Miles Within Constellations

Prologue-1-2

At that moment, I'm warm again.

A message beeps in my left coat pocket and, this time, guilt jolts panic and nausea in my stomach.

I don't unlock the phone this time as the notification has Cassiel's name on top of it. I shove it back down to where it belongs, deep in the intricacies of my life where it's trembling for existence.

Daniel stops the car near a gas station and tells me that he'll be back in five. I watch him go and pay on the cash register. I watch his back disappear in an aisle inside the small shop at the gas station. I fight the urge to check Cassiel’s messages. But, then again, how am I supposed to let it go?

I find my phone again and watch the message lighten up the darkness in my life.

CASS: Sorry I missed our date. I’m thinking about you. Love you baby. Be back before 2. X

A ball of cotton gets stuck in my throat and I don't know how to feel at this moment. I watch Daniel talk with the cashier and head back to the car as the gas is filled up in the back. The cashier gets the job done and waves in the front mirror, signaling for us to move.

Daniel gets in the car quietly, and his fingers try to find mine again, but I make myself busy on my phone, checking my notifications. He drives with a slight, treacherous smile on his face.

And when I looked outside my frosty, dew-covered window, I saw the sadness in my eyes reflected back in the windowpane. The irony is that treachery is the last thing on my mind.

Chapter 2

FOUR YEARS AGO

“Are you going to show up for Mr. Freyer’s class?” Carrie was sitting on the couch beside me, running her fingers down her golden auburn hair. She looked like a Disney princess done right.

“Is he going to give another sermon on John Donne? Because all man now is an island.” I rolled my eyes when Carrie shot me a look. She gets boisterous and sassy when it comes to Literature.

Carrie has always been in love with Dante and metaphysical poetry. She wanted to revel in darkness and the spirituality behind human existence. She had this constant gleam in her eyes whenever she sat in Mr. Freyer’s class, like she was in awe or something.

I wanted to ask her what Bertrand Russell once said, “Day after day, man is accumulating knowledge, but is the man getting any wiser?”

I felt my inner Virginia Woolf fist thumping when I looked at her. What’s all this passion for?

Carrie hummed a low growl like a dog in heat, getting all pissed. She ran a finger under her chin as she fought for my soda can. "You know that pale skin, dark-haired guy is also going to be there," she said.

“Which guy?” I averted my gaze, suspicious that I’d been caught.

“ ”Kid me not, woman,” she chided, “I know the way you look at him. Something is definitely fishy. Do you know him or something?”

“Nope. He ...” I look at her, embarrassed, “... has the most beautiful eyes. It’s just the eyes. I’m not sleeping with him or anything.” I mused as if I was just getting to learn how to get lost in those blue eyes of his. He does have them good.

“That’s the thing. It’s easy to give away your body sometimes, but, in the matters of the heart, one might perish.” She lurked around the topic of he who shall not be named.

“Anyways, I think I'll make it to class today. What if Mr. Freyer starts on that play I love . . . remember?”

She had no clue whatsoever of which play I was talking about and Carrie was the kind of girl who wanted to know everything. It was easy to see her latch on to something as small as this, and this leading to an incessant buzzing in her head. I drowned in satisfaction.

”What play?” She reprimanded me from her walking down the closet and pulled out a sweater for class. She pushed the head of the sweater down her neck and hummed to distract herself.

“Look back in Anger!” I clapped my hands, full of energy.

“Oh, that John Osborne guy?” Carrie divulged like he was some guy she met on a Friday night, in some gloomy, local bar, and ended up having a one night-stand with.

“Yeah, what about him?” I gave her a look.

“Nothing. It's just that he’s annoying.” She picked out her satchel and started combing through the things inside it.

“Not as annoying as John Donne.” I ended up picking up my own backpack and putting things inside it, including my notebook and the curriculum book needed for class.

“Angelique!"

“Carrie!”

Carrie was tilting her wrist, still as infatuated with her Gucci watch, as the first time I ever met her and thought that she was the most pretentious kid I’ll ever meet on campus. Little did I know, she was not even the cherry on the cake. There were a few pompous asses residing down the block with their BMWs and Porsches.

A message pinged on my cellphone, vibrating the front of my faded denim jacket. I pulled it out and then swiped right to open it.

SETH: Baby please, I deserve one more chance.

I killed my phone’s power button and fished for my other curriculum books. I threw them inside the backpack that was sitting on top of my study desk.

“Wanna tell me who just texted and he texted what?” Carrie’s voice was barely above a whisper.

“No,” I let out an exasperated sigh.

“Okay. Let's go to class.” Carrie swept the matter under the rug. The topic had already perished in thin air. I pulled on my boots and she locked the apartment on our way out.

“Okay.” I silently wrapped arms with her as we made our way in the unknown land of literature and mysterious, pale, dark-haired boys.

“Lee, will you stop looking behind your back and concentrate?” Carrie chastised me and I rolled my eyes to the back of the lecture hall. She can’t tolerate the rolling of my eyes at her. She was defiant and bossy.

“What are you thinking about?” Carrie stalled as the professor was busy scribbling the concepts of Romanticism.

“Nothing.” I blew out a long breath, wriggling my nose, and nervously pushed some loose strands of hair behind my ears. “Just nothing.”

"Oh. You're definitely looking for that blue-eyed guy whom you trance eyes with, huh?" She laughed.

“What? I do no such thing! You can either ask your questions or justify your statements.” I rolled my eyes at her this time.

“Girls at the back, yes, you two,” Mr. Freyer pointed a finger at us. "What's the first structure of Romanticism?” Mr. Freyer snapped from the front of the whiteboard holding his black marker in hand. He was thumping the small nozzle of the pen against the board in frustration. He was somewhere in his late-fifties but he had amazing eyesight. He wouldn't let anything fly past him.

We both froze in our respective seats. I twitched my fingers as I stood up just to respect him and form an incoherent sentence about how Romanticism works, and about the constant fight between good and bad and conscience and everything else. That’s all I picked up from my distracted state in today’s lecture.

Mr. Freyer shook his head at me and told me to pay attention in class. He went back to lecturing about the values related to Romanticism. Carrie chuckled in her seat because she never got the brunt of the situation. I gave her a glare and she smirked back.

Before sitting back down at my seat, I glanced back where he was usually seated, but the chair remained vacant, so I sighed and finally averted my attention back to the lecture.

”Lee, will you get me a chai latte? I’ll find us a good table.” I nodded at Carrie as I looped my fingers in the backpack I was carrying on my back. It suddenly felt heavy. We both just got piled with assignments that we’re expected to finish and submit by the end of this week. I came face to face with so many lingering deadlines.

I made my way to the counter in the cafeteria that was inside the university campus. There was a line forming and I somehow got stuck at the very back of the queue. The queue was long and the cafeteria was bustling with lovers, freshers, people who never attended classes, people living in campus dorms, and people who were visiting someone in the college.

A sudden rush flowed through my right shoulder, as I jolted my hand in response. I saw my blue linen shirt overflowing with coffee. I started cussing and rubbing the place which felt like it was burnt when two strong hands removed them from the point of assault. The broad muscles were taking me away from the queue. I was trying to protest, but before I could, I was being led away from the sea of masses and sweaty bodies and curious eyes in the cafeteria.

Suddenly, as if I was tethering on the verge of conscience and tripping in my own shoes, I also started checking out the guy in front of me. His aqua green shirt touched his upper body in all the right places and his ripped blue jeans accentuated his long, sculpted legs which helped him in taking really large steps.

I was conflicted and astonished about why I was letting myself be dragged. As if the tall guy can hear my thoughts, he turned around and I saw that we were already in front of the fountain and he was asking me a question, his fingers still firmly placed on my wrist.

“Are you okay? I’m so sorry, that was some real hot coffee.” And it clicked, to be really honest, it had clicked way back when he spilled his coffee cup on my shoulder but it was as if my head was denying the resemblance. It was him. He came. But that doesn’t mean he gets to spill his hot coffee all over me. Not like this.

Did he know that the Styrofoam cup acts as a thermodynamic insulator and keeps the heat intact? Did he? The fact that this could've resulted in a very serious burn. I bet he didn't.

"Slow down, you may have third-degree burns," he said.

What did he say?

My head spirals.

"If this is your way of meeting girls, it's really sore,” I said in mock sarcasm.

His lips curled upwards. “I wasn’t. I really wasn’t trying to meet you in that way . . . and spill my coffee on your shirt.” I saw that he was frazzled, I was enjoying it.

“Here.” He handed me his handkerchief to use as a rag and wash my shirt and rid some coffee stains off from it. “Take it please, I’m extremely sorry this happened.”

“Oww, it hurts,” I tried to investigate my burn by peeking on from the collar.

“Let me see it.” His long fingers were now prying and removing the side of my shirt on the edge of my shoulder when he suddenly stopped, looked at me right in the eye as if to ask if he may proceed. I held his gaze and let myself drown in those blue balls of burning ice.

“May I?” He asked. I nodded and that took a whole lot of persuasion from my nerves.

He inspected the wound with his long fingers and saw a splatter of red covering my shoulder bone but no air bubbles.

“I’m again, extremely sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

He wetted the rag in the water fountain and gently placed it on the wound. He said he’ll be back but it was fleeting and the words hung in the air.