Just me chillin

She loves the infinite expanse of them, the promise of possibility. Loves the way her eomma loves them. Loves how sometimes after dinner they’ll sit outside together, and Eomma will brush Rumi’s hair and rebraid it while pointing out specific stars, or different constellations while telling her their stories.

A bright giggle next to her, and Rumi’s cheek turns into the grass to absorb Zoey’s grin.

“Look,” Zoey says, arm pointed upward and zigzagging. “There’s a shark! See his fin?”

Rumi follows, as best she can, the wide gesture, following the line of stars. “I see him,” she gasps as her mind slots them into space, the long body, the proud tail. She scans the night sky, passing over Ursa Major and the Leos, the ones she can never see as anything else. “Oh, there!” She leans over, shoulder pressing into Zoey’s, hand directing her eyes farther left. “There’s a wolf, howling at the moon.”

(She’d asked Eomma about a wolf constellation, and been told that it wasn’t visible from their house. But that’s okay. Wolves live in packs; there can be more.)

“Ooooh.” Zoey nods, eyes darting about the sky, and they trade off their own constellations until called inside for bed.

—— 

Rumi leans against the car hood, head tipped up toward the night sky as she stretches her back out. She’d been driving for several hours; jumping out long enough to toss Zoey’s bags in the trunk did not count as a break, at least not according to the stiffness lingering throughout her body.

Zoey had fallen asleep almost as soon as they’d rolled out of the airport. Apparently the excitement of moving back had not been enough to override the exhaustion from the flight, which Zoey had described as ‘hellish’ through a tight smile.

She’d woken up starving about twelve kilometers back, and so now they were parked outside the closest convenience store their phones had found. Zoey’s inside, and Rumi is taking the moment to stretch and maybe tame the way her stomach is trying to tie itself into knots.

They’d kept in touch over the years, phone calls and video screens, little messages and gifts. So Rumi already knew the way that Zoey’s voice had changed, the subtle changes to the shape of her face. She’d heard Zoey’s half-hearted complaints about her height, hadn’t been startled at all during their too brief welcome hug when Zoey’s face only hit her shoulder.

Rumi just hadn’t been prepared for how it felt to have Zoey next to her again. How right it seemed, even with Zoey passed out against the car window and her sweatshirt lightly emanating that stale airplane scent.

A shoulder bumps against hers and the car rocks slightly as another weight throws itself against her. “I got enough to share,” Zoey announces, holding up a plastic bag that sags under its weight.

Rumi laughs. “Are you sure you didn’t just buy everything that looks good and only then realize you couldn’t eat it all?”

“Maybe,” Zoey says teasingly, in that slightly deeper voice that tips Rumi’s head back toward the sky before she can say anything she’ll regret.

She keeps her eyes there, the streetlights and lights from the store drowning out any hope at making out any but the brightest of stars, even as the crinkling of a wrapper announces that Zoey’s starting to eat. A hiss of a can follows after, and they spend a few moments in an easy silence.

“Hey, look,” Zoey says, her voice softer, and Rumi’s traitorous stomach flips at the sound. “Isn’t that the wolf constellation?”

Rumi wrenches her head around so quickly that she thinks she’ll feel it later, meets Zoey’s eyes, which are watching her warmly but warily, a twitch of anxiety at the corner of her mouth. Rumi’s eyes drop to her lips, pull back up over her face. The California sun has tanned her skin, made her freckles stand out all the more.

(Rumi wonders what constellations she can find there.)

“I missed you,” she breathes out instead, because of course Zoey remembered something like that.