Chapter One
The stars rolled past like a ceaseless tide, silver-crested waves of deepest blue-black crashing on the glittering shores of galaxies and nebula. They threw their radiant foam around the pillars of creation like the surf against stones. Amber trained her wandering eye on a ship carried by that wild tide, a comet streaking across the astral sea, trailing a blue-white wake. She charted its course with careful consideration and reverent awe, turning the massive telescope to follow it.
On a cosmic scale, space was wild madness. Stars bloomed and died as quickly as flowers, everything burning and crashing in glorious creative chaos. A million years was a blink of an eye to a solar system, and in that time, everything could change. But from a human's perspective, the great opera of the planets was a stately parade, vast and slow and inevitable. Heavy and somber as a funeral march toward the death of the universe, the galaxies tumbled on. To humans, a nearly incomprehensible stretch of time lay before them, every action slow and graceful and full of a pristine economy of motion. But to them, they might as well be billiard balls on a pool table, ricocheting off one another as they rocketed toward the inevitable scratch. Amber wondered if human progress seemed equally grand and slow to the short-lived mayfly, glimpsing only a moment of human life in a dozen generations. She recorded the slow approach of the comet and laughed at the thought that her brief, tiny life might have any significance to its infinite progress.
When her scheduled time on the telescope ran out, Amber gathered her things and hurried across campus. Her mind still buzzed with stars, a binder above her head to protect her from the warm, late summer rain. It drizzled out of the gray, overcast sky at a light but steady pace it had maintained all day and promised to keep right through the evening. She sought brief shelter under the university's historic white oak. Beneath its long, twisted branches, the only sound was the quiet patter of raindrops falling through the translucent green leaves and the distant chatter of other students like herself.
"Amber!"
Amber looked up in surprise as someone called her name. A young woman was running toward her, jogging through the rain, a smile on her face. Amber smiled back, waving.
"Erin!" she said warmly as the other woman reached the safety of the tree. "You're out of class early."
"Yeah, my professor never showed up," Erin replied, flopping against the tree and trying to pat dry her red hair with her equally damp jacket. "Not that I blame her. I was tempted to stay in bed this morning myself. What a miserable day!"
"I don't know," Amber said, looking out at the gray rain. "I kind of like it."
"You would," Erin teased, snorting.
"It's peaceful," Amber insisted.
The two had met on Amber's first day on campus. Two years later, Erin was the closest friend Amber had ever had. Although that wasn't saying much. Amber had always struggled to make friends and be social. When she tried, it seemed awkward and forced. When she didn't try, she was judged aloof and standoffish. Basic socialization, what seemed so easy for others, especially Erin, seemed totally out of reach for Amber. She couldn't help being jealous of Erin for that.
She had a lot of reasons to be jealous of Erin. Erin was certainly prettier, with striking red hair and hazel grey eyes that made Amber look dull in flat brown. While they were both nerdy, Erin was the kind of effortlessly extroverted nerd who could as easily engage in a deep debate about astrophysics with a colleague as gush about the latest episode of a popular new TV show with a stranger. Amber could barely talk to her professors. Where Amber had struggled to shake off the 'freshman five,' the weight most people gained after coming to college and eating too much junk food, it had never touched Erin. Erin was studying astrophysics and engineering, looking to enter the space program. She followed the strict physical requirements for astronauts religiously and had stayed trim and athletic since Amber had met her. Amber, by exercising with her friend, stayed more or less in shape, but she knew she was softer around the edges than Erin. Much as she loved the stars, Amber knew she'd never make it into space.
Despite all this, and all the other reasons she could have resented Erin, Amber could never stay angry at the other woman. Erin, in addition to being beautiful and brilliant, was also just a great person. She'd seen Amber alone and lost that first day and hadn't hesitated to come to the rescue. She'd never made Amber feel less or made fun of her. She was kind and upbeat and the only friend Amber had.
"Where are you heading on a rainy day like this?" Erin asked as they both watched the sky, waiting for the rain to let up a little.
"The flower shop," Amber replied without thinking. Erin grinned.
"Going to see your boy again?" She nudged Amber with her elbow, amused. "Third time this week. I'm starting to think this is serious!"
"He asked me to come back," Amber said, her face heating with embarrassment. "He wants to show me a new flower they just got in."
"I never took you for a flowers kind of girl." Erin leaned out to get a better look at the sky as distant thunder rumbled. "It always seemed like you never cared about anything but the stars."
Amber smiled a little at that. She was studying astronomy, and it was true that space had always been her first love. But this was a special case.
"You haven't heard the way he talks about them," she explained. "He can make a bouquet sound as fascinating as a supernova."
"That's a pretty impressive talent," Erin admitted with a small laugh. "I don't know, he still seems kind of weird to me. What kind of name is Atropos?"
"It's Greek," Amber said a little defensively. "His family lives there. He's just visiting the states for the summer, to work. He's saving up to open his own shop."
"Doesn't that mean he'll be leaving in a couple of weeks?" Erin pointed out. Amber looked away, not wanting to remember, and Erin frowned sympathetically. "Well that sucks. Still, you should enjoy it while he's here. Maybe he'll come back next year and tell you he saved himself for you. It'll be just like one of those cheesy movies."
Amber laughed a little, shaking her head.
"Probably not," she said. "Honestly, I'm not sure why someone like him is interested in me to begin with."
"Amber, you're too hard on yourself," Erin scolded. "You're smarter than anyone I know. You're thoughtful and creative and—"
"And I have a great personality, I know," Amber said, not really believing any of it. "I'm just saying he could do a lot better."
Erin shrugged. "Maybe, but it seems pretty obvious that you're what he wants. You must have something going for you."
The constant drizzle of rain slowed a little, and Amber hurried out from under the tree, quietly glad to drop that line of questioning.
"How'd you meet him, anyway?" Erin asked instead as they hurried away from campus toward the parking lot. Amber lived in the dorms, but Erin lived off campus and drove. "I know you don't get off campus much."
"His store is the closest to the school," Amber explained. "So he's actually here pretty often making deliveries. He was in the library dropping off a birthday arrangement for one of the staff and we bumped into each other. I would have just been embarrassed and kept going, but I complimented his flowers first, and he started talking about them, and I just got pulled in. He knows everything about them, Erin. Not just what they are, but the varieties, the meanings, the history. I could listen to him talk about flowers for ages."
"Sounds like you've got it bad," Erin said with a laugh.
"I don't know." Amber blushed. "He's just so smart and passionate. Anyone would think he was amazing."
"Maybe you should tell him that," Erin suggested as they reached her car. "You want a ride? I can't let you walk in this rain."
Amber accepted gratefully, sliding into the passenger seat.
The flower shop wasn't far, in the busy college town's quaint downtown area, the old brick buildings from the 1800s now occupied by craft beer bars and cellphone carriers and vape stores. The historical society kept the signage tastefully old-fashioned and the flowerbeds full of pansies, but the clashing anachronisms gave the entire place a kind of off-brand theme park feeling.
The flower shop, Lilac, Lupine, and Lace, by contrast, seemed perfectly in place. As Amber said goodbye to Erin, she could already see Atropos in the front window, adjusting an arrangement he'd just placed in the display. He was a large man, tall and broad, which made the delicacy with which he handled the flowers all the more surprising. His skin was a rich bronze, his hair a wild tangle of shining black curls. When he smiled, as he was now, seeing Amber through the glass, he might have been a statue by Michelangelo. He waved and she waved back, hurrying to meet him.
The store was small and densely crowded with greenery. Every wall and surface overflowed with fern and flower. The air was thick with the perfume of a hundred bouquets. To Amber, it felt like breathing in pure color.
Atropos ducked carefully under the baskets of fiddleheads and succulents hanging from the ceiling in order to greet her.
"You came!" he said warmly. "I thought you might not."
He had a peculiar accent, which Amber assumed must have been Greek, and a habit of carefully pronouncing each word. Normal, she assumed, for someone who didn't speak English natively.
"Why wouldn't I?" she said curiously.
"Well, it is only a flower," he said, looking a bit bashful. "I know you have more important things to do."
"No, I want to see it," Amber said at once, stumbling a little over the words. "I mean, you're excited about it, so it must be cool."
He smiled warmly, grateful, and led her toward the back. The freezers full of live cut flowers hummed busily behind the workbench where he made the arrangements. There was no one else behind the register as he passed it.
"Just you today?" she asked.
"Yes," he confirmed, opening one of the freezers to remove a tray of flowers. "Brooke did not come in for her shift today, so I am working alone. Here, look."
He set the tray down and Amber's eyes widened as she looked down at the beautiful flowers.
"Lilium orientalis," he explained, cradling one delicately in his large, graceful hands in order to hold it out to her. "I thought you might like them."
They were easily as big as her hand, with long tapering petals of bright pink edged in white, spangled with dark freckles like stars, swirling down like a galaxy to a firework center of long pistils.
"They're wonderful," Amber said honestly, stroking a velvety petal. "Are they very rare?"
"Not particularly," Atropos said with a shrug. "They are a hybrid, hardy and popular with florists."
"So then, they have some weird symbolism, right?" Amber asked with a grin, curious now as to why he'd been so excited to show them to her. "Victorian flower language or something."
"Afraid not," Atropos said with a laugh. "They were developed in the seventies. Too late for the Victorians."
"So then, why did you want to show them to me?" Amber asked, curiosity growing.
"They were created as an alternative to Rubrums," he continued patiently. "Which looked similar, but their heads drooped downward, making them look dead and lifeless. These were made to always look up toward the sky. So they were named 'Stargazers.' It reminded me of you."
He offered her the flower and Amber felt her face turn scarlet. She looked down, fighting the urge to blurt some excuse and run away, overwhelmed. Sensing she was uncomfortable, he set the flower aside and backed away. After a moment, he cleared his throat.
"So," he said, busying himself with another arrangement. "How is your comet?"
Amber took a moment to steady herself, but her voice still wobbled when she spoke.
"Still on course. I scheduled observatory time to check on it today. I think it might have passed through a stellar cloud."
"Oh? What makes you think that?"
"Its color is different," Amber replied. "Judging by photos and observations, it was more on the red side of the spectrum seventy years ago. Of course, photo quality wasn't the best back then."
She shrugged while he tucked one of the stargazer lilies into an arrangement of white peonies.
"I suppose we can only ever wonder where it has been," he said mildly.
"Well, not really," Amber said, sitting on the counter. "Maybe in the forties. But these days, we can use telescopes to follow its trail and send out probes to collect samples from its tail that can give us an idea of what the places it passed through were like. It's actually kind of amazing how much we can discover about the universe outside our solar system through indirect methods! We use radiation like a dolphin uses sonar, using the absence of it or the way it moves to guess the size and nature of the things it's moving around. We're discovering new ways to learn about the universe every day."
"Fascinating," Atropos said, turning to face her, and she thought he meant it sincerely, unlike a lot of people who tended to get bored very quickly when she rambled about space. "That technology seems to race ahead faster every day. I cannot keep up with everything you can do."
"You know," Amber said, shifting a little nervously, "the comet is supposed to be visible from here in about a week. I thought, maybe, we could go and see it together."
"Like a date?" Atropos asked, a little wide-eyed.
"I mean, it doesn't have to be," Amber said quickly, flushed with embarrassment. "It could just be, uh, a casual thing? We could invite other people and—"
"No, I would like it to be a date," he said quickly, cutting her off, his smile dazzling. "But why wait? If you are not busy, I would love to do something tonight."
"Really?" Amber stared at him for a moment, stunned, then she smiled, laughing nervously. "Yeah, I'm not doing anything tonight. We could get dinner?"
"The shop closes in an hour," he said, stepping closer and taking her hand. "How do you feel about a movie first?"
"That sounds perfect," Amber said, feeling like she might float right off into space. "I'll go home and get ready. See you back here in an hour?"
"I will be waiting," Atropos said, smiling as he brought her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it. Amber turned red, mumbled a quick goodbye, and hurried out of the store, feeling like every step was lighter than air. She tripped in the doorway and thought for a moment that she might fall up into the air and land gloriously laughing among the stars. Instead, she caught herself, embarrassed, and hurried on.
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