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“But you’re an amazing artist. Most people will never be as good at anything as you are. You have such a gift. It would be a shame to waste it. Look at what you’ve done with that star, and that was while you were chatting. You didn’t plan it,” he carried on.
Her throat was closing now. Where was Emma? She’d be able to calm her. Lucie fought to find words to make Chris stop talking and calm herself down. “It’s a hobby. I have to go intolaw. I have to make my family happy.” She pulled her hand out of his. It wasn’t working. Her brain was fuzzy, and her pulse sped up. She screwed up the drawing of Chris. She was on the brink of an anxiety attack. Why did her dad have to take her phone away like she was a naughty child? These were the sorts of emergencies she needed it for. What did Emma tell her to do when she was on the edge of an attack? Thought after thought rushed through her, not stopping long enough for her to process each before the next ones bombarded her.
“Why did you do that with the picture? I wanted that, Lucie.” Was he upset or disappointed?
Her eyes brimmed with tears, and it was like a hand was reaching for her throat to strangle her. But there wasn’t any hand. It was too late to control it. The anxiety attack was coming, and she had to get away. Chris couldn’t see it; everyone would laugh at her. The shaking was intensifying, and there were too many things to hide from him. The escalation was rapid.
Shit, please don’t let me be sick, not here.
“I have to go,” she cried, throwing down the money from her pocket to cover the cost of the coffees. She grabbed her bag and snatched the balled-up paper. How could she tell Chris to reach for the stars when she couldn’t talk about her future? She needed Emma. The paper seemed to burn her hand as she scrunched it in her fist. She was a fraud and not an exception. She was a fuck-up, and Chris would hate her if he didn’t already.
I hate me.
“Lucie,” he shouted, but she was running to the crowds now, desperate to hide the attack from him. “Lucie, don’t go.”
She threw the paper into the nearest bin, ashamed of who she was. Today she’d had hope, but now she had nothing.
He shouted something else, but she was too far away. She couldn’t see him again.
He knows I’m a freak.
She hated that word, but she’d had the term thrown at her many times. Tears ran down her face as she searched for a space to hide and be alone as the attack consumed her.
Chapter Twenty – Present Day
“That weekend with you was one of the best of my life,” Chris exclaimed, staring at the piece of paper on the table.
The shooting star brought back memories of her anxiety attack under the trees of the forest. As she clawed at her closing throat, she blamed herself for everything. It was as if she’d lost all she’d gained about who she was. Each burst of spirit ebbed away to nothing until, by luck, Emma had walked past and Lucie flagged her down. Emma talked her through the attack, although exhaustion remained for the rest of the evening.
But she’d not thought about what Chris was doing in those first minutes. “I still can’t believe you retrieved my drawing,” she said.
It was his turn to shrug.
“That weekend changed the course of both of our lives. Didn’t it?” Lucie added.
Chris smiled before staring into the distance.
“Yeah, it did,” he replied eventually, with a sad sigh. Chris held the paper gently between his hands as he spoke. “That Saturday morning, when we’d stood on the beach, you shared a quote with me. It spoke to my soul. It was simple, the sort of thing that litters Instagram now, yet it opened my mind to possibilities. I’ve remembered it ever since. ‘Spread your wings, reach for the stars, and you will change the world.’ I thought about that for a long time. It was like a marble that I would roll around in my brain, trying to see it from different angles as I mulled it over. How could I change the world if I wasn’t developing my skills or believing that I had any? I spoke to others about what they thought I should do, and in the meantime, I put my everything into my studies. I was the best student.”
“You didn’t spend university drunk and joining pointless societies? I’m shocked,” she said, trying to bring a smile to his face.
“Well, maybe a little of that too. I was vice president of the extreme frisbee society at one point. I can’t even throw a frisbee!” His deep laugh filled her body, and her heart swelled unexpectedly. “Apart from that, I worked really hard, but I was lost in terms of my future. Then one day, when looking at the stars and remembering you and what we went through that weekend, I realised how I could make a difference. You told me that I helped you reach your goals and believe in yourself, from bowling to facing your fears. I had this skill, and I wanted to use it. I became a teacher. Each day, I try and help others to reach for the stars like you helped me to.”
“And like you helped me to,” she replied without pause. Heat filled her heart at the idea that they had been changing each other’s lives from a distance.
He smiled wistfully.
Am I returning his smile, or is he returning mine?
“I did some volunteering after I met you. You inspired me to try,” Chris said with a big grin. “I wanted to tell you all about it, but after what happened, I presumed you didn’t want to hear from me.”
A song by The Weeknd and Ariana Grande came on the jukebox, and she struggled to hide her smile. It had played one night at a bar in Phuket when she was traveling with Emma. Although Lucie had only travelled to Europe during the year before university once Emma finished school and Lucie finished university, they saw the world together. They’d experienced the treasures in Cairo’s markets and surfed off the stretch of the Durban coastline.
Her favourite moment was on their last night in Boston, watchingMidsummer Night’s Dreamin the park with newfriends from around the globe. Lucie hugged Emma tight and sent a thank you to the sky for giving her the opportunities she’d never thought possible before that weekend she’d met Chris. The stars twinkled back at her, and as impossible as it was under the lights of the bright city, she swore she saw a shooting star. Emma joked she’d drank too much beer at the Red Sox game earlier that day, but that moment wouldn’t have happened without Chris. Instead, she’d have drowned under a Birmingham law degree.
“Riding down that hill was such a high, especially when that guy chased us.” Chris laughed, waggling his fist as the ranger had. “‘I’ll find you!’ Oh my God, my dad fell off a chair in a fit of chuckles when I told him that a couple of weeks later. He was dropping me off at university, and I was worried he was going to cry.”
“Your dad laughed?” Lucie asked, trying to envisage the Daniel Craig lookalike belly laughing. “Mine raged.”
