When he got home that night, Skyler didn’t spend one moment with a heart rate below 100 bpm. The whole drive home had been spent with a smile on his face, even though he got caught in a traffic standstill for twenty minutes.

He excitedly tapped the elevator railing while on the way up to his apartment, earning him a sweet yet confused glance from the older woman who got off the floor below him. Skyler practically pranced out of the elevator, as he bounded across the hall to his door.

Inside, he leaned down to yank his shoes off, setting them beside the door before slipping on a pair of slippers. Skyler tossed his phone and keys to the countertop as he washed his hands, and then pulled open his fridge to grab a yogurt. A moment as happy as this deserved a yogurt.

He had met Mr Lee for the first time in years, and that man had smiled to see him. He smiled to see Skyler.

Maybe Mr Lee had said no to going for a meal together as colleagues, but they had only just met again, and it was an inconvenient time for him. There would be other chances.

God was Skyler excited.

Wolfing down his yogurt, Skyler went to his counter and leaning against it opened up his phone. He went first to his messages with Chloe, but after typing out ‘Guess what!?!?!’ in the message bar, opted to talk to her about it later. Opening his photos app, Skyler looked at the one picture he’d taken that day. It was of the evening sun through the school’s front door, Mr Lee was walking with his back turned to the camera. The nature of the backlighting made the man look almost ethereal as a silhouette.

Tapping the little heart to add the image to his favourites, Skyler shut his phone off again as he walked over to his kettle. Some water was left inside from his morning tea, so he simply turned the heat on as he walked over to his tea cabinet to choose a beverage. Normally Skyler would only drink tea, it was the perfect beverage after all. Unlimited flavours, caffeinated and caffeine-free options, plus, tea just tasted better, but coffee… that was Mr Lee’s poison of choice.

Grabbing the instant decaf coffee powder from out of the cabinet, a product Skyler only bought for this purpose, Skyler poured one packet into a mug as well as a hefty dose of sugar. When the water was hot, he poured that in too, mixing it up before taking a sip.

It was gross. The coffee was bitter even with the sugar inside, it tasted dirty and left an odd aftertaste in his mouth. Sure that could have been due to this being cheap trash instant coffee– but Skyler had to build up his coffee tolerance so he could drink it with Mr Lee.

‘I’ll make sure to keep sugar packets by the machine I buy for our classroom’ Skyler thought, his face wincing at his second sip. ‘His taste is terrible if he loves this stuff so much,’ Skyler didn’t understand his irony then.

Funnily enough, he didn’t even watch TV like he had told Mr Lee he planned to like Mr Lee at that same moment. Rather, Skyler picked a pair of silk pyjamas from his dresser and set them on the sink counter in his bathroom as he prepared to take a shower. His whole apartment was impressive –it was two stories inside in fact– but the bathroom was the only fancy amenity that Skyler had truly become dependent on. He liked the sprawling countertop by the sink, so he could neatly arrange his products all in view. Hair items to the left, and skincare to the right. During the winter, his feet appreciated the heated floors and his body the heated towel rack. He liked the flush strength on his toilet that had never once clogged, and most of all, Skyler adored his waterfall shower head inside of his rather large shower stall.

He spent a long time under the warm embrace of his shower, thinking to himself as he stood still under the water stream. Skyler set the speaker he left in his bathroom to play an older Sia album, one of the same ones he bought a CD for. The music was nice, but some of the lyrics were difficult to discern from the mix of her accent and vocal style, but Skyler didn’t need lyrics to love the music. He tried thinking back in his mind to that day when Mr Lee was setting up his classroom. Skyler really couldn’t remember a single line of a song that had played, a single rhythm or phrase.

‘Maybe I can ask Mr Lee about it, that’s a conversation…’ Skyler talked himself through it, but in his mind whenever he asked Mr Lee, that man’s response wasn’t of warm and joyful reminiscence, rather even Mr Lee in Skyler’s imagination seemed a little weirded out. ‘I’ll find a way to work it into a conversation smoothly,’ Skyler decided, that’d be better than straight up asking about a day from six years ago. A day when Skyler had just stared at Mr Lee.

Had he even noticed back then?

‘Hopefully not’, Skyler thought. ‘I’d be a burden for him then’. And that was the last thing he wanted. Finally turning the water off, Skyler shook his head like a dog to get most of the water out from his hair before stepping out and grabbing a towel.

Looking into the mirror, Skyler felt like he could see his chest rhythmically beat alongside his heart. He reached for the second smaller towel on his rack and dried his hair, a little more before putting on his pyjamas. They were a deep blue silk with black lining, and pretty damn comfortable too.

Skyler pushed his hair back with the headband he left by the sink, and washed his face, then used his toner, retinol, and about twenty other products as well. Having ‘effortlessly flawless’ looking skin was not effortless at all.

‘I wonder if Mr Lee is into skincare? His complexion seemed even. He did have tired eyes, but it wasn’t in eye bags that you saw it, it was his eyes…’ Skyler found himself lost in thought while brushing, his back left molars intensely cleaned while the rest of his mouth waited. ‘His eyes…’

Once he spat his mouthwash into the sink, and thoroughly washed it down the drain, Skyler took his headband off and shook his hair a little more. It was mostly dry by now, part of the benefit of not-too-thick hair and a decade-long skincare reason it’d seem.

He walked to his room and plopped backwards onto his bed. Turning only his head to the side he looked at all the stars out his window. It was quite a beautiful night out, and even from the busy area in which he lived Skyler could see a good few stars, the moon too was in view, it was almost full. 

‘I wonder if he’s watching the stars right now too…’ Skyler thought to himself as he scoured the night sky for a shooting star to wish on. ‘If so, it’d be like we were watching them together.’ Skyler rolled off his bed, he pulled the neatly tucked comforter from under his mattress, before sliding beneath the blankets.

He pulled his phone from inside his pocket, and after turning down his brightness he opened his messages with Chloe;

Hey He said.

Hey, wsp? She replied quickly.

Saw Mr Lee at the school today, he gave me a tour of where our class will be. Skyler smiled just seeing the words ‘our class’ written out on his screen.

Dope. Chloe said plainly. After a few moments, she added a second message. Did you see the sky? Starry as hell tonight.

Yeah, I saw it.

You remember that one band from the 80s my dad liked, The Church? They were one group he kept a CD of in the car. Chloe asked, her dad was always the one to drive them home from school if rained too hard to walk.

Yeah, why? Skyler responded, trying to fathom in his mind why Chloe would bring them up now.

They had this one song that got famous, ‘Under The Milky Way’, you know it?

Maybe, why? Just because it’s starry out? 

No, Sia made a cover of it. You should listen to it sometime. Chloe replied, sending a string of three emojis afterwards. A star, a CD and a kissy face.

DID YOU LOOK THROUGH MY PHONE!? Skyler typed out aggressively, but after taking a deep breath, he rewrote it not in all caps before sending it.

No, dummy. You ordered your CDs on the business account for the studio. This is why you should log out from that Amazon account on your phon–

Skyler didn’t finish reading her message before he closed the app. Chloe knew just as well as Skyler why he ordered the CDs, he never told her, but Chloe was not a dumb cookie.

Setting his phone to sleep mode, Skyler looked up the song, Sia’s cover that is. After setting it onto an hour loop he put his phone down on the nightstand and turned to face the open window once more. 

‘Maybe we can watch them together someday, somewhere that we can see all the stars at night,’ Skyler hoped upon the wishing star that refused to cross the sky when he needed one. ‘Someday we’ll watch all of our stars in the sky,’