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“What? I am pretty attractive if you haven’t noticed.”
“I haven’t,” he replied while drinking.
I wanted to smack him but instead I closed my eyes and drank too, enjoying how warm it made me feel.
“Having a boyfriend and being in love are two different things.”
“I know.” Which was why I’d broken up with him…he said he’d give me space, but not only did he fail to do that, I found myself annoyed each time he texted me. So before coming here I’d simply told him I wanted to see other people via text message. He hadn’t replied and I hadn’t given it another thought until now. I felt better to be free of him…was that a bad thing to say?
We fell into a comfortable silence and maybe it was the chocolate, or the fire, or maybe I was just too exhausted to care, but I slowly leaned into him and rested my head on his shoulder.
“What are you doing—?”
“Shhh,” I whispered as I opened my eyes and looked up at the sky. “I know your story. Your life has been painful but I’m still jealous.”
“You really need to see someone about this jealousy problem of yours,” he said softly and I could tell he was uncomfortable so I sat up again.
“Anyone would be jealous. Could you imagine being one of those stars?” I pointed up at a random one. “There are thousands upon thousands of stars all around you, and your task is to find the one that’s perfect for you. It’s hard. Some stars you like don’t like you back. The stars that like you, you don’t like them back. Sometimes stars like each other for a while and then realize, for whatever reason, this isn’t the one. Sometimes…you start to wonder even among the thousands and thousands of stars if there is anyone actually out there for you. And you, Malachi, are the one star who always knows there is someone for him.”
“I’m not a star,” he said and then lifted up his hand and pointed to my left. “I’m that.”
Just as soon as he’d said it the first firework exploded in the air and its gold shimmering lights fell down like…like broken stars.
“I’m a firework. Only here briefly and then I fade. While the stars stay where they are.”
I frown at that, looking to him as he watched the show. “Malachi.”
“What?”
“Look at me.”
And when he did, I did what my grandfather always did to me. I flicked the center of his forehead as hard as I could.
“Ah! What the—?”
“Stop being so negative!”
“I was just—”
“Being negative. Pause for a second and look around.” Rubbing his forehead he looked around. “What do you see?”
“What am I supposed to be seeing?”
Man, he was a pain. “The whole town is here to see the fireworks. Stars are beautiful. Fireworks are breathtaking because they come so instantaneously and then poof. They’re gone but that display lingers in your mind. It eclipses the moon and the stars. But most importantly it brings everyone to a stop. It makes them get together in one place and just stare at the sky.”
I looked back to the sky as four, then five of them exploded.
“Could you imagine this world without Romeo and Juliet, Obinna the Great to Adaeze,
Lancelot and Guinevere, Wei Xiao and Princess Changping, Quasimodo and Esmeralda? It would be…miserable. We wouldn’t dare risk the odds because we didn’t have examples of what that looked like. Your love, your life, has inspired millions—no billions—of people to love foolishly…selfishly…unreasonably, with no regard for anyone or anything else.” I repeated the lines of from the last book, and I could feel the tears forming in my eyes again. “And because of that, when we see fireworks, when we see true love, we must stop what we’re doing and respect it enough to just let it be, to watch it dominate the sky, we stare in awe of fireworks.”
I was so lost in my rant that I didn’t look back at him until I was finished, and when I finally did I found him looking at me. The way he looked at me… the hope, the pride, the kindness…it made my chest hurt because I thought he looked almost supernaturally beautiful. And I didn’t want to think that. Thinking that would make me think…about how much I liked him. About how fun it was to fight with him. And just live here…but that wasn’t my place. I didn’t want to be Li-Mei’s replacement…how could I possibly be?
“I’m tired. I’m going to head back,” I said as I rose from the log and set the cup down. “Thanks for coming with me.”
Wrapping my blanket around me I left him as quickly as I could, which meant that I ended up trying to make it through a maze of people all of whom were just standing still with their phones up in the air to take a picture. The more people I had to get through the more frustrated I became and I didn’t know why. But my head was spinning. I just wanted to run.
Finally, I made it off the beach and into the trail of the woods, just in time to see Murphy try to push away David who was hunched over her with a beer bottle in his hand.
