It was late autumn when the star professor of the Physics department, Charles McGregor, fell head over heels for the most beautiful, talented, kind, intriguing girl in the universe.

Well… In his eyes, at least. No one else seemed to pay her much attention. None of his colleagues, even those in the Humanities departments, had much to say about her, nor did the students that populated the halls of the observatory or the Physics classrooms.

She is not an astronomy student, not even in the general education classes, which came as a relief, as it took away at least some of the concerns he. She said she was researching for her senior project. She was an art major, she explained as she pulled a sketchbook from her bag. She wanted to do a work on the night sky, and that maybe someone around could show her how they took pictures of faraway celestial bodies and how they interacted in space

Nonetheless, Charles was the only person manning the publicly accessible parts of the astronomy wing, specifically its giant telescope, who did not fully believe her when she said that was the only reason she started hanging around. He had known loss, he had already felt its keen sting, and he knew when her eyes caught his that there was more haunting her than high marks and graduation.

She often stayed late into the night, so he told her all about the nebulas and galaxies and patterns the ancient cultures saw meaning in. He is a teacher, of course, and that is his role in society, but he had never enjoyed it quite so much as when her eyes focus solely on him and an attentive grimace sketches itself on her face.

With each of his stories, night after night, she opened up a little more. Her name was Celine, after her grandmother's favourite singer. She told him of her deceased mother, fierce and brave and overprotective in her tracksuits, and her wreck of a father. Their life in their shanty house in a bad part of town. The celebration when she got a full-ride scholarship to college, a veritable miracle, one that one of his former students, Mr. Ibrahim, had a little hand on.

Here she was, working odd jobs to pay for everything else the scholarship did not cover. Spending her nights in the observatory and planetarium, searching…

Celine always redirected the conversation before he could pry out of her what exactly she was searching for. She deflected with excuses about a new commissioning or perfecting an art technique or just needing to get away from the stresses of life.

He realized she knew very little about him, eventually, as even someone as awkward and unsympathetic as he is would eventually notice every other word out of his mouth was about a celestial body. So, he began reciprocating her personal revelations: He was an only child, he was raised by his older parents and he liked watching meteorites and constellations in their back garden with them, his time as an investment broker…

Charles did not know what the magic words were as he talked, but Celine began to smile more as she sketched the star systems that he projected onto a dark wall for her.

She put down the sketchbook entirely as he answered her question about his parents with a dark joke about him being an orphan. She slid her hand over his, and her eyes were full of empathy.

He wondered sometimes if she wanted to kiss him when he walked her to her dorm or when she snuck him takeaway into the lab after hours. He held back from closing the distance himself, too unsure if she felt the same.

Autumn changed to winter, and the academic year flew by as they became the closest of friends. Their reunion after the Christmas holidays was perfected by a brief midnight kiss at the frigid strike of the New Year. They both blushed even redder in the icy air but they did not have a chance to talk about what it meant as the fireworks exploded over the near-frozen river.

Winter changed to spring, and they held hands at any occasion they found themselves alone or fairly distant from university grounds. It became harder and harder to think about life after her graduation.

Things were going well, all in all, and he was happy for once. Until, that is, he caught Celine in tears in the planetarium one evening in April.

"Celine? What's wrong?" He asked, his voice full of concern.

Charles tried to think of anything that he should have known she might be upset about. An anniversary he forgot? A date he missed? Or worse, something he might have done to hurt her?

She tugged at her sleeve. "I'm running out of time."

Looking at the usually vivacious girl folding into herself like that, he realized it was quite warm in here. Too warm for a hoodie, even a thin one like hers.

"Running out of time? To find a job for after graduation?" The man insisted.

She shook her head but smiled a bit. "Well, that too."

"For us? To me to be with you?" He asked, feeling bold about it. "Because, Celine, the best thing that can happen is for us to be away from here. We can work it out, we can start over. Even if you have to leave the state, I can manage. We can go anywhere we want. It doesn't have to be the end, I…"

"No." She cut him off and pecked to his cheek to soften the harsh tone. "I mean, yes, I want to talk about that and the future and everything, but that's not why I'm so sad. There's something else, something I failed at."

His confusion and honest desire to help must have shown on his face because before, he could reassure her that, while her academic performance was not perfect, it was far from failing, she placed a gentle hand on his chest.

"I haven't been entirely honest with you, Charles. You do know most of the reasons I come here at all." She gestured to signify the astronomy building as a whole. "But you don't know the most important reason to me. The most personal one. It's ridiculous, but please don't laugh."

"Celine…"

"No, let me just say it."

She unzipped her hoodie and took it off. Charles swallowed hard, and the part of his brain not keeping his overeager anatomy under control realized he had never seen her in short sleeves in all the time he had known her. The weather had not been warm enough until recently.

Celine revealed the inside of her right wrist. It was the tattoo of a star, the five-pointed kind, with black dots inside.

"It's a map of how it looks from Earth." She explained. "Or it's supposed to be."

He examined her wrist more closely, holding her arm as carefully as if it was her heart, because the look in her eyes told him it was. That is how much this tattoo meant to her.

"I got it the day I turned eighteen." She continued, a wistful smile blooming slowly in her face. "My dad… When I was born, he didn't have much money, him and mom, so to celebrate, he adopted a star and named it after me. After she died and he remarried, he forgot about it. Somehow, we lost the certificate with the star's identification number, but he had this map in a file I found. The big one there in the middle, that's it. You're supposed to be able to find it yourself even with just a kid's telescope, if you get away from the city far enough."

His heart sunk. Charles wanted to help her, he wanted to find the star for her, but the pattern did not match any he was familiar with.

"There isn't no-one that could help you with that? The person who sold the naming rights for one?" The professor asks. "Or perhaps some other information that your father might remember about it? Even if it's just the constellation, it'd narrow it down significantly."

"No, he doesn't remember shit, and Rosalie gets mad at him whenever we talk about it." She grimaces at the mention of her stepmother and he thinks it is cute how every thought of hers seem to find its way to her face. "That was back in the '90s, so who knows if the adoption program is still even active today, even if he remembered. I've tried to find any part of the sky that matches. That's why I've been here so much."

Celine sniffled and wiped the sparkling tears from where they were caught in her lashes. He let loose of her wrist and leaned in to kiss away her tears.

Just before his lips reached hers, however, her words echoed in his head. The late '90s. The map was over twenty years old.

He jumped up. "I've got it!"

Celine blinked up at him, trying to figure out why he did not follow through with the kiss. He would have to make up for that. His glee is not translating well as she sat on the planetarium floor in the literal and metaphorical dark.

"I know how we can find your dad's star!" He almost shouts, excited as he was.

He pulled her up to standing and gave her the kiss she deserved, and then bounced away, leaving her shocked by the sudden kiss and still trying to follow his train of thought.

"Sorry, but how?" The young woman asked, confused.

Her scrunched brow and slightly tilted head were adorable to him.

"You're brilliant, Celine. You said it yourself! The map is as old as you are."

Understanding dawned on her face and she inhaled sharply. "Charles, it's… I've been looking at your newest projections with…"

"With a telescope more powerful than most anything else out there, certainly more powerful than tech from twenty years ago." He concluded the thought for her.

Charles typed furiously into the planetarium's computer, flipping through the years until he had the archives from her birth month and year. He carded his fingers through his wild brown hair, not caring how it stood up in all directions.

"C'mon, c'mon!" He muttered as it loaded piece by piece onto the giant projection screen covering the entire theatre.

Their eyes scanned the white dots over and over until she gasped out, "Oh my god."

"What? Where?" He asked, trying to follow her gaze in the dark.

Celine pointed, then walked right under it, staring at her star.

"It's here." She whispers, overtaken by emotion.

One hand covered her mouth and the other wrapped around her middle as she choked back her tears. He went to her and pulled her into his arms, soothing her with strokes along her back.

"Hey, hey! Don't cry." He sooths her softly. "You did it, Celine. You found your star."

"We did it." She corrected, absolutely thankful for his help. "Thank you. I know it's just a star, like any other, but my dad… It's my last connection to him, to my mother, to the family that we used to be. The only thing I have left. Oh god, my father! I should, I don't know, print it out or something."

She laughed at her own silliness. She had not planned out what she would do if she actually found it. She only knew her senior project had to involve the astronomy department so she could get in here. To have access to this.

Charles understood and smiled down at her, shining eyes reflecting her own. "I can do even better."

They used the remainder of their free time until final exams working on a special project together. A thank you gift from Celine to her mom, even if she could not see it anymore.

They presented it on graduation day, a beautiful painting done by Celine with her official boyfriend's help and expertise. It showed the night sky as they could see it today through the telescope, and they showed her father the real thing to prove it, but the painting featured special metallic paint over the stars on the map that had been left behind.

The older man smiled and cried copiously, much to her stepmother's distaste, kissing his daughter's hand in thanks. She knows that he loved his deceased mother very much, that he missed her almost as much as her, and she was happy that she had the chance of showing him that, of sharing that moment together, even through their disagreements.

That painting of the stars in the 1990's was passed on from generation to generation, with Celine and Charles's kids and grandkids and great-grandkids eventually receiving their own adopted stars for each birth, until she had painted all her aging fingers would allow.

They never forgot those nights together in the astronomy building, however. The studying and sketching, takeaway and pizza, laughter and tears and revealing their hearts to each other until their love was as vast and deep and infinite as the stars they counted.