Only Love

“Mind joining us?”…
   There was no good reason to reject such an offer since all he saw was…but the spectacular long-legged and long-hair Helene sitting right there between her two friends having a cup of coffee outside that French café…
   “So Ween, tell us something…” Lydia asked…
   “When she says something, she actually means everything,” Pamela added... Helene said nothing and simply smiled…
   “And what else?” Lydia asked bluntly.
   “I also liked numbers.” “Oh,” sighed Helene.
   “I always liked counting. I counted the stars almost every night.”
   “Really? How many were they?”...
   “Ninety nine. There was always one missing, and I just couldn’t find it.”
   “Oh, how tricky,”...
   “And…have you found it now?” Helene poured in her first question…
   “Almost.”
   “Almost?”
   “Tell you what. When I was twelve, I dreamed of becoming a pilot, a spacecraft pilot though I was a dull boy.”
   “No, you weren’t.”
   “Yeah, I was so dull that I believed that there was an end to the sky and that once I have reached there, I would have explored all the miracles in the space and then come down with all those untold stories to tell people I love, especially…”
   “Especially who?”
   “My…,” he looked at Helene, “mother.”
   “What?” Lydia exclaimed. “Wouldn’t it be nice to tell your girlfriend first?”
   “Yes, it would if I had one.”…
   “So, suppose you had had a girlfriend then, what would you have brought down to her?” asked Lydia.
   “That missing star, of course. And perhaps two or three more.”
   “But what if you couldn’t find that missing star?” Helene became serious. After a pause he spoke slowly and clearly “And what, if you were that girl, would you do to me?”
   His counter question made both Pamela and Lydia look straight at each other...something between Ween and Helene was unusual…
   “If such were the case, I guess, I’d simply tell him to quit searching for it because the sky is too…big.”
   “And then I’d tell her that the sky is actually…very small and tiny, very tiny indeed that there was nowhere I could hide my secrets. I’d tell her that what I saw everywhere I looked was her heavenly, fabulous face…I’d tell her that my wish to know the spectacular miracles had simply become…a dull wish, because all the miracles were actually inside of her. She is, as I should always have believed from the beginning, the missing star.”
   All the four became silent…
   The two were left alone at last, for the first time…
   “A spacecraft pilot, huh?” she recalled what he’d said.
   “Yes, yeah. A silly dream, indeed, don’t you think?”
   “No. Why? I wouldn’t mind being in space some day myself, you know, flying among those stars, not sure where to go, wondering if heroes truly exist.”
   Helene’s eyes became at that very moment the softest and most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. He couldn’t ask God for better eyes. 
   “They do.”...
   “Really? You think they do?”
   “Sure. Look at those three little twinkling stars. I call them ‘the starry knights’. I’ll show you where you can see them dance.” Ween then pointed to a big tree in the backyard of their college. Helene wasn’t sure what he was trying to say about the dancing stars but followed him. Once they found themselves right under that tree, he started to show her how to view those three stars from under that tree’s branches. As they slightly moved their steps forward, backward and side to side, those three stars appeared as if they were really dancing…amazing.
   “Wow, it’s miraculous. It’s beautiful.”
   “OK, I’ll show you another place.”   No, no places like there... She kissed him unexpectedly.