Summer of Supernovas (9 page)

“S
ee it?”

Seth leans closer; his hair tickles my neck. “No, show me again.”

“There.” I circle the red laser pointer. The planetarium has cleared with the end of the presentation. Meaning the two other people besides us have left. “See, it’s sorta shaped like a teapot? That’s Sagittarius; the constellation represents Chiron, the centaur. He sacrificed himself in place of Prometheus, who was being punished by the gods for giving fire to man.”

“What was his punishment?” Seth shifts in his seat. His leg lightly presses against mine. Is he doing that on purpose? The dark room seems to amplify every touch and word, giving them odd significance.

I push up my glasses and feign oblivion to the casual way his jeans rub against my bare skin. Otherwise, my thoughts get too cloudy. To think days ago I was concerned about asexuality! “Prometheus was chained to a rock, and every day an eagle would come and feast on his liver. And every night the liver would magically grow back. Yeah”—I note Seth’s scrunched face—“the gods didn’t mess around. So Chiron offered up his immortality in return for Prometheus’s freedom. Zeus rewarded the act of kindness by placing him among the stars. Ergo, Chiron is Sagittarius. I guess he sorta maintained his immortality after all.”

Seth lets out a low whistle. “How do you know all this?”

“Reading mostly. I’ve always found the constellations and astrology to be especially…Oh, um, never mind.”

“What? Tell me more.”

My heart trips over its own rhythm as Seth leans closer again. I smell the faint cologne he wore at Absinthe. I like it.
A lot.
“You…you want to hear more about the mythology behind the constellations?” I ask, dubious.

“Why wouldn’t I? The stories make the stars more interesting. It’s pretty impressive how much you know.” He gives me a sidelong glance. “I bet your dates are totally into you at this point, aren’t they?”

I let out a nervous chuckle and intertwine my fingers in my lap.

Seth gives me a gentle nudge. “
Oh, please.
Don’t tell me I’m the first guy to dig this about you.”

“Well…it’s not like I routinely bring guys here.” I twist the onyx ring on my finger. “And, um, I couldn’t say what my dates thought of me since most ended in disaster.” I sigh. Honest to Aquarius, outing myself as a former dating weapon of mass destruction had
not
been how I wanted to christen the night.

But that’s all in the past. It will be different with Seth.

His eyes crinkle at the corners. “I bet you’re exaggerating, Wil. It can’t have been that bad.”

Uh, yes, in fact, it
was
that bad. But I don’t want to do a postmortem on all the whys.

“Okay,” Seth says uncertainly in the wake of my silence, “what’s the worst thing that’s happened during one of your disaster dates?”

Drawing my gaze from the man-made dots of light, I can tell Seth is anticipating something trivial like a trail of toilet paper stuck to my shoe, or spinach wedged in my teeth, or some such nonsense.
If only.
“Well…I once broke a guy’s nose.”

“Seriously?”

I blow out a breath. “Yep. Well, technically, I’m not sure it even classifies as a true date. It was just a guy I danced with at homecoming. I guess he liked me. That is until…” This is so mortifying.

“What?” Seth urges.

“He caught me completely off guard! I mean, one second we’re dancing and the next he’s telling me he likes me. Which was insane because he’d never said more than four words to me. So when I reared back to see if he was kidding, he must’ve been lowering his head and…I head-butted his nose. Broke it in not one, but
two
places.” I sink deeper into my chair. “God, there was so much blood.”

Seth covers his mouth, smothering the smile beneath.

I cross my arms over my chest and scowl. “It wasn’t funny, it was traumatic…
for everyone
involved. I felt terrible. Sometimes I think I should come with a warning label.”

He stifles another laugh and I knock his elbow from the armrest. “I’m sorry,” he says, his leg pressing more firmly against mine. I forget I’m supposed to be scowling. “Hey, accidents happen. It was unfortunate, sure, but not the end of the world.”

“You think? Because they call me the black widow at school.”

Seth has the decency to look horrified on my behalf. “No shit?”

I smile wryly. “No, not really. But in the spirit of fairness, it’s your turn to spill.” I twist toward him, eager to hear his most mortifying account. “Okay, so what’s the worst thing that has happened to
you
?”

“Hmm.” Seth runs his hand thoughtfully along his jaw.

“Pressure’s off. We already know you can’t hold a candle to the blood and carnage of mine.”

“All right. Well…there was this time I ripped my pants on a skateboarding jump. It was eighth grade and I was trying to impress this girl, right? So I was soaring high, and when I bent to grip my board…
rrrrip!
Right up the middle of the seam—total blowout. She laughed her ass off.”

Oh Lord. History is repeating; my own ass is in serious jeopardy. I can’t stop laughing, and it comes back doubly loud in the quiet of the circular room.

Seth chuckles and with a rueful eye adds, “All I could think was
thank God
I didn’t go commando. I’d never live it down. Wow, I can’t believe I just told you that story.” He hunches forward, resting his elbows on his knees, head hanging low.

My laughter fades with my smile.

He could be on a date with any one of the pretty girls salivating over him at Absinthe. Girls who don’t require warning labels. Or have grandmothers who warned him to
keep it in your pants.

Then a paralyzing thought occurs to me.
What if he regrets asking me out?
My stomach descends to the planetarium floor as the theory begins to sound more plausible.

I clear my throat. “Look, I know you’re probably used to girls who are a lot cooler—nonplanetarium types. Let’s be real, how many dates are going to ramble on about constellations and magic livers and noses they’ve broken?” It’s a rhetorical question. Because we both know the answer is a big, fat zero. I lift a shoulder. “But this is me. And I don’t know how else to be, so if I’m not what you exp—”

He silences me with his fingertip. “Stop. Just stop. You’re killing me, Wil.” Seth’s eyes fall to my lips, where his finger hasn’t moved. He exhales, dropping his hand. “Look, the more you try to talk me
out
of liking you, the more I like you. And you’re not like other girls I’ve dated, because you’re a million times cooler.”

My smile stretches from one ear to the other. “So…you
like
me?” My Sagittarius likes me. Hope balloons in my chest.
Likes
me, likes me. Here I thought I was blowing it with my moronic babbling.

“Do you really think I’d be here if I didn’t?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you just couldn’t think of a nice way to ditch me. I was trying to give you an—”

Seth pulls me toward him.

“What are you doing?” I ask in surprise. One of my hands lands at his shoulder as I brace myself above him.

I can tell he’s on the muscular side, just like Grant. No, don’t think about Grant. But now that I know they’re related, I can’t help but home in on the similarities. Little pieces of Grant are scattered all over. So I focus on the parts that are different. Seth’s nose is just a little smaller, and his jaw is just a little less square, and…and his shoes don’t have duct tape on them.

Seth’s eyes—like mine—openly stare back. They wander my face before he crooks an index finger under my chin. My heart pounds inside my chest. “What am I doing?” he repeats at a near whisper. “Trying really hard not to kiss you.” His full lips rise in a smirk. “Mainly, because I like my nose the way it is—
unbroken.
”

Has he noticed I’m holding my breath? I exhale in a jittery laugh. Now my right boob is completely squashed against him. He
has
to notice that. Seth relaxes his head against the worn burgundy fabric of the seat, but doesn’t break our gaze.

It’s my move. Right? Wait, what’s my move? “Seth, I—”

At that moment, the door bangs and the house lights come on, bleaching away our summer sky.

I push myself upright.

A janitor wheels in a trash bin and a vacuum cleaner larger than Gram’s Buick. Unaware of our presence, he plugs in the extension cord while whistling an off-key rendition of “Hello, Dolly!”

The machine fires up and I can no longer hear my own jumbled thoughts. Seth grabs my hand and we laugh, racing out of the planetarium.

Seth has picked an adorable French place—La Petite Plat—on the east side for dinner. It’s a gorgeous evening, so we dine outside under twinkle lights and umbrellas. I can’t pronounce a thing on the menu. And I almost lose my appetite when I see the prices. Good thing, given the minuscule portions.

Do the French just have really small stomachs?
Uh-oh. I might’ve said that last part aloud, because suddenly Seth is laughing. He then goes on to explain La Petite Plat means “little plate.” Oh.

At least my starvation will be entertaining.

We talk about things that matter and things that don’t. I learn that Seth loves to travel and, at the ripe age of seventeen, has seen more places than Gram has flavors of cupcakes. Which is really saying something. He also has a killer comic-book collection, and as a kid dressed as Batman for Halloween. Four years in a row.

He, in turn, is curious about my fixation on vintage clothes and hairstyles. I’m used to this question. I try to explain the timeless allure of forties fashion. How people were forced to do more with less because of war rationing. It’s why so many incredible hairstyles were born from the era, because hair was the one thing they had that was changeable.

I don’t mention that many of the forties-style dresses I wear are from my mother’s collection.

When I return from the restroom, I find Seth doodling on the back of his receipt.

“What are you drawing?” I ask, peering over his shoulder. But I don’t get to see.

“Oh, it’s nothing.” He quickly crumples up the paper. “Just…scribbles. Stupid really. You ready to go?”

“Sure.”

We decide to take a stroll along the boardwalk. It’s June, so the Opal River has yet to take up the sweltering stink of August.

“You do that a lot,” Seth says, with a squeeze of my hand.

I drag my gaze from above and back to the boy at my side. “What?”

He points up to the glittering sky.

“Oh, sorry. Habit, I guess.” We veer around a tree branch jutting into our path.

“This would be a habit you got from…” He pushes his free hand through his hair. “Give me something at least. You barely told me anything about yourself the whole night.”

I draw in a breath to argue.

“
Besides
the planetarium narration and love of retro fashion.”

“My mother,” I supply, forcing a grin. The wind rustles my dark hair—black as the gaps between the stars, she used to say. “Astrology, stargazing, it’s something we always shared.”

“Cool.” When my speech stalls, Seth offers an encouraging grin. “Anything else?”

Happy memories bubble to the surface of my mind. I catch one, careful not to break it, careful to extract every exquisite detail. “Well, when I was little she’d wake me up—often in the middle of the night—and we’d sneak out to the backyard.
God,
I loved that. Just us and the sky rolled out like a huge movie screen.”

My face splits into a smile as I relive the memory. How the smell of cut grass mingled with the sweetness of Gram’s blossoming moonflowers. How my heart beat a little quicker at the prospect of doing something a bit forbidden. And getting away with it.

“So we’d lie there in our pajamas on this old peach-colored blanket that smelled like cedar while my mom pointed out all the planets and constellations we could see. Then I’d usually fall asleep to the sound of her voice, like she was telling me a bedtime story. Those were my first lessons in the
language of the sky
—that’s what she called it.”