The Stars Will Shine (5 page)

“I swear, you look exactly like her,” Aiden says. Then he pauses, and I know something more comes next because, in the stretch of silence between us, I can hear his smile widen. “She was really pretty.”

I stop walking for a second, heat rushing to my cheeks, but then I push on. Aiden keeps up with me but says nothing more, only hums a tune I swear I know. I’m thinking hard about where it’s from, trying to push the flush in my cheeks back down, when I realize I’m already standing at the checkout counter and Aiden’s pulling the cart around so the associate can scan the paint cans easily.

“Don’t you have some stuff to go buy?” I say to him, hoping he’ll get the hint to leave me alone now. Glancing at the total, I hand the cashier some cash, which only reminds me I need to find a job, and soon.

“Didn’t have what I was looking for,” Aiden replies. The subtle curve of his mouth verifies he caught my underlying message and is only amused by it.

“What were you looking for?” The cashier asks him, having not caught on. Aiden only briefly looks his way before setting his eyes on me again.

He crosses his arms. “A drill you don’t have.”

I lift a brow skeptically as the cashier hands me my change and I pocket it.

While I slip the paint supplies back into the cart, the cashier starts asking Aiden more specifically about the drill he wants. In my periphery Aiden waves off the cashier’s questions and quickly reaches for my cart’s handle, clearly inviting himself to help me to my car.

I clear my throat as we cross the parking lot. The sun beams down and glimmers off the lids of the cans. They shake where they sit in the cart as Aiden rolls it across the uneven asphalt.

“There was no girl that looked like me in your English class, was there?” I ask, more as a statement. I look sideways at him, and I can’t help but compare the feeling in my stomach to the way the paint is probably sloshing around inside the tins. Aiden’s eyes slide slowly to mine, and in a very similar manner comes his grin.

“No, there wasn’t,” he says. “Doesn’t mean you’re not pretty, though.”

I don’t answer, but I do turn my head away and bite the inside of my cheek. That’s when the name of the song he was humming comes to me. “Hey There Delilah” by The Plain White T’s. I almost laugh out loud at the corniness. But the thing is, I don’t think he even knew he was humming it, which almost makes it a little endearing.

Aiden sets the paint cans by the back tire of my car.

“I got it from here,” I say along with a murmur of thanks. I don’t meet his eyes, but I know he’s waiting for me to. He leans back against my car, feet crossed at the ankles, arms folded over his chest, and watches me. I watch him, too, in my periphery, but I keep my eyes forward on the paint cans, which I load onto the floor of the backseat, one by one.

“Right, well, I better go now.” I move to slip past him to head around to the driver’s side. As I pass, he pushes off the car and brushes my arm with his fingers.

“Wait, Delilah.” I stop even though I wanted to avoid this. I know what he’s going to say. I can hear it in his tone and in how he says my name—a little hopeful, a little unsure. “I thought maybe…” He leans back slightly, inwardly debating whether to go on. And then he straightens, tucks his hands into his pockets, and braves it. “I thought maybe since you’re new here and all, I could, you know, show you around town sometime.”

I was holding my breath, but I let it out now as I drop my head. “Aiden, you seem like a really nice guy. But”—I hesitate—“I’m not—I’m not a very nice girl.” I manage to meet his eyes, and I see the way his smile falters so infinitesimally as to be almost unnoticeable. “I think you’re better off not hanging around me.”

I force myself to move on without looking back. It’s better this way; it’s better that I push him away now. The only people I ever let close are those I know will never mean a thing to me; that way, when they leave me, it won’t hurt to see them go.

***

I move the roller through the paint and consider my first target: a wall to the left of the bedroom door, one I stripped completely bare to its big pink bottom. I changed into another loose tank top I couldn’t care less about splattering with paint. It’s a dark gray one with a low-hanging neckline and the words “MADE YOU LOOK” stamped large in sparkly silver across the chest. The first time I ever wore this top, paired with tiny, shredded jean shorts, my dad refused to let me leave the house.

Spoiler alert: I left anyway.

I went to a party in the desert, had more than one too many drinks, nearly fell into the bonfire, and hooked up with some guy, whose face and name I don’t remember, in the bed of his pickup truck. That was also the night I vowed to live by the motto: Any vodka is too much vodka.

I stare at the too-thickly coated roller in my hand and watch the paint slowly succumb to gravity, sliding over itself and off the roller cover. A bright orange drop falls to the floor, which I was kind enough to cover with a sheet of plastic I found in the garage.

Another drop falls and splatters onto the topside of my foot. I blink down at it, breathing in long and exhaling slowly. A third one falls, and I blink again.

A memory brushes my mind, soft and featherlike, coaxing me, tempting me to remember a time when I was truly happy. It swims forth, but I push it away, the muscles in my forearm straining as my grip tightens around the handle of the roller.
My mother’s face
—I shake my head. I don’t want to remember.
My mother’s smile, filled with life and love and laughter
—I slap the memory away, but it’s relentless.
My mother taking my hand and gently wrapping my fingers around a paintbrush, the bristles coated in blue paint.
My eyes sting.

“Paint something, Delilah.” She nods towards the canvas. Her voice is like an angel’s, sweet and melodic. There is rhythm to the way she speaks, and passion, and a softness that swells my heart.

“I don’t know what to paint.” My voice is small. I am so young.

A tear rolls down my cheek, and I bite down on my lip to stop it from quivering. I don’t want to remember because it hurts. It hurts me so bad that she’s gone.

“Paint me,” she says simply. “I’ll be your model.” She strikes a pose that makes me laugh.

“Okay,” I say with a small smile. “I’ll paint you.” I reach out and swipe a streak of blue down her cheek. My mother’s eyes go wide, and so does her mouth before it spreads into a beautiful grin. She sweeps me off my feet, throws me over her shoulder, and tickles my ribs. The paintbrush falls from my hand as I try to wriggle out of her hold, my squeals and laughter ringing all around us.

I swallow as the memory fades and look up at the wall again. I don’t move for a long while, my breaths shallow and short. Finally, I wipe the few tears away with the bottom of my palm then lift my roller, and I paint.

I don’t know how much time has passed since I began, but when I have about a quarter of one wall remaining, there’s a knock from the doorway. I turn to find Dylan standing there with his knuckles against the doorframe, surveying the room with a smirk.

“Doesn’t quite match your bedspread,” he says.

I turn back to the wall and continue painting. “I plan to get a new one.” My voice is tight, my jaw clenched. He doesn’t say anything, so I turn my head to make sure he’s gone.

No such luck. He’s still standing there. Still smirking, too.

“You can go now,” I snap.

“And you can cool off,” he retorts, pushing off the doorframe and inviting himself into the room. He plops down at the end of the bed and resumes surveying the room from there.

I heave a sigh. “What do you want, Dylan?” I’m in no mood for his jabs. He’s silent as he watches me cover the last bit of wall with orange. When I’m done, I face him with hands on my hips. “So?”

He lies back on the bed and hooks his hands beneath his head. Narrowing his eyes at the ceiling, he says, “Mom says I have to show you around town.”

I drop the roller onto the tray and vigorously shake my head. “Oh, no. No, I don’t need you to babysit me.”

“And I don’t want to be your babysitter. So can we come to an agreement?”

“This once, yes.”

“I had plans today. To hang out with a friend. Problem is, Mom can’t know where I’m going.” He sits up and eyes me as if he’s debating whether he should be revealing this information. “She doesn’t exactly like this guy.”

“Great, so we’ll just leave the house together and then go our separate ways. You can text me when you’re on your way home and we can make a fucking grand display of re-entering the house together, hooked at the hips and everything.” I lift my shoulders and let them drop. “She’ll never know the difference.” I’m not sure why Aunt Miranda is at all attempting to be nice to me, given our exchange this morning.

“Right. I hope.” Dylan slides off the bed and straightens tall. He gives his head a tiny shake to flip the hair out of his eyes, then says, “We leave in an hour.”

An hour is enough time for me to do some more touch-ups, clean up, and down my uneaten meal from last night, which I find in a Tupperware container on the top shelf of the fridge. I’m a bit surprised by that; this family struck me as the type that didn’t do leftovers.

At half-past 2:00 p.m., I’m watching an old re-run of
Friends
in the living room and doing my best to not enjoy it. But despite my efforts, I burst out laughing when Joey’s head gets stuck in a turkey. I hear a chuckle behind me, and I whip around to find that Dylan has just walked in. His face turns stoic in an instant.

“Look, we better go now,” he says, not meeting my eyes.

“Yeah, sure.” I grab my bag and slide off the sofa, both of us embarrassed to have been sharing a laugh.

I trail him to the front door. As we pass the hall that leads to his parent’s bedroom, Dylan starts broadcasting about some record store he wants to show me, purely to keep up appearances, and I’m thinking how much I’d actually really like to check this place out.

When Dylan opens the door, he shouts, “See you later, Mom! I’m showing Delilah around.” I roll my eyes at his abysmal acting, and lead us through the doorway.

“That better be the truth,” Aunt Miranda warns. Dylan hastily shuts the door behind us before she can say anything else.

“God, that woman already knows,” he groans.

“But you were so convincing.”

Dylan ignores me. “C’mon, I’m catching a ride with my friend so you can take your car.”

We don’t speak the rest of the way to my car. I drop him off down the road where he says his friend will pick him up, and I watch him in my rearview mirror as I drive away. Dylan glances down at his phone, shoves his hands into his pockets, and stares up at the sky through the canopy of trees. Shaking my head, I return my attention to the road, my fingers tighter around the wheel.

I pull into a Catholic church parking lot a little while later. I have no intention of going inside; I’m not here to pray or reconnect with the faith of my youth. I just need a place to stop for a moment so I can use my cell phone to look up that record store Dylan mentioned—Miles of Vinyls, or some half-rhyme like that. Something you’d have trouble saying ten times fast. I punch it into Google Maps and wait for the possible routes.

I’m only two minutes away.

As I flip the car into reverse, the church doors swing open, and people, clad in semi-formal attire and huge smiles, stream out. They form two lines, one on each side of the double doors, stretching farther and farther out into the parking lot as more people join. All of their hands are full of something they hold with readiness.

A bell tolls, a joyful sound. Everybody cheers, and the people closest to the door begin throwing their hands into the air, unleashing a delicate shower of white rose pedals. It continues down the line in a wave, and once the end is reached, a young man and woman emerge, their hands held high. She’s wearing a beaded lace wedding gown, and he, suspenders and a tie.

I feel a pang in my heart as the scene shifts something in my head. Memories again. Memories I don’t want to think about. Memories so beautiful it is heart-wrenching such beauty was stripped away.

I hold a photograph in my hands, careful not to touch its surface with my fingers because I don’t want to leave smudges all over the happiest day of my parents’ lives. There’s a loveliness to the photograph, in the way the sun rays cast down upon them and light the everlasting love in their eyes, in the way my father holds my mother, one hand at the small of her back while the other tenderly cradles her cheek.

The man sweeps the woman into his arms and kisses her deeply. There’s more cheers from the family and friends. Then he carries his new bride to the car that has just pulled up and tenderly sets her inside. He pumps his fist twice to more cheers and runs around to the other side, ready to parade around town with his new wife and brandish their love.

My parents were like that once, when my mother was still alive. Now all my dad has left of her is my brother Dave and me. I look a lot like her, and I think that makes it all the worse for my dad. Because my mom was a comforting fire in a winter storm; she was a breath of fresh spring air; she was the golden rain on a sunny day and a rainbow smile in the heavens. And me…Well, I’m everything opposite.