Inspired by Stop Crying Your Heart Out, Oasis. Listen to it in conjunction to this if you like. Also, this is pretty much my first draft, so help me out. I don't do this kind of thing usually. May be a few proof-reading errors. Apologies.
“I don’t see the stars tonight,” she whispered, and there was fear in her voice. She pulled Nick’s arm around her shoulders and shivered. Her heartbeat was almost audible in the silence of midnight.
“It’s just cloudy. The stars are still there.” How many times had Nick repeated those words, night after night, with the same reassuring smile? She always found a way to ignore him.
“But I can’t see them, Nick,” she said, and he began to knead the dewy grass with his knuckles. The damp had seeped into his shirt and was freezing him, preserving the love he felt for her, turning back time until he saw only Becca and the stars didn’t matter. It had been him she’d really come to see.
He sat up, releasing her from his embrace, and looked towards the sky. It was grey and indeed, star-free. Didn’t it know by now? Were even the clouds working against him to hide the only things that made her happy? He could have screamed at them, begged them to show him the stars; some nights he had, after she’d cried herself to sleep, but clouds were hard of hearing. Nick fought alone.
“Maybe we could take the car tomorrow and go somewhere nice. Less cloud, more stars.” He hated doing this to her. Usually her eyes would glaze over and she’d start to mutter to herself, and Nick would have to drag her inside. Once or twice she’d throw a fit and launch herself towards him, clawing at his chest, but Nick had resolved that she’d have to face the memories at some point. As her eyes settled on him, wide as the full moon, he hoped that tonight she’d see acceptance. But he always hoped for that.
“I don’t like cars.” Her tongue forced its way out of her tightly pursed lips and slid from left to right. She fiddled nervously with an earring; the matching one had long since gone missing, and her newly cropped hair revealed the other ear to be bare. It suited her, Nick thought, this odd jumble of rock chic and kid playing dress-up. It defined her.
“You won’t even come to see the stars?”
She shook her head and her hand moved from the earring to a crescent-shaped scar on her forehead. Once it had been covered by a fringe, but now the pink skin was exposed. She liked to show it off.
“I’d come with you. Maybe we’d see some new stars , too.”
“I like the old ones,” she said defiantly, marking the end of the discussion. At least, Nick had assumed so, but curiosity was not so easily defeated. “Are you sure you would be there?”
“I promise.” Nick bit his lip as she traced the scar with her slim fingers. Tears choked him, but that had been another promise. He couldn’t cry in front of her. He wouldn’t grieve her if she wasn’t dead.
If she wasn’t dead... was she dead? He had been meaning to find out. He reached for it, and the box almost jumped out of his pocket where it had stayed for so long, gathering dust and crying out to be opened again. He had always carried it with him.
“Where are all the stars, Nick?” Becca asked, as she had all those months ago. Nick could hardly remember what he’d said in response.
“They aren’t in the sky tonight. I stole them.”
Becca gasped. She hadn’t laughed then, and she didn’t now. The innocence she’d once had to feign came to her so easily this time, but she was still keeping to the lines in the unwritten script. Nick was swamped by a feeling that could only be described as déjà vu.
“You stole the stars?” She was outraged, but curious again. Everything he did, every move he made, seemed to intrigue her. “Did you hide them in the car?”
Nick wiped the tears then, before they fell. This was her first mistake and the first sign of cracks. He heard the car screech once more, and he wanted so much to reach over and kiss her, to shake her and tell her he was here, but he’d done that once before. Her blank look, glimpsed from beneath the bandages, had torn a hole in his heart.
“They’re not in the car. I put one in here,” he said, tapping the box and smiling weakly.
“Is it for me?”
It was already hers. She had accepted it with a barely stifled squeal of joy. He had stolen it from her, not the sky. He couldn’t have let her keep it, because back then, it hadn’t been hers to keep. Nick had still been waiting for Becca to claim it, but now he realised that it was his responsibility. He’d have to give it back.
He opened the box and forced himself to listen to the same squeal, this time not stifled at all, but free. He could only watch as she put it on her ring finger and stared at it critically. It was a perfect fit.
“It’s pretty,” she finally decided, smiling that cherubic smile. “It’s like a star.”
She didn’t lean in to kiss him. She didn’t break open the champagne. She didn’t run to the car, unsteady on her feet, to go for a celebratory drive ‘round town. Becca just smiled, and even as Nick cried, he was glad.
