Stealing Stars

“Hey.” He says.

This time he gets through to my head and I can’t take it anymore. I grab his free hand and pull him off the couch and lead him out the front door to the spot on the porch where all the people make out.

“Can I kiss you?” It is kind of late to be asking him this question but I don’t care and he didn’t try to stop me while I pulled him out the door.

“Yes.” He says quickly and then we’re making out. It isn’t sweet and soft but fast and desperate. I need him near me and considering how much I’ve had to drink and what he’s had we both can assume that it is the alcohol doing the decision making.

I don’t know how long we are making out for, nor do I care. But I pull away when I hear my name being called. Isabel Stark is laughing while Blake just looks really weird. Blake and Isabel are tangled in a corner by the side stair of her wooded porch. I watch as Blake untangles himself from Isabel and walks over to me. I get out of Caleb’s embrace and stand there dumbly.

Somehow Blake knows that I need to get out of here before I do. “C’mon Chan.” He takes me by the wrist and drags me gracefully, well as graceful as someone can drag someone, down the porch and to his car.

Isabel is yelling the entire time but neither of us turn around and instead Blake pulls me faster. We get to his Jeep and he opens the passenger door and picks me up and sits me carefully on the seat like I’m some sort of breakable object. He closes the door and runs around to the other side and begins to drive.

As we reach the intersection about three minutes from Isabel’s I start cry, no not cry, bawl. I’m bawling in the passenger seat of Blake’s Jeep and I just can’t stop.

“It’s okay Chan.” He says while not taking his eyes off the road until we stop at a light. “We’re going to get some coffee and then we’ll head home, okay?” he sounds worried like he’s talking to someone that will die if he says anything wrong. Or a three year old.

“Okay.” I croak between sobs.

I can see the ground clearly, there is only one ground not a mixture of two different ones anymore. Blake and I are sitting on the hood of his Jeep in a parking lot of an old diner that hardly anyone goes to any more. We are drinking coffee. Not the sweet, yummy stuff from Starbucks that costs four dollars but the hard core, straight, black coffee that you down in a hurry after you buy it for ninety-five cents before going to work.

I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t think he expects me to say anything but I feel as if I should. “Thank you.” I say as I turn to him.

His blue eyes look black in the dark but he is still my Blake, the one that no one but me sees. “No problem.”

We sit in an awkward silence for a few minutes before I start to talk, “What time is it?”

Blake pulls out his cell phone, “twelve fifteen on the dot.”

“Can we stay out until curfew?” My voice is quiet, almost pleading. I’m very disappointed in myself.

“Yeah, we can stay until one forty-five then we can head home.”

I nod my head while the florescent neon signs from the diner in the background light up my silhouette.