Constellations

by Meghan Diane

  A hand waving in front of me pulled me out of the flashback, and slowly the record store came back into focus. “Uh Aurora?” Cassie asked, “you in there?”

  I blinked and looked up at her, studying her face as I often did. “Yeah, of course. What’s up?”

  When her eyes narrowed, I knew I had missed something.

  “I asked if you wanted to go for pizza,” she said pointedly.

  “Oh.” I smiled sheepishly at her. “Sorry. I zoned out there for a second. My bad. Yes I want to go for pizza.” I studied her face a little more closely. Cassie didn’t usually ask me to pizza unless something was wrong. “Something the matter?”

  “Let’s not,” she replied.

  I couldn’t help but notice the way she tried to hide the pain from her face.

  “Okay,” I said tentatively. “Then pizza and beer it is.”

  “Perfect. Pizza and beer.”

  I watched her walk away. I watched as she brought her hand up to her bangs and gave them a gentle tug that I swear I felt on my own heart. I wonder what’s wrong with her. I hated seeing her upset, but I was glad that we were going for pizza. I cherished the moments that we spent outside of work just doing silly things.

  Pizza and beer couldn’t come fast enough. Correction, beer couldn’t come fast enough.

  “Mm, I love beer.” I smiled as I took a long sip of the cold drink in front of me. I let its coolness coat the back of my throat, the fizziness almost causing me to choke. I needed this.

  We’d come to my favorite pizza place again. It wasn’t much of a battle anymore. The cheaper the beer, the better. And plus, they liked us here. I didn’t even have to tell Matt that we wanted our usual veggie pizza with added pepperoni. He just saw us and nodded before coming over to bring us a pitcher of beer.

  I looked over at Cassie as she took her first sip. I openly stared once more. I watched as she missed her lips and the beer poured down the front of her Royal Records work shirt.

  My laughter filled the air.

  “Shut up.” Cassie laughed too. “I have apparently never had a beer before.”

  A warmth filled me. She was cute without trying. I blinked away the thought. “So tell me, why are we here? I mean I’m always down for late-night pizza, but I know there’s a reason.”

  “Man, cutting right to the chase. Can’t a girl finish her beer first before getting grilled, okay, thanks.” She took another sip of her beer, getting it right this time.

  “Fine, you can finish your beer, and then we can talk about you. In the meantime, my life sucks.”

  She eyed my quizzically. “Still don’t know what you want?”

  I let my head fall to the table. I looked pathetic and I knew it. “No, I don’t know what I want. And, I don’t know that I ever will.”

  “Now you’re being dramatic.”

  “No!” I said. “I’m not being dramatic. Maybe I’ll never find the right one, you know, the one who can hold all of the pieces. The one who can be my everything, so I won’t have to outsource different parts of me.”

  She took another sip of beer and pulled her seat a little closer. “I mean you’re a lot to handle, darlin’.”

  I swatted her from across the table. “Me! How about you?”

  She choked on her beer. “Okay, you may be on to something there.”

  By the time I set the second pitcher of beer down on the table I was so curious I could hardly stand it. Why did she want to come for pizza? What was bothering her? Was it the same girl as always? Hanna?

  “You ready to talk about it?” I asked, peering up from my new glass of beer.

  She looked up from her own glass and our eyes locked.

  I stared back. I didn’t want to look away. I didn’t want to be the weakest link, so I held steady. The more we stared the more I felt like I could see the whole world in her eyes. I could see who she wanted to be, what she wanted to accomplish in life, and even who she was. At this exact moment I knew more about Cassie then I had ever known before.

  The idea of it scared me, and I finally looked away. In the blink of an eye it was like it never happened. And maybe it didn’t, because I was no longer sure what I had seen in her eyes. I took a long sip of my beer to try and erase the thought. When I looked up, she was still staring at me.

  “Yes?” I asked. “Ready to talk?”

  Her eyes narrowed before lighting up. “Yes, let’s talk. Let’s talk about your past.”

  “My past?” I asked, my eyebrows rising far above my eyes. “Don’t you already know everything? You know about the graveyard of girls that I’ve dated.”

  She laughed, and I couldn’t help but think how I loved to watch the way her eyes crinkled when she laughed.

  “No I mean tell me something I don’t know. Tell me your secrets.”

  “Secrets?” I asked, my voice rising a few octaves. “I don’t think I really have any secrets.” Well besides that time I kissed Emily in the locker room after soccer practice. But that doesn’t count ’cause we both pretended it never happened after. Or there was that time that I stole a few of the props from our theater class. But that probably wouldn’t be that interesting to Cassie.

  “I can’t think of any right now.” Then I grinned. “But maybe they will come to me after we finish this pitcher of beer.”

  She immediately picked up the pitcher and poured me another glass. “Oh good, I’ll be ready.”

  I watched as she poured herself another glass too. Something was definitely wrong. She looked sad, and it killed me inside to know she was hurting.

  “What about you? Tell me your secrets.”

  “I don’t have secrets,” she challenged.

  “I don’t believe that for one second,” I challenged right back.

  Cassie crossed her arms in front of her. “That’s fair. Let me think on it.”

  “I’ll wait,” I said mockingly.

  “Did I ever tell you about the time that I made out with my brother’s girlfriend?”

  “What!”

  She nodded her head up and down, looking pleased with herself.

  “You did not kiss your brother’s girlfriend.” But I knew she probably did. With Cassie there were almost no boundaries. Sometimes I wondered how much of her conscience still existed, if any. But then I’d feel bad. Cassie wasn’t a bad person. Of course she had a conscience. Sure we would fake fight at work, but if things got too serious she would feel bad later and she would make sure that I knew she was joking, or that she was sorry.

  And sure, sometimes with girls she went a little overboard. She didn’t say sorry often, but that’s just who she was. And they knew that going into the relationship, if you could call it a relationship.

  “I did,” Cassie continued. “It was my junior year in high school. My brother was a year older than me, you know? Well because we were so close in age we were always competing. He’d beat me in a race. I’d beat him at things that actually required skill, like basketball. He’d get a ninety-three on a paper and I would come back with a ninety-four. That was our life. That was just how things were.

  “Dating was usually something we kept separate—mostly because we were into different girls. Well, somehow we had both decided we liked this same girl, Alex. And when we realized that we both liked her, we turned it into a competition. Now keep in mind, though I hate to admit it, seventeen-year-old Cassie wasn’t as smooth. Yeah, I usually got the girls that I wanted, but it was also ’cause those girls were obviously gay.

  She paused to take a sip of her beer and I followed suit. I was hanging on her every word and I wanted to know what happened. When she leaned in to take another sip her bangs fell over her eyes, and I instinctively reached over and pushed them away from her eyes, gingerly tucking them behind her ear. A blush crept up my cheeks when I realized what I had just done. I wanted to make a funny joke about it to lighten the mood, but I was too busy silently kicking myself for what I had done.

  She didn’t say anything either, she just cocked her
head to the side and gave me a strange look.

  “Okay, so seventeen-year-old Cassie. Go on.”

  “Right,” she said, snapping her fingers. “Okay, so seventeen-year-old Cassie struggled. Every joke I made fell flat. Every sweet gesture I did went unnoticed. And my brother, he was the smoothest of the smooth talkers. And he had a car. I’m going to attribute the brunt of his success to that. Well, obviously he got the girl. And he let me know. He rubbed it in my face for days. Every time she would come over, he would have this shit-eating grin on his face. By then I knew that I should have given up; just let him have her. But that just wasn’t how things worked between us. We played dirty. So, I stepped up my game.”

  I leaned closer, the anticipation killing me.

  Before she could continue, the waiter came and set the pizza down between us.

  “Anything I can get you?”

  “No thanks,” I said without looking up.

  Cassie continued. “I started flirting shamelessly. I would leave a single flower for her on her car. I would make jokes about how gorgeous she was, and she would eat it up. Well, one night when she came over Jake had to go help our dad fix the lawn mower. I was left with the task of entertaining the guest.”

  She wiggled her eyebrows at me, and laughter erupted from inside. Maybe I should slow down on these beers.

  “Well, she must have really been getting my signals this time ’cause they weren’t gone but three minutes when she was already in my lap, straddling me, and who was I to say no.”

  “No way,” I interjected.

  “Way,” she laughed.

  “So there we were, in the middle of one of the hottest make-out sessions ever—my hands under her shirt, her tongue in my mouth—when in walked my brother.”

  “Oh nooooo.”

  “Oh yesssss.” She took another sip of beer. “I have never flown through the air so fast in my entire life. And I don’t mean of my own will. He literally picked me up and threw me across the room.”

  “Oh man,” I said. “Well at least you got the girl.”

  She shrugged. “I guess. But honestly, I didn’t really want her. I only wanted her ’cause he wanted her. It fizzled out soon after.” She paused. “I do wonder what she’s up to now though. She was pretty banging.”

  I laughed for the millionth time. “Typical.”

  “Ah well, some things never change.”

  “That’s true.”

  The conversation lulled and we looked down at the untouched pizza. I could feel it calling my name. “Shall we?” I asked.

  “Of course. But first, I must get us another pitcher. We seem to be running low.”

  Cassie stood up, and I looked at the pitcher. Did we really go through another one that fast? Oh brother.

  As I sat there and waited for her to return, I couldn’t help but think about how nice it was to be with her. There were no rules. There was nothing holding us back from just saying what we were thinking or feeling. Or maybe that’s the beer talking. Either way, I loved it. Nights like these were some of my favorites.

  When Cassie rounded the corner with our new pitcher, I stared. She had a walk that was all her own and I often found myself staring, trying to figure out what was so different about it.

  “I can’t believe we got another pitcher. This is a terrible idea. You’re going to be carrying me out of here, just so you know.”

  “Gladly,” she said as she picked up my glass once more to refill it. “Now, did you think of a good secret to tell?”

  My face ran hot. I was hoping she had forgotten. “Hmm,” I contemplated. “Have I told you about the time I ran from the cops?”

  Beer came spraying from her mouth, drenching me in the process.

  “Guess not,” I laughed.

  “I feel this is a lie. Is this a lie?”

  I shook my head. “Nope, honest truth.”

  “I’m listening,” she said, eyeing me with sudden interest.

  “Well, it was an accident really.” When she narrowed her eyes at me suspiciously, I continued. “Okay maybe it wasn’t that much of an accident. I was sixteen, and I had a major crush on this girl Rory. Well, one night we were hanging out with her friends in one of their basements. It wasn’t how I normally spent my nights, but I would have gone anywhere with her.”

  Cassie rolled her eyes. “The things we do for love.”

  I rolled my eyes back at her. “Right? Well, it was getting kind of late, and I was about ready to head home. Just as I was about to stand up, one of her friends jumps to his feet. He went on and on about how we needed to get out of the house and do something. I wanted to do something all right. I wanted to go home and go to bed.”

  “Of course.” Cassie laughed, and I knew it wasn’t with me, but at me.

  “Well,” I continued, pretending not to notice, “one of them decided that we should do something with the roadwork nearby. I tagged along, of course, ’cause I wasn’t about to ditch the precious time I had with her. And, I didn’t want to come across as a major pansy—”

  “Umm, I think you always come across as a major pansy,” she cut in.

  I picked a mushroom off the pizza and threw it at her. “I do not.”

  Cassie laughed, picked the piece of mushroom off her shirt, and ate it.

  “God, I hate you.”

  “Aww, you wish. But go on. This sounds fun.”

  I rolled my eyes. “So we got to the construction site, and there were all of these bright orange traffic cones lying around. So someone got the bright idea to place them across the road. We put four across, effectively blocking both lanes of traffic, and then bolted behind a building to see our hard work pay off. It was nighttime and apparently people either couldn’t see or they were caught off guard, ’cause the first three people ran right into the cones, plowing them over. I laughed so hard that I nearly peed my pants.”

  Cassie’s eyes gleamed with excitement and it made me feel good. “Well, we kept it up for probably another half hour. A few people were actually paying attention because they came to an abrupt halt, and just stared at the cones, uncertain of what to do. Some of those people were wise enough to get out of their cars and move the cones, but other people literally turned around and went back the way they came.”

  “That’s mean.” Cassie smiled. “But wait, I thought you said there were cops?”

  “Oh there were. So like I said, we kept it up for about half an hour before I was ready to go home for real this time. But Rory pleaded and begged for one more. I was going to give that girl anything she wanted, and so we stayed. Only the next car to pull up was a cop. He must have been paying attention—go figure—’cause he stopped the squad car and got out. Rory, the bright one that she is, lets out this high-pitched laugh that could be heard three states over. The cop spotted her and started to run toward us. By this time though, I had already grabbed Rory’s hand and we were so far gone that he never would have caught us.”

  “Wow, who knew that Aurora could be a badass?” She shrugged her shoulders. “Well kind of a badass. You did kinda try and run away like five times.”

  “Yeah.” I wiggled my eyebrows. “But guess who got the girl at the end of the night?” I pointed to my chest. “This kid.”

  “Damn son,” she said, raising her glass to mine. “Well done.”

  I sat back in my seat and eyed the carnage that was left of our pizza. There was one slice left, but I knew neither of us would eat it.

  “So,” I said. “Are you ready to tell me why we’re here?”

  “Ugh.” Cassie threw her head back, closing her eyes.

  Even though she was in distress, it was nice to just look at her without her knowing. I watched as her hair fell to the sides, exposing her face a little more. When she opened her eyes I was smiling at her.

  “I’m listening.”

  She picked up her beer and took a sip, clearly stalling.

  “Things with Hanna are completely over.”

  “Yeah? I know, you told me last
week, and that’s why you went out with the other girl.”

  “I know,” she whined. “Which is why I don’t know why it’s bothering me so much. It shouldn’t. I always go from girl to girl.”

  “Well,” I said, taking a sip from my own beer. “Did you really like her or what’s the holdup?”

  Cassie rolled her eyes. “That’s the problem. I don’t know. At first I didn’t really care about Hanna. I had a crush on someone else, and I was using Hanna to forget about her. Only now that it’s over, I can’t stop thinking about her. And the worst part is, now I can’t have her.”

  “So if you can’t have her, move on. Find someone else to be with until you get over her, or until she comes to her senses.”

  Cassie let her head hit the table. “I wish it was that easy. It turns out that Hanna is actually really great. She’s awesome, and fun, and pretty. And she’s so great to be around.”

  “And she has some really big—”

  The glare from Cassie across the table was enough to stop me from finishing that sentence. Now probably wasn’t the time to remind her of that. I shrugged. “It sounds like you’re in love.” But then again it always sounded like Cassie was in love. She went all in on all of her relationships. Or she did for the first month at least, until she realized she knew nothing about the girl, or that she didn’t like her at all.

  “No, not in love, I just really like her.”

  “So then go for it. You guys are always in and out. I’m sure the fight this time couldn’t have been that bad.” Cassie laid her forehead, down on the table and mumbled something that I couldn’t hear.

  I reached across the table and lifted her head back up, looking into her eyes. “Wanna try that again?”

  Her eyes drooped down and she frowned. I felt her sadness wash over me as she brought her eyes back up to mine. “She…she said that I’m too clingy.” She looked away, clearly ashamed.

  I felt my smile lift up without my consent. I thought she was going to tell me that she cheated on her, or that they weren’t compatible or even that their sex life was subpar. Never in a million years did I expect to hear that sentence come out of Cassie’s mouth.