Hello there, I'm sorry for the delay on City Lights, again. I'm trying to work on it but my mind is everywhere. It will come, I can promise that. Meanwhile, I wrote this and hope you like it.

Let me know what you think.

Disclaimer: I own the plot, not the characters.

Stars

"Are you crazy?" I whisper-yelled staring at my screen in the dark where her face was at, as she gave me her stunning grin on the other side.

"Crazy would be to know you're here and not come see you." I heard her respond through my earbuds, sounding as normal as ever. I only could see her face, but I could faintly listen to the rush of the street behind her in the background. She was here, in the city. "So, come down, I'll wait."

I shook my head. "She's going to kill me. Even worse, your mother is going to kill me."

She just chuckled. "Why would my mother kill you? She's not going to know. And, honestly, I don't care about your friend. We'll be back before any of them wake up, anyway, so shut up and hurry up. It's kind of cold out here."

I smiled, pleased with her answer. "You're just really crazy, aren't you?"

She nodded. "And that's what makes this whole thing funnier. See you in a bit, Lex." and with that, she ended our video call.

I exhaled through my nose and got up from the couch I was crashing in for the time being, making sure to be as quiet as possible to avoid waking up anyone. It's not like they would have stopped me, but I knew my friends wouldn't approve of this. They didn't like her, but I was well past the point of caring about that. I loved her and that was all that really mattered.

I grabbed my jacket and walked out of the apartment.

"Well then, there she is." Her words reached my ears just as the cold autumn wind did, sending goosebumps all over my skin. There she was, Mitchie Torres, finally in front of me after so long, carelessly leaning against what I assumed was her mother's car. Her wavy brown hair was down, falling over the blue with gray sleeves hoodie she was wearing. Her hands were hidden in her pockets but her all so familiar grin was all over her face.

She was happy to see me and my heart might have skipped a beat for knowing that. "Hello," I said, timidly, holding my breath without really meaning to. I was more nervous than I thought I'd be.

"Hi." She said in respond, taking her hand out of her pocket and extending it for me to take it. I smiled and did as she wished. She pulled me into a tight hug that felt like I was that one favorite stuffed animal from childhood of hers that she had just found after years of being lost. "It's so good to see you."

I breathed in her essence. "It's really good to see you, too." Mitchie pulled away, turning her grin into a mischievous smirk.

"Are you ready to go?"

"I still feel like you're kidnapping me."

She let out a laugh that sounded so much different to me than from what I was used to, confirming she was here, with me. She stuck her hand inside her pocket again and pulled out a pair of keys. "I am, but just for a couple of hours. Let's go now; the road awaits." Mitchie opened the passenger door for me.

I raised an eyebrow. "Where are you taking me, though?" She placed her hand on my upper arm, making me feel that rush all over my skin, again.

"As my friend would say, wherever the wind takes us." And she winked at me.

It was the silliest of things, really. It wasn't my intention to fall for someone I would see once or twice a year, but it just sort of happened. Even when Mitchie wasn't there, it felt like she was. It was like gravity would pull me right back to her as she was Earth and I never understood why. She wasn't the best out there, I knew that, but maybe she was just right for me. For so many months, years now even, I had told myself how foolish of me it was but maybe she was like the sun and I'd be powerless like the moon without her. I had loved her even when I would forget how she felt like, but now here she was right next to me, driving, and some part of me just knew she was it.

"How you like the city so far?" Mitchie asked, oblivious to all the thoughts inside my head. I shrugged.

"It's not New York City, but I like it." She chuckled, because she expected that. "It's different, I suppose."

"How so?"

"I don't know. You live in or visit a place for a long time and all the people seem the same to you. They're all doing the same, rushing to their jobs, to their lives. However, when you go somewhere else, somewhere you've never been to, even when they're doing the exact same thing, it feels different and I like that feeling. The undiscovered. It makes everything much more exciting."

She looked at me by the corner of her eye, surprised. "Are you saying the big old city isn't exciting for you anymore?"

"No. New York will always be exciting to me as I haven't discovered all its secrets just yet. What I'm saying is I like new and this city? It's new to me."

"Well, I'm glad you think that because I'm sure your friend, as the proud citizen of this beautiful city she must be, took you to all the places you needed to see while being here. Me, however, since I don't live in the city, I'm taking you somewhere else." She stopped at a red light and looked back to me. "I'm taking you to new."

I giggled. "I see you just enjoy using my words." She smiled and looked back to the road.

It was not always this way; I had hated her as much as I had loved her. Mitchie Torres was everything I had ever loved, the same way she was everything I despised. But even when I hated her, my love for her never really left. That's how we ended up here, really. We became friends and I loved her, just as we drifted apart and I hated her. Time, however, never adjusted to my plans. I wanted to hate her, I really did, but something never let me. That way, without meaning to, we found our way back to each other. And I don't know why, I will never know why, but we found a way and it worked. We worked and I stopped questioning it. Ultimately, if it was meant to be, it'd continue working and if it wasn't, we'd just drift apart again and I had gone through that once. I could handle it.

I was just going to enjoy it while it lasted.

"Here we are." She said, after over half an hour driving, stopping the car and unlocking her seatbelt. I looked through the windshield, bewildered. Basically, we were in the middle of nowhere. It was an empty field. I was in an empty field, in one of the most dangerous cities of the world.

I swallowed. "What?"

The brown eyed girl laughed. "You're probably thinking I really did kidnap you, I have plans to kill you and leave your body here to rot, aren't you?"

I tilted my head. "Can't say that thought didn't cross my mind, to be honest…"

She reached for my hand and held it in hers, intertwined our fingers and stared at them as she did so. "Do you trust me?"

I sighed. "I do."

Mitchie looked up and met my eyes, hers shining with a special glow. "Then let's go. You're gonna like this. "

She let go of my hand and got out of the car. I blinked, thinking for a second if this was a good idea and concluding it wasn't, I got out of the car as well. She had opened the trunk and was taking a backpack out of it; my nerves were over my head. This was entirely too random and she wasn't that way. She gave me another comforting smile, closing the trunk and locking the car. Then, she extended her hand to me again and threw the backpack over her shoulder. I held her hand, my hand feeling so small in hers. She squeezed it a little as she guided me into the field–she could feel my nerves.

"So, where are we?" I muttered as I could.

"Well, you see, before I knew how to drive, I wouldn't leave my town. I'd stay there and be bored out of my mind, inside, you know how it is. But then, once I got my permit, it opened a world of options to me. So, sometimes, I grab my mother's keys and just drive. It liberates me." Mitchie stopped walking, making me stop. "And in one of those drives, I found this place. It looks deserted, but there's a little town like 5 minutes away from here. The river isn't that far, either." She opened her backpack and pulled out a blanket from it and extended it over the grass. "And the reason I brought you here is–" She sat down and pulled my hand slightly–I sat down next to her. "You love the night sky." I raised an eyebrow. "Lie down."

I did as she asked but she didn't move an inch. She kept her eyes on me and, in my nerves, I couldn't keep my eyes off of her. Well, maybe that wasn't my nerves, she was just breathtaking. It was one thing to see her through pictures and video chats, but it just felt different to have her next to me. "Do I have something on my face, Lex?" She said and I giggled. I actually had forgotten there were other sounds around us–I could only hear her voice, her breathing.

"You're beautiful."

"So are you." I smiled. The brown eyed girl crinkled her nose. "But now, look up."

I gasped when my eyes reached the night sky. In all of my years, I had never seen something quite like it. I had spent so many nights admiring it, looking at it, getting inspiration out of it and suddenly, she gives me this, constellations. Lots of them. I'd only ever get so very few stars.

"It's quite the view, isn't it?" Mitchie said, happiness radiating in her voice. This wasn't random–she hoped for this reaction.

"I thought you said that–"

"I couldn't see the stars." She finished my sentence, nodding her head, as she put down her backpack. "But like I said, driving liberates me and here we are. A found a place where I could see them. And you were the only one I wanted to share this with."

"This–this is amazing!" I stuttered, excitedly and her grin grew bigger. "Of all things I'd thought I'd see in here, I never thought this would be one of those." I pushed myself up with my elbows, sitting straight again. Then, I leaned in to hug her, taking her by surprise. She left out a small whimper as I held her tight, but returned the embrace. "Thank you for bringing me here."

"It's my pleasure." She responded and pulled away. "But now let's get started with this; the clock is against us."

She looked into her backpack and took out sandwiches and two bottles of iced tea. It was everything we needed, really. In fact, I'm sure we would have been just fine if it was just me, her and the constellations above us. We were here because I had been in the city for a couple of days and this had been our only chance to do this. Sneakily, but we were doing it. And it was just a couple of hours. We were making the most of our time together, like we tried to do ever since we made this work again. In fact, maybe that's why we were working. We weren't fooling around this time. We wanted to work, like the stars do when they form a constellation. Sometimes, the shape doesn't make sense. It might look weird, even, but people still look at them in awe. We wanted that. We wanted all people that said 'this isn't going to work' to look at us and see how it did. So, we talked about everything and nothing, we laughed at each other's stupid jokes and we just lied there, in the middle of nowhere, setting the start line of our long run because we knew when we looked back, this would be the moment we would remember. Not the past, when we were just two children not making sense of what we wanted, but this moment, when we realized what really mattered.

"Mitch?" I said after a long time, when we were just lying there next to each other, listening to the crickets sing and looking at the few clouds above us move slowly. My voice made the crickets' singing grow weaker, like when I was a child and one would get stuck in my room. It'd shut up if I talked. I smiled, keeping my eyes on the starred sky.

"Yeah?" I heard her respond, her voice sounding like she had just woken up from a deep slumber. I knew it wasn't like that, though. She just was lost in her thoughts.

"I love you." I said, simply and I swear I heard her smile.

"I know." And I'm glad she knows, because years will go by and we will change just as much as seasons do, but no matter how heavy the winter or how unbearable the summer heat, my love will remain the same at anytime and everywhere, just like the stars and the sound of crickets. "I love you too, Alex."

"I know." because this time, I really did.