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but lately I don’t even know myself // turn out these lights, they’re too damn bright // I need the moon tonight // so let me walk outside
Walk Outside – East Love
They told the kids over ice cream.
One summer evening in the backyard where everything was normal until it wasn’t. The girls were still too young to realize what it meant, but beginning that fall they were splitting time between two houses. She never knew how truly hard it was on them until Amelia started to refuse the frozen treat, claiming that it always gave her a stomachache.
It wasn’t lactose intolerance, it was her. She ruined ice cream for them.
Everything always came back to August. To children desperately outrunning the sunset to capture what was left of summer. It was meant to be fireflies and lemonade and floating in a warm breeze, but now, even after thirty years, the month served as a reminder of what had passed.
The ghosts of the past haunted her heart.
She remembered the sundress that started it all; how it began the month white and ended it stained red by cheap Chianti and the wrath of a woman scorned. She had apologized after the fact but Kit never accepted it. She had a right to feel used. A pawn in someone else’s life, one month of sex and wine and feelings never meant to be reciprocated and left with a lifetime of knowing it ended a marriage.
Ever since that night Kit had felt like she deserved a bit of the cruelty that life had thrown at her.
Now, on the backroads of unincorporated Bartow County, another ghost decorated the skyline: the first date at the end of August with the man who would later become the father of her children. She remembered so much of that night – strawberry milkshakes and popcorn and holding his hand for the first time – and yet so little of their marriage. They were just kids, like something out of a movie themselves.
Spatial memories were a cruel mistress because now that the ghost of that night was in her head, her sedan felt like his father’s pick-up truck and the vacant road ahead looked like a scene projected onto a big wooden screen.
She was not sure what had gotten into her. Usually she was more pragmatic than processing a blender of emotional distress via a midnight joyride chasing the horizon, but it was the twenty-fifth anniversary of her first divorce, she was about to lose her job, again, and everything in the city was just so loud right now. She could hardly hear herself think and the lights were blinding and she just needed to go.
Go anywhere.
She would go home later.
Wherever that was.
Kit pulled onto the side of the road and put the car in park, taking the keys fully out of the ignition and leaning onto the steering wheel. The tears that accompanied frustration, failure, loss, and loneliness were meant to fall any minute, but none came. Which only made matters worse.
The hum of the crickets beckoned her closer, and she had never been able to resist the call of the moon and the stars. She climbed onto the hood of her car, still warmed by the engine, and laid against the windshield to gaze upon them like a lost explorer searching for direction.
The sky was aglow with dust and light, hundreds of thousands of stars constantly being created and destroyed, humbling and magnificent. Constellations named for gods and heroes guided the way and mapped the sky. Each star had a place and a purpose and in moments of glory she felt that perhaps she belonged among them, too.
After all, we are made of starstuff.
She had a place in the world, however small compared to the abyss of space, and not alone.
She looked onto the horizon, the tree line, the dirt road, and eventually to her hands; the only two things she could count on these days. To dream was to find peace in the unknown but reality was inescapable. While we may never be truly alone among the stars, there was no denying the loneliness.
The time spent staring at the sky was uninterrupted until headlights illuminated the road beside her. The first car that had driven by to reignite reality… stopped. Red lights turned to white as the car reversed towards her. It was past midnight and she was alone in the middle of a field. Adrenaline surged through her veins and her focus tunneled, choosing fight over flight. Kit sat up slowly and rummaged through her purse for the defensive tools she wished she didn’t have to carry and prepared for battle as the car backed up.
Once close enough, she swore she had seen this car before. Nearly every day.
“Kit? Is that you?”
That voice.
“Bloody hell,” she muttered under her breath, “You have got to be kidding me.”
Behind the open window of the black luxury sports car was none other than the one person that she could not take her mind off of. Of all the people in the universe to wander onto a dirt road at this hour, it had to Randolph Bell.
“What the hell are you doing out here?!” He shouted.
Kit rolled her eyes and put the purse away. She was tempted to curse him out until he left, but he was already parking behind her and stepping out of the driver’s seat, and she did not feel like yelling tonight. He seemed perplexed by the situation, checking each of the four tires for signs of trouble and her front seat for any other clues.
She ran a hand through her hair, sat back against the windshield, and hoped that maybe if she closed her eyes, he would avoid the emotional confrontation that was guaranteed in this type of setting and back away slowly.
There were no answers in her car, her demeanor, and her silence, so he cleared his throat and tried a gentler approach.
"It’s a lovely night,” he said, looking to the sky. “The Perseids aren’t at peak until later this month, but the sky is alive at this point in August.”
Why did everyone always have to bring up the damn month, she thought.
Randolph shrugged and put his hands in his pockets when he was once again met with silence. There was a profound sadness written across her features, sharpened by the light of the moon, speaking louder than she could.
His voice was quiet, laden with concern, when he asked, “Kit, are you okay?”
“What do you think,” she sighed. He climbed onto the hood beside her. Too tired to fight it, she left some space for him to rest against the windshield on the side nearest to the road. “I don’t suppose you’re ‘okay’ either, driving around Route 108 in the middle of the night.”
“No, I suppose not.”
It hung in the air, amplified by the sounds of the bugs and bullfrogs in the distance.
“There’s a lake. Not far from here,” he started. “It’s… more of a bog, really. There’s a lean-to and an awful, dented aluminum canoe with a broken paddle. The bats and swallows keep the mosquitos under control and it’s nearly the perfect spot, but I can never see the stars through those trees.”
Kit acknowledged his admission silently. He was not on a bender, not on his way back from a casino or a hotel bar or the bed of a woman whose name he would never know, he was doing the same thing that she was.
Going. Going wherever he could.
Going home later.
“They’re extraordinary, don’t you think?” He said, gesturing across the stars just enough to enter her peripheral vision. “We stare for hours into the endless vacuum of space, knowing that it would be lethal to ever venture into it, searching for guidance in these tiny specks of light. And somehow the stars provide it. Even when everything is in flux, the same arrangements of stars that have guided mankind for centuries are always right where we expect them to be.”
It's always about constellations, she mused, never about individual stars. Only groupings where every one played their part in something bigger, coupled with those they would be beside for eternity. Only when we were together did we truly find meaning in darkness.
The ghosts of summers come and gone swirled before her once more and brought with them the grief of reality.
“Do you… do you ever wonder…” she whispered, then shook her head. “Never mind.”
“Do I ever wonder what?”
A lone tear streaked down her cheek and she blinked the rest away. “If you’re destined to be alone.”
His heart broke with the question. Everything was louder at one a.m. on the side of the road, but he had never heard her sound like this. Not broken, but small, like a distant speck of light in the sky. He looked to her and found the same radiance that the stars provided, dimmed by clouds of sadness but striking as always.
“I don’t have to wonder. Life has made it clear for me.”
“I wish it didn’t bother me. Independence.” Kit sat up taller and curled her knees to her chest, like if she held herself tighter it would prevent the truth from coming out. “But it does.”
There was nothing that could be said. He tilted his head just enough to see a silent tear streak down the side of her face.
“You’re not alone tonight,” he offered.
She scoffed. “Because you somehow materialized out of nowhere and that maligned savior complex of yours compelled you to ride in on a white horse and rescue the woman having a breakdown on the side of the road, and it was just my bloody luck that that woman was me!” The words grew sharper, more agitated, and she scrubbed her hands over her face once they had pierced through the air and done their damage. “Sorry. You… you don’t deserve— I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You’re not wrong. But when I recognized your car, I…”
He caught himself before sharing the true end of the sentence. How he, too, had been thinking about destiny and loneliness and drifting aimlessly, wishing the universe would send him some sort of beacon. A singular north star that would actually point north for once, showing him the path towards a future he wanted to be a part of.
After wishing upon a falling star and taking an alternate route back to the city, he just so happened to run into her on the side of the road? Of all people, he found his way to the one who had always brought truth and light to the darkness?
For a fleeting moment he considered the miracle of it all, until he saw the sorrow that had settled deep in her bones. The universe did not send cosmic signs like this, and they certainly didn’t send them to him. All he could do tonight was hope that Fate had intervened enough that he could be the light that she needed.
Randolph held his breath and turned back to the sky. “I thought you could use a friend,” he finished quietly. “I can go if you want to be alone, but I am not leaving until I know you’re safe. You can hate me for that later.”
The last thing she wanted to be was alone. A part of her wished that she had the bravery to tell him about the ghosts of the past, because he of all people might understand them, but she knew that she could not get the stories past the suffocating lump of emotion in her throat. Somehow, she still needed to get herself and her car home in one piece.
“I don’t hate you, Randolph.” She finally replied. Vulnerability coated every word when she added, “I hate August.”
Earlier he had searched for answers in her words and now was closer than ever, but this was the farthest he would push tonight. Kit had not yet thrown him from the hood of the car, so the least he could do was allow the words to be carried away by the summer winds.
Time played tricks in the early morning. It could have been minutes or hours, but when her legs began to numb and her eyes grew heavy, it was time to face the reality of an empty house with plants dying on the windowsill and laundry waiting to be folded. The ghosts of the present.
As soon as she began to move his hands were on hers, helping her up and carefully off the car away from the road.
“We’re about forty minutes from Buckhead. I’ll follow you home.”
It was not worth arguing with him.
The drive went quickly with the window rolled down, the headlights of the Porsche in her rearview mirror the only constant as stars turned to city lights. There was an unexpected silence in her thoughts, everything quieter and yet, louder somehow.
He parked on the side of the street in front of her townhouse, ever the knight in shining armor to complete the quest of keeping her safe until she was back in her castle.
Keys dangled from one hand as she started towards the door, but her feet carried her to the curb and the window that was slowly being rolled down in anticipation of her arrival.
“Would you like to come in?” She asked, bending to his level to avoid talking above a whisper. “It occurs to me that you could use a friend tonight, too.”
He turned towards the road, away from her, and swallowed thickly. “I don’t kn—”
“Don’t think so hard.” She looked to him one more time with tired eyes, not in the mood to entertain a superficial debate about boundaries, then nodded towards the front door. “It’s two in the morning, Randolph. Come inside.”
She tossed him a pillow and some clothes that might fit and set him up in the guest room, silently moving through the darkness and accepting only silent thanks. Their ability to move like this and to lean on one another on a night like tonight was a comfort in itself. So quiet, and so loud.
Providing comfort was one of his greatest strengths. Whether he meant to be or not he was an expert, one single phrase or smile over drinks or in an operating room, a hand to help her off the roof of her car and out of the way of danger. But he was so stoic and masculine, never outwardly showing when he needed comfort, too. It took skill and time to read into his needs, a book still being written.
It was why she invited him in. Because he was driving around the backroads of Georgia at midnight and somehow, despite all odds, found his way to her. He accepted the offer of comfort and was now down the hall and for the first time in what felt like decades, she found herself wanting to fall asleep next to someone. Steady breathing not her own serving as a reassurance that perhaps she was not alone.
Kit wanted to be beside him and on a fraction of a chance, she thought that he wanted the same.
The sheets on the guest bed were soft and the air cool, unlike the warm August air of earlier. A wave of exhaustion swept through and just as he was about to fall asleep, the door opened and brought with it light.
It only took one look to her, silhouetted against the hallway and shutting the door behind her, for him to scootch over and turn the covers down. Kit slid in beside him and turned away. Before he could react, she reached backwards for his arm, pulling it around her ribs and holding his hand between her own. Tentatively he followed, inching closer until his chest was flush against her back, and relaxed some of his weight over her.
When she let out a long, content exhale, the rest of the tension released and he knew it was the answer to her silent question. His mind began to turn but quieted with her reminder not to think so hard. She was warm and close and as soon as her breathing evened out a sense of pride took hold. All he wanted was for her to feel safe and to know that she was not alone and if this is how it was shown, so be it.
A fleeting memory of his midnight quest for clarity and direction tugged at his chest and he pulled her closer. If he was able to hold her and know that even if for only one night he was not alone, that brought a comfort no amount of starstuff could.
There was nothing left to say tonight. The stories had been written and placed in a box with the ghosts that accompanied them. They would be told another night, where there was space to set them free without suffocating under their weight and promise that we can exist alone and together, with and for one another. A night where the sky was not a mockery but a symphony of light, and stars that appeared uncoupled were anything but that.
Destined to be alone, but perhaps instead… destined to find each other.
After all, for small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.