You've Found Oliver (You've Reached Sam, #2)(26)

“Best cannoli in the world,” Ben says.

“I would normally argue with that, but my favorite bakery in Ellensburg just closed down. I’m still grieving, actually.”

Ben places his hand on my shoulder. “We’ll order some in its memory. And a cinnamon roll while we’re here.”

We pay at the register and head outside again. The temperature has suddenly dropped, making me shiver a little. That’s when I realize I forgot something. “Wait. My jacket.”

“Did you lose it?”

“Yeah!” I think back to the places we’ve been. I don’t remember bringing it to the movie. “I must have left it on the bus.” I let out a long breath. Now I’ll have to call lost and found in the morning.

“Here, you can wear mine.” He removes his jacket for me.

“Then you’ll be cold.”

“I’ll be fine, I’m wearing a thick sweater.”

He places his jacket around my shoulders. It carries the warmth of him, feeling like an embrace. I take in the scent of his cologne. Hopefully, I’m not blushing too hard when I say, “That’s really nice of you.”

Ben just smiles at me. He leads us toward the center of campus, and the university clock tower rises into view. The quad is more than twice the size of CWU. I would probably get lost in the maze of trees if I walked through here alone. Thankfully, I have Ben to show me around.

Apparently, he doesn’t have access to the observatory this weekend. “Don’t worry, I have a plan B,” he says. To be honest, it doesn’t really matter where we’re heading. We could sit on the sidewalk and I would enjoy it all the same.

Eventually, we reach the entrance of an old brick building as he takes out his key card. “This is the astronomy department,” he says, unlocking the door. “We’re not really supposed to be here this late, but my TA let me borrow his key.”

“So we’re sneaking in?”

“Let’s not use that word,” he whispers.

Since it’s a Saturday night, the place is vacant of students. At first, I think he’s going to show me something in his lab. But we take the elevator to the top floor. There’s a stairwell at the end of the hallway. We climb to the top and Ben pushes open a metal door. A breeze rolls through as he leads me onto the rooftop. I glance over the ledge, taking in the view of the city.

There’s a blanket laid out in the middle of the roof. Next to it is a telescope that’s angled toward the night sky. Ben walks over to it and says, “I set this up earlier for us. Just have to adjust a few things.”

“Did you borrow it from the department?”

“It’s actually mine,” he says, running a proud hand over it. “It was my graduation present. My parents said it was this or a trip to Greece.”

“You turned down a trip to Greece?”

“I like to use the word postponed. It’s all about how you frame things, you know?”

I nod thoughtfully. “Well, in that sense, I’ve also postponed a trip to Greece.”

“Maybe we’ll end up going together.” He smiles at me again. Then he bends down, twisting a metal knob beneath the lens. A moment later, he lifts back up and says, “Alright, it’s ready for you.”

Ben explains the right technique. Apparently, you have to keep both eyes open when you’re looking. And you can’t stand too close or you won’t see things clearly.

It takes a second for the image to focus. Small pinpricks of light shine through a dark sky. “So what am I looking at?”

“See the white speck in the center? That’s the Orion Nebula.”

“That small smudge of light?”

“Exactly. It’s one of the closest star-forming regions to Earth,” he explains. “You can see it with the naked eye in the wintertime, but it’s not as clear without a telescope. And see the three bright stars on the right? That’s Orion’s Belt.”

It looks like a string of pearls in a dark sky. “How far away is it?”

“About fifteen hundred light-years.”

“Oh, wow.”

“Let me show you something else—”

I step back and Ben adjusts the telescope again. He seems more excited for me to see this one. As I lean forward to look, he places a hand on my back, which makes me go still. For a second, I forget what I’m supposed to be doing.

“That’s Coma Berenices constellation,” he says. “It probably looks like a bunch of stars at first. But each one is actually an entire galaxy.”

“Those are galaxies?”

“Thousands of them, actually.”

“But they’re so small…”

“They’re millions of light-years from here. The interesting thing is we’re actually seeing them from the future,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“It takes time for light to travel to us. So what we’re seeing now is light being emitted from millions of light-years away,” he explains. “Which means we’re looking at these objects as they were millions of years ago. There’s a chance they might not even exist anymore. Or other galaxies could have been born. A telescope is sort of like a time machine that way. You don’t really see things as they are now.”