We went as far as the car would take us. When we got that far, we left the car and pushed. After 20 feet of that, we gave it up to fate. Aaron took what he wanted, as well as what I wanted, and we walked, shedding few tears for the lost car that stood, diminishing behind us. It was my brother’s.
Down the winding road we traveled, with sweaty hands bumping together until we bit the bullet that chased us and clasped them together. We held hands like that for a long time, not feeling pressured or out of place, or any of the other things that accompany something new. It felt right. When we grew too hot, we let go for a while, wiped our sweat on our pants and travelled as two once more. That felt right too. The whole time we were silent as the world stretched before us into the night sky, into the stars, the universe above, the infinity beyond it. We felt like space explorers.
As the night wore on and the sun set in our West and rose in someone’s East, I looked up and saw the moon, big, bright, and beautiful, winking at me from someplace very high. When he saw me, nearly toppling back as I was, Aaron swept me up onto his back, locking my arms and legs in place. “Look,” he said, quieting my idle protest. “Look up and enjoy the universe. It shines for you, Charlotte. We all shine for you.” I smiled into his neck and then up at the sky. Raising one hand from Aaron’s neck, I pointed to it, right at the face of the opalescent moon and whispered. “Shine! Shine for me, my friend, shine.”
It did. The moon and the stars and the sky that surrounded them; they glowed, fiercely, brighter than the light of sun, putting out the feeble streetlights that lined our path. When I reached for them, they came closer, closer and closer so I could see every crater on her white face, every meteor rippling the blue blanket, each gaseous halo on every starry head. Closer and closer they came until, looking down, I realized it was I who moved. The ground shrank beneath our feet and Aaron and I, with hands locked like before, drifted up into the sky. Past my friend the moon, whose surface I brushed with each fingertip, and into the land of stars where we burned and shone with the rest. We were stars, he and I. I and him. Shining for each other. Shining for the world.
“Charlotte. Char? Can you hear me? We’re home, almost.” Aaron’s voice reverberated through the universe, and when I blinked, my moon was miles away, lifetimes away, disconnected and deserted. But my own little star was right here, carrying me, with his arms holding me up, up, up in the sky. I slid down from his back and clasped his hand in mine, tightly, so I wouldn’t drift away from him, nor he from me. And we walked off into the night, two lonely space lights that combusted under the hot sun on a long road one afternoon, when the car broke down and something else drove them forward; now one bright, bright star. Shining for each other. Shining for the world.