April 21, 1980

The stars looked smaller than he remembered.
Duller, too — like someone had dimmed them when he wasn’t looking.

Noah sat alone, knees pulled to his chest, perched on the crumbling edge of the hill they used to call their galaxy. The wind rolled in off the trees, brushing across his knuckles like a breath. The grass was damp beneath him. It hadn’t rained, but it smelled like it might — like wet stone and cedar and something old.

He hadn’t been up here in months. Maybe a year.
He hadn’t let himself.

Below, the town blinked in soft orange and gold — porch lights glowing like lazy fireflies, the streetlamp near the post office flickering like it always had. A car passed once, headlights carving a path through the dark, then gone.

Everything else was just shadows and silence.

Until footsteps.

Steady ones.
Boots on rock.

Noah didn’t turn around, but he felt them — the rhythm of them, slow and casual, like whoever it was had always known he’d be here. A moment later, a hand settled gently on his head. Not rough. Not playful. Just... there — like it had always belonged.

Noah didn’t look up right away.
He didn’t need to.

“Hey,” Caleb said, voice low and almost sleepy.

The familiar scent of leather, pine, and faint cigarette smoke curled around Noah like a memory.

He turned.

Caleb stood in his usual worn-out denim jacket, zipped halfway up. His breath fogged faintly in the cold. And there, just beneath his left eye, was a bruise — purple blooming into red, raw and ugly at the center. Faint swelling at the cheekbone.

Noah stared at it.
Too long.

Caleb’s hand slipped from his hair.

“I hit my face,” Caleb said flatly.

Noah blinked once. His voice, when it came, was quiet — not cold, but careful. “What happened?”

Caleb rubbed the back of his neck, eyes drifting somewhere over Noah’s shoulder. “The fence. You know the one by the old trail?” He gave a soft, humorless chuckle. “Slipped on the rocks.”

Noah’s expression didn’t change. His arms stayed wrapped tight around his knees, and his eyes stayed steady on Caleb’s. For a second, it looked like he might say something more. Press him, maybe. But instead, he just nodded.

“Right.”

A pause.

The wind stirred again, brushing past them like it wanted to carry their words away.

Caleb looked down. “It’s not a big deal.”

Noah hummed, noncommittal. “Doesn’t look small.”

That made Caleb smile — barely. “Still dramatic, huh?”

Noah didn’t answer. He just shifted over slightly, making room for Caleb to sit beside him.

Caleb took the space without a word.

For a while, neither of them spoke. Just two silhouettes on the edge of a hill, sitting in a place that had held all their childhoods. Where the sky once felt like theirs, full of possibilities. Now, it only watches.

Noah kept his eyes on the stars. Caleb kept his hands in his jacket pockets. And neither of them said what they really wanted to.

The air between them was filled with silence and almost-words.

The stars flickered above them — cold, old, indifferent.

Noah looked up again. “They feel further away,” he murmured.

Caleb squinted. “What does?”

“The stars.”

Caleb followed his gaze, leaning back on his elbows. “Yeah,” he said after a while. “But maybe that’s just us getting taller.”

Noah smiled, almost.

They used to lie on this hill at ten years old, flashlight between them, naming constellations wrong on purpose and swearing they’d build a spaceship together. It used to feel like everything was waiting for them. The stars. The world. Each other.

Now, it just felt like they were always waiting on everything else.

Noah glanced at the bruise again. It hadn’t moved. It hadn’t softened.

He wanted to reach out — to press a thumb gently to Caleb’s cheek, not to fix it, but to say I see it. I see you.
But his hands stayed in his jacket.

“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly.

Caleb looked over. “For what?”

Noah didn’t answer.
Maybe he didn’t know.

A long silence stretched between them. The kind that could only exist between people who knew each other too well.

Then Caleb spoke. “I didn’t think you’d be here.”

“I wasn’t going to be,” Noah said. “But I couldn’t sleep.”

Caleb nodded. “Me neither.”

And that was that.

They stayed a while longer. Watching the stars, even though they looked small and cold.
Not touching. Not asking.
Both of them pretending they didn’t notice how the space between them had changed.

The bruise never came up again that night.
Neither did the truth.