Nothing Loves You
“… Hi” he said sheepishly. The girl raised her head and took a quick glance at him before lying back down.
“Hello.” she greeted, her voice going up into the night sky. He continued to look at this strange girl lying on the top of the hill in the park by his house. He was sure that he’d never see her before; he surely would’ve remembered a face like that. He stood there awkwardly, not knowing if he should say something more or just continue on his way. He wrestled with the idea in his mind, struggling to find a proper response.
“You can join me if you want.” the girls invite echoing through the trees.
“Uh, yeah sure.” he made his way to join her side. Together they lay there, this perfect silence surrounding them.
“What are you looking at?”
“The stars, for now.”
“Cool.” He didn’t really talk to girls; actually he never talked to girls. All the jumbled up thoughts in his head made it almost impossible to form a coherent thought.
“I like looking into infinity.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” she shrugged. “People always seem to forget them, they know the sky is beautiful, but they overlook the little things that make it that way, the clouds, the moon, the stars.”
“So you like the little things?”
“Yeah, I guess I do.” He looked at the sky and tried to see the little things, and in a way he did see how on their own, they were just pretty things and together they made something remarkable, but he didn’t think he saw the sky the way she did. He had never seen someone relish in the night the way she did. He spent quite a while just looking at her as she looked into space. In that first night he memorized the profile of her face: the little dip in her nose, the mounds of her lips and the length of her eyelashes. If you asked him, on that first night, he wouldn’t have been able to tell you her name, her age or her story. The only thing he was certain of was the color of her long blonde hair, the look of absolute wonder in her eyes as she watched the stars shine and that he would spend his whole life trying to get her to look at him like that.
“So what’s your deal?” she asked on the eighth night.
“My deal?” He was slowly becoming more and more comfortable with her. At first, he wasn’t sure if he was welcome to come again or if she would even be there, but when they both showed up night after night that fear went away. He wasn’t sure if any of his actions were the right ones until the fifth night, when she grabbed his hand and did not let go. “Yeah, what brings you hear every night?”
“Maybe if you actually listened to me.” he mumbled.
“What was that?” His father asked.
“Nothing.”
“It’s always nothing.” he sighed. “Can you even form a proper sentence? You say absolute squat when I talk to you about your no good friends and your abysmal grades. Don’t you have anything to say to defend yourself? Grow a pair boy, you’ll never be cut out for the real world.”
“May I be excused?” he asks after a lengthy, unnerving silence.
“Go ahead.” his father dismisses him with a wave of his hand. He snatches his jacket and flees into the night. He loved clearing his head when all was dark, you never know what you’ll find when the sun goes down.
“Nothing at all.” he responded. “I mean no reason.”
“You say that a lot.” she observed, not even bothering to look him in the face.
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s like your answer for everything.”
“Oh, well…” he could feel the blood rushing to his cheeks.
“It’s not a bad thing.” She breathes. “It just adds to your mystery.”
“My mystery?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.” he could sense the smile on her lips as she said this. “What about you?” he asked.
“What about me?”
“What’s your deal?”
“I just like looking at the sky.” she shrugged.
“That’s a lie. You’re more of a mystery than me, I don’t even know your name.”
“What’s yours?” she countered.
“You can call me Z if you want. Everyone does.”
“Names aren’t important Z.” she tucked her hands under her head. “They only lead to disappointment.”
“Disappointment?” His brow furrowing in confusion. “All that from a name?”
“A name leads to a connection, which leads to a relationship, which leads to expectations. And when the other person doesn’t fulfill those expectations, that’s when you’re left disappointed.”
“Yeah,” he paused, realizing the truth in this statement “But I can’t go around calling you nothing.”
“Ah, but that’s exactly what you should call me.”
“Huh?”
“Call me Nothing. That way whenever you say it, you’re reminded of me. When you say ‘its Nothing’ say it like I am completely at fault and you are blameless, say ‘nothing’ like you have no expectations of the other person or of me.”
On the fifteenth day they stayed up till the sun was peeking over the trees and the morning chill woke him up so that he felt no fatigue. On the twentieth day he almost fell asleep, until she woke him up by rolling him down the hill. On the twenty-fifth day she wasn’t there when he walked by. He sat atop the hill for an hour waiting for her figure to emerge from the trees, but no one came. He waited another fifteen minutes and again when he didn’t see her familiar face, he got worried. He stood up, brushed himself off and went out in search of this girl who asked he call her Nothing, but soon became his everything. He came back to their spot with no luck in finding her. Discouraged, he was going to go straight home, until he heard the words “You’re late.” being uttered from that oh so familiar voice. Smiling he went to meet his everything and was about to say something, until he noticed the sadness in her eyes. She let him lie down next to her and without hesitation she grabbed his hand and did not let go, but those were the only words spoken that night.
On the thirtieth day she asked him to do something for her. At first, he was reluctant to accept as he was worried that she might want him to do something that would test his strength or speed or some other ‘manly’ quality, and to be frank, he didn’t think he had many of those. Then he saw the hope in her gaze and realized that maybe, just maybe, she had grown to have expectations of him and he was not one to disappoint.
“What is it?” he asked.
“You have to promise you’ll do it first.”
“Why?”
“I don’t do why’s.” she stated.
“You did the first night.” He remembered it clear as day; how could he forget the moment when everything changed.
“Huh?”
“You answered a why on that first night,” he repeated, nestling himself back into the grass.
“When?”
“When I asked you why you liked looking into infinity.”
“And I said something about the stars and the moon and the clouds.” She cuddled into his chest, using it as a pillow as she continued to look up into the dark. He wondered how someone could look at the same thing night after night and not get bored. How could she still be so amazed by the same sky? And how could he feel so strongly for her without even knowing her real name.
“You did answer a why then.” he smiled at the warmth of hers touching his, making him feel as though he was on fire.
“Just for you.” she yawned.
“Just for me.”
“Promise you’ll do it?” she asked.
‘Promise. What is it?”
“I’m gonna start changing.” She started. “Like, in the way I look and stuff.”
“Okay.” he was still unsure of what she wanted.
“I just need you to, not say anything about it. Like if you notice something different or off, just don’t mention it. Can you do that for me Z?” she brought her head up to meet his, and again he saw the glimmer of hope in her eyes. He did not know her life outside of these nights, nor did he want to. All he knew was that here, in these moments, she needed something from him. He did not know why and he didn’t care to. He trusted her reason, even if he had not heard it spoken aloud.
“For you Nothing, anything.”
During the day, he would walk around with his head hung low and his hands in his pockets. Everyone would push past him, mumbling their apologies as they sped on by. Some days he liked to join them in the every day rush to get to class, or work, or wherever they were supposed to be; while other days, he liked to stand still. He would take a second and pause, and watch the world move around him while he stayed fixed in place. It was in those moments, those little breaks from the real world, that he would imagine her. What she was like in the daytime, how she looked, how she dressed, how she interacted with others. He would imagine this whole life for her where she had friends and a nice family and a boy who loved her unconditionally and a sad smile would appear on his lips. Even though he did not wish to know her life outside of their nights, she was everything he thought about and he was almost certain that it wasn’t the same for her.
“Tell me a story,” he asked on the forty-fifth night.
“What kind of story?” They had done this enough times to know that on nights like this, where the temperature was just a degree below freezing and the wind made the trees move in an articulate dance, they needed more than just the grass beneath their heads and light jackets to keep them warm. So together they lay, on a blanket from his childhood with a flashlight from his days of being scared of the dark, eating food from her fridge that he had no idea what the name was, but liked anyway.
“Any kind.” he mumbled, it was close to morning now; he could feel it in his eyes, the way they drooped with fatigue and the way his voice became hoarse. The time was ending on this night.
“Let me see.” she lifted her head using her hand and he couldn’t help but notice how her hair no longer fell onto his chest. All that remained was a short pixie do’ but he wasn’t sure if it was that look that made her features look all the more striking or if her sunken eyes and hollow cheeks made it that way. “Once upon a time…”
“Ugh, no.” he grumbled. “Not ‘Once upon a time’ don’t tell me a fairytale.”
“Alright, alright.” she shushed. “I’ll start over. In a yellow brick house, a little ways down the road from a ravine, there lived a little girl. She had long blonde hair and bright green eyes and all she wanted in this world was to see the stars.”
“I like that.” he whispered.
“Don’t interrupt.” she scolded. “What no one noticed about this perfect little house, the one thing that everyone seemed to overlook, was the fact that there were no windows. This little girl who wanted so desperately to see the stars, had no way to glimpse at their beauty. On the girl’s seventeenth birthday, her parents granted her one wish: to be able to spend the night looking at the sky. Now this had never happened before because her parents new of her condition and liked to keep her safe. Hence, no windows. They believed they were doing the best for their child and their duty was to protect her from all harm. But on her seventeenth birthday she begged and pleaded and bribed for her one and only shot and reluctantly they agreed. That night, she wandered around looking for the perfect spot to do her gazing. She searched high and low and finally stumbled upon a nice hill isolated by trees. She looked up into that beautiful sky for what seemed like hours, until she was disturbed by a boy who said ‘hi’.”
“A boy?” he smiled.
“Yes a boy,” she laughed. “She invited him to join her and she realized that she like it a whole lot more to be gazing with someone else by her side. And so, night after night she would sneak past her parents bedroom door and make her way to the isolated hill so she could be joined by that beautiful boy, so they could look up at the stars.”
“What was the girl’s condition?” his curiosity getting the better of him.
“You’re tired,” she whispered, stroking his hair. “I’ll finish it another time.”
“I’m not.” he lied; he could barely keep his eyes open. “Did the girl get caught? What about her and the boy?” his words were slowly starting to slur together.
“Shh,” she shushed, “another time.”
He woke up to the sounds of birds chirping around him. The morning sun beating down on his head. He shifted around trying to get back into his deep slumber, but stopped when he noticed no one lying next to him. He jolted up and look to his left, but no one was there. He searched around to see where she had gone but like always, there was no trace. Finally out of his sleepy haze he realized that it was morning and at the very least he would be in some very deep shit. He sprang up, only to be stopped by the sound of rustling in his pocket. After folding up the blanket he made his way home whilst pulling out this bent envelope. “To: Z” the cover said. Curiously he opened it and pulled out a letter.
Z,
We live in a world of broken promises and what if’s and have’s and have not’s. This is a place of great destruction, where people don’t think of others and getting ahead is their sole priority. But somehow, with your help, I saw the beauty in it. I saw how the stars shine so bright and how looking into infinity made everything seem so small and all my worries so useless. So thank you Z, for spending those nights with me, for not asking why’s and for just being there.
I know I promised another time, but sadly there won’t be. There are no words that can justify my abrupt departure and there are no words to show my gratitude towards you. I know you may feel like you are owed an explanation and you’re probably right. But no amount of practiced speeches in my head or rehearsed metaphors could possible make you understand, so I’m leaving it as it is.
Being with you, taught me a lot of things. One of them being we live in a world of ‘I wish’s’. I wish I had more money, I wish I had a better house, I wish I had a nicer car; I wish the nights were longer, I wish the stars shined brighter, I wish I had more time. You’ll be feeling that Z, that feeling that if only you had more time you could’ve said all the things you wanted to or done the things that you were too scared to do. I know you’ll be feeling this because I will be feeling it too.
If you are to remember anything about me, remember this: I love you, with all that I can, in the best way I know how. Remember me Z, and most of all, remember I love you.
Good-bye