Page 63 of The Heartbreakers
I yelped and dropped the picture, my heart nearly bursting from my chest. Someone started to chuckle, and I jerked my head up to see Oliver leaning against the window frame, arms crossed over his chest. His entire upper body shook as he laughed at me.
“Where the hell did you come from?” I demanded, my heart still thumping hard.
Oliver responded with a mischievous grin before turning around and climbing out the open window. When I didn’t immediately follow, he poked his head back in. “You coming or what?”
Curious what the heck he was doing climbing out people’s bedroom windows, I nodded. “Yeah, okay,” I said and pinned the picture back to the bulletin board. Once I reached the window, I realized there was a section of roof, six by six at the most, for us to sit on without being in any danger of falling. Oliver offered me his hand and helped me climb outside.
When we’d first arrived at the Morrises’, there was still a wash of color left in the sky, oranges and pinks and purples as the sun set, but now it was completely dark. The air had cooled off considerably with the arrival of night, and I wished I was wearing more than a tank top as a rush of goose bumps spread up my arms.
“So,” I asked after finding a comfortable position on the shingles, “what are you doing up here?”
“Enjoying the party,” Oliver said.
“But you’re not even at it.”
“Of course I am.”
“But—”
“Just be quiet for a sec,” he instructed me and pointed down.
I followed his gaze and fell silent. From the roof, I could see the entire backyard. White Christmas lights woven through the deck railing and tiki torches positioned throughout the garden lit the area, and most of the party had spilled out of the house into the refreshing night air.
There was a stone fire pit in the middle of the yard where someone had started a bonfire. More than a dozen kids were gathered around roasting marshmallows or cooking pudgy pies, and their laughter was warm and bright, like the crackling of the flames. Most of the adults were on the deck, drinks in hand, talking and laughing and enjoying the company. Every now and then the wind would snatch away part of a conversation and carry it up on a breeze for us to listen to.
“All right,” I admitted. “This is a pretty awesome spot.”
“When we were younger, JJ and I would scoot all the way down to the gutter so we could dangle our feet over the edge. Mrs. Morris banned us from coming out on here because she was afraid one of us would fall off and break a leg or something, but I think that’s why we liked it so much. It drove her crazy.”
“You spent a lot of time together.” It was meant to sound like a casual observation, but really I was digging for any information Oliver would give me about his childhood and who he was, aside from being the front man of the Heartbreakers.
It was frustrating that Oliver was still a blank slate to me, while he’d uncovered most of the deep details that filled my own page. I could easily google him and find out everything for myself, but it wasn’t really the background knowledge that I wanted. Opening up to Oliver about Cara’s cancer had been terrifying, like dodging out into traffic with a blindfold on. But I’d trusted him to guide me safely to the other side of the road instead of running me over, and I wanted him to do the same—to trust me. Because if he did, then maybe I could prove that I could be just as good a friend as he had recently been to me.
“My brother from another mother,” he said, cracking a smile. “Our moms were good friends in high school, so I spent a lot of time here growing up.”
I kept my eyes down and focused on the bumpy texture of the shingles, not wanting him to see just how interested I was. “Oh?” I asked, hoping he would keep talking. This was the first time he’d ever brought up any of his family. I thought I would meet them at the party tonight, but since he’d been hiding up here alone, I was willing to bet they hadn’t come.
Next to me, Oliver lay back and tucked his hands behind his head. “Wanna see something cool?” he asked.
I sighed at the change of subject but said, “Sure.” Then I copied him, inching back on my elbows so I could gaze up the sky. “What am I looking at?”
“You said your favorite Disney movie wasHercules, right?”
A partial smile tugged at my lips; he’d remembered. “Yeah.”
“Okay, do you see the four stars that kind of form a square?” Oliver asked, pointing straight overhead.
“I think so,” I said, tilting my head and squinting.
“That’s the keystone asterism in the Hercules constellation.”
“Ah…you lost me.”
“So an asterism is a pattern of stars in the sky, which can be made up of part of a constellation, or more than one,” Oliver told me. As he explained, I let my head roll to the side so I could watch him. I wasn’t paying nearly as much attention to his words as I was to the way his eyes held a hint of the stars above us. They gleamed with excitement as he spoke. “This particular asterism is shaped sorta like a keystone, hence the name.”
“Thanks for the astronomy lesson, Galileo,” I said, biting my lip and trying not to laugh. “But I’m still confused.”
Oliver grinned and propped himself up on his elbow so he was facing me. “Basically you’re looking at Hercules’s torso. He’s got a head and arms and legs too, but I’ve never really been good at visualizing them,” he said. “Oh, and if you look a little more to the left, you can see Pegasus.”
