I Told the Stars about You

Chapter 32: The Joshua Tree

Times like these, I feel I never want to move. I feel like I'd be perfectly content simply lying here, hearing the birds chirp outside my window and the breeze move the curtains forming little figures of light on Rose. It's 9am and I've been awake since 7am, watching her sleep for 2 hours. She looks so peaceful, so calm with her hair sprawled out all over my pillows, her skin bare, pale and covered in freckles. I know that they go beyond her neck, down to the tops of her breasts. I know all the different curves and dips they cover. I've tasted every shiver of her skin.

As I look at her, I have the urge to wake her up solely to feel her curves, fist her smooth hair in my hand and kiss her neck without remorse. But I have to get to school in the next hour and looking at her, kissing her and tasting her skin won't help me get there in time.

Slowly, to avoid waking her, I crawl out of my bed and slip on some sweatpants, go to the bathroom and brush my teeth. In the mirror, I catch my ruffled hair and smile. Rose did that.

Grinning like an idiot, I wash my face before walking to the kitchen. And after putting the kettle on, I notice the defeaning silence for the first time as I sit around, waiting for the water to boil. Waking up and not listening to insufferably loud music is something that wouldn't upset many. But happiness in one present turns into pain in the hands of grief after the test of time. In the silence, I feel ready to let the thoughts and memories flow.
But before I even have time to process that it's because Cassie isn't around, it's because her Rod Stewart and U2 records are covered in dust in that wooden wine crate by the corner of her bed, Foolish Behaviour's first track starts playing.

And I walk towards Cassiopeia's room, slowly, confused, scared. I follow the sound of the song, the crackle in the chords. Rose is sitting on her bed in nothing but my T-Shirt staring at an empty place in the wall.

She doesn't even seen to register me until I'm sitting next to her and the bed with flowery covers dips under my weight. She turns to look at me slowly, her gaze reluctantly leaving the Vogue poster on the wall.

"You've got to go and collect your results." Rose says, matter-of-factly.

Not knowing what to say I simply hum, letting her speak.

After a moment, she lets me see her true thoughts.

"I miss her music." She gestures the record player turning and crackling. "She used to play her music on her IPod to me at school. I always said she was so old fashioned to have an IPod, her vintage T-Shirts and Doc Martens shoes she got from a garage sale." A laugh escapes her lips.

I get up, walk towards her wardrobe and open the creaky doors. Pull out the boots.

"These, right?" I ask, still feeling the memories that resurface at her scent in the wardrobe. I'd almost forgotten her scent. My heart clenches hard, but I force a smile onto my mouth for Rose.

She nods, taking them from me and putting them in the corner of the room.

"She told me her favourite record was The Joshua Tree, U2. She-"

"What?" I ask, confused. When Rose's warm eyes meet mine, I elaborate, sitting back down on the bed with ever next to me. "She always told me it was Foolish Behaviour. She used to play it at 7am every morning before school, so loudly it would rattle the windows. I used to-"

"Hate it, I know." Rose finishes for me, leaning her head on my shoulder in the most casual way. "That's why she played it. I mean, she liked it too but it was mainly just to piss you off."

It takes a second of silence before we both burst out laughing.

"What an absolute idiot." I say between seconds of catching my breath. The sort of thing I'd have said to her if she ever admitted to bursting her ear drums solely to annoy me. And I'm laughing in joy at hearing more about Cassie, things I never would have known without meeting Rose. And as I think of it, whoever or whaterver is up there, fate or God or destiny, I believe that although they took Cassie away, they made parts of her live on through Rose and parts live on through me. All her memories, all her personality and her attitude and her anger and her kindness. They are still here, in us.
And I'll still get to know her through Rose.