𝒑𝒆𝒕𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒉𝒐𝒓 ᖭི༏ᖫྀ 𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚖𝚜

chapter thirty three: i'm taking a ride with my best friend

[XXXIII]

The summer was waning, and it was my birthday.

18th August, 2038.

I was nineteen.

I was nineteen, and my whole life was ahead of me.

Which is why I decided to do something that would likely throw it away.

Either life itself, or the life I had, that is.

Not that I wanted this life. This life where my mum was dead, Abby was loose, Finn didn't want to know me.

But I had you. And you were... sensational.

You were the only thing keeping my grief from hardening permanently. We were lost in each other's grief, but so in love.

So in love.

It seemed ridiculous now that we'd spent so much time dancing around it when I was pretty sure I had loved you for a lot longer than I'd care to admit.

But I did admit it.

We were lying down in the back of the truck. You weren't a big person but, you held me in your arms like I belonged there. We talked so much, between our tears and our anger regarding our losses. It was the only thing keeping our heads above water.

"When did you fall for me?" I asked childishly, hand in your hair as I gazed up at the cosmos. You paused.

"I fell for you?"

I laughed and shoved you playfully, telling you to shut the fuck up and answer the damned question, with love of course.

You hummed a little, lost in thought.

"I definitely didn't know it...or didn't want to admit it. Maybe both."

Your pride ran deep but you were putting it aside for me.

"But... I think it was the first time I lost you. I was filled with so much rage thinking you betrayed me, but that was just deep heartbreak. And then I found out you were telling the truth, and..."

I stroked your hair as you recalled, knowing the memory must have been difficult to wade through. You were this small, scrawny ball of sheepish masculinity, constantly avoiding eye contact or saying things at inappropriate moments. I liked it. It made me laugh.

The stars were so bright. I welled up a little remembering how my mother had told me that in the olden years, pre sentient-mushroom beings, there was so much light in the cities, so much pollution in the air, that you could hardly see the stars in the sky. That was the one drawback of the old world. Humans were rife but they were to the planet what Cordyceps was to us. Now we were a rare species, but you could see the bottom of lakes and deer in the woods. The stars were out. The stars were out in their trillions, in their greenish aura that painted the sky in its verdant majesty.

"It's dippy," you said, moving your arm slightly west of Polaris, the North Star.

Dippy, was not a diplodocus.

It was what I called my favourite constellation, Ursa Major. Otherwise known as the Pan, and the Big Dipper. Hence, Dippy.

Four stars in a little trapezium, adorned with a handle comprised of another three. Seven total.

The seventh, and last star, the only of the seven only connected to one other star, was my favourite. Alkaid.

Not the brightest or biggest of the constellation, but that's not how you pick a favourite, is it?