"Make Way" Part Three: Star Stuff

It's been about a week since they last spoke. Bray was in his room, laying on his bed, speaking on the phone with a friend who'd just abruptly become a part of his life, again. The conversation was deliberately slow, he swallowed air for each paced deliverance, and with great effort, held any release of tears and the exhale of heavy emotion. It was a hard moment for him when he had heard tell of Nalani's thoughts on the situation that had transpired between the two of them. He had an idea of what she would say, but hoped for something different.

"From what I gathered after talking to her—I'd say she left the impression that she didn't have the urge to contact you or really work on you and her."

Jesus fucking Christ, that sucked. He took it in.

"What I'm saying is... I feel—this is just the impression she left on me, alright? I'm saying I feel she doesn't care, anymore."

His stomach twisted, just put a rat trap between my legs and shoot me in the chest, he thought to himself. He repeatedly asked his friend:

"So she doesn't care anymore, huh? Is that what you're telling me?"

The rooftop of his apartment is for the quieter moments and to gain some clarity. It was a retreat to the top of the world, or the highest he could get access to.

His best friend, 'Bonza', they call him—said to him the day before: "Don't hurt yourself over a girl, alright? Don't be a cliché."

But that was not Bray's intention. Besides, he'd be too scared to actually do something like that. How could anyone really go with it? The suicide? How do you have the balls or the heart to actually do something that extreme? The end? He thought of all of that for a moment.

The sky was black, and from the height of this five-floor building, the view of the freedom tower and that fucking Verizon building stood surrounded by abrasive lights. Beamed in and through out the thousands of city architects. Car and street lights slowly softened to flowing ovals of color. Bray was on the edge, laying and looking up at the sky, and the six little bright stars it came with at this hour.

He told himself if he could catch a falling star, that'll mean he could apply some color gel over it and he basically had the component of someone who died once upon a time. He wasn't a science guy, but he heard the words "We are star stuff."

"We are star stuff."

Only, that second time, he heard it in Nalani's voice. He looked over and thought he saw her, or just felt her presence.

It was in her bedroom, Bray was holding her right forearm, in which there was a tattoo that said 'We are star stuff.' Her other arm had another tattoo that was the solar system, and a small tattoo above her wrist, which was a small cat that she wasn't so fond of, now.

He was confused when she was explaining to him her tattoo and the meaning behind those four words because he was too distracted by the scent of her hair, and her eyes...

Sad eyes, but beautiful eyes when she smiled. It sounds poetically cheesy, but her eyes when she smiled painted an image worth describing. A garden, and a rainbow by a small farmhouse somewhere in Upstate. There was just a little life told from two eyeballs.

Anyways...

Her dimple from the right side of her cheek distracted him, too. In a good way, the smile made the dimple squeeze in and it was cute. Her face bloomed with a warm tan on what was at this time, slightly pale skin. It was winter. She got distracted explaining by the fact he was distracted.

"What is it?"

"What?"

"You look focused, but not for what I'm saying."

"I'm sorry, it was just a second. It's your dimple."

"Wait, no—what?" She sounded embarrassed.

"Relax, I meant it in a good way. You were saying?"

She thought about her dimple now, and quickly thought of her little chin hair. Nalani broke her gaze, and went back to explaining.

"We are, each of us, a multitude." This sounded pretty cool.

She isn't a Christian, nor is she any precise religion, at all. She isn't even an Atheist. She believes science is the remedy of all living features. Bray was born a Christian, went to church every Sunday. He was raised believing every bad decision was looked upon by God (poor kid). Masturbation was tricky because he'd feel ashamed right after.

Now, at twenty-two, he isn't sure what he is. He knows he isn't a Christian the way he used to be, the most religious he gets is wearing his father's golden cross.

Nalani and Bray's conversations inspired a broader perspective of the subject matter for Bray. It was an argument, though, in which the perspective served him. She tried convincing Bray he wasn't truly a Christian if he didn't forfeit his true beliefs for the sake of "... being a Christian." It was one of these exchanges that hinted Bray's ignorance and denial for being wrong, or as he put it, "outsmarted."

Yet, he admitted it, and would listen to the elegance of her sometimes soft and sometimes boyish voice describing how Earth is a body of purity, and its living forms of life are created by universal and divine ingredients.

She looked at him, with those eyes, in which showed immense bound of affection and joy, he'll never once blink. She told him there is a star in us all.

"That's what I believe because it is true." She said.

He poked her lower thigh. "Hell yeah, there is."

She brushed his arm away, with a smile. "I'm being serious."

They laid together on her minuscule bed. Half his body was actually hitting the wooden floor. Yuma, the needy cat, came in between them and Bray had no shot for the time being to go for a kiss. It kind of annoyed him, this cat... just from time to time.

Nalani asked him to give Yuma affection and Yuma rubbed her left ear up against Bray's neck. There was a spinning vinyl playing Hypnotic Brass Ensemble's "War." The high aggressive trumpet, the clashing in full speed percussion, and the beat snaring cowbell put a tingle in both of them.

They looked above, the ceiling dissolved into a gaping black hole, and all surroundings in the room bloomed a softening hue. Instant flashes arrowed right past them, and their bodies became comfortably numb. A kaleidoscopic oval of all nine planets zoomed to their profiles and abruptly melted like pouring milky soup of warm colors that soon unveiled as a burning, bright star. The sun.

Mercury formed a line beneath it, and what came dripping down as a pimple shaped dot, engrossed as Venus. Earth came right after, and it continued like an Imax solar map experience, bestowed above them till Neptune's bright azure blue formed.

Nalani leaped off her bed, closed and locked her door, and walked over to the edge of her bed staring down at Bray. She pulled the curtain on the bed side all the way to the end, covering the bed side. She stood on her bed, now, looking down at Bray. She pulled down her sweat pants, with nothing else underneath it. Bray pulled down his jeans, and then his boxers. They indulged in an intense and erotic exchange of kissing, as their bottoms touched and embraced. The galaxy above warped into the epitome of space and time, that in which is the Universe.

Nothing stopped.

While Bray was laying on his rooftop and staring at the star above... he thought to himself one more thing. Whatever star I have in me, could it slowly start dying, now?

He wasn't sure if the thought, itself was stupid. But hey, that's why you don't say shit out loud.

Here's a fact. It has been about nine months or something like that, since either Nalani or Bray listened to Hypnotic Brass Ensemble's "War."