The Stars are on Our Side

by Jennifer Hartmann

Love at first sight isn’t a real thing—I know that. But there is certainly a something at first sight.

My trauma isn’t my life. It’s nothing but an awful piece wedged between a million beautiful pieces.

“I’m t-trying to fly, but…” “I’ll be your wings,”

Tabitha is a raven around my heart. Soft feathers and sharp claws. She soothes me while shredding me to pieces at the same time. And yet I’ll take every claw mark, every painful laceration, just for the chance to fly with her one day.

I’m so happy you’re shackled to a pole in a madman’s basement, awaiting a death sentence, just so I don’t have to suffer all by myself.

I wanted to run back home with what was left of my half-heart, guided by the light of the broken moon. But the window was too far away. My chains were too sound. And the stars had never felt more out of reach.

His arms squeeze, holding all of my broken pieces together. And suddenly, the stars don’t seem so far away anymore.

And that’s where I fake-propose to the girl of my dreams. In the parking lot of a sketchy gas station in Maryland, across the street from the Sexy Stuf kink store, with a billboard of Bambi the buxom blonde and her come-hither eyes as our only witness.

“I hope the next time you smell lavender, it doesn’t make you sad.” He presses a kiss to my knuckles. “I hope you’ll think of this moment instead of the bird. This day. This room.” Another kiss, and then a whisper. “Me.”

I’m being so damn reckless. And I think, maybe… It’s within the reckless moments that we truly live.

“You look at her with love,” she says gently. “And she looks at you like she doesn’t know what to do with that love.” There are a million ways to die and my mother settles on the most painful.

The dude said to talk to my dad; said that good ‘ol Pops will know what to do. Well… Fuck no. Double-fuck no. I’d rather scoop my eyeballs out with a melon baller and dive face-first into an acid bath than have a conversation with that man.

“I was with you.” Tears glitter in his eyes as he steps away from me and starts to fade into the black of night. “That made it…a good last day.”

“I’ve rearranged the order of needs like you requested. Number one is love.”

“Love, physical touch…intimacy,” I told him. “I know, without a doubt, that I’d give up food, water, safety, and shelter. Just for a moment.”

“I’d give up all my basic needs for one single moment free from these chains. I’d sacrifice them in exchange for wrapping my arms around you and holding you tight.”

“I’d give up everything,” I croaked, “just to touch you one more time.”

“Talking is depressing and I’m tired of being depressed. It’s a heavy weight. Tonight, all I want to do is fly.” “I’ve got Red Bull.” I reach for the cup again in vain, but she keeps it out of reach. “Gives you wings.” Lame.

And with the stars as our nightlight, she finally gives me an answer. “I see you, Gabe,” she murmurs on a sleep-laced breath. “I only see you.”

“Gabe?” I murmur. I hear the affection in his voice. “Tabs.” “Thanks for flying with me today.”

He has no idea that I said my true safe-word; I’ve said it thousands of times. One syllable of solace. Four letters of sweet relief. A safe place to land when my wings get tired. Gabe. His name is my safe-word. He’s my solid ground.

People beam. They wave, and they smile. And all you want to do is cry.

“I’ll take your leftover pieces. I’ll cherish those pieces. And I’ll spend my whole damn life doing everything in my power to make your heart whole again.”

Despair is still despair, but it bleeds with passion, and I think somewhere between the two is where Heaven and Hell collide. Fire and serenity. Madness and magic. Balance.

“My love is unshakeable.”

“I was protecting the truth about our baby.”

It was just me. Me and the rats. Me and the useless stars. Me and a fatherless baby who would be born inside the pits of Hell. Me… And that leaky fucking pipe.

My traumatic past attached itself to me like a tumor, and while I’ll never be fully free from it, it somehow feels less heavy. Less terminal. My story has been told, and the crippling weight of my secret has been shared. I did it. I’m finally in recovery.

It’s a bloodbath, a massacre, a catastrophe. It’s inevitable, though; there’s always a crash. And I think if I’d have known… I never would have tried to fly.

Life is so beautifully fragile. It is; it really is—but love? No, love is not fragile at all. It’s long-lasting, bone-burrowing, and unshakeable. Real love doesn’t snap or fizzle out because of circumstances and tough decisions. It doesn’t just dissolve because you want it to, because you beg it to. Those things only make it hurt. Those things only make it sink deeper, until you’re choking on that love. Suffocating. Bleeding out while still breathing. Love latches on to you, consumes, and then it haunts you. Forever. Love isn’t fragile. It’s fucking shatterproof.

“Maybe you’ll see it differently when you’re lying in your warm bed one day with the man you love, with a child sleeping peacefully down the hall, with a thriving, beautiful life filled with beautiful things.” He died for this. He died for my hollow, lonely existence, and I wish so badly I could take it all back.

I suppose that as long as he haunts me, it means he’s still here. And I’ll take any part of him I can get. Even his ghost.

I glance up, and up, and up, wishing I could see through the clouds. Wishing I could fly right through them. Wishing I could thank the stars.

“By the way,” I whisper, smoothing back her hair. “I would, you know.” She lifts up. Her gaze darts across my face before she blinks down at me. “You would what?” “Die for you.”

“Gabe,” she says, hardly keeping the sob in her throat. “I don’t want someone who kills for me. I don’t want someone who dies for me.” Swallowing the emotion, she raises both palms and clasps my face. “I just want someone who will live for me.”

“Music?” I can almost feel her smile. “Sure.”

Do I believe in luck? Fate? Cosmic design? Do I believe that the people we love, the ones we lose along the way, are never really lost? I don’t know. All I really know is that it does me a disservice to reject the possibility. I want to believe in them because the idea of those things brings me peace. It brings me hope that, perhaps, in some way, the stars are more than just stars, and that maybe, maybe…those stars really are on our side.

“Check this out. It’s a weird kissing machine for lovers in a long-distance relationship. This is crazy.” Sydney’s eyes bulge with intrigue as she bolts in the other direction. Oliver watches her go, head tilting to the side, brows furrowed thoughtfully. “Why only tomatoes?” he muses. “Why did I just inherit a bird?”