She smiled, handing me a fork, but I couldn’t return any of her enthusiasm. And when she realized it, her smile fell.
“What’s wrong?”
I swallowed. “My mom.”
It was the only answer I could give, but fortunately, Giana didn’t press for more. Her brows folded in, and she nodded in understanding, grabbing the cake out of my hand and setting it back on her desk.
“Come on. Let’s go somewhere.”
“Where?”
“You’ll see.”
Clay
We were the only ones at the university observatory.
Because of course we were — it was Saturday night and our team had just won a football game against one of our rivals. Everyone else was out partying, whether at The Pit or a bar off campus.
Everyone, that was, except for me and Giana.
She hadn’t said a word on the walk over, our steps in time on the quiet sidewalk. We could hear students celebrating all across campus, but it became more and more distant as we got to the outside perimeter, and faded altogether when the off-white dome of the observatory first came into view.
A pimple-faced kid chewing bubble gum too loudly let us in, bored and barely looking up from the game he was playing on his phone.
“Let me know if you need anything,” he’d said after running over the rules for the telescopes — and the look he gave us as he left us alone told me that we had better not need anything, because he wasn’t in the helping mood.
Then, it was just us.
Giana dumped her bag in the corner of the oval-shaped room, eyes bright beneath the reflective lenses of her glasses as she smiled up at the open sky above us. Most of it was covered by the top of the observatory dome, but there was a wide-open gap where the telescope pointed through. When she bent to take her first look through the viewfinder, she gasped, smile widening.
“You have to see this,” she breathed, pulling away only to grab my wrist and tug me over to the machine.
There were three different telescopes, but she’d picked the largest one, and when I bent to look in for myself, I understood why.
The sky above Boston typically only gave way to a few stars and maybe a planet or two, the city lights too bright to see much else. But through this lens, the stars came to life, a whole galaxy of them sparkling in the black. But it wasn’t just black — you could even see the gasses of pink and blue swirling among the darkness.
“Magnificent, isn’t it?” Giana asked behind me.
I nodded, pulling away so she could look in again. She carefully adjusted some settings and the area of focus, smiling like a kid in a candy store when she found what she was looking for.
“Saturn,” she breathed, and then she tugged me down to look with her.
And I couldn’t hide my surprise when I did.
“Whoa,” I said, in awe at how clear it was, how we could see the rings spread out around the planet as if it were just a football field away.
“Perfect visibility for it tonight,” Giana said. “We should be able to find Mars and Jupiter, too.”
I shook my head, pulling back to let her play with the settings again. As she did, I watched her, completely awestruck by how she lit up when she had education at her fingertips. She was antsy the way a drug fiend might be before a hit — bouncing a little on her toes, smiling so wide it made my cheeks hurt.
“Saturn is mostly hydrogen,” she said as she squinted through the lens and slowly moved the scope with the controls. “It also has one-hundred-and-fifty moons. Can you believe that? That planet is in the same solar system as ours and it’s mostly gas and moons.” She shook her head. “Wild.”
The corner of my mouth crept up watching her in her element. Nothing amped her up the way discovering something new did, and I marveled at how curious she was, at how she was like an endless encyclopedia of fun facts, not because she’d studied and committed anything to memory, but because she simply loved learning that much.
But as fast as the smile had bloomed, it died again, my chest aching with thoughts of my mom suffering on the other side of the country.
“Found it!” Giana said, and she shoved me toward the scope. “Mars.”
I peered through, commenting on what looked like it could be an ice cap before Giana launched into an essay on the powerful snowstorms on Mars. I listened with a distant kind of awareness, leaning against the back wall of the dome and watching her work with the scope.
And I tried to make it work.
I wanted to be distracted by her, by science, by the stars and the universe. But while it should have reminded me how small my problems were, it somehow worked to do the opposite, and I found myself wondering why I’d moved so far away from my mom in the first place.
Maybe it was my fault she was searching so desperately for someone to love and take care of her, because I had been that person, and now I was gone.
My stomach twisted at the thought, even as another one chased right behind it, reminding me that she’d always been looking for a partner — ever since Dad left.
But still, I could have been there, I could have been doing more.
It was selfish of me to chase my dreams of playing in the NFL when I could have been home with her. I could have a full-time job by now, one with benefits and a decent salary. I could be taking care of her in every way she needs. At the very least, I could have gone to school somewhere close, in California, where she was just a quick drive away.
Instead, I was focused on myself.
All the thoughts and guilt warred inside me, and Giana must have seen, because her brows folded together when she looked over her shoulder at me perched against the wall.
“Come on,” she said, gathering her things. “Let’s go up to the deck.”
I followed her quietly up the stairs, and we were met with a soft, cool breeze when we reached the top of the observation deck. Giana tucked her cardigan around her more for warmth, and I slipped my hands into the front pocket of my hoodie.
There were a few small telescopes along the railing of the dome, but Giana didn’t go for any of them. Instead, she tossed her bag down to the side and slid down the outside of the dome to sit on the deck, patting the spot next to her for me to do the same.
“I hate that you’re this sad on your birthday,” she confessed when I sat next to her, my knees spread, elbows balanced on them, and hands clasped in-between.
I didn’t respond.
“Talk to me,” she pleaded, angling herself toward me. “Tell me what happened.”
I closed my eyes, shaking my head before I opened them again and stared at my sneakers. “Can’t,” I managed.
“Why not?”
Because it’s hard to explain. Because I’m embarrassed. Because I’m ashamed. Because I’m terrified there’s nothing I can do. Because I hate that it’s my responsibility and feel like an asshole for feeling that way.
All those responses and more rushed through my mind, but I just shook my head again, unable to say a single one of them.
Giana let out a long exhale, then nodded, as if she’d heard what I couldn’t dare to say. “Okay,” she said. “Then use me.”
I frowned, especially when she crawled over to sit between my legs. She sat on her knees in front of me, forcing me to open my stance, to unclasp my hands and let her in. She quite literally forced her way in until I had no choice but to look at her.