1.1 | constellations of you and me ✓

30 | telescopium

FOR A WHILE, JONAH FEELS LIKE HE'S FLOATING AROUND IN THE MIDDLE OF SPACE WITH NOWHERE TO GO. Everything takes on a listless glow, and he finds himself graduating at the top of his class and smiling through the pain as his mother snaps celebration pictures. His friends, of course, do their best to distract him and drag him from party to party with concerned glances. And—

He doesn't see all of their text messages and photos (he printed them all out beforehand, anyways); he doesn't think about the way her breath stutters in her sleep every once in a while like she's dreaming of him, and he certainly doesn't remember how much she liked when he had on his usual headbands.

Jonah doesn't wear them anymore.

***

A month passes.

Then two.

He still loves her, because how could he not?

***

The internship at Carter & Company ends with the incoming summer, and Jonah's mind busies itself with minor tasks: helping his mother with grocery shopping, driving Adrian around when he gets drunk, and looking for future schools to apply to.

Within those weeks, he sees Eloise Park three times, and they're all on accident.

The first had been when he stopped by Sue's Corner for a quick meal and saw the curls he'd been so familiar with linger outside the entrance, hand stretched out as if to pull the door and enter. But when she retracted her fingers, Jonah's eyes had watered precariously as his mind flashed back to their first date. And he figures out that the hurting never stops—that it never ceases—because all he sees when he looks at her are two stars that were never destined to meet. Clinging to music, to poetry, to distractions hadn't helped to—to get over here, and Jonah had closed his eyes and begged himself to stay put. So he did.

Four weeks ago, he filed another complaint about Jayden Bradshaw (nothing was put into effect), and when he walked out of the office, she'd been sitting on an old picnic blanket on the campus lawn, smile soft but gaze so, so distant. Parker had been sprawled out next to her, and Jonah, with four textbooks in hand, felt his emotions peak before he literally had to hide behind a building to calm his composure. Because she still looked the same, and—and she shouldn't have, because both of them must've felt like they were breathing without any oxygen and simply existing but not truly living. Right? It broke him, remade him, and shattered him over and over, but... but he realized that he'd come to terms with their relationship.

Falling in love with her was a breath of fresh air: exhilarating, wild, and carefree. And maybe—just maybe—he was so blinded by it that he couldn't see her falling apart with his very own eyes. Maybe he should've noticed. Maybe he should've fucking said something.

He hates how breakups have such a negative connotation swirling around the syllables like it's toxic or shameful—hates it so much he can almost feel the bile rising in his throat. But Jonah knows that he has to be his own first before he can become someone's, and maybe it's not so terrible.

But in the middle of the night, he would still wake up feeling lonely.

I still want you.

And right now, as Jonah sees her sleeping in the library with her head tilted downwards, he feels a rush of such strong nostalgia that it punches him roughly in the stomach, heart a nervous wreck and eyes widening just a bit. Your neck will hurt tomorrow, baboya, he wants to whisper. Because Ellie looks just as beautiful as he remembers, and—and the dark circles underneath her eyes are gone; if he stares hard enough, he can sense some sort of liquid peace settled on her lash line, full of soft intentions and healing bandages.