Page 71 of The Words Beneath the Noise

“Yeah.” Tom took a long pull from his beer. “It does.”

Silence settled between us, comfortable in a way that still surprised me. I had never been good at silence with other people. It always felt like pressure, like expectation, like a space I was supposed to fill with appropriate words I could never find. But with Tom, silence was just silence. A shared pause. Room to breathe.

“It's quiet out here,” he said, breath misting in the cold air.

“That's why I like it.”

“Yeah.” He took a swig from the bottle and passed it to me. “I can see that.”

The beer was barely cold, which meant it was actually drinkable in this weather. I took a sip and handed it back, careful not to let our fingers brush. We had been doing that lately. Being careful. Maintaining small distances that felt enormous.

Above us, the stars were scattered thick across the sky. No moon tonight, which made them brighter, sharper. I found myself tracing constellations without meaning to, the old habit of looking for patterns asserting itself even here.

“What are you looking at?” Tom asked.

“Orion. There.” I pointed without thinking, and he leaned closer to follow the line of my arm. His shoulder pressed against mine, solid and warm through layers of wool. “The three stars in a row. That's his belt.”

“I see it.” He did not move away. “What's the bright one below?”

“Rigel. It's actually a blue supergiant, about seventy thousand times more luminous than the sun.”

“Seventy thousand times.” He whistled softly. “How do you know things like that?”

“I read a lot as a child. Stars were safer than people.”

He turned his head to look at me, and suddenly his face was very close. I could see the faint lines around his eyes, the slight roughness of stubble along his jaw. Could smell cigarette smoke and beer and something underneath that was just him.

“Safer how?” he asked.

“They don't expect anything from you. They just are what they are, and you can watch them without having to perform or explain yourself.” I swallowed. “When I was young, I used to sneak out to the garden at night and lie on the grass and pretend I was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere the rules were different.”

“What rules?”

“All of them.”

Tom was quiet for a moment. Then he shifted slightly, and his thigh pressed against mine. Not moving away. Just settling.

“I used to do something similar,” he said. “Not stars. I wasn't that clever. But I'd go down to the river near our house and just sit. Watch the water. Let everything else go quiet for a bit.”

“That sounds nice.”

“It was. Until I had to go home.” He took another drink. “Home was loud. Lots of people, not much space. I loved them, but sometimes I just needed to not be there.”

I understood that. The need for silence, for solitude, for a break from the constant performance of being a person among other people. I had never met anyone else who seemed to understand it the same way.

“Do you miss it?” I asked. “The river?”

“Sometimes. Mostly I miss the feeling. That sense of being somewhere apart.” He glanced at me. “I get it here, actually. By the lake. It's similar.”

“Is that why you suggested we come out here?”

“Partly.” He did not elaborate, and I did not push.

We sat in comfortable silence for a while, passing the beer back and forth. The cold was seeping through my coat, but I did not want to move. Did not want to break whatever fragile bubble we had created around ourselves, this small pocket of peace in the middle of everything.

“Can I ask you something?” he said after a moment.

“You can ask. I reserve the right to deflect with sarcasm.”