She missed him. Especially now, with the night so dark and cold and she had to stay up all night to watch the stars.  She missed his warm hugs, his teasing laughter and the way his brown eyes twinkled in the starlight. It was here, on top of this hill, that they had grown close to each other.

            Chris could still remember the night clearly when she had lost Mac. It had happened exactly twelve months ago, this very same Perseids meteor shower night. They had been classmates in Humanities I, and through some quirk of the teacher, it was one of the requirements to attend and experience the overnight activity. Mac didn’t want to come, for he liked nothing less than to stay awake on cold nights, but she did. She cajoled him, and when that did not work, she resorted to threats until he finally gave in.

            She could still remember her restlessness that night, her anxiety as hour after hour had passed and Mac still did not come. It was not like him to break his word, and Chris had been utterly convinced that he did want to be with her. After a nightmarish night of waiting, she finally called him at his house, and unclear as the words were because of the loud sobbing of his mother, she got the message: Mac was dead.

            Chris did not know how she got through the day and the days that followed. She was numb all over and later, she could barely recall if she had cried or not. Weeks passed before she became totally aware of her surrounding, and through constant communication with his family, she got the details of Mac’s death: he had been in the front seat of a jeepney when it collided head-on with a right-hand drive truck in Quezon Avenue. Most of the passengers had been injured but Mac and driver were the only casualties.

            Now, a year and a failed subject later (she had ceased attending her Hum I classes after the accident), she could still feel the pain of her loss. Though the physical pain she had felt during the first few months of his death was gone, it left a curious numbness that she could not just fling aside. It was especially intense now, when she tried to remember everything about him, even only the features on his face, and could not. At first, she had tried to keep his memory alive by remembering, as an exercise, every single physical detail about Mac. She started with his face, with the mole on the middle of his right cheek, to the scar on his neck (the legacy of a childhood disease), and then to the small patch of very light hair on his right ankle. Day by day she had tried to remember all and found out that her mental image of him grew more and more vague each day.     Eventually, though, only his eyes remained to haunt her at night.

            “Chris.” Said a voice behind her.

            She started. “Who… Rico?”

            “Yeah. Can I sit beside you?”

            “Umm…okay.”

            Rico carefully laid out the paper he brought with him on the ground and sat down. “You’re thinking of him again, aren’t you?”

            “Yeah,” she replied, suddenly aware of the picture she was presenting to others: cold, lonely and remembering. She reluctantly focused her mind on what Rico has to say and at the same time bracing herself for the multitude of advice that was sure to come. Although he was both her friend and Mac’s, she still could not understand his overwhelming concern for her.

            Rico hugged his knees and gazed at Polaris, now unusually bright, peeking just above the acacia tree made lush with frequent August rains. “It’s been a year already. Can’t you forget him?”

            Chris shook her head and felt her eyes getting misty. She didn’t want to cry! But her vision blurred and the hundred lights in the horizon became one. She allowed a solitary tear to fall and it coursed down her cheek, leaving a warm trail behind.

            “That’s exactly the problem. I don’t want to forget him, but I think that I already have!”

            The admission loosened Chris’s restraint, and she let her tears fall. She cried for herself, for the transience of love that could never become a reality again.

            Silently, Rico handed her his hanky when hers became a mere ball of wet memories. After a while, when her sobs gradually subsided, he spoke.

            “There’s nothing to be guilty of in forgetting, Chris. It just means that time is healing your wounds. You’ve got to let go of the past and live again. Mac wouldn’t have liked it for you to pine for him forever.”

            After wiping the last of her tears, Chris found out that she felt a lot better. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s just I’ve loved him so much.”

            “But he’s dead, and you’re alive. Remember him from time to time but don’t let his memories prevent you from being happy again.”

            She turned her head sideways to thank him and suddenly found herself face to face with Rico. Their gazes locked, and she knew that if she would not stop herself she would be sucked again, down, down, into a place she had slowly and successfully left behind. The discovery that she could still feel something intense so soon made her dizzy. She immediately broke the contact and looked up to the dark, starlit sky, trying to flee, she knew, the inevitable. Suddenly, something caught her eyes.

            “Rico, look!” she cried, pointing at the object in the sky. It was a bolide, a meteor bigger and brighter than any celestial object visible that night. Bolides were rare, even for them who watched the night skies frequently. Together, they watched its fiery descent until it finally flared off.

            “That was magnificent!” she said, feeling genuinely happy for the first time in months. Was the bolide an omen of good things to come, or was it just Someone’s way of saying that love is not and can not be limited to people?

            “Yes,” Rico replied quietly and stood up. He held his hand out to her and said, “Come, we’ll tell the others.”

            Chris stared at the proffered hand for a long time. From a distance, she could hear the animated talk of the other observers from the observatory deck and knew that they needed no telling. Her mind was suddenly filled with memories of loving, of spending nights and days with someone else again, and of knowing the feeling of being treasured. But then, visions of herself plunging straight into long, tear-filled nights and bleak, empty days and months after love is gone also came, together with the bleak feeling of losing control over her emotions. She knew that somehow, someday, like Mac, Rico would leave her.