Page 104 of Love or Leave

"I'm Margaret, leader of the Niagara Chapter. We have three new members to welcome tonight. Please give a warm welcome to Maury, Kathleen, and Antonio!"

Antonio smiled and waved as his fellow members turned to him to say hi. Becoming a full-fledged member of the Royal Astrological Society was probably a step too far, but now that he was there, he really wanted to check out that black hole. And ifCara refused to give him another chance, at least he had some potential new friends.

Maury was probably cool.

"This is Cara," Margaret continued, gesturing toward the love of his life. "She's a PhD student of astrological physics at the university. She and Dr. Tanaka alternate leading our sessions."

Cara sighed out an obviously annoyed breath but seemed to shake it off. She waited for Margaret to sit, then carried on.

"Okay, black holes," Cara said, getting back on track.

"The event horizon of a black hole is the boundary where the gravitational pull is so strong that objects would have to exceed the speed of light to avoid getting sucked in. It's basically a point of no return."

She turned to a giant paper flip chart on a wooden easel and pulled out a thick marker. As she drew, she spoke about the physics equations that break down past the event horizon, and how it has evaded physicists so far because of how difficult it is to study something you can't see.

Maury raised his hand and asked what would happen if a person were to fall in.

She explained they would die immediately because of a process called “spaghettification,” then drew a diagram of a stick figure being pulled apart cell by cell in a long string.

It was gruesome and intriguing.

At the end of her talk she took questions, answered them, and then had everyone come to the front to look through the telescope.

Antonio stood at the back so he could be the last in line and waited. Cara took her time with each person, making sure they knew what they were looking at and answered their questions. She kept a polite smile on her face until the very last person in front of him left, then her smile dropped.

"Why are you here?"

Yeesh… Not a great start.

"I wanted to see you," Antonio said, then turned toward the gigantic telescope and peered in. "I also have a new fascination with black holes."

Cara huffed an annoyed breath. "Unwanted and repeated contact is an offense. Criminal harassment. Do I have to file a police report, or should I just call Max?"

He stopped and turned to her. "Cara," he said, and felt some hope when her angry face faded slightly. "I'm sorry about how things went."

Cara stared for a moment before the rest of her angry look melted away. She looked around the room, then back at him.

"Me too," she said. "Maybe we could just give this some time to settle and then we can go back to being friends."

"Friends?"

His heart split and he immediately shook his head.

Cara sucked in a breath and looked down at her toes. "Let's not make it awkward for our friend group. We have Adam and Chelsea's wedding coming up, and Willow was talking about having a friends Christmas party at the brewery. Let's just move on."

He looked at her for a long moment and wondered if he should take her lead and back off, but when he opened his mouth, he couldn't bring himself to agree.

"I can't be just friends with you, Cara. I love you."

She softly shook her head. "No, you don't."

"Yes, I do," he said, lifting a hand to the back of his neck. "You're like my black hole. I've moved past the event horizon.” He dropped his hands by his sides. “I'm spaghetti."

There was a long pause before she spoke.

"I'm not in your black hole, though," she said. "I escaped just in the nick of time."

Antonio forced his head to stay up, instead of letting it fall in disappointment. This wasn't over. Not by a long shot.

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