Between the Stars and Sky (6 page)

It is cold.

“I’m glad you came tonight,” I tell Sarah. I don’t know what to say to her, not really. Not when I want to do nothing but kiss her.

She mumbles, “It was nice.”

“You had fun?”

“Yes.”

We walk to the sounds of summer’s night. The deep bass of the lake growling against the strings of the breeze through the trees. The drumming of our feet against sand.

The world is music.

And it is so, so cold.

I shiver. “Do you want my jacket?”

I think she’ll say yes. I think she’ll want something of mine to wear around her shoulders like people do in movies when they’re in love and happy.

Instead, she shakes her head. “No. But look. Miles and Sean have a fire going by the Point. Let’s go.”

I nod and we begin to walk-

to run-

and then we are flying.

We are birds in the night, against the coolness of the lake air and the chill of darkness swiftly falling.

Suddenly. “Let’s do something crazy.”

“Like what?” I ask, my chest pounding.

“Let’s run and jump in the water and swim until we reach the other side. Or take off our clothes and run down the beach,” Sarah says.

“What?”

“Kiss me.” She turns to me, her eyes burning wild, and says, “Kiss me like you love me.”

Sarah is the lake.

My heart is the tide pulling me under.

I don’t speak.

My hands find her face and I hold her.

She wanted to run

She wanted to jump.

But I am already falling.

I am already out of breath.

And when I kiss her-

I drown.

“LET’S TELL STORIES,” Sean says.

“A scary one?” Miles asks.

Sean’s head moves back and forth and back. His short brown hair never moves, but his pale skin flickers by the light of the soft fire. “No, a story that means something. Just like tonight.”

“Jackson is good at those,” Miles tells him.

Sarah nods. “He is.”

It thrills me that she remembers a time meant for just her and me, but I can’t tell a story like that tonight. A private one. I’m enjoying this too much, and when I tell stories my words are traced with memories or wants or desires.

For a moment, just one tiny moment, I wonder what my story would be about. This one. Right now. The one I am living and breathing through.

A boy trying to be a man.

A teenager trying to fall in love.

A boy already in love.

A son lost.

I am so many things it feels as though I am between everything. Nothing. I am nowhere and everywhere at once. And tonight, those little pieces of my great story are not safe to say.

I am healing-

slowly.

So, I tell a different story. One I remember from my mother, from my life here in Huntington before. Words as true as the characters who lived them. A story that will be remembered in vivid detail days from now, one about a man named Jameson and a woman named Emily.

Jameson lived and breathed the water. But his world was not filled with fishing or hunting, instead Jameson lived a quiet life in a small village near a small lake overlooking small mountains. Every morning he would leave his cabin and walk the mile to the place where the water met sand, where his boat waited for him. Even in the winter, Jameson would do this, even if it was just him and the lake, his boat left behind.

But the one thing Jameson refused to leave behind was his heart.

Day after day on the water, Jameson would make his way to the tallest rock that overlooked the lake and have lunch there. He would break, throwing pebbles in the placid water. Wishing, hoping, dreaming.

For what?

For love.

Jameson thought love was like water, that it was something no one could control but everyone needed. Something that moved and changed like waves or raindrops.

But Jameson had no one.

He loved the village, the lake, too much to leave. And there was no one there for him. No one at all. He was very much alone.

Until he wasn’t.

One day, as the brightest sky was just beginning to changed to night, Jameson saw a woman standing on the tallest rock where he normally lunched. At first, he didn’t know what to do. She looked like an angel, her dark hair nearly blending with the fading day and her white dress moving in the air like waves on the lake. He was struck so swiftly, so instantly by her beauty he didn’t think to scream as she jumped.

But she did.

With no warning, the woman jumped from the cliff to the lake, her arms stretched in front of her like wings. Flying and flying and flying until she landed without a sound in the cool waters.

Jameson panicked, and hurried over to where she had landed. But he didn’t see her.

“Help!” he called. “Help!”

But no one answered, no one came. And the woman seemed to be missing. Was she a ghost? A reflection? A dream come true and gone again?

“Are you lost, sir?” a voice called in the dark.

There.

Jameson almost cried, and with a burst of air he realized he had not breathed since she jumped. But there she was, alive and well and smiling.

“Are you mad?” Jameson asked her.

Her smile flipped. “Excuse me?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I meant to ask if you were okay, but you shocked me.”

“I have that effect, I’m told.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Are you flirting with me, sir?” Her smile was back. “I couldn’t be,” Jameson said, although his smile was nearly as big as hers. “I don’t even know your name.”

“What’s yours?”

“Jameson.”

“Jameson,” she repeated, tasting the name on her lips, her tongue. “I’m Emily.”

“Emily,” he said, doing the same. “It’s very nice to meet you. But why did you jump?”

“To feel alive, Jameson. The greatest things in the world require us to jump. It’s like taking a leap of faith or falling in love. We have to. So I did.”

“Just like that?” Jameson snapped his fingers.

Emily shook her head. “It takes time, always time. I’ve been working up to this jump, telling myself that at the end of summer when fall was just beginning, I would jump and find myself in the air as I fell.”

“Did you?”

Her eyes locked on his. “I think I might have.”

Days later, Emily and Jameson were in something like love. When Emily kissed him, his lips tasted of salt and love and danger. Of things that should not make her feel safe but did.

Like the lake.

Like the fire.

“I love you,” Jameson told Emily, his voice raw and rough with the passion of his words. The meaning behind them, he wanted forever.

A sly smile hit her lips. “I don’t love you.”

It was then that Jameson knew what death must feel like, must taste like, because his heart was barely beating and his lungs hardly breathing. “You don’t?”

“No,” Emily told him. “You are my air, my life, my heart. You’re my everything, Jameson. That is not love. That’s something so much more. How can you define something that gives you life, makes your heart beat as though someone else controls it? I don’t love you, but if love is the strongest word we have then that is what we’ll say. I love you I love you I love you.”

“Let’s jump,” Jameson told her. “Let’s jump again and hold hands and fall together.”

“Fall together forever,” she said. “Our first jump.”

“First of many.” He smiled, the air from the lake below them rising around the cliff where they rested. In the light of their small fire, the world looked darker around them as though he and Emily were the only two pieces of light in existence. “Do you think this jump means more than just falling from a cliff into the lake?”

“Of course it does,” Emily told him. “It means everything, Jameson. Life and love, the two great events of our world. This fall holds them both.”

“Like everyone who falls will fall in love?” Jameson laughed.

“Why not? Anything is possible.”

“With you, I’m sure it is.”

Emily took his hand and pulled him close to the fire that was kindling next to them.

“You, fire, and the fall, Jameson. Those are my very favorite things. In you I see my future, in fire I see life, and in the fall I found you. How could I ever need anything more than this?”

Jameson felt her breathe, felt her live. And as his whispered words carried higher in the air around them both, he knew he didn’t need anything more than her. “I want you to be happy, Emily. The happiest you’ve ever been, and I want to be the man who makes you feel like the world is yours to take.”

“You already do.”

“You feel like you can do anything?”

She nodded. “I do.”

“Then let’s jump.” He grinned.

On their feet, hands together, they took one breath before they ran past the fire to the edge of the pointed cliff and jumped.

Arms like birds.

Hair flying in the night.

Darker as they fell.

And when they hit the water, the impact of the cold lake unlocked their hands. But Jameson was smiling. He had felt the world pass him by, felt Emily’s warmth all the way down. Heard her scream and laugh and giggle as the two fell through the air, fell further in love.

He surfaced. “Emily?”

Jameson’s hand ran through his hair, the only movement in the night. Otherwise, the lake was flat. No waves, no ripples. Nothing.

Panic rose in his chest. “Emily! Emily!”

She was nowhere. Where could she have gone?

Minute after minute, hour after hour, he searched for her. Questions beat Jameson silly until guilt broke him in a thousand pieces. And finally, he stopped.

There, at the edge of the lake, was a body.

Cold and blue in the darkened waters, Emily looked like a ghostly angel. Sleeping soundly. Eyes closed. Lips slightly curved in an innocent smile. She looked peaceful.

“Emily?” Jameson choked as he ran for her. “No! No, please. Don’t leave me, Emily. Don’t go.” And then, “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry...”

Jameson whispered into the night, the day. Until he was found next to her, holding her hand, mumbling words into the noon air.

He was never the same.

But he never left.

Because of a woman named Emily, a man named Jameson lived and breathed the water. He never left his love, his Emily, and forever he would visit the pointed rock that looked over the lake and light a fire for her. And through the cool air and heavy mist, he always remembered.

My story ends in silence, and for longer than a heartbeat I think someone will end the beauty of this moment. But no one speaks. No one so much as breathes beyond the pitch of waves and crickets and sparks. And in the distant echo of night falling, the coming sounds of the Firelight Festival grow and grow. A maddening anthem of danger and secrets, life and death. Coming, longing, waiting.

The Firelight Fall is a love story.

It is almost here.

It is almost time.

I can taste the fire in the distance.

Still, we have now. Miles is holding Sean’s hand, and Sean’s eyes are holding the fire. I am holding my words in the air, and Sarah is-

Sarah is holding my heart.

*   *   *

This I know: I will not want to look back or look forward, but I will always have to do both. My mother is a memory, one I will always have, always cherish. And in small pieces of the forever created by me and by others for me, I will always have her. But Sarah is my present. My future. Soon, my always. I am between- so many things. But that doesn’t mean I’m not where I should be.

*   *   *

“Dad?” My voice is a whisper laced with the quiet surrender of things unsaid. I didn’t want to call but I had to. I had to do something. I’ve thought about this for days. I can feel it; the world is nearly eating me alive like this.

I need someone who understands.

“Jackson.” His voice is rough, like he just woke up. Like he’s been waiting to say my name since the day I left. “How are you?”

“I’m okay. You?”

“Okay.”

Silence.

He asks, “Good summer?”

I nod even though he can’t see. “It’s been good. Miles is doing great. He and Sean are living together now.”

“Good,” he says. “Always liked that kid.”

“Yeah.”

And then-

“She would be proud of you,” he says.

I can’t speak.

Words stick.

My throat is filled with them.

And he knows, Dad knows because he sniffs into the phone and says, “Until next time, kid.”

He’s gone.

But he’s not.

It’s not perfect, but neither are we. We never will be, but that’s okay. In so many ways, it will always be okay with him. He tried. I tried. And in the end, as I fall asleep thinking of what was said and what was not, I know we’ll be together again. Not like we were, not like what once was.

Different. Not better or worse.

Still, together.