“I got a new job.”

The gentle sound of cutlery scraping against pristine plates ceases as Sam looks up from his meal at his sister, sitting across the table with knowing eyes. He rips his gaze off her nonchalant expression and inspects at his father closely for the first time in a while, searching for a hint of what he might announce.

He isn’t the young, sporadic man he once was, caught in a job that drove him to his knees and an addiction that crippled him in every facet of his lift. His warm, brown skin sags more than Sam remembers, wearing deep wrinkles like war medallions, decorating his face with hard times and years past. His meticulously combed-back hair, slick with a few drops of post-shower mist, has been peppered with faded greys. But behind his glasses, his eyes of thick hot chocolate speak of the new future he’d carved and molded out of clay. His hardened expression softens as their eyes meet.

“I was thinking of moving this summer.” Sam presses his ever-chapped lips together. “I got an opportunity to be transferred to the financial sector in Delaware – I could earn more and buy a bigger house for the grandkids to play in.”

“We’re moving for my senior year?”

His father considered him behind those horn-rimmed glasses which had sturdily stood by him even when he thought his family wouldn’t. His face betrayed not even a single concern.

“It’s for all of us. There is a really nice public high school there.”

Sam sucks in a breath of air between his gritted teeth.

“For all of us or for you?”

His iron gates of his father’s mind, which had creaked open, slams shut.

“Samuel, I-.”

“You don’t even think of what I want.”

"You know-"

"Why don't you ever ask me what I want?"

He flies to his feet, as the room quakes in fright around him and his hands clutch the tablecloth, his frail, marred nails digging into the crevices of the table.

“You don’t even know what you want!” roared his father, his body quivering with rage.

“Yes, I do.” Sam mumbles under his breath, as his sister’s eyes widen. He was the child who had always kept quiet, always knowing when to press his lips together and bear the weight of the world with solemn eyes.

“Cállate,” growls his father.

“This isn’t fair.” He crossed his arms, wrapping them around his ribs as if a shelter of flesh would stop the words from ringing within his bones.

“You’ve been acting out lately.” His father huffs, his eyes widening as his jaw clenched. “First, you get drunk and come home like a wasted idiot and then you scream about this? I’m doing this for all of us. Don’t act as if you understand what I am going through.”

He can fight against this.

He can fix this.

He knows he’s being irrational – there’s nothing here he would miss in the remote town other than a handful of friendships he’d cultivated with everyone at the café.

He would miss her.

Yet Sam finds himself succumbing to the disapproving glare of his father, whose lungs are filled with a thousand curses to vile to say and whose eyes are stained with painful disappointment.

He spins upon his heel with his family behind him, a scowl upon his lips as he angrily leaves his food untouched and scampers up the wooden stairs.

He collapses on his bed, staring at the white crosses of his window into his forested backyard.

In his mind, a thousand thoughts raced to patch up the sinking ship of his mind. What would be different there? Another year of playing the role of a perpetual new kid? Another year where he finds himself too reclusive to talk to anyone worth meeting?

But how was moving once again any different?

It was them, wasn’t it? The friendships he’d tenderly cultivated at the café, basking in the glistening dewdrops and flourishing in the fertile land he’d long left untouched, had stained his life with glimpses of colors within a monochrome existence.

It was her.

The clatter of a half-picked-at plate against his desk, covered in loose papers and books, woke him from his trance. He rolled over to see his sister silently dismiss herself from the room before reassuming his place, staring at the starlit trees.

Those bright stars always had a place, in both the cosmic order and the eager collection of astrologers. They knew what they had to do – to shine unapologetically.

If only his path was that simple.