THE STARS ARE BEAUTIFUL - WATTYS AWARD NEW ADULT WINNER 2019

Callum | 27

IS IT POSSIBLE TO TAKE all of the words someone once told you and still find them living where that person no longer exists? Barefoot in Red Pine, Georgia, I searched for a girl with long blonde hair. I walked along the train tracks she swore she rode as a child. My palms ghosted over wildflowers that grew around my new, too-quiet, too-loud house. I listened for her in the night. I searched the stars. After a while, I thought goodbye had finally made a home inside my chest, that the pain had replaced my longing and this was what happened when you lost someone you loved, but the truth was agony and love are companions. It's what lets you know that love was real. It's what lets you know love still exists—no matter the cost, no matter the divide. There are some connections that can't be severed by time.

***

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Those were the words that greeted me on the other end of the line. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. No one can help. Sorry. No one can transfer you to her room. Sorry. No one has seen her. Sorry. Dr. Brighton won't allow anyone to... Yeah. Sorry.

***

I really didn't give a damn what color the couch was. I followed Marta around a furniture store for nearly two hours, bouncing on this couch, that couch. Suede or leather, dear? I didn't give a wild fuck. Let it be made out of lead and upholstered in poison oak. I was trapped by the motto, "Give me liberty or give me death!" That's how I felt, trying to do something as mundane as picking out a couch amidst heartache.

"I think this nice suede couch with a few throw pillows would be perfect." She smiled, so I smiled. "What about dishes? Do you have plates? If you entertain, you will need at least eight settings, as a start."

"Marta." I tried not to groan. "I am pulling seventy-, sometimes eighty-hour work weeks. Do you think I have time for tea parties?"

"Not tea parties. Heavens no, darling." Her eyes mocked me. "But perhaps when the sweet girl you love comes to live with you, she'd like to have a place to sit and dishes to cook you some food and serve that food to you with? Yes? Maybe?"

It only made the pain worse. I wanted it to be unbearable, to make it more real. The pain was all I had left. Liberty or death. No one was freeing me of my agony is this furniture store. Not even myself. I said her name. "Everly Anne won't be cooking for me. I sincerely doubt she has ever even been near a stove in her life. She couldn't even play grill assistant in Montauk."

Marta bit her lip and turned on her heel.

"What?" I demanded.

She shrugged and tried to go back to picking out a couch. I stepped in front of her. "What?"

"I happen to know," she said nonchalantly, "that Everly is a very good cook. Matter of fact, she is an excellent biscuit maker. Super fluffy."

She laughed at my expression, but I was not amused. "What the fuck do you mean she makes good biscuits? How in the ever loving Christ would you know that about my girlfriend?"

"Callum" she warned, "that mouth of yours."

"I'm tired." I sat on the couch she wanted me to buy. "And I'm extra-cranky."

"Clearly." She sat beside me. "And... miss Everly?"

"No, I don't miss Everly," I groaned. "I'm dying a slow and painful death without Everly."

Quietly she replied, "She isn't faring much better."

I glanced over at her. "How do you know?"

"You asked me to be a mother to her." She shrugged. "A good mother knows these things about her daughter."