In the Stars Read online

  I wipe my eyes. “Thanks, guys.” I appreciate them trying, I really do. But I know, deep down, that Drew is the reason I’m not half the girl I want to be. Despite what my friends say, I feel like a failure.

  If only he hadn’t left me.

  “Want to go see a movie?” Josh stands up and stretches. Apparently wallowing time is over. “There’s that new Jennifer Garner movie that came out last week. You love those girly shows, Charley.”

  “Rain check for me. I have to get to a photo op.” Heather rumples her hair and lets it fall down her neck like a waterfall. “The Herald wants a picture of Miss Calgary and the mayor.” She flutters her fake eyelashes and shoots us her toothy, over-the-top pageant smile. “Sometimes it’s so hard being me.”

  Josh groans. “You are unbelievable, you really are. How in the world am I friends with you?”

  “Because you are secretly in love with me?”

  “As if. That would be like macho G.I. Joe falling in love with a ditsy Barbie doll. Not going to happen.” Josh looks at me. “How about you, Charley? Movie?”

  I shake my head. “I have three dollars to my name. I can’t afford a movie ticket.”

  Josh grins. “It’s my treat. We can stop for DQ ice cream after and make it a date.”

  I laugh despite myself. “Thanks for asking me on my first date in about eight months, but, for the record, it doesn’t count as a real date when it’s with one of your best friends.”

  “Fine, it’s not a date. Whatever. Get your shoes, let’s go.” He grabs his baseball cap off the kitchen table and puts it on, covering his dusty blonde hair that never stays in place the way he wants no matter how much gel he uses. Heather disappears into her room to put on the final touches of makeup and I sit up. I wipe my eyes and drag myself off the couch.

  At least now I know why my life sucks. It’s all because of the one who got away.

  Maybe I can get him back.

  Wouldn’t that solve all my problems?

  The longer the night lasts,

  the more our dreams will be.

  —Chinese Proverb

  Chapter Three

  Sitting in the theater with a huge bucket of popcorn in my lap makes me feel better. The buttery aroma gets my stomach growling and I shove another handful in my mouth. “Want some?” I hold the bucket out to Josh and he grabs a few kernels. The pre-show ads are playing with random movie trivia and other entertainment news. While I chew, a brightly colored picture of pop star Mikayla Rivers appears, with a voiceover advertising her new album.

  “She’s from Calgary, you know.” I point to the screen.

  “Really? I’ve heard her music. I had no idea she was Canadian,” Josh says.

  I nod. “I think she even went to U of C for a bit. I remember reading about her in an article a few years back when her stuff first came out.” I watch the pictures on the screen flit from one to another. Mikayla in a little black dress accepting a Grammy. Mikayla posing on the red carpet with a good-looking guy in a tux. Mikayla wearing sunglasses and standing in a recording studio. I sigh. Wouldn’t it be great to have her life? I bet she gets any guy she wants. If I was her I’m sure Drew would come find me. He’d want me then. Successful. Gorgeous.

  The ad goes away and a Pepsi commercial takes its place. “Theoretically speaking, how would you track down someone from your past? Without spending a lot of money on detectives and whatnot,” I ask nonchalantly.

  “Track someone down?” Josh echoes. “Like a stalker?”

  “Not like a stalker!” I hit his arm lightly with my purse. “Like, I don’t know, an adopted child who wants to find her birth mother, or something.”

  “You’re not adopted,” Josh points out. “And it would be a bad idea to try to find an old boyfriend.”

  He saw right through me. I take another bite of popcorn. “Why would it be bad? What if he’s been secretly thinking that I’m his one true love and all but he doesn’t know what happened to me? It could be fate.”

  “Or he could be married. Or seeing someone else. Or living in Australia or something,” Josh interjects. “The point is people change. You dated him five years ago. It would be a bad idea to try to rekindle a relationship at this point.” He reaches for more popcorn.

  I frown at him and lean my head back into the movie seat. “People reconnect all the time. That’s why Facebook is so popular. People crave having a connection with their past; it’s human nature.”

  “Fine, think of it this way,” Josh counters. “Kevin, that guy you dated for a month in first year law school? Remember him?”

  Why the heck would Josh bring up Kevin? Kevin and I were never compatible. I mean, he was a Virgo and I am a Gemini. He showered neurotically at least four times a day. His apartment was so clean that once I accidentally dropped a potato chip on the floor during a study session and he about had a heart attack. There was no way we could last. Bad example if Josh is trying to win this argument.

  I grunt and Josh continues. “Picture Kevin trying to track you down now. What would you think?” When I don’t respond, he says, “This is exactly what you are suggesting you do with Drew. When people reconnect with old friends it is one thing, when they reconnect with ex’s it’s something else.”

  “Yeah, but Kevin and I weren’t soul mates. We weren’t meant to be.”

  Josh takes his baseball cap off and runs his hand through his hair. He shakes his head and replaces the cap, but before he can retort, the lights dim and the movie begins. Perfect timing. It’s as if the fates are aligning in my favor. The universe must want me to find Drew.

  “This isn’t over,” Josh hisses at me. Sheesh, he can be so single-minded sometimes. It’s probably why he’s such a good lawyer; he focuses on an issue and never lets up until he wins the argument.

  But he’s not winning this time. I know what I need to do. My life, my decisions.

  I barely watch the show I am so focused on figuring out my plan. I’ll do a quick search of Facebook, of archaic MySpace and maybe a couple of those other networking sites like LinkedIn. That should give me an idea of where he is as well as relationship status and all that good Facebook information.

  I wrack my brain. What if he’s not into the whole social media thing? He was never a big computer nerd type. Maybe he’s off the grid, as it were.

  Jennifer Garner is on screen and crying as she’s running through a park. I have no idea what’s going on in this chick flick. Too bad, because it looks like exactly the type I adore.

  I know a few of our mutual friends from back in the day. I can chat with them. I’m positive one of them will know where he is. However, I muse, the problem with involving too many outside people is that they might have the same negative attitude as Josh. Or they might think I’m clingy and ridiculous. Which I’m not, for the record.

  I lean forward and place my head in my hands. Now Jennifer Garner is walking a dog with a blonde, older lady who is telling her that your life and destiny are in your own hands. Wherever you are is exactly where you are meant to be. She sounds like a female Yoda. Jennifer smiles that gorgeous, dimpled smile and says, “Thanks, Mom.”

  Suddenly I have a brain wave. That’s it! His mother! I met her a couple times. The university was only a thirty minute drive from his house. Drew grew up on a beautiful acreage outside the city. Not a farm, mind you. It was basically a mansion with a huge yard, all perfectly manicured. But still, I’ve been there. And I’m pretty sure I could find my way back again.

  I’ll need to bum some gas money off someone. But since Heather is usually up for adventures, I’m sure I can convince her to come with me.

  Problem solved. My life is going to get back on track, I can feel it. First I win back Drew. Then I get a high-powered career at a top notch law firm. The two of us go on exotic vacations every winter to Bali and Greece and the Bah
amas and one day maybe we’ll have a couple of little babies with Drew’s curly black hair and green eyes. It’s my future. I will make it happen.

  I must be grinning idiotically because Josh is watching me out of the corner of his eye with his left eyebrow half raised. I’ll fill him in when the movie is done. Not about Drew becoming my baby-daddy, mind you. Just the fact that I know how to find him. For now, so as not to raise suspicion, I paste a vague expression on my face and settle back into my chair ready to watch the show. I’m sure I can figure out what’s going on. Chick flicks are never too complicated.

  Unlike real life.

  A teacher opens the door.

  You enter by yourself.

  —Chinese Proverb

  Chapter Four

  It’s almost ten o’clock at night and I am sitting at the kitchen table, spooning Ramen noodles into my mouth with my lucky pair of chopsticks. The apartment is dark and silent. Heather must still be fulfilling her role as Miss Calgary, and after the movie, Josh had gotten an email from one of the partners at his law firm who needed some last minute help for a court case on Monday. So he’d rushed off to the office, leaving me alone with my thoughts and the instant soup.

  Seeing Josh scuttle off like an obedient puppy made me nostalgic in a strange way, although I don’t miss that aspect of being a high-powered lawyer. During my year of articling I put in on average seventy hours each week and even had to work from home on Christmas Day. My mother was so not impressed. But I needed to make a good impression for the higher ups at Carter Clinton so I could get permanently placed as an associate. It would all be worth it.

  If only I’d known that they were going to screw me over and fire me all because of that bitchy intern two months into my position, I would have . . . I don’t know what I’d have done. Stolen a stapler, perhaps. Or left the office at five a few days in a row. Yeah. That’d show them.

  Don’t think about Carter Clinton right now, I command my brain. Obediently my thoughts turn back to Drew. I slurp up another bite of noodles as the front door opens. I know it’s Heather without even looking up. Her heels tap on the lino and her signature Bellagio perfume wafts over to me.

  “How was the photo shoot?”

  Heather tosses her Louis Vuitton knockoff purse on the counter and pulls up a chair beside me. “It was good. Long, though. The mayor didn’t like how he looked in the first dozen shots, so he had his assistant go back to his office and bring him a different tie. Ended up taking for-ev-er.”

  She reaches in front of me and pulls my noodle bowl toward her. I hand her my chopsticks and she shovels a mouthful in. A bit of the juice drips onto her chin and she wipes it off with the back of her hand without stopping chewing.

  “If only the world could see their beauty queen now,” I laugh. “Maybe you’d have won Miss Canada if they knew you were secretly a slob. It would have made you imperfect enough to get you the crown.”

  Heather takes another bite and then slides the bowl back. “I still can’t believe I lost that. Why couldn’t I be a bullied ethnic minority?”

  “There are so many things wrong with that statement.” I shake my head and have the final bite.

  About a month ago Heather came in second at the Miss Canada pageant. The winner was a beautiful, exotic Korean Canadian who had been bullied in high school, overcame a speech impediment in her first year of college and a week before the pageant underwent a double mastectomy. You can’t beat that.

  “How was your movie, by the way? Did you and Josh have a good time?” She shoots me a meaningful look.

  “If by good time you mean he harangued me to stop trying to find Drew, then yes, it was a blast.”

  “Find Drew? What are you talking about? I thought you were just ranting and hating your life, I didn’t know you actually were planning on finding him.” Heather raises her eyebrows and gives me a quizzical look.

  I draw a deep breath and rest my arms on the table. “I can’t help but wonder what could have been between us. I’m thinking I might reconnect or find him or track him down or whatever you want to call it. I need to know.”

  “Huh,” Heather murmurs. She watches me for a long moment, and the silence becomes deafening as we both contemplate what was said.

  I open the dishwasher and place my bowl and chopsticks inside. Then I follow Heather into her bedroom and sit on her bed. She takes off her earrings and places them neatly in her jewelry box.

  “I’m going to search Facebook,” I admit as I pick up one of her pillows and hug it against my chest. “I have to find him, Heather. Do you think I’m an idiot? Josh said I was.”

  Heather unbuttons her blouse and tosses it on a chair in the corner. “Well,” she begins. “I think you are a smart girl and you know what you’re doing. I should support you, not shoot you down. Drew was a cool guy. Maybe you two could get back together.”

  “But what if he’s married?” I echo Josh’s words from the theater.

  “And what if he’s not? You can’t live your life with ‘what ifs’.”

  Suddenly I feel giddy, like on New Year’s Eve after having too much cheap champagne. “I’ll get my laptop!” I race to my room, grab my laptop from my desk and sprint back.

  Heather is waiting for me, now wearing her robe and sitting cross-legged on the bed.

  I open my Facebook account and type Drew Adams into the search box.

  After a few seconds a list of about a hundred people appears. The two of us squint at the tiny pictures. Some are female and we can cross those off immediately. Others take a bit more time.

  “That looks like him, right?” Heather points to the third one down. The photo is of a guy with dark hair standing on a beach with ocean stretching behind him for miles. And he’s wearing a Speedo.

  “It’s hard to tell. He looks sort of Asian.” I squint at the picture. “Any way to make it bigger?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “He’s not here,” I sigh after we finally have scrolled through the entire list. We try MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn, all to no avail. My eyes burn from staring at the computer screen and my frustration is mounting.

  “Who doesn’t use Facebook?” I moan and flop back onto the bed. Heather sprawls out beside me and stretches her arms above her head. She drums her headboard with her fingers.

  “Do you have his email address or anything from when you were together?”

  “No, his email was the university-issued one and I can’t remember his cell number. It was too long ago.” Curse my non-photographic memory.

  There is a long silence. I don’t know what Heather is thinking and I am afraid to mention Plan B. It’s one thing to look at the guy on Facebook (well, if he had Facebook, that is), but it’s something else entirely to drive to his childhood home.

  “What are you thinking?”

  I hesitate and then decide that full disclosure is the best option here. “I remember where his parents live, on that acreage near Edmonton. I could go see them.” My voice shakes with nerves.

  “Creeper! You’re serious?”

  My voice takes on a defensive edge. “I can’t think of any other way to find him, can you? Besides, it’s not like he’s a celebrity and I fell in love with his picture in a magazine. I know him! We dated for a long time! We were friends! It’ll be like Glee when all the kids who graduated come back and see each other again.”

  Heather seems to digest those words for a minute and then smiles. “Well, I’m coming with you. Drew was my friend, too.” She nods her head and adds, “Road trip! Maybe we can get some shopping in at West Ed as well.”

  I knew she would come through for me.

  “When do you want to go?”

  I roll over onto my side and heave a drawn out sigh. “I have a job interview next Wednesday. That’s it. Period. My life is an open freaking b
ook full of blank pages.”

  Heather laughs. “You are always so dramatic. Okay, so tomorrow is Saturday. What if we leave in the evening, drive up, stay near West Ed, go shopping on Sunday morning and then drop in on Drew’s parents later that day? We can be back in Calgary late Sunday night. I don’t have to be anywhere until Monday morning.”

  Hearing it all planned out suddenly makes it all very real.

  “We’re actually going to go find him, aren’t we?” I say the words but still don’t quite believe them. I’ve thought about Drew on and off for the last five years. I never really believed that anything would ever come of it.

  “Darn right we’re going to find him,” Heather says. She rolls off the bed and heads toward the bathroom, calling over her shoulder, “Maybe he’ll even have a cute roommate for me, you never know!”

  I lounge on the bed, listening to the water running in the bathroom sink as Heather removes her layers of foundation, lipstick and mascara. I haven’t felt this excited about life in years. Those legendary butterflies I read about in my guilty pleasure romance novels flutter around in my stomach and I want to shriek or giggle or dance, or maybe all three at once.

  Unbidden, thoughts of Josh enter my mind. I wonder what he’ll think now that Heather’s on my side? Will he accept this and wish us good luck? Or will he lecture me all over again?

  But what does that matter? Josh is just a random guy I went to law school with who has a great personality, makes me laugh and can calm Heather down when she gets in her diva moods. He’s a stellar friend, not my soul mate.

  Why do I care what he thinks?

  To know the road ahead,

  ask those coming back.

  —Chinese Proverb