My Best Friends Brother

Chapter 54

Just as I bring my lips to his, he suddenly jolts. His body is torn from mine unceremoniously as he jumps up to his feet and I look around sharply for whatever has caught him off guard, only to look back and realise that he's smiling but glancing around the room. What the fuck is he doing?

“Josh?”

He seems to spot whatever he was looking for and races over to the edge of the auditorium where a large control panel and podium sits. When he rushes back he’s holding what at first glance appears to be a large paperweight, but as he sits back down I realise it’s some weird kind of remote control with numbers on the three sides and a large movable ball in the middle. Either this does something with the room or he has very weird taste in sex toys.

“I nearly forgot the best part. Look, pick a star.”

He hands me the controller and I realise that each side has numbers for coordinates. I start with the longitude of the first star that pops into my head, it’s the North star which I know isn’t very original, but as I hit enter all the screens around us begin to spin. I finish typing in the latitude and the screen just above our heads zooms in until I find myself staring directly at the middle of my favourite constellation. Well it became my favourite the moment I watched Josh’s face after he found it for the first time that night in the woods.

“Oh fuck...” This is incredible... I place my palm over the large glass ball at the centre of the controller and as I roll it to the left the whole screen begins to zoom in until I find myself staring directly into the eye of the full flame of burning hydrogen. The closest I’ve ever come to seeing a star like this is in the pages of my old science books, this is so much fucking better.

Josh lays back with a giant smile on his face as I find a new wave of energy and begin typing away every star, black hole and planet I can fucking think of. The room keeps spinning but it only makes me happier as I feel my childhood desire to explore our entire solar system coming through right before my very eyes. This is the best day of my fucking life.

I can’t stop myself from pouring out all my useless knowledge about everything we're seeing as I spin from one incredible creation to the next. I’m not a religious guy or anything, but it’s kind of impossible to look at the beauty of the ever expanding universe and not believe there must be someone or something that played a part in making something so unexplainable. Look at the world hard enough and you’ll find patterns in everything, nature is a field of rolling cells combined to create, but the stars have something more than that. They are brought into existence by sheer force of will, a conjoined embodiment of elements exploding into something majestic.

Josh sits up and begins to dig through the duffel bag as I come to the end of everything I can think of to explore in this moment. I’m sure I’ll be laying in bed tonight kicking myself over all the things that I’ve forgotten... But maybe we could come back here one day to find those too, I’ll bring the picnic.

“Can you look up these coordinates for me?” Josh hands me a scrap of paper with poorly written sets of numbers on but I managed to make enough sense of it to pull up a single star. It takes me a second to figure out what constellation we’re in but when I do I’m at a bit of a loss as to how Josh found this particular star, it’s not around one of the big constellations that most people would recognise.

“Why did you want to look at this one?” I ask spinning the ball on the remote to give us a full 360 view of this star. It’s kind of sweet, out of the way and almost completely on its own if there wasn't a virtually identical sized one directly next to it.

Josh lays a black gift box on my lap as I zoom in enough for us to get a proper look.

“Because, that one is yours.”

It’s... what?

Josh moves forward, taking the controller from my hands and placing it down next to us as I stare in disbelief at the black gift box wrapped in silver ribbon.

He didn’t...

My fingers tremble as I pull the ties apart and lift the lid of the box, only to be greeted with a glass framed certificate claiming ownership of the star that is looking down upon us right now... in my name.

‘This star is hereby named after its owner Milo Thompson, purchased and received by Joshua Jones on his behalf.’

‘Miles, you are my stars xx’

He bought me a star. He bought me a fucking star.

I read over every word before me, not truly believing that this is actually happening... Getting to the bottom line, my breath catches in my throat as I look at the date of discovery.

It’s the day I was born. He didn’t just buy me any star, he bought me a star that was discovered on the day I was born. It’s literally my star, if all the Greek mythology is true then this one was literally made... for me.

Staring back up at the star above me, I swear to fuck I try to stop it but I can feel how fucking moist my eyes are getting. Don’t cry, do not fucking cry.

I focus my attention around it, trying to stop any tears from wiggling themselves free of my lids and become entranced by not my star, but the one that sits slightly behind it. This one is older, you can see that but it's just as fucking beautiful. Just sitting there, unassuming and allowing the other one to glow brightly whilst protecting it from being lost completely.

It’s him. It’s me and him... we’re written in the stars.

Josh’s thumb comes out to swipe over my cheek bone and I realise for the first time that I couldn’t actually keep it in, a single tear sprung free despite all my fucking protests. I’m grateful that he doesn’t say anything, if I tried to talk right now I know I wouldn’t be able to stop the rest following it.

Instead, I do something I’ve never done before. Lowering the certificate to the floor, I move forward silently, without a single word from him also until I have my arms and legs wrapped around him whilst sitting firmly in his lap. I’m really shit at being vulnerable, but somehow with him it doesn't seem so fucking scary.

Burying my face into the crook of his neck, I plan to stay until I know I can get a grip on myself. He does the same thing to me, wrapping his arms around my waist and running his hands up and down my back soothingly before beginning to leave affectionate, wall shattering kisses on the side of my neck.

“Miles... I need you to know, whatever does or doesn't happen between us, you are really fucking special to me... This is just my way to show you that.” He whispers gently between kisses.

I nod but don’t respond, keeping my head concealed against him until the time comes that I know I won’t make a bigger fool out of myself than I already have. Can he even truly comprehend what this means to me? Will he ever realise that he’s just given me something so meaningful that he’s already sealed our fate?

We sit there for so long, yet neither of us made any attempts to disconnect. Both of us know that the moment we do, this will all be over. I won’t be the one to end this night. For once in my life I can say that I have something that is absolutely, unequivocally, inexplicably and irreparably... Perfect.

Him.

The world eventually begins to fade to black, the star above us the only light as my body grows heavy under the weight of absolute exhaustion. At some point the security guard I saw talking to Josh earlier comes to find us, his hand over his eyes and waving his flashlight for attention out of fear of what he might see as he informs Josh that it’s nearly time for him to swap shifts.

I don’t really remember removing my body from Josh's, or leaving the Space Centre, the memory of tonight is so strong I don’t think I’ll ever truly leave this place. I know that my hand never left his at any point, that never in my life have I ever felt safer or more complete, and that by the time Josh was stirring me from my deep slumber we were sitting at the red lights in the centre of Westbrooke with the sun threatening to rise before us.

“Miles... I have no fucking idea where Eli lives, is it Southside or north?”

I turned in my seat, keeping my hand locked with his as I hold it to my chest.

“I don’t want to go to Eli’s...” I mumble in my semi conscious state.

Josh chuckles, glancing from the red light before us down to the clock and then back to me.

“So, home then? Because it’s like four in the morning...” I shake my head again, only causing Josh to laugh harder at the fact I can hardly keep my eyes open, whilst he takes our conjoined hands from my chest to his lips and kisses the back of my palm. It feels unnaturally good when he does that. “Then where do you want me to take you Miles?”

There’s only one place on earth that I want to spend tonight.

The light before as changes to green, but even the only other car on the road at this time in the morning, honking his brains out at us, wouldn’t make Josh move as I pull his lips to mine in a sleep hazed kiss. I just need him to know I mean it when I say it...

“Yours. Take me to yours.”

Don't forget to vote and comment beauts 🥰❤📖