A Star Named Amber

The stars above me shine as if they don’t do it often. They flicker from my porch chair and maybe they’re too tired to shoot across this dark expanse we call the sky. I know I would be if expected to sit up there glistening every night for people I won’t ever meet. Even if the same people watch me, none of them would feel familiar and it wouldn’t matter if they thought about me or not. Maybe if they wanted to transport themselves by my side telepathically, I’d be endlessly grateful but then they’d grow lonely and annoyed with the same plaguing questions. I don’t envy the stars anymore the way I did as a kid and shift away from them to sleep. 

Today is Saturday and thankfully, Saturdays don’t bring the promise of a draining commute for me. For once, I can have my French roast in peace with the exception of the neighbors’ kookaburra laughter that has me sandwiched between upstairs and downstairs apartments. Can they watch those sitcoms at a lower volume? I can’t make my French roast much less remember where the cups are with a laugh track going off every ten seconds after a painful “joke”. I wonder if I would blare a film or music or something of that nature in the same position and after twenty seconds of contemplation, I don’t imagine being that annoying in my opinion. 

Amber is my neighbor in the apartment complex across the street and my ex-girlfriend. She is a natural brunette with a penchant for checking people’s watches for the time and dancing to no music. She dyes her hair once at a random point in the year and calls me to ask if she can borrow plant food. Amber is a half-inch taller than me and also calls me to ask if I’ve grown a half-inch taller. She writes letters to love interests on behalf of the people who are interested in them for a living and slips them through her door’s mail slot in exchange for cash in an envelope. 

Amber thinks I’m that annoying or that I can be. 

I sip my coffee while I stare at the ceiling in the kitchen and my phone rings. Not the cell, the cordless house phone that seldom gets used. Only Amber calls that line. I can stroll in and answer cooler than I am or drag my feet and be snippy. If she’s calling to be snarky, I can drag my feet and be snippy but if it’s something reasonable, I can stroll in and play cool. 

What the hell, let’s stroll in and play cool. 

I stroll in with this awkward forced limp to my walk and answer the phone as coolly as possible.

“Hello, Amber”, I respond, dragging out her name. 

“You’re such a weirdo”, she chuckles. “I was gonna ask for plant food or the time but I want you to come over and talk for a change.”

Everything she says starts to kind of warp and mesh together into an unintelligible mass. I don’t know what would possess Amber to “want” a conversation from me but here it is plain as day. The last time we “talked for a change”, it was to break up with me and relocate to the apartment across the street though there was never any explanation of why. Maybe that’s what she wants to talk about and if that’s the case, all my “cool” is leaking from my body as sweat. I can stroll over there but she’d see the sweat pouring down my face as a reminder of how much I suck at pretending. 

“Hey, you okay over there?”, Amber says, snapping her fingers repeatedly. 

“Yeah, I’m plenty fine”, I say hurriedly. 

I hang up without a thought and rush upstairs to throw on some jeans. I have jeans with holes, faded jeans, jeans that are rolled at the ankles, and I opt for the jeans that are rolled at the ankles. Last time I was at Amber’s place, the floor was covered in red wine she said was spilled by her tabby but I didn’t see or hear a cat anywhere. I imagine she was too embarrassed to admit her clumsiness so I let her have that lie and changed the subject. Amber never openly thanked me for helping her save face although, for the remainder of that week, she didn’t call for anything but plant food. 

If that was her apology, I’ll take more of that in bulk. 

The walk to Amber's apartment complex is brisk due to nerves and the boiling heat underneath my bare feet on the asphalt. Thankfully, she lives on the first floor and when I knock, the door squeaks open to a tabby cat perched on her coffee table. When I shut and lock the door, Amber frantically checks my watch and exhales. Her place has a few large pieces of furniture, one massive television mounted on the wall and not much else which gives one the idea she is as minimal as this space. The way Amber dances me a coffee to imaginary music and invites me to sit in her enormous couch and I mean in because it pretty much swallows whoever sits on it reveals how big her actions are. 

“You didn’t dye your hair yet”, I say between a brief sip of coffee and a light coughing fit.

“And this isn't French roast.”

Amber stares a few seconds at my feet and plops in a beanbag on the opposite side of the coffee table. 

“The heat couldn't have been kind to your feet”, she grins. 

“I'm just grateful I didn't have shoes for you to shake off and set by the door.” 

Amber watches me half-eaten by the couch and doesn't lose her grin. The tabby leaps into her lap and purrs as she strokes it without breaking eye contact. I'm awaiting this “conversation” she wants with me and doesn't even acknowledge the fact that, despite how bold I am, I'm scared. Maybe she knows I was sweating before exposing myself to the heat and that I forgot to wear shoes or that she spilled half the coffee brought to me from dancing. I break eye contact to stare at the obvious brown puddles on the ground yet I feel her stare at me as if to say “this is how you make a poker face”. 

“Amber, I’m scared of what you’re gonna tell me”, I start. “And I feel I know what you’re gonna tell me.” 

I stumble out of the couch’s mouth to find something to clean the mess. I watch Amber’s hand extend towards a paper towel roll in the kitchen. On my way to the kitchen, the tabby meows, and I wonder whether or not it’s been there the whole time but it was shy. Maybe, in a way, the tabby and I are kindred spirits from the way it ran to Amber to the way it probably hid when she spilled red wine the last time. The tabby cat could have been the reason she spilled the coffee but it was at the door which means it’s clearly her dancing. As I wipe the scattered splotches of coffee, I wonder if she blames the tabby for clumsiness the way she blames me for something I don’t know about yet. 

“I broke up with you because I didn’t want to fit you into a life that couldn’t fit us both”, Amber sighs. 

I drag the brief walk to toss the wet paper towel and plop on her sturdy couch. Amber releases the tabby cat and it scurries off into her bedroom. She crosses her legs as her eyes dart from the furniture to the television and everywhere else before they settle on mine. She mutters a few unclear things to eat up the silence and then switches on actual music from a record player. Once the needle that hits the record plays, Amber extends her hand to me and I don’t hesitate out of curiosity. 

I instantly recognize the song as “Last Dance with Polly”. It’s a slow song from the 60s and while we slow dance, I sigh against her shoulder. The tabby returns to purr and circle around us with each strum of the acoustic guitar, each shared and careful step. Amber smiles absentmindedly and bends to pet behind the tabby’s neck. We continue to slow dance and I keep my head pressed on her shoulder as she runs her fingers across my face.   

“I don’t know what you mean by what you said, Amber”, I finally respond. 

Her admission can mean a number of things since it’s vague. For one, it can mean she didn’t see us being endgame and I understand because, after a while, I had my reservations too. It can mean she didn’t feel grown enough to literally house the idea of us yet. It can mean Amber had space in her life for herself and no one else. She exhales and with how much air she takes in, I have a feeling the answer is coming. 

“I mean I felt it was time to give us space we never had from one another”, Amber says with a sad smile. 

I catch a tear that tumbles down her face and she catches one that tumbles down mine. She’s right. We spent every bit of daylight together cooking, cleaning, and more. Maybe everything I did over some time grew annoying and she blossomed into someone I slowly couldn’t stand as much. Maybe now, Amber’s seeing someone who isn’t a pain anymore and I shouldn’t be concerned with clumsiness or burned bare feet or anything insignificant like that. 

Amber and I loosen our embrace as she stops the record and saunters back over. The tabby meows and she disappears to feed it. Not once does she tell me the tabby’s name while I’m there nor does she ask for plant food. I cover my watch though and while the tabby is eating some wet fish mixture, Amber pries my fingers off to check the time. She pats my hand and jogs to grab the mug of coffee as if the entire conversation didn’t happen. 

“Your coffee’s cold by now”, she giggles. 

Amber drinks the rest of it in one gulp and invites me out the door. 

“You want your plant food, don’t you?”, I grin. 

She nods and the tabby scurries to lick my foot before jogging back to its bowl. 

I jog back to my apartment across a less scorching street and into my space where stale jokes and laugh tracks seep through the ceiling and walls. I dump the cold coffee here into the sink, set the mug on the counter, and stare outside into the sky. Amber and I used to come here and gaze at nothing in particular while we waited for the oncoming night. We retired to my room and claimed constellations for each other as if the universe didn’t mind. While I scoop a bag of plant food for Amber in a paper bag, I wonder if she kept the constellations or released them a long time ago. 

This time, I slip on sandals and jog to Amber’s door. When she opens the door, she’s dancing to an invisible rhythm again and the tabby licks my feet. She snatches the plant food from me, caresses my face, and closes the door. I didn’t expect fanfare but maybe after our slow dance-and-cry session, I figured things might shift a little. The door opens back up and Amber checks my watch before locking the door again. The only thing that shifted between us was a slow song but that was more around us than anything. 

I retire to my room when I’m home and I slide the sandals off. Amber bought them for me a month before she broke things off. I wonder if it was a gesture to soften the blow of the inevitable end. I appreciated them without a word which made her feel I hated them and maybe my verbal gratitude could have saved us. Then again, when a relationship draws to a close, tying the parties involved with duct tape doesn’t keep a crumbling situation together. I should know because my apologies came profusely and constantly but once Amber was out the door, she didn’t return. 

Eventually, it’s night and I’m on my porch as the stars begin to twinkle. They’re shining their hardest for everyone who notices or doesn’t and I don’t. I stare at Amber’s door until I feel it’s hopeless clinging to dead time. I mean, it’s not dead since the stars glisten and memories are called memories for a reason. I simply wish she surprises me with her company one of these starry nights and maybe a shooting star flies by some time to grant such a selfish request.