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.

“Yeah.” They’re curled up side by side on her bed, almost forehead to forehead, the way secrets should be shared. They’re still holding hands. Zoey has to let go soon, because her dad is waiting outside the door, and there’s a car waiting too, and a plane, and an ocean. For the first time probably ever in her life, she wishes the ocean were a little less big. “If I had like, a billion dollars, I could fix a giant space swing all the way up there. So we could just—” 

Carefully, really carefully, because Rumi’s still healing up and Zoey can keep at least one hurt from her if she’s careful. Carefully, Zoey swings their hands in a big curve to demonstrate, puffs her cheeks up and makes her best pshewww noise for extra effect.

Rumi giggles, and now her eyes and smile go together better, and Zoey feels her own giggles bubbling up as she keeps swaying their hands back and forth, back and forth, squeezes and feels a squeeze back. 

Zoey thinks about how even the stars swing right back around, if you just wait long enough.

“Zoey.” Her name from outside the door. Not angry, but warning. Zoey hesitates, but Rumi’s fingers go loose. She knows that tone too.

“It’s okay,” she says, and it’s not, it’s not; Zoey’s hand grips her sleeve, moves to her back, but she’s not supposed to hug Rumi, not supposed to press anywhere on her body. But Zoey wants, needs to, doesn’t know how—

Rumi’s breath hitches, but no sound escapes. 

“I’ll—” Zoey starts. Swallows the wobble and tries again. Stronger. “I’ll keep in touch, okay? I promise.”

Rumi’s eyes widen. Start to glisten. “Okay,” she whispers. “I’d like that.”

Zoey nods, nods, pulls back, feels her fingers slide off of Rumi’s shoulder, Rumi’s hand, all the way to the last second, and she walks backwards to the bedroom door, five steps, six.

(Seven: out the door, to a whole universe away.)

—

It’s about when Zoey’s cramming the seventh bag of convenience store buns under an elbow that she thinks maybe this is too many snacks. But there’s a tell-tale twisting and growling feeling in her gut that she knows is only partly the nerves, and then partly the jet lag, and the post-car nap sluggishness, and the nine hours since the last time she got to eat (thanks no thanks to the flight from hell,) and it won’t take more than twenty dollars to fix one of those things.

She should get a basket. She gets a basket. There’s still the chips aisle to raid, and heck yeah, now she’s got plenty of stacking room on the snack pile. In goes the shrimp crackers, in goes the honey butter chips, in goes the— 

Her hand pauses over a familiar package. 

Maybe it’s still Rumi’s favourite. Or not? Somehow in all the letters and calls and years between them, it’s never come up. Zoey’s never asked, hey do you still like those chips? Do you still like pouring the bits at the end of the bag straight into your mouth? Or do you like different stuff now, doing stuff differently?

…she grabs two anyway. It’s fine. It’s not like they’re not good. She’ll just eat them if Rumi doesn’t.

It’s Rumi. Rumi, who’d blurted an offer before Zoey’d even gotten to talking about the arrival date or the awkward timing, had driven hours into the night just to get her from the airport. Rumi, whose letters are bursting the brims of shoeboxes tucked deep and safe in Zoey’s luggage. Rumi, who’d smiled so wide and opened her arms just as Zoey had run right into her, and even though the hug had lasted maybe two seconds and Rumi’s so much taller and broader now (unfair!) it’d been warm, and tight, and—

Look, Zoey’s not super hug-deprived! But nobody gives hugs like the Ryus. Like Rumi. 

That much hasn’t changed. 

(Rumi, taller and broader, waiting past the convenience store windows. Curved in profile against the hood of a car she’s old enough to drive, now, head tilted towards the stars, fingers rubbing absently at her arm in a way that makes Zoey’s palms itch. Makes Zoey think of rain beating on rooftiles, of huddling together under one blanket, of the slow nervous circles Rumi would quietly trace on her own arms until Zoey’s hand wiggled into hers, held it until the wind stopped howling.)

Zoey takes a breath. Pays for the stuff, says something hopefully normal to the cashier, heads for the doors and the five, six, seven steps back to the car.

(Lets gravity do its thing. Tug them back into orbit.)

—--

“I missed you,” Rumi says, and it feels like every weight drops from Zoey at once, lets her mouth beam wide.

They split the snacks. Zoey inhales three buns and feels slightly more like a person again. Rumi breaks open that packet of chips, and even though she eats them a couple pieces at a time instead of grabbing them by the handful, she still tips the bag back into her mouth once she gets to the bottom.

They talk about the stars, then about light pollution, then about cities and lizards and a dozen other things, and it’s only when Rumi gently takes hold of the half-full can slowly sliding out of Zoey’s fingers that Zoey realises they’re still shoulder to shoulder, still tucked right where they were when Zoey first hopped up to join Rumi on the car, warmth sandwiched between them.

“We should probably make a move,” Rumi says, soft and probably right and maybe, Zoey thinks, a little regretful about it.

And maybe it’s that, or the jet lag, or the stomach full of food, or all of them tag-teaming the buzzing thoughts and nerves into a softer, fuzzier morass to sink into, but either way Zoey feels like the appropriate thing to do is bury her face in Rumi’s sleeve and whine a little, so she does. Rumi pats her on the shoulder, all fondness, but gives her at least another minute or so, which Zoey takes full advantage of by breathing in the scent of soap and skin.

The leftovers get bagged, the trash in the proper bins. Time and moving get a little blurry round the edges. But eventually they’re on the road again, Rumi fiddling with the thermostat, then the sound system; Zoey making a cocoon of two of the three blankets she’d teased Rumi for when she’d first seen them neatly folded and stacked in the backseat, next to the little potted plant carefully buckled in.

Slow electronic beats filter through the speakers, a familiar tune playing in that in-between volume between waking and dozing. Rumi’s hand hovers in the air beside the steering wheel; then settles on the center console, palm up. 

(Casual. Deniable.)

Without a second thought, Zoey slips a hand out from between the blankets, weaves her fingers between Rumi’s. Squeezes lightly, carefully; feels Rumi curl around her in turn.

Zoey lifts their joined hands just a few inches, lets them fall back to the console. Pshewww, she breathes out.