He pulled a cigarette from the pack, drew it to his lips, crushing it slightly in his careless grasp, set fire to the end of it and took a deep, long breath of nicotine-filled smoke. He just stared out into the night sky. Our conversations sometimes stop like this. I hated him a little for this, too. Not for killing the conversation, though. No, the talk was mindless chatter to me. No. I hated him for his ability to withdraw from this world. Just looking at him, I could tell he was somewhere very far away. I wondered if the cancer was kicking in yet or not.

"Do you think we'll ever get there?" he asked.
"We're not actually going anywhere," I replied.
"No, out there. Far out there, into the light. Do you think that'll ever happen for us." He said it more as a statement than a question.
"I don't know," I exhaled, slightly bemused by this sudden change of thought.

He didn't reply after that. I just sat there on the porch while he stood with his cigarette burning slowly in his hand. He should have been an astronaut. Of all the people I knew, he could probably do it. There was something in him that just let him keep going, even when everything was going to shit. It was another ten minutes of looking out into the stars before he spoke again. During that time, I wondered how many of those lights were snuffed out already. I wondered why I was so morbid all the time. I guess I'm just a product of the grisly times in which we live.

"You know, I never spoke to her after that."

I didn't reply. There was really nothing I could say to him. After everything that had happened, it just didn't seem right.

"It's the stars. They remind me of her, somehow. Maybe that's where everything that you've lost goes when it's gone. Out into the stars..."

I stood up, pulling a cigarette from the pack. I clumsily lit the end of it and breathed in my own brand of cancer. The stars were brilliant that night.

"Ya. Maybe," I answered.