered. She climbed the stairs to the second floor and went straight to the large bathroom off her bedroom.

  As the tub began to fill, she dropped her bag on her bed and opened the large doors that led to her balcony overlooking the springs and waterfall. Flower-scented mist rose from the waterfall spray, kissing her skin. She closed her eyes, inhaling deeply, filling her lungs with the pure air she’d missed so much. Her body responded with renewed energy and vitality she hadn’t felt the entire time she’d been in New York. Could she really go back and leave all of this behind?

  One glance at her large bed and the answer was clear. Yes, she could. Because since the moment she’d been whisked away from Zander, she hadn’t felt like herself. She felt as if part of her was stuck in some kind of purgatory—neither fully on Earth nor fully in the stars. She was hanging somewhere in the infinite cosmos between them.

  Maia slipped into the hot water of the bath after discarding the knit blanket and laying it on her bed. Turning the faucet off, she leaned back into the water, letting the bubbles cover her all the way to her chin. If she’d had more tears to cry, she would have, but she’d cried so many times already in the last twenty-four hours, they’d all been used up. Her eyes stung, her heart hurt, her mind was still clouded with confusion and indecision.

  She drifted in the tub for a while, the warmth of the water soothing her soul even if it didn’t clear her mind. Maybe her father was right and there wasn’t any hope for her and Zander to be together. Isn’t that what she’d been telling herself the whole time she’d been with him? So why couldn’t she accept it for what it was and move on now that it had finally happened?

  “Boy oh boy. Whatever it is that’s gotten you this down has got to be pretty bad. I’ve never seen you look so pathetic before.”

  Maia opened her eyes at the sound of her sister’s voice. “Electra, I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you too. You’re not looking so good. Aren’t you happy to be home?”

  Maia tried to force a smile onto her lips. Her father had already read her the riot act. She didn’t really need Electra coming down on her too. “Of course I am. I’m just tired. Orion found us—me.” Damn it! Maia wasn’t ready to talk about her feelings for Zander yet. “And I had to run through half of New York City to get away.”

  Electra raised an eyebrow. “Orion found you and who?”

  “No one. I said the wrong thing.”

  “Liar. You know I can always read you. You may be older,” she smirked. Her sister never missed an opportunity to point that out. “But you’re certainly not wiser. Tell me before I have to turn on the cold water and force it out of you.”

  “Don’t bother, I’m getting out. Hand me the towel, would you?”

  Electra grabbed the fluffy blue towel from the hook behind the door and handed it to Maia before turning and walking into the bedroom. Her sister sprawled out on the bed on her stomach while Maia dried off and wrapped herself in her warmest robe. She couldn’t seem to get warm.

  “So?” Electra questioned, obviously not letting Maia duck out of telling her about what happened when she was away.

  “His name is Zander.” Her voice caught in her throat as she said his name. Where had these powerful feelings for him come from all of a sudden? Hadn’t she been the one only a few hours ago who’d been telling him it was over, that they could never b
e together so get over it? Apparently she couldn’t take her own advice.

  “And you have it bad. Okay, so who’s Zander and how did you manage to meet another one of us that makes you look like that,” she wiggled her finger at Maia’s expression.

  Maia swallowed the lump she felt growing in her throat. Here goes nothing. “He’s not one of us.” And commence the “you know better than this” speech.

  Electra laughed.

  That wasn’t exactly the response Maia had expected. In fact, it was the exact opposite of what she thought Electra would feel.

  “A guy from New York gave you that expression? Wow. He must have been some kisser.”

  Maia sat on the edge of the bed beside her sister. Her shoulders slumped forward with defeat. He wasn’t just a good kisser. He’d been the best kisser she’d ever experienced. And the best she’d ever had in bed too. And the only man who’d ever looked at her with that look in his eyes. But she wasn’t about to admit that to Electra.

  “He was.”

  “So what,” Electra draped her arm across Maia’s shoulders and squeezed her. “No big deal. You need a rebound guy and I know where to find the best kissers in the whole universe and I’ll give you a hint, it isn’t on Earth. No way. We’ll head over to Mars and have ourselves a little girl’s night out when all this other crap with Orion is done.”

  Maia pulled away. She didn’t want other guys. She wanted Zander. “I’m not going. You don’t understand.”

  “So make me understand.” Electra’s voice was soft and soothing and made Maia want to confide in her.

  “I—I haven’t met anyone like him before. He was fun and kind and took care of me and kept me safe from Orion. He dropped everything to be with me—to help me get away.”

  Electra was quiet for a moment. “He must be something if he gets to you that deeply and he’s from Earth, which you know is off limits.”

  Maia sighed. “He is something else. He’s—otherworldly.”