“Thanks for the evening.” She said smiling while entering into the cab.
“Call me after reaching home, okay?”
“You aren’t coming?”
“No…I just…I just need a walk under the stars.” He closed the door and waved his hand meaning goodbye from behind the glass. The cab started to move and he started walking in the opposite direction.
It wasn’t late, just the beginning of the night. The sky wasn’t completely clear, a little bit cloudy. He wasn’t a lucky man in his life. Turns out, the sky was barely showing stars. Very few stars were blinking, if he wanted, he could’ve counted them all. But his head was down. He was walking slowly, all alone. Like the stars, a bunch of thoughts were blinking inside his head. Maybe he was thinking about his paralyzed mother, or maybe about his schoolboy brother, or maybe his late father. Or what his father told him before his death, “Son, life isn’t a sum of some good moments. Life will give you beautiful moments along with struggles. Like the space, it’s all dark; but you see, the stars still shine!”
Whatever he thinks, none can surely tell. His eyes never say what he thinks.
Suddenly he starts humming the tune of his favorite song. He starts to walk rhythmically. Maybe he was just trying to live at the moment. Maybe he was thinking about the girl he was with.
Sometimes he wonders how on earth did he meet her!
The road was quite silent. Only his slow footsteps and the sound of a few honks were heard. But he heard another footstep, like someone was rushing.
He stopped and turned back. He was so surprised that his mouth involuntarily opened, “You?’
“I think I need a walk under the stars too. Mind if I join?”
He smiled. She forwarded her hand to him to hold.
“What about the cab?” He asked grabbing her palm.
“I passed it. I think it’s too early to go home. Mom is having late shift in the hospital. No one’s home.”
One thing they have in common. They both have lost their fathers.
“Then let’s just walk?”
“Sure.”
He just discovered he didn’t get to walk under a thousand stars, but he got one star beside him.
Perhaps, it’s the brightest one.