Somebody Else's Sky (Something in the Way, #2)

by Jessica Hawkins

A crush was fun and exciting, butterflies, pink cheeks, lash-heavy glances. My feelings for Manning were crushing. Late night sobs and black holes. Curled fists and fingernail crescents imprinted in my palms. Regret.

My chest throbbed all the time, a gaping wound waiting to be filled or bandaged or prodded.

What was wrong was that I was in love with someone who might never be mine. Someone I hadn’t seen in a year and whom I saw everywhere.

I couldn’t get a breath, my throat now swollen shut. I was an idiot.

He’d never told me he loved me. I’d based an entire future with him on the things we hadn’t said, on looks exchanged and almost-touches. I knew I hadn’t imagined it, but I had no evidence of it whatsoever,

I didn’t expect the pain of losing him to ever go away, but surely it would dull. Surely it would get easier.

It was done. We were done. Only my pain persisted.

once told me you couldn’t move the stars. I’d thought that meant our love was predestined, written in the night sky, sure as death. Behind my lids, I pictured the two stars and realized for the first time the permanent distance between them. And I accepted that there was, and always had been, a third star. You can’t move the stars. I had tried, and I had failed.