It was Valentine’s Day. I was sixteen, and he was eighteen. It fell on a Thursday that year, and Conrad had classes until seven on Thursdays, so I knew we wouldn’t be going on a date or anything. We’d talked about hanging out on Saturday, maybe watching a movie, but neither of us mentioned Valentine’s Day. He just wasn’t a flowers and candy hearts kind of guy. No big deal. I’d never been that kind of girl either, not like Taylor was.
At school the drama club delivered roses during fourth period. People had been buying them all week during lunch. You could have them sent to whoever you wanted. Freshman year, neither of us had boyfriends, and Taylor and I secretly sent each other one. That year, her boyfriend, Davis, sent her a dozen pink ones, and he bought her a red headband she’d been eyeing at the mall. She wore the headband all day.
I was up in my room that night, doing homework, when I got a text from Conrad. It said, LOOK OUT YOUR WINDOW. I’d gone to look, thinking there might be a meteor shower that night. Conrad kept track of that kind of thing.
But what I saw was Conrad, waving at me from a plaid blanket in my front yard. I clapped my hand to my mouth and let out a shriek. I couldn’t believe it. Then I jammed my feet into my sneakers, put my puffy coat over my flannel pajamas, and ran down the stairs so fast I almost tripped. I made a running leap off the front porch and into his arms.
“I can’t believe you’re here!” I couldn’t stop hugging him.
“I came right after class. Surprised?”
“So surprised! I didn’t think you even knew it was Valentine’s Day!”
He laughed. “Come on,” he said, leading me by my shoulders over to the blanket. There was a thermos and a box of Twinkies.
“Lie down,” Conrad said, stretching out his legs on the blanket. “It’s a full moon.”
So I lay down next to him and looked up at the inky black sky and at that shining white moon, and I shivered. Not because I was cold, but because I was happy.
He wrapped the edge of the blanket around me. “Too cold?” he asked, looking concerned.
I shook my head.
Conrad unscrewed the thermos and poured liquid into the lid. He passed it to me and said, “It’s not that hot anymore, but it might still help.”
I got up on my elbows and sipped. It was cocoa. Lukewarm.
“Is it cold?” Conrad asked.
“No, it’s good,” I said.
Then we both lay down flat on our backs and stared up at the sky together. So many stars. It was freezing cold, but I didn’t care. Conrad took my hand, and he used it to point out constellations and connect the dots. He told me the stories behind Orion’s belt and Cassiopeia. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I already knew; my dad had taught me those constellations when I was a kid. I just loved listening to Conrad talk. He had the same wonder in his voice, the same reverence he always had when he talked about nature and science.
“Wanna go back in?” he asked, sometime later. He warmed my hand with his.
“I’m not going in until we see a shooting star,” I answered him.
“We might not,” he said.
I wriggled next to him happily. “It’s okay if we don’t. I just want to try.”
Smiling, he said, “Did you know that astronomers call them interplanetary dust?”
“Interplanetary dust,” I repeated, liking the feel of the words on my tongue. “Sounds like a band.”
Conrad breathed hot air on my hand, and then he put it in his coat pocket. “Yeah, it kinda does.”
“Tonight, it’s—the sky is like—” I searched for the right word to encapsulate how it made me feel, how beautiful it was. “Lying here and looking up at the stars like this, it makes me feel like I’m lying on a planet. It’s so wide. So infinite.”
“I knew you’d get it,” he said.
I smiled. His face was close to mine, and I could feel the heat from his body. If I turned my head, we’d be kissing. I didn’t, though. Being close to him was enough.
“Sometimes I think I’ll never trust another girl the way I trust you,” he said then.
I looked over at him, surprised. He wasn’t looking at me, he was still looking up at the sky, still focused.
We never did see a shooting star, but it didn’t matter to me one bit. Before the night was over, I said, “This is one of my top moments.”
He said, “Mine too.”
We didn’t know what was ahead of us then. We were just two teenagers, looking up at the sky on a cold February night. So no, he didn’t give me flowers or candy. He gave me the moon and the stars. Infinity.
