Wildfire Stars.

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I thought the plane Elliot would board would be our fucking epilogue. Honestly, I did. I even hugged the handsome idiot fiercely, believing that, that was the last time I would be able to hear him call me the annoying nickname he had christened me with. I thought that, that would be the last time in our lifetime when I would be able to hear him laugh or be graced with his rare smile. I thought that, that would truly be it. No more early-morning-late-night conversations as we watched Grease; when Fintry was usually drunk.

That was simply how I felt as I had walked out of the airport with droplets of tears glazing my eyes, because although he said he would be back, I was still a teenage girl with an insecure voice in me that amplified the fear of him never returning: not then; not now; not ever. Not even in my late-night dreams. We were human like that: having reassurance that something would happen, never stopped us from instigating inevitable doubts that created loopholes in promises made and dreams dreamt.

But that was the thing. He did come back, he did.

In the nights when I couldn’t sleep, when silence amplified my senses and all I could feel were the lingering kisses of his lips caressing the undulating horizon of my lips. In the dark hours, when the seconds turned into lifetimes, I could still hear the echoes of his moans over the soft buzz of the night-time traffic. In the small confinement of my room, I could still smell his entire being wafting around my scent. During dreamless nights, I could still taste our savoury memories.

In the nights when I couldn’t sleep, when the darkness amplified the stars, I could still see the midnight blue of his eyes inked in the night skies as I stayed awake trying to hold the stars close to my heart. And again, he came back tonight as I fell asleep after staying up, counting the stars: the night sky’s floating snowflakes.

The mellow tunes of Grease filtered through the thin walls and into my sleep.

For a while, I tossed and turned, believing that my mind was simply recalling the nights we spent on the living room couch, watching that musical, but even as sleep drifted away into consciousness and my feet hesitantly trudged down the stairs, into the living room and in front of a very-much-real Fintry, it did not seem as though it was an illusion drawn from my remembrance.

It was then that I became torn; torn into believing that this was real and torn into accepting that it might not be real, that my alarm clock would start buzzing in a raucous manner and then I’d wake up, to a cold bed and empty summer days without Fintry, days that seemed a tad bit colder than winter.

But my alarm clock did not go off. Instead, Elliot Fintry stood up and looked down at me and the head adorned with black curls seemed very fucking real, the pink lips that curved into a rare smile seemed fucking real and the midnight was still present in his blue eyes. He did not seem very much real, he was real. (No one was bullshitting me.)

I could feel it in the way his breath caressed my cheeks and the way his heart beat faster than mine when I laid my right hand on his bare chest.

“Hey, munchkin.”

A faint smile sneaked onto my face and a slight chuckle escaped me. My voice was hoarse as I murmured, “You’re here. You’re actually here.”