“See that bright star straight ahead?” He sits up, and I follow. He moves in impossibly close. His hot cheek grazes mine. I smell him, an earthly mix of sweat and cologne, and my entire body aches. “Follow my hand to the tip of my finger. See that star? Trace it with me.” His finger outlines the geometric ladle.

“That’s it?” I ask excitedly. “That’s the Big Dipper?”

He laughs. “Sure is.” For a moment, everything is suspended, like the stars in the endless void above us. If I wanted to, I could reach out and grab the Big Dipper and pull it close, hold it to my chest, carry it with me everywhere I go. Or climb inside its basin and peer out at the world below, at this, us, right now. Then he turns, and we’re close, so close that our noses almost touch.

I hold my breath, and my heartbeat increases as his eyes search mine.

Then he pulls back, returns to his position in the grass, and I release a ragged breath, missing my chance. I guess that’s the thing about stars: they might always be there, stuck in the same fabric that lines the sky, but they will always be out of reach.

Jack reminds me of a star—no, Apollo, Greek god of the sun. How the world seems brighter, lighter with him in it, the way his words flow like poetry. Gods, like stars, are untouchable. If Jack is Apollo, I guess that makes me Icarus, who flies too close to the sun.

“What do you think comes first?” Jack asks. “Thunder or lightning?”

Without thinking, I say, “Lightning. Always.”

I’ve spent many stormy nights with Taylor outside watching and listening to the cracks in the sky during storms. The way the air goes silent always enraptured me like somehow all the people and all the cars and all the noise just stopped, and there was this swell of silence, the breath just before the downpour.

“Actually,” Jack says. “Thunder and lightning happen at the same time. But light travels faster than sound. That’s why we see lightning before we hear thunder.”

“The thunder chases the lightning,” I say. “Mom always told me to hold my breath and count after the lightning strike and however many seconds it took to hear the thunder, that’s how far away the storm was.”

I hold my breath and count. Jack does the same.

We move closer, wrapped in a sudden squall, so close that I can hear Jack’s heartbeat. Or maybe it’s my own.

Jack talks first, and I exhale. “Sounds like an old-school fable.” He sits upright and gets crossed-legged as if he’s readying himself to tell a story. “Lightning and Thunder, who live high in the clouds, chasing each other, longing to find one another. Every so often, they collide. That’s when the booms happen.” He smiles his crinkly smile, and his one dimple creases.

“What if Thunder and Lightning are lovers?” I suggest. “And the booms happen because Thunder cries when he realizes he’s missed catching Lightning again.” I pause and look up at the sky, remembering the way Jack captured lightning in his hands and passed it to me at the show, the way the ground shook and the earth moved, and we became something else entirely. “Ever wonder why we see something before we hear it?” I ask, not entirely sure we’re still talking about lightning or thunder or something else.