Reaching for Stardust // Josh Kiszka

Part II

Word Count: ~4300

Warnings: none

<3

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Josh and I had tackled grocery shopping first thing in the morning, unpacked it all, then headed out for a long walk through some swamps that were so overgrown and murky that it lended to a very quiet experience with no one to interrupt us. It was nice. He'd been quieter than usual again, though I thought he might just want to tune into the wildlife we didn't always get to encounter–the tree frogs were invisible around us but loud, their throaty songs permeating the air, and Josh vocalized wonder as to what they were saying to each other. The bullfrogs were loud too, impressive in their deep calls, and we saw a couple leap from the muddy edges of the trail into the dark, shallow water and disappear. Redwing blackbirds fluttered from reed to reed, pausing on cattails to tweet more words unknown to us before going off to perch somewhere else, and the geese beyond were paddling through the water with fuzzy bunches of yellow babies, which Josh and I had to stop and watch until they got too far away to squeal over anymore.

But Josh wasn't quiet in the car–he was singing along to Van Morrison, the copy of Saint Dominic's Preview that his dad had given to him rolling through the CD player, and I was amused at how he sang every word with passion despite how strangely their voices mixed. Or didn't mix at all, really. They didn't go together, making for quite a jarring duet, but Josh just kept going and I kept watching–I watched the sun hit his eyelashes and his cheekbones, how it cast a shadow down his neck when we drove through the trees and back onto the paved roads, and I watched his hands move from the wheel to the air as he sang along. He was always moving. He couldn't ever just be still, not even while driving, and I could still remember how much that had annoyed me when we'd first met. Now, I couldn't imagine why–he was like a bird too, colorful and vocal, quick and strategic.

The sun wrapped itself through his honey curls and I reached out to touch his hair, to run my fingers over the shaved patch above his ear. "You ever gonna let all this grow out again?"

Josh hummed with the last few words of the song before he answered: "Maybe. Why, do you miss it?"

"Sometimes," I admitted, looking in my mind's eye at a snapshot of Josh from years prior, all that hair wild, untamed, ridiculous, adorable. "I like it. But you already know if you get rid of all your hair, I'm leaving you."

He laughed, nose crinkling. "Oh yeah, you've told me that. I'm not gonna. We still have to get married, you know."

I huffed out a small laugh at him throwing that out there so casually. "I remember that too, don't worry."

"So when are we gonna do it?" Josh asked, turning for a moment to look at me, his eyes catching the light too and I could see a brief glimpse of all their colors, the nature that lived inside those irises.

"After you propose to me," I told him, then laughed again. "Unless this is your proposal?"

"Absolutely not. But you said you didn't want me to propose to you yet."

"You don't think we should buy a house first?" I reminded him, looking out the window as we passed other people's houses, all looking way better than an apartment. "That's really my only stipulation. I thought we talked about it."

"I know. But I just don't wanna wait much longer, darling."

I looked back at him, gazing down at the pendant, the Taurean bull, the little starshine jewel, I'd given him for our first anniversary that was hanging around his neck. Truthfully, I didn't want to wait much longer either but I wanted to put down real roots first–I wanted us to have a place we could truly call home and begin to build before we put the final touch on our relationship. Josh had never been so orthodox with anything really and that was okay, which made me wonder even more why he wasn't so willing to just go along with my idea. But maybe this was that bull-like stubbornness rearing its head.