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Avery was the taste of New Years Eve, of cars chasing the road and fireworks scraping stars, of the beginning and the end, of something that Derek's soul had decided was the most worthwhile curiosity in the world.
The party had been vaguely dull, and the noise had been awful and droning to the point which the environment became a boring blur that made the bottom of Derek's red plastic cup quite interesting to him. The minimal amount of alcoholic drink that sloshed in the cup seemed infinite in its flavor, unbeckoning in the repetition of itself. In summary, Derek did not want to be there, but he was there anyway.
Somehow, it was almost already the New Year. Somehow, this is worse than being home alone, observing the minute difference as the date on his computer changed. Somehow, he is shoved off the wall as the crowd envelops him and he is made one of many in an ocean of people counting down for New Years. A countdown for when he can finally go home, he thinks, and he wonders how bad traffic will be.
50 seconds. A few plucky sort are already counting down
40 seconds. Derek sighed and deigned to throw out the cup so that when everyone eventually went crazy, it would not spill on him accidentally.
30 seconds. Voices. Lots of voices. Counting. Loudness. Loudness, he knew, that would be followed by more loudness.
25 seconds. A voice. A tap on his shoulder. A stranger's smile in his face. He was drunk, but not obnoxious.
"You look lost," he said. The crowd attempted to drown out his voice with its rowdiness.
"Uh," Derek replied. "I'm here."
"My name is Avery."
"Avery," he said instead of his own name, like the world's most intelligent idiot.
20 seconds.
"Do you," Avery slurred. He squinted at Derek like he was a light. Something about his presence was aborbing. "Do you wanna dance?"
"It might be too late for that," Derek answered honestly.
15 seconds.
"How about later?"
"Maybe."
"Hm." A smile—satisfied. "Cool."
10 seconds.
"You gonna stick around here?" Avery asked, swaying slightly, bringing himself close so he could hear Derek's response. "After the countdown."
"…No."
"Oh."
5 seconds.
"Wait—but you said maybe, earlier."
3 seconds.
Derek frowned.
2 seconds.
"Did I?"
1 second.
Avery had shrugged and smiled and sparkled in this earthly shade-under-flowers way, and Derek had been pulled into orbit. Naturally, of course. He saw the fireworks, then he heard them like he heard his heart pound in his ears, and tasted Avery's drunkenness like a match tossed onto gasoline where Avery's hands connected onto his shoulders. He was a stranger, but all at once it had felt new and exciting, and it had felt like coming home.
Stunned, Happy New Year was all he could mumble against his lips, his mind running and running and running—he had wanted to go home, hadn't he? That is what he would do. He found himself nodding along as Avery pointed up to the fireworks in the sky, and they watched them burst, and for a moment he felt that someone was looking back down at him from the sky, and he thought that it was himself.
Avery, then, he knew—he had lost Avery in the crowd, and he could not find him, and he went home with his head in the clouds. Then he realized, it had not even been a full hour since the New Year, but he had already taken the place of the moon's eye that watched the earth, that saw the fireworks, and that had looked back at him when he looked to the sky by Avery's side.
Oh, Derek realized one day, when he walked into a room that Avery was walking out of, and their shoulders brushed. He doesn't remember me.
He could not wander campus without Avery catching his eye: Avery was the world's friendliest mystery. He liked to skateboard and he liked to smile, and he was good, good in the way that Derek could look at him and know and understand that Avery would follow his heart to the edge of the earth. Promptly after having such thoughts, his head would hurt, and his heart would race, and Derek would clutch himself in embarrassment, and he would think about their first and only encounter—wondering if it would be the only one he would carry for the rest of his life. Even before he truly decided such a thing, without even trying to talk to him again, he figured that the memento would linger with him anyways, regardless.
Derek meets Avery in the library, and wonders if it was always meant to be this way. There is something so right about the picture of Avery with a storybook open, reading to children with animated movement and expression. He makes them laugh like his life depends on it, as if the six year olds will chase him out of the building of he (the jester) did not perform a suitable act. The Kids' Corner of the library was decorated in children's crafts of different fruits, all that which surrounded a large paper version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Among the blooming and the blossoming—of the flowers, and the laughter, and the colors—Avery belonged in such a lovely way. He illuminated like how he had illuminated among stars and clouds and fireworks, and Derek had felt the sparks all over again.
Though he had a book open before him, Derek could only stare at the words as his ears both betrayed and indulged him to listen to the story Avery was telling.
He approaches him, later, when storytime is over.
"Pardon," he says, knowing that soon, Avery will see him again. "Could you help me find a book?"
Avery turns around, and finally, finally, finally, he sees Derek, and he smiles at him. "Sure thing!"
Derek is no longer just a patron of the library.
"It's you!" Avery lights up in (glorious, Derek thought) recognition when he sees him—then glances at the name tag he dons. "Ooh, we'll be working together!"
"Yeah." A whisper of a chuckle. "We will."