Paisley climbed out the attic window with a pillow to sit on and a Negroni in a sippy cup. Her cushion slipped on the angled asphalt shingle, so she planted her bare feet on the grit and leaned against the house. A mouthful of the cocktail blossomed on her tongue. Campari and orange peel softened the gin. The gin softened her. The night was mostly quiet. Crickets and summer wind in the leaves, a dog that barked at anyone who drove by, shut up shouted, and street racers in the distance. The scent of flowers and tree sap waltzed with the stink of sunbaked roofing tar.
“Hey Goober, turn off the lights,” Paisley said.
The house darkened. Between sips, Paisley stared at the moon and then star after star, winding out in a spiral. Paisley counted them. One for every finger and toe. She left off at the ring finger of her left hand when her drink was empty. She’d pick back up with that pulsing, vibrant speck.
“Hey Goober, turn on the lights,” she said and climbed back inside.
On the stairs down to the kitchen, she unscrewed the sippy cup and ate the orange peel stuck to the underside of the lid. It twisted her face just how she liked.
“Something warmer,” Paisley said, as she rinsed her cup at the kitchen sink, and fixed herself a
Boulevardier:
One part some local whiskey a guy left behind after a date where he bragged about size then came and went before they both got off… Maybe two parts.
One part sweet vermouth. A leftover from a poorly attended singles event. After which she’d filled her freezer with spirits.
One part Campari. Its color the orange of the sky those days she couldn’t go outside because the forest fires had made the air the worst in the world for the better worst part of a week. Drinking the color of that apocalyptic sky was like inoculating herself for the next time.
An orange slice from the same crusting fruit that tasted a little like crackers from its days in the fridge. She wished for someone to drink with as she set the hacked at orange back on the empty top shelf
Paisley climbed back out to her perch and searched the sky for the star she’d left off with. It had moved. Slightly, but as she sipped, she was certain it felt closer.
Could it be a shooting star working up the nerve to bolt? Winding back before it sling-shotted itself across the universe? The rest of the sky sparkled. She sipped. Kept counting. Then the star—the shooty star—it overtook the next. Then another. As if demanding her attention
Looking back, Javi glinted in the heavens. And Paisley could tell it was for her.
“Hey Goober, lights!”
She returned to the kitchen for another drink. Something substantial this time. She’d skipped dinner, but now, with such an attentive date, maybe a Bloody Mary—or Maria—since she had no vodka.
Two parts silver tequila—in honor of Javi’s pale tail.
Four parts tomato juice. But one part was an actual tomato—rather soft—squeezed in Paisley’s palm until it oozed out from between her fingers.
One lemon, juiced, but Paisley used a press, since the rind had more fight than she had coordination.
A few dashes of Cholula and lemon pepper from when a guy from Chicago was in town for work, which he only told her after they’d swiped right and he came over and cooked and fucked and left and unmatched by the time Paisley reopened the app. After him she’d bought the sippy cup and got serious about roof cocktails. But this time…
A salted rim on a real glass. She had company.
On the rocks. Garnished with baby carrots and a pickle.
Back on the roof, Paisley drank while she Goobered images of Javier. She couldn’t be certain they were of her comet, but they looked the same: a shining dot. Her dot. The longer she stared into the deep, dark sky, the bigger Javi seemed. Coming fast. Coming for her.
She ate the pickle, its brine electric on her tongue.
Javi was everything the men in Paisley’s life were not. Rock hard. Well-traveled. Hurtling toward a desired future with certainty enough to smash against anything that might get in the way.
She stroked the rim of her glass with her finger and licked the salt from its tip.
But what if she was wrong? Paisley wanted a second opinion, so she texted a friend.
Soon, a reply to her text, “I think you sent the wrong pic,” her friend said. “Unless you’re a total starfucker now lol in that case that’s one hot rock.”
Sure, Javi looked hot on the outside, but Paisley knew comets were covered in ice thick enough to have never really been touched. Not like she wanted to touch.
Through the glass bottom the comet had grown to the size of Paisley’s heart. She set down the glass on the shingles, nestled against her body, and licked the spices from a baby carrot before biting.
She must have dozed off. The carrot pressed against the inside of her cheek. Her body curled up against the house, still warm from the day’s sun, or the booze, or the heat between her and Javi. Paisley dreamed of that heavenly body pressing toward her.
Glass shattered.
Paisley’s eyes popped open again. Her fingertips scraped against the roof where she’d set her empty drink. Finding it missing, she gasped, and the baby carrot that was still in her mouth sucked into her windpipe. Choking, she tried to lodge her hands under her ribs to force air out.
The whole time, Javi grew in the sky—bigger than the moon—bigger even than the neighbor’s car. The car’s alarm went off next. Dogs barked. Paisley’s downstairs neighbor ran outside barefoot and screamed as he stepped on shards of salted glass.
The night brightened to a pale blue as Javi kept coming. Paisley’s mouth hung open as Javi grew as massive in the sky as the sky itself. The house shuddered beneath Paisley. The street cracked in streaks and bursts. Down the road, street racers skidded and crashed. A fireball a few blocks away reflected in Paisley’s wide and watering eyes, its smoke sucked towards Javi. Trees flailed, leaves tore away and floated skyward, followed by the bloody salted glass and the dog—again barking.
Out of the open kitchen window flew the whiskey bottle and the vermouth, the lemon rind and Campari, the Cholula and lemon pepper, the tequila, the sippy cup, and out her bedroom window flew Goober, the wind whipping its chord like a tadpole’s tail. The refrigerator door slammed open, and the remains of the cold-crusted orange followed too.
Javi’s gravitational pull lifted Paisley off her feet. Javi pulled her hair. Breathless, Paisley purpled in midair until Javi’s force dislodged the baby carrot and shot it into the night. Javi’s velocity kissed Earth’s atmosphere harder still, and Paisley too fell—into the sky—toward Javi’s sparkling surface.
And then so did the house, then the neighborhood, then the street the racers had crashed on, then the cocktail bar within walking distance that Paisley loved but never went to anymore because her ex worked there most nights, then the Eastside of Portland, then most of Multnomah County, then Mount Hood, then the state of Idaho.
From here, Paisley could see the ridges and grooves of Javi’s shell as they cracked from the celestial tension. Ice shed and melted and fell like rain on Paisley. On her forehead and in her eyes. Javi wet Paisley from scalp to toenails as she was carried away into the stars.
Photo by Jakub Sofranko on Unsplash