Love Among the Stars

I watched her taillights as she turned out of the Diner parking lot and into the night. This was it; the last time I ‘d see the girl I thought I was the one, and the news hit me like a ton of bricks. I thought our relationship was going great, that we were comfortable. Apparently comfortable isn’t what she wants, however. Comfortable means bored and complacent to some.

            I finished my coffee and paid the bill. When I walked out to the lot, however, I couldn’t will myself to leave. This was the spot where she and I had last made contact, and there was some aura around that fact that I was afraid of losing. So, instead of putting my key in the ignition, I propped myself onto the hood of my car, swung my feet over, and lay, looking up at the nighttime sky with my hands resting behind my head.

            As I looked up at the stars, I remembered a little fact from grade school that had always stuck with me, and that was this: the light from these stars has traveled lightyears to get here, and the light that my eye is catching is actually the star’s former self. It could have been minutes, hours, or years ago that the stars twinkled or flickered or shone like this. Even the light from the sun’s rays takes a full eight minutes to reach the surface of the earth.

            In that moment, it clicked that this idea has to work in reverse as well. Some star up there is looking upon this planet when it was infested with dinosaurs.  Another star might be seeing the light from this planet that was emitted when the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

            If I could build a space ship and travel the stars, I’d travel to the star where  Erica and I had our first kiss, to see the look on my face when I felt her lips for the first time. Maybe I’d go to that white dwarf in the distance to re-experience the “perfect day” we’d always reference later, spending our afternoon wandering the zoo and napping in the park before we went home and had sex for the first time. Ideally, I ‘ll find a red supergiant that I can park my ship on just in time to witness the time I first met Erica at the bookstore. I’d set up camp there and relive all of our great memories.

            The problem is, time is still linear, even among the stars. Eventually our relationship would turn sour again and I’d have to pack up and head further out into space, racing against time to only live in those days where Erica and I were happy.  

            Just then, a sliver of sunlight caught my eye as it peaked over the mountain. The sun is probably just witnessing her taillights leaving the parking lot about now; leaving me here alone.

             I sat there running her words through my head over and over again, but only in bits and pieces. “Everything just feels stagnant”. “We’re in different places right now”. “You hear me, but you don’t listen to me”. The more I heard these phrases and dissected them word-by-word, the more hollow they seemed. They’re those kind of phrases that sound profound but hold no real weight. Maybe that’s what our relationship was. When I look at it from a distance, it looks real and meaningful, but was it real? She tried too hard to be right all the time, and we didn’t have much in common. There were definitely signs that whatever we had wasn’t going to be forever.

            With that thought, I was able to smile to myself, if only for a second. I swung my legs back over the hood of the car and planted my feet in the dirt. I opened the drivers’ side door, took a seat, and started the engine. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I glanced out my rearview mirror to see the Diner waitress watching my taillights disappear.