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“Just one more glass of water?”
“Just one, promise!”
“And then you’re going to want to pee at like 3 a.m.?”
Giggles. “Noooooo I promise I won’t!”
“What, you can tell the future now?” Nick smiles down at that adorable grin and faces the inevitable. “Okay, run, quick get one more drink of water. But scoot your tuchas right back here after that! You’re only using up your own story time!”
The little tousled head scampers to the bathroom sink and back in record time. No one wants to miss story time, right?
“What shall we read tonight, my love?”
Nick is perusing the tall bookshelf across from the bed, mentally sorting out books that could go to the school’s book swap this year. If he convinces their owner to let them go, finally. Seems unlikely, though. This 8-year-old has board books about counting 1-10 , for chrissakes. Just can’t let things go, it seems. That’s not genetic, right?
“Daddy?”
“Hmm?” he hums as his eyes continue scanning the rows, trying to decide if tonight will be an “attempt-to-read-in-French-even-though-that’s-been-way-less-popular-since-school-started” night. “Think of one you want, bug?”
“Yeah. I mean no, I don’t want a book.”
Nick turns toward the bed, surprised. “Really?”
“No, I mean, yeah I want you to tell me a story, but not read a book.” A light dawns in Nick’s eyes and he knows what’s coming. “Can you tell me the story about the star again?”
Nick’s heart swells, just like every time, and that one tear threatens to spill out of his right eye, just like always. This is an emotional one; he feels it in his heart, but the kiddo doesn’t know that, and he’ll tell it like always. It’s a favorite in this house because it’s hopeful and fantastical and different and affirming. It’s difficult because there are truths in it that not everyone knows, but that does not stop it from being all of those other things. All of the things he wants this kid to have, that he wants this whole generation to have, and every one after it.
He blinks to get rid of the one tear (ok, fine, maybe there are a few tears) before he turns around. “Scoot over, goober.” He lays down on the single bed, his sturdy frame just a teensy bit too big to be comfortable there, but it’s so incredibly worth it. The snuggling alone…ten minutes of this here and now will get him through the entire next day at work.
Nick nestles into the pillows and feels the little body press up against his right side. Normally he’d have a book in his lap and they’d both be eagerly examining the pictures, but today there’s nothing. This whole epic tale lives in his mind rent-free. He wraps his arm around his child and they both close their eyes as he begins to speak.
“There are so many - so, so unimaginably many - stars in the sky. There are other cool things out there too; planets, asteroids, comets, little green people–”
“Daddy!” A sharp little elbow pokes him in the side. This child demands literal truths mixed in with their magical, beautiful, flowing tales of grandeur. And Nick loves it.
“Okay, okay, we don’t know that one for sure. So, where was I? Oh yeah, what else is there in space…nebulae? Galaxies? Even star nurseries!” Little eyes are wide even though they’ve heard this very monologue many times before. Why is it still so captivating? Nick is unsure but will take advantage of their attention and unabashed joy until the second they leave for college. If they’ll allow it.
“But of course the thing we love the most are the stars themselves. We like to pick them out and memorize their dances and interpret their stories. Because they must have stories, right, bug?” Nick looks down into a knowing face that nods up at him.
“They must have stories, we think inside our hearts, and then we weave tales and pass them down from generation to generation and we think we’re learning things about the stars, but what are we really learning, bug?”
The shout is triumphant. “About ourselves!”
“Haha, that’s right! Just maybe a little less shouting at this time of night.”
“Daddy might be asleep?” questions a softer voice, in the loudest whisper known to humankind.
“You never know! But yep, you were exactly right, though. We learn about ourselves in the stories we create to explain the movement of the stars. We learn about our history, like the discovery of harvest cycles and the invention of math and the origins of faiths and gods. And then we learn about our futures, right?” Two heads nod in unison, seriously.
“We learn about our hopes and dreams in what we make up about the stars. Because if we want the hunter to catch the prey or the boat to reach the shore or the star-crossed lovers to find each other, then–probably we want those same things for ourselves.” Nick trails off, lost in thought. A small reminder prods at his brain.
“We want to fall in love too, daddy?”
The spell is broken and Nick’s attention is drawn back down to the bed. “Some of us? But one thing I know we all want is to eat as much mac and cheese as we can get our hands on, that one is so obvious!” They both laugh at this and he continues.
“So anyway, we think we’re like them–like the stars. We see strength and promise in them and we can’t get enough.” Even Nick’s voice is full of awe, and he’s traipsed over these words a thousand times.
“And what if we actually met one someday?” They speak this line together, the meaning and the dream and the poetry burned into both of their brains. Nick picks up the thread and continues.
“Because, you know, sometimes they’re here walking among us. Some people are stars come to earth and we don’t even know!”
“But daddy, it’s sad, right?”
“It can be sad, my bug. But it can also be so, so inspiring.”
There is a big, little yawn at his side and a snuggling further in. The voice is sleepy when it speaks next. “Tell me about the one you met, daddy?”
Nick smiles and wonders how much further he’ll get before he’s talking to himself.
“I met the most wondrous one. And his story was hard, because it was sad. But it was also so, so good and so, so important. And it made my heart ache to hear it and my arms want to comfort him and my mind whir to think about how to fix things…but he had already done what he had to do, so there wasn’t much I could fix anymore.”
The muffled words come from a head turned almost directly into a pillow. “What’s ‘whir’ mean?”
“It means I was trying so hard to figure out how I could help. My brain was running in place trying to find the answer. But it turns out I had it backwards. His story was sad and hard and important because he had helped, already.”
Nick’s mind wanders back to that first time Charlie told him everything, the words he had used, the breaking open of their two hearts as they wept over what he had gained by giving away everything.
Nick’s listener is almost still now, breathing evened out, legs splayed apart with one foot sticking outside of the blanket on this almost-autumn night. He drops his voice to just above a whisper and tells the end of the story, because how could he not?
“There’s a thing out there. Well, in here too, around us and following us and sometimes even feeling like it’s inside us. A thing that is evil and separation and emptiness. And sometimes on the most hopeless days it seems like there is no stopping it. But then we rediscover that it is possible to defeat it–by being its opposite. By being love and joy and promise and community. And we absolutely have the power to do that, we have that life inside of ourselves that it doesn’t have. But…it’s not always easy. And sometimes we pay a price to defeat it.”
Nick bends down over the sleeping head and places a soft kiss on a burgeoning curl.
“But it’s always, always worth it, my love.”
**********
It’s barely September, but there is a chill in the air. Nick shivers as he steps out onto the back deck, and slides the glass door shut behind him. Charlie is standing at the railing looking up into the night sky. The constellations change throughout the seasons, but Charlie’s story doesn’t.
Nick comes up behind him and slides his arms around his waist. He feels rather than hears the sigh as Charlie melds their hands together and leans his head back onto Nick’s chest.
“How’s the bug?”
“Sleeping soundly.” Nick smiles as he cranes his neck down and places a kiss on the second curl in three minutes. Curls can be genetic, so maybe wanting to kiss them can be too? Remains to be seen with the next generation, he guesses. “Happy and at peace with a favorite story.”
The light from the kitchen is low and it’s hard to see Charlie’s expression, even when he turns in Nick’s arms and stares up at him rather than at the heavens.
“Why so much love for that story? It’s sad.”
“Because it’s hard to not love truth. And stories of bravery-” (Charlie rolls his eyes at this) “-and wisdom, and mercy, and most of all, hope.”
“Damn, are you an elementary school teacher or what?”
“On my good days, yeah.” Nick’s smile reaches his eyes, no matter if Charlie can see it or not. He sits down on one of the padded benches and pulls his husband down beside him before he continues. “How’s the wounded spirit tonight?”
“I think I’m ok.” Charlie answers. “It’s just close to the anniversary, you know?”
“Oh, don’t I know it. Don’t think I could ever forget finding out I was grinding on a fucking star at a gay bar literally called Orion’s Belt. ”
When they have both stopped laughing at that for the umpteenth time, Charlie leans back with another sigh, and lays his legs across Nick’s lap gingerly. They are silent for a beat, Nick trusting that his love would say more if and when he needed to.
“I don’t regret it, you know?”
“Not at all?”
Charlie sits up and looks intently into Nick’s eyes, somehow making that connection through the night air.
“Never. It hurt, right? Oh, it hurt so badly. And I miss it, from time to time. But–”
Nick practices silence and patience sometimes, but no one could expect him to do so all the time, right?
“But you met me and we have the bug and so it’s all worth it?”
Charlie’s smile can be heard in his voice. “I did and we do and it was, but not just for that reason.” He pauses and gathers his words. “My life is way better because I met you, there’s not a doubt in my mind about that. But that’s not why I gave away who I was, you know? I didn’t know I would find you. I didn’t know at all what would happen next. But I knew the promise of you existed, and of bug, not even as people meant for me, but just out there somewhere, existing.”
He swings his head up and takes in the swirls of the Milky Way, and Venus disappearing over the horizon, and the enormity of it all.
“We are all of us connected. I didn’t trade my life as a star just so I could try being a human with things like good sex and parenthood and chocolate milkshakes.” A low chuckle follows. “I did it because, how could I not? Knowing that good existed, and facing the evil that threatened it right there in front of you? What else is there to do!” The pair take hands and feel the universe bubble up inside them. “Why are we like this? Because there isn’t any other way to be.”
**********
Star nurseries, or nebulae, are giant clouds of gas and dust where new stars are beginning to form. It’s physics and chemistry though, not the birds and the bees. So, at least that’s one point to life on earth that Charlie really, truly has to fucking admit is better here. This night and every night before it and every night to come. And you know what? He accidentally discovers, over and over again, that the joy and pleasure here is just as triumphant over evil as his dying burst of light had been all those years ago, both lighting up a corner of the night, searing light and a pulse that no one can overcome.