MADE OF STARS — CHAPTER SIX

Chapter 6Lila"Don't touch me!" The pale boy shouts and jumps back, arms held high. "You can't touch me!""Who are you?  Are you from the future? Are you from another planet?"I ask this because he's come into the café so many times now. For months and months. He always orders the same thing, a chocolate-chip cookie and a latte. And he sits in the corner and pretends to write, but whenever I look up I see him watching me. And yet he never does anything but order his cookie and his latte. So today I followed him out of the café. I ran after him, stopping him before he'd gone a block.And now he laughs at me—at my comment about the future, I suppose. It is silly of me, but I feel I know him. Why do I feel I know him?"I'm not from the future," he says. The sun is bright, and his brown eyes look like they have glitter in them.  "I'm not from another planet, but I can't explain where I’m from.""Do you live around here?" I ask, all the while aware that I've left the café, and that I need to go back. For a moment I lost track of where I was—a little town in Louisiana. And the season—fall."Yes.""Nearby?""Yes." He suddenly looks sad. "I won't be coming back to the café," he says, as if he's just now, at this very minute, come to that decision. Now I am sad. I don't know why, but I will miss him. I'm sorry I ran after him. I'm sorry I scared him away."Forget about me," he tells me.What an odd thing to say. As if we've had a relationship. "I've known you before, haven't I?" I ask."You weren’t supposed to remember. Sinclair said you wouldn't remember.""Remember what?" The very word remember causes a click deep in my brain, and I find myself grasping for a faint dream that slips away before I can see the edge of it."Nothing." His voice kind of breaks.I lean a bit closer. "Touch me.""I can't.""You want to."  I can tell. I lift my arm. I stretch my fingers toward him, a temptation. He does the same, until our fingertips are inches apart.  I feel a spark jump between them, and for a moment I smell moss and river water. I hear a flute playing in the distance. His fingers curl into a fist, and his arm drops to his side. "Be happy," he tells me. And then he turns and runs. * * *Over the years, I catch glimpses of the pale boy. Always, it seems, at some important event in my life. And always watching me from afar. His strange presence no longer alarms me, as unexplained at it is. And today, in fact, his presence in the back pew of the church brings me a sense of comfort. And even though the distance of the church separates us, and even though my husband-to-be stands in front of me, I can feel the softness of the pale boy's hair against my cheek, and I can smell soil and brackish water. I can taste red wine that hints of cork and moss.And suddenly I imagine the pale boy standing in a road, and I'm inside a car, someone I love beside me, behind the wheel. A young girl. The pale boy is older, but still beautiful. I've known him. Somewhere. Somehow. He loved me, and I loved him. And we stood at an altar together just like this.Justlike this. I'm so confused. For a moment, I forget about a man named Walter who is looking at me with expectant and puzzled eyes, a ring between his fingers. He is suddenly much less important than the pale boy. A waking dream.How can a dream seem more real than real life?  How can a dream hurt in this way? How can a dream bring with it so much love?The minister makes a small sound in his throat. He asks me again if I take the man across from me to be my lawfully wedded husband. "I do," I whisper. How can I stop the ceremony? How can I say I love someone else? A pale boy from a dream?The minister pronounces us husband and wife, and when we turn to face the congregation, I scan the crowd with something like panic, looking for him. The pale boy. The man on the bike. The man in the road. The man who leaned in the car and whispered that he loved me."See you at home," I'd said, waving as the car pulled away. See you at home.  And then I remember him on the floor of the café where I'd worked…how many years ago?  Ten? Holding my hand so tightly. Holding my hand as if he never wanted to let go.* * *Years pass, and I continue to see him. He is there when both my son and daughter are born. Both times I awaken to find him standing in my hospital room. One blink, and he is gone. He is there as I grow old, and he is there at my husband's funeral, held in the same church where we were married. And he is there at the very end."I know you," I whisper from my bed as I feel life slipping away. He doesn't look any different.  But I am old. My daughter has gone downstairs to get a cup of coffee, and my son is asleep in another room. "Yes," the pale boy says."You love me," I tell him."Yes."You've loved me for a long time."He nods, presses his lips together, and bows his head."I used to think it was a recurring dream, but I finally realized that somehow we shared a life."He looks up, stricken. "I'm sorry.""Don't be sorry. How many people get the chance to live more than one life? You gave me a gift. And love. Who can be sorry about love? Maybe love is the only thing that never really dies."

*****************************************************************

If you missed any of the chapters, just click on the Made of Stars label below to take you to previous chapters. Purchase links to iTunes, Amazon, and B&N can be found under CHAPTER ONE.