Counting Stars

They lay back on the grassy knoll and stared silently up at the night sky. There were a few small clouds on the northern horizon, too far away to make out any real shapes in the evening dimness, but the sky was otherwise clear. They were silent for a few moments, and Jarrod began to wonder if perhaps he was doing this the wrong way. Then Lucy turned to him and smiled, and if he could not make out the clouds he did not need the sun to make out her beauty.

“This is a first for me, you know,” Lucy said casually, propping her head up with one arm to face him.

“Oh?” Jarrod asked innocently. “What about Ryan, didn’t he count?”

“He and I … we never …” Lucy looked flustered for a moment, then sighed in mock exasperation. “I meant being out here like this. Under the stars.”

“Well, I regret to admit that I may have seen a few stars before tonight. None quite as lovely as you, though,” Jarrod said cheerfully. Lucy rolled her eyes and groaned slightly, but he could see her smile grow slightly wider.

“Isn’t that what most families are supposed to do though? Sit together at night and point out constellations, out in the wilderness with only the light of a campfire playing on their skin. Silly stuff like shadow puppets and awful sing-alongs, burning marshmallows but eating them anyway because good old reliable dad forgot to pack the bread …” her voice trailed off wistfully.

“You’ve put a lot of thought into that, haven’t you?” Jarrod asked jokingly, but Lucy didn’t respond. His smile paled and he continued seriously. “Did your family never do stuff like that?”

She shook her head and waited a while before replying. “We were never that close I guess. Dad was away on work most weekends and even during the week he didn’t really spend much time with us. Mum tried, but she …”

“You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to,” Jarrod lightly assured. Lucy shrugged and continued, but turned her head to face back upwards.

“No, it’s alright. It’s not like it’s a big secret or anything. Mum was just getting too stressed out about whether Dad was cheating on her or not – he wasn’t, as far as we know – but she took to the bottle pretty heavily for a while. The cost didn’t affect our budget that much, but even once she recovered she blamed herself for all our problems. There’s only so much you can say to someone who’s constantly feeling guilty, you know?” There was an awkward silence between the two for a while. He watched her sadly, even as she ignored his gaze and continued to stare upwards at the stars.

“Well, for what it’s worth, I think those five are called the Siren’s Pentagon or something,” Jarrod offered, pointing randomly up at the stars. Lucy chuckled lightly and turned back to face him.

“You’re sweet, you know that?” she smiled.

“If you wanted to be sure we could head back to my place and …” he began suggestively, before she cut him off with a playful slap across the arm.

“Jarrod!” Lucy exclaimed.

“Sorry, sorry,” Jarrod apologised half heartedly, still grinning. Lucy tried to look cross, but was barely able to hold the expression for a second before grinning too. When they fell silent this time it felt more natural. They both looked upwards, but always keeping one eye on the other.

“Why do people count the stars, do you think?” Jarrod wondered aloud.

“To see how many there are?” Lucy replied slowly. “I’ll lock in A for five thousand dollars Eddy.”

“That’s the thing though; even here near the city we can still see, I don’t know, a lot of them,” Jarrod said, gesturing about the sky.

“Maybe you should try counting them then,” Lucy commented wryly.

“You couldn’t. We could lie here all night counting and not even really get started, let alone out in the country, and that’s not even thinking about all the stars you can’t make out from Earth. It seems so … fruitless,” Jarrod shrugged.

“Maybe that’s the point,” Lucy suggested.

“How do you mean?” Jarrod asked.

“You can never count them alone, but nobody tries to actually count them all. Well, except maybe astronomers or something, but maybe people just count them … to count,” Lucy finished a little hopelessly.

“I could count my toes too, and where it wasn’t so chilly,” Jarrod replied as a light breeze swayed the grass around them. “Although, I can think of ways to rectify that.”

“You’d finish that though, even if it might take a while with that tiny male brain of yours,” Lucy responded with an innocent smile.

“If I wanted to do something impossible I could start terraforming the beach with my bare teeth too,” Jarrod countered. Lucy sighed and mimed strangling him, but Jarrod just laughed.

“Stars are universal,” Lucy explained after a brief consideration. “Not everyone has seen the ocean, or run through a forest, or burnt marshmallow, or …”

“Or has toes,” Jarrod filled in helpfully.

“But everyone can look up at the sky and night and realise there are some things that we humans can’t achieve, because the world is a big place and despite everything we’ve done and accomplished here we are still resting outside and looking up like so many other people, at what we can’t have …” Lucy finished slightly breathlessly, and Jarrod reached over to kiss her gently on the lips.

“I know.”

And for a while the two just lay back, forgetting the world’s problems and counting stars.