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So many stars. Countless. Bright and close, magnificent and unbelievable.
Like a disco ball or a snow globe or... There were no adequate metaphors.
“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen,” I whispered. I turned back to Derek. “This telescope is way better than your last one.”
“I know, right?” he said, taking the telescope again, putting his eye to the piece. “It’s like a front-row seat on the Hubble.”
I’d hate to think what his new telescope cost. “Did you get it from NASA?”
He chuckled. “Not quite.” He was quiet then for a few moments. “It’s even more breathtaking from here.” He moved the telescope so he could pan across the Milky Way; he was looking for something, clearly. He grinned when he found it. “Oh wow.”
He held it still and fixed the scope so it didn’t move. “Here. Take a look at this.”
Norah had another look and she gasped again. She was, quite surprisingly, speechless. She looked up at Derek, amazed. “Another first to add to my list,” she said. “Of all the things I thought I’d see in Kakadu, Saturn wasn’t one of them.” She looked back through the scope. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”
My eyes drifted to Derek’s. His longish hair fell to his eyes, the muted lantern light catching all his features like a monochrome photo against the blackness around him.
I’d never seen anything so beautiful either.
“Here,” Norah said. “Take a look.”
Derek and I pretended we hadn’t just been staring at each other. I put my eye to the eyepiece and looked.
And stopped breathing. What I was looking at literally stole my breath.
I glanced over at Derek, awe clear on my face. He smirked in return, like he’d known this secret all along.
“Jesus,” I mumbled, looking back through the telescope.
It was Saturn and its rings in all its celestial glory. Like every high-definition photograph I’d ever seen, only better.
And with my own eyes.
“You look at these every night?”
When he didn’t answer, I turned back to face him. He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Derek,” I whispered. “I’m...” I didn’t know what I was. “Wow.”
His smile was timid, personal somehow. And I wished we were alone. I wished Norah wanted to go back and it could be just me and him...
But instead, she began to tell me of the Northern Lights she’d seen in Iceland. She talked while Derek kept his eye to the telescope, and I kept my eyes on him. The way his jaw cut the dark night behind him, the column of his neck, how his long fingers handled the telescope with such care.
My mind took me back to our lives together. Him laughing in the shower, him moaning in my ear...
“Paul?” Norah asked, her voice cutting into some very private memories.
“Sorry? I was a million miles away.”
“I just asked if you’ve ever seen the Southern Lights?”
“No. Not yet. Maybe one day.”
Norah began telling me about the time she was in New Zealand, and I caught Derek’s smile as he went back to looking through his telescope.
It wasn’t long after that he began packing up.
“Did you want to stay?” I asked. “I can walk Norah back to camp and come back.”
