Excerpt from The Good Daughters

After she and Charles had made love for the first time, they'd gone for a walk in Schenley Park, and she'd spent the whole time smiling up at the sky. "What are you looking at?" Charles whispered in her ear. His breath tickled, and she couldn't help shivering a bit as she laughed.

"Big balls of burning gas."

"Oh, well, when you put it that way, it sounds so romantic."
He takes her hand. Even in the dim lighting of the park, her skin carries a pale luster, like pearl, peeking out between the cracks of his long obsidian fingers.

With his other hand, he points up through the tall trees. "That's Ursa Major."

Madeline strains her eyes and cranes her neck. "I can't see."

Charles pulls her through the shadows to a clearing called Flagstaff Hill and scans the skyscape now spread gloriously above them. "Can you see it now?"

"Yes."

"Okay, good. Then over there, that's Orion. And next to him, Taurus, the bull he's trying to kill."

Madeline smiles as he continues his stories. She is no longer interested in the stars, but in their keeper. She cocks her head at him. "What, the kid from the ghetto had a telescope?"

He nods. "I saved up for nearly a year. Wanted to be an astronaut."

Earlier in their relationship, she might have blushed, nervous about the differences between them, their upbringings, their opportunities. But his ease was contagious, and soon they were as comfortable with one another as they were with themselves. Now she can't help grinning at the thought of him as a young boy, one eye pressed eagerly against the end of a scope.

"So what happened, Charles Skywalker?"

He shrugs. "It was just a childhood dream. I grew up, and I wanted other things."

Madeline looks up to the skies once more. She has only ever wanted to be an artist, to create unexpected beauty and meaning that will affect others, maybe even change their lives. Feeling Charles' presence next to her, above her, she wonders if she knows what growing up means. Has she somehow stagnated, remained a child full of naïveté and dreams?

[...]

"How do you know the difference between growing up and giving up?" she'd asked.

He'd looked down at her, amusement twinkling in his eyes like the stars in the skies above them. "Maddy, that's the one thing I know you will never have to worry about."