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The darkness began to fade from above as the illumination of the sky discovered shades of purples and blues. Soon after, pink and orange hues bled over the landscape, peeking through the clouds, finding their placements in the world. The warm glow spread across the sky, growing more intense with every passing second. The higher the sun rose, the more vibrant the tones became before they began to shift to softer, muted pastel hues. Each stage of the sunrise felt like its own personal masterpiece.
I’d never shared a sunrise with another person since Mom passed away. It was my own thing, my secret moment of solitude, but for some reason, it felt even better having her beside me. As Starlet studied the sky, I studied her. Her brown eyes grew glassy as she watched with such awestruck amazement.
“Wow,” she murmured in a complete state of bliss.
“Yeah,” I whispered, my eyes still on her. “Wow.”
Starlet felt like that to me. I hadn’t been able to place what it was that she’d felt like since the day I met her.
She felt like the sunrise.
Bright, vibrant, and awe-inspiring with such mind-blowingly satisfying warmth.
Starlet began to allow tears to travel down her cheeks. She seemed unashamed that she let them fall. Without thought, my thumb brushed against her tears, wiping them away slowly. She tilted her face my way, taken aback by my action.
“Sorry,” I muttered, feeling foolish for thinking I was allowed to touch her whenever I pleased. She wasn’t mine to touch, but damn, how I wished she was.
“Don’t be,” she said, pushing a few of the tears away on her own. “I’m sorry for being so emotional that I cry at freaking sunrises.”
“Don’t be,” I said, echoing her words. “I like that about you.”
She chuckled. “That I cry over sunrises?”
“No.” I shook my head. “That you feel. I like that you feel things so deeply.” It made me want to feel things, too.
I took a deep breath as I glanced at the now-fading sunrise.
Good morning, Mom.
We got back on the road not long after that. By hour three, the sun was wide awake, beaming through the windshield, so Starlet put on her dark sunglasses, and she asked me what my plan was after I graduated.
If I were honest, I hadn’t really thought of my plan.
I wasn’t one to have dreams or goals, which left me as a bit of a floater.
“Not a damn clue,” I told her.
“Have you considered college?”
“It’s too late to apply. Besides, I don’t even know what I’d study.”
“That’s fine. You can always take a gap year to figure things out or not go at all. College isn’t for everyone.”
“In my dad’s mind, there are only two main paths—college or the military.”
“Would you join the military?”
“Not a chance in hell.”
She glanced over at me, then back to the road. “If you could do anything, what would it be?”
“Anything?”
“Anything in the world.”
I narrowed my eyes. “No wrong answer?”
She giggled. “This isn’t a test, Milo. There’s no wrong answer.”
I loved when she giggled. It got me higher than any pill ever had.
“I’d be a wanderer. I’d buy an RV and go across America, witnessing as many sunrises and sunsets as possible. I’d make a vlog about it on YouTube or some shit and show different people the world and all the unique places.”
“Oh my gosh,” she said. I held my breath, thinking she was about to tell me how ridiculous the idea was. Instead, her eyes widened, and she said, “That’s one of my dreams! I’ve wanted to do that since I was a kid.”
“Bullshit.”
“Not bullcrap.”
I smiled.
I liked how instead of cursing, she used different words like bullcrap. It was cute.
She had the same dream as me. That created an odd sense of tumult in my thoughts. I couldn’t stop but wonder if Mom did this. Did she make Starlet for me? Did she somehow force our paths to cross? Did something in the stars bring us together? I didn’t believe in destiny, but I hoped for that to be true. That was something new for me, too—being hopeful.
“My life goal was to take a school bus or an old van and transform it into a mobile home,” she explained. “I’d spent a ridiculous number of hours looking up videos like that. In my perfect world, I’d have an RV home and go everywhere with it. That or a tiny house. I think tiny houses are the coolest houses. Or a tree house!” she remarked with such excitement.
“Star?”
“Yes?”
“I think I just fell in love with you,” I half joked.
She didn’t laugh, though. If anything, she grew a bit too somber.
“I was kidding,” I said, feeling like a dumbass for making that comment.
“No, I know. It’s not that. It’s just…I like when you do that. I really like that.”
“Like what?”
“When you call me Star. Only the people closest to me call me Star.”
