19 | The Stars Never Rise

THE STARDUST DINER sat solitary on the side of an uneven road, surrounded only by dark stretches of trees and the even darker, more sinister secrets of the town, most of which crawled their way through its doors in the form of whispers between its patrons. It also happened to serve some of the best food in Woods Crossing, which was why Jen ended up there with her parents on a Saturday morning.

It was Mom's birthday and she wanted the three of them to have breakfast together, and Jen couldn't exactly say no to that. But aside from the hour-long drive to get here, she really had little complaint about this arrangement—Stardust's food was the only food in town good enough for her to miss when she was gone.

That, and she'd already been in a good mood this week. She and Robert were finally acting like normal friends again, which actually surprised her a bit. She would have thought that basically saying, hey, let's put making out down on the calendar for two months from now would make everything immensely uncomfortable in the meantime, but it turned out that this awkward waiting around for each other was still relieving in comparison to trying to convince themselves that they should never be together at all.

They were now exchanging letters again and quick, lighthearted snippets of conversation when he passed the front desk coming into work each morning. Jen loved reading his thoughts, his likes and dislikes, the things he found interesting versus dull. She took great pleasure in being invited back into this corner of his mind, and though any expressions of his feelings for her were noticeably absent from his letters, she understood why giving themselves the permission to say anything and everything would be too dangerous. She knew now not to open that Pandora's box, the same way she knew not to let herself be alone in a room with him. Their little mishap had taught her that the feeling of kissing him wasn't worth the panic of being discovered. What made it such a paralyzing kind of fear, she'd later realized, was that it came so abruptly, striking out of nowhere like a venomous snake. Even so, though she swore to herself she wouldn't do it again, she couldn't get herself to regret that one moment of indulgence, those long seconds where the air felt hotter than it was and the danger was still fun and if she'd just tilted her cheek, his lips would have been sliding along her jaw–

"Are you okay?"

Jen was so far lost in her not very family-friendly thoughts that she nearly jumped at the sound of her father's voice. "Of course," she said quickly, reaching for her water cup. "Just thinking about what I want to order, that's all."

It wasn't entirely a lie. All of the options sounded good, possibly just because every last thing in the Stardust diner, including the menu items, was space-themed. She was torn between the Full Moon, a vanilla yogurt bowl with granola and banana slices placed on top to mimic the appearance of craters, and the Milky Way Waffles, which were topped with swirls of strawberry and blueberry syrup.

The waitress arrived to take drink orders, so Jen requested a coffee and then deliberately turned her attention back to her mother before she could get sidetracked again. Mom and Dad were a bit of an odd pair, he with his stern and steady demeanor and she as beautiful yet as fragile as a flower, but she had a placid smile on her lips now, and with his arm resting on the back of the booth behind her, they almost felt like a normal family. It was the moments like these that made Jen grateful that her mother wasn't aware of how badly she'd hurt them.

Don't think about that, she scolded herself. Not today.

"How's work?" Mom asked, tucking a strand behind her ear in a fashion that reminded Jen of herself. "It feels like I don't hear as much about your life anymore."

The hint of sadness in her voice wasn't a very well-concealed one, and it made everything in Jen's chest tighten. She knew how much it upset Mom that she didn't remember everything there was to know about her daughter, and though she tried to thoroughly catch up with Jen each time they saw each other, the knowledge only sometimes stuck. Too often, it slipped from her grasp as soon as she'd managed to catch it, and Jen was aware that she was only exacerbating her mother's melancholy by keeping quiet about her personal life. But there wasn't much she felt like she could tell. She was scared of Mom asking too many questions.

Her eyes nervously flickered towards her dad, though she usually found little to no comfort there. He was expressionless, a marble statue.

For a moment, Jen considered what would happen if she actually said, It's okay. I work for Nora, who I don't know if you've ever met or know even exists. I've never been able to ask. Oh, and I could have gotten fired because I have the hots for my co-worker and one of my friends walked in on us alone. On the floor.

Aside from the obvious issue that she could not bring up Nora, and she most definitely could not bring her up today of all days, Jen was also legitimately concerned that her dad might run over Robert with his truck if he knew that his little girl was sneaking around with a boy she worked with.

It was with all of this in mind that she simply said, "Work is good. I really like this job."

She swallowed the nervousness that buoyed up in her lungs, knowing that Dad had disapproved of her taking a job that was only going to keep her for a few months. But Mom smiled—Jen's apparent happiness made her happy. That much had always been true.

The waitress arrived with tea for Mom and coffee for Jen, rescuing her from having to say anything else at the immediate moment. She ordered the waffles—since she drove an hour for this and her parents were paying for it, she thought she might as well indulge in a treat.

Once their server had once again departed and Jen was stirring a pinch of sugar into her coffee, Dad asked, "Are you still doing that book thing?"

He obviously meant book club, but he'd never been much of a reader. Jen inherited her love for stories from her mother. She wasn't even entirely sure that he knew how book club worked; she did know that he probably would not care to listen to her explain it. Still, he approved of it as much as he ever approved of anything she did, because in his eyes it at least meant that his daughter had some semblance of a social life. He didn't have to know anything about book club to decide that it was better for Jen than her staying holed up in her apartment by herself with said books.

"Yes."

He made a vague noise of approval, so she wasn't going to tell him that the most people who had ever shown up was five, and two of them were friends whom she already hung out with anyway. "Have you started looking for other jobs?"

Jen tensed like a tightly-coiled spring. She was already ever-aware of the clock counting down, minutes slipping away, the end of May hovering like the finish line of a race you both did and didn't want to be over. She had done a distressingly small amount of job-searching because every time she tried to start, she panicked. She didn't want to fill out applications because she didn't want to be rejected and being rejected would remind her all over again of how much of a failure she was. It was pathetic to feel like she'd found a place at St. Catherine's when Nora was Nora and everyone there knew that she wasn't there to stay, but at least she had Jude and Robert.

Jude, her dear friend, the brother she never had growing up but got to have now. Robert, the first man to have no problem with believing she was brilliant, the only person outside of her bubble to immediately think she was smart enough or interesting enough to engage in compelling discussion with him and be worth his time. He read her thoughts scrawled down on paper and considered them as if they were as valuable as his own. She had thought that he would surely think less of her once he got to know her better, once he started to see how messy and frayed she was under her patchwork exterior, and then he'd gone and blown all of her perceptions out of the water by kissing her the very same night he showed up at her door and found her crying.

Wanting him was a double-edged sword. Having him around at work made it harder to leave, and yet she could not have him in his entirety until she did.

Mom, understandably, was befuddled. "Other jobs?"

Jen resisted the urge to glare daggers at her dad – why did he have to go saying things that would make Mom feel more out of the loop than she already was? – but smoothed her face over with an obedient smile. "Yeah, this one is temporary, unfortunately. I'm covering for someone who's on maternity leave."

Mom, much less cynical than her husband, took this at face value and nodded in understanding after lifting her glass to her mauve-tinted lips for a sip of tea. "Well, I'm sure you'll find something else in no time. I believe in you."

Jen waited for a second for her dad to echo that same sentiment – to say that of course he believed in her, too – but all in the Stardust Diner was almost completely silent.

She mumbled a small thanks to her mother and looked down at the solar system coloring sheet that served as a placemat, pretending to be very interested in stirring extra cream that she did not want or need into her coffee cup. The liquid swirled violently, but before any of it could slosh out of the cup, she gingerly set her little spoon aside. A dark stain spread like blood where the metal touched the napkin. Jen watched the little spiral in her cup go round and round and round.

By the time her waffles came, she didn't have much of an appetite anymore.

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A/N:

sorry that this was another short chapter, but I hope you liked it nonetheless!