A series of vignettes inspired by Zico's team on SMTM4 and a dream I had about them when the season was still airing. I don't know why I've only just decided to write this. 

00.

The temperature went colder as we drove up the mountain. In a way the winding path was relaxing and in the dark you couldn’t really see how high you were going. We were ascending indefinitely, into the night, getting closer to the stars.

“The stars are so much brighter here,” he said. I glanced at him from the passenger seat and I couldn’t believe I was out there with him. He had one hand on the steering wheel and smile on his face that felt so warm to look at even in the darkness. This was the kind of spontaneity I had always wanted in my life, and I was quietly pleased to finally have it after waiting for so many years to be allowed to grow up. When we finally reached our stop on the mountain, a dirt turnout that could fit at least six cars, he got out of the truck and opened my door for me.

It was a lot colder than I had expected it to be in the early spring time. He noticed my reluctance to step out of the vehicle and offered me his leather jacket. “So, what we’re seeing right now,” I began, making my way to the back of the pickup to sit on the blankets we had spread over it, “is the light of stars that's been traveling through the galaxy for years and years and years and is only just reaching us.”

He probably already knew this, but out of the corner of my eye I can tell he’s looking at me with an amused expression. I put on his jacket and he climbed the side of the truck and sat down next to me. “We’re looking at the past. We’re looking at something that might not even be there anymore.”

He said, “Did you know that stars burn brightest—”

“—when they’re about to die? Yes.”

“That’s the case with a lot of things, huh?”

We sat in silence, a respectable, necessary distance between us. It's peaceful to be away from the sounds of the city. The only sound I hear is my own heartbeat. No crickets, no birds of night.

“Is it weird, that I’m comforted by science?” I asked, breaking the silence.

“How so?”

“Thermodynamics. The law of conservation of energy. The idea that nothing ever truly leaves us; it’s just transformed into something else.”

I knew that the main reason why we were there was not for a date but because I’d lost my boyfriend just a couple of weeks ago. And I still couldn’t bear to be alone. I felt like every time I thought about his absence, my grief was a palpable smoke seeping out of my skin, a fog. “He’s up there somewhere,” he said, as he gestured at the stars. It was as if he knew what I was thinking about, and knew exactly what to say without needing to be told. And I was grateful he asked me to come with him tonight even though he knew that my mind would be preoccupied by some other guy for most of the time.

“Yeah,” I said, “He is.”