Chapter 45: Until the Stars Remember Us
It was a Friday afternoon when we returned to the clearing—the one tucked deep within the trees behind Oriana's grandmother's house, the one where the light felt different, where time folded in on itself and gave us permission to be only Anya and Oriana. No roles. No school bells. Just us.
We packed simple things. A woven mat, two small bottles of chrysanthemum tea, a bag of sliced guava with chili salt, and our sketchbooks. Oriana also tucked in a small Bluetooth speaker and a faded poetry book wrapped in cloth.
The walk there was slow and filled with stolen glances. She kept brushing her fingers against mine as we moved beneath the tall bamboo. At one point, she reached up to pluck a flower and slid it behind my ear without a word. I didn't need one. Her smile said everything.
When we reached the clearing, it was just as we left it. The tall grass bent gently with the breeze, and dragonflies skimmed low across the surface of the creek nearby. Light streamed in through the trees in golden beams.
She laid the mat out and dropped onto it with a content sigh.
"I missed this place," she said, pulling her shoes off and wiggling her toes in the warm grass. "It feels like we left part of ourselves here last time."
"Maybe we did," I murmured as I sat beside her. "Maybe that's why the air feels heavier, softer, like it knows our names."
She rested her head on my shoulder. "Or maybe it just missed our love."
We spent the next hour sketching side by side, sometimes in silence, sometimes humming along to the soft music coming from her speaker. She drew flowers and faces. I drew hands—hers, specifically. The curve of her fingers, the way her pinky always curled slightly inward when relaxed. It was strange how even the smallest part of her could feel like home to me.
She glanced at my sketchpad and smirked. "Are those my hands?"
I nodded. "They're the only ones I want to remember how to draw."
She didn't say anything. She just reached for my hand and held it like she was reminding herself it was real.
Later, we lay side by side on the mat, our hair tangled against each other's cheeks, her hand resting gently over my stomach. The sunlight filtered through the canopy in dappled flickers, and the world around us grew quieter—just the soft rustle of leaves and the murmur of the creek.
She turned her head toward me.
"Can I ask you something honest?"
"Always."
"Do you ever think we'll lose this?"
I looked at her.
"Lose what?"
"This… this feeling. This closeness. The way we seem to fit."
I reached up, brushing a strand of hair from her face. "No. Because we keep choosing it. Every day. Every time we reach for each other instead of walking away."
She nodded slowly. "I want to keep choosing you. Even when life gets messy. Even when I'm scared."
"I want that too."
She shifted closer until our foreheads touched. Her breath was warm, steady.
"You feel like a story I started in another life," she whispered.
"Then let me be the chapter you never close," I whispered back.
The sun dipped lower, and we opened the guava and shared bites between giggles and touches. When a piece of chili salt stuck to her cheek, I reached up to wipe it away—only for her to catch my wrist and press a kiss to the center of my palm.
"You always touch me like I'm fragile," she said.
"You're not," I replied. "But you're precious."
She stared at me like she didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
"You make it hard not to fall deeper."
I leaned in, and our lips met—slowly at first, like remembering a language we'd both forgotten. Then again, fuller, surer, like the answer to a question that had always lived in our bones.
When we parted, she whispered against my lips, "Don't stop choosing me."
"I couldn't if I tried."
As twilight descended, we wrapped ourselves in Oriana's light cardigan and sat with our backs against the bench. The clearing shimmered under the dusk light, and the music turned softer, more distant. Oriana opened her poetry book and began to read aloud.
"'I have found peace in the spaces between your sentences, in the pauses where your breath catches…'"
Her voice trembled slightly. She paused, lowering the book.
"I wrote this one," she admitted.
I blinked. "You wrote that?"
She nodded. "Last week. After we kissed in the rain."
I didn't know what to say, so I wrapped my arm around her waist and pulled her closer. She rested her head on my chest, listening to my heartbeat.
"I want to remember this night forever," she whispered.
"You will," I said. "Because it's stitching itself into your ribs."
She smiled. "You say the most poetic things."
"They're all because of you."
The stars came out one by one, slow and blinking like shy eyes in the sky. We lay back again, the mat beneath us now cool, the trees above turning black silhouettes.
"Tell me something you've never told anyone," she said.
I thought for a moment.
"When I was younger, I used to look out the window at night and imagine someone out there waiting for me. I didn't know what they looked like. But I knew they'd smile like sunrise. And I knew their voice would sound like a song I didn't know the name of."
She was silent.
Then: "And now?"
I turned to her.
"And now I know it was you."
She kissed me again.
This time longer.
Deeper.
Our fingers laced together and pressed to the center of my chest.
Her body shifted over mine gently, slowly, like the way the moon moves across the sky — nothing rushed, everything meaningful. She wasn't a storm. She was the tide. And I let myself be carried.
Afterwards, we lay there beneath the stars, tangled in breath and wonder, skin warm against skin. She brushed her lips against my shoulder and sighed like she had just returned home after a long journey.
"I feel like the world just stopped," she said.
"It didn't," I replied, "but it bent around us for a while."
"I love you, Anya."
My heart caught.
Not from surprise.
But from the truth of it.
"I love you, Oriana."
She buried her face against my neck, and I felt her smile.
We left the clearing long after midnight, fingers still entwined. The walk home was quiet, our footsteps soft against the dirt path. Fireflies danced ahead of us like lanterns lit by the universe just for this moment.
At her gate, she turned to me.
"There are a thousand ways to say I love you," she whispered. "But none of them feel enough."
"Then don't say it," I replied. "Just show me. Every day. Like this."
She cupped my cheek and kissed me again, long and slow, before slipping inside the gate and disappearing into the night.
And I stood there, my heart no longer my own, but hers.
Always hers.