Chapter 1
Earth…the not-too-distant future
Is running away to another planet really the best option?
“Earth to Geo.” Ginger tapped her manicured nails on the café’s darkened vid-screen table, scrolling the breakfast menu. I squinted. How did she paint those tiny little cherries on them?
Saturdays at Toni’s Café with Ginger were nonnegotiable.
Every booth was packed, and the air was thick with the tang of toasted sourdough and cinnamon-dusted lattes.
Toni’s was the only place in this dive town with espresso that wasn’t too sour or acidic—Ginger’s words, not mine—and it was a tradition going on eight years.
Dressed in silver lamé, she literally shone as she sipped her Italian espresso.
Her black-tipped bangs were framed by stick-straight silver-white hair.
Opposites in so many ways, I scuffed my worn steel-toed boots against the floor and fingered the hole in my frayed jeans, sighing as I recalled loosening my belt another notch that morning.
She pushed the off-planet employment brochure toward me the same way she did every week. Constantly scanning them for costume design inspiration, Ginger always had the latest one. “C’mon. Now’s the time.”
At least three of these brochures lined the bottom of my recycling bin at home, and I’d unstuck one from under the popcorn bowl earlier.
She leaned over the table between us, knocked the brim of my Space Invaders cap from my head and rustled my overgrown curls. “You’re too cute and just too amazing overall to let Cameron keep bringing you down.”
My ears grew warm as I pulled my hat back down over them.
“You need a change. It’s time to kick that douchebag to the curb.” Ginger didn’t sugarcoat.
“You trying to get rid of me, Ging?”
“Not in a lifetime, but it’s resonating in my bones.
You’d be so perfect for this. They’re recruiting an archbuilder…
” She paused before her eyes grew cartoon-character wide.
“Plus”—her voice softened—“I know you don’t want to hear it, but Cameron looked awfully cozy in his social feed last weekend.
” Her knuckles turned white around the tiny espresso cup.
“Who the hell is that guy anyway? Wasn’t Cameron away on business? ”
I shook the numbness from my fingers, but my stomach roiled. Whenever Ginger pointed out one of Cameron’s indiscretions, I folded my emotions and refolded them before safely slotting them into a locked box, like a ballot to be dealt with never.
I sighed, the earnestness of her words hitting harder than usual this time. “’Kay, you got me. What the hell’s an archbuilder?”
“I researched the shit out of this, Geo.” She smacked the rolled brochure into her palm. “It’s a home builder. You’d be doing what you love, acting as a project manager, but on another planet. How cool is that?”
My mind flicked from one far-fetched image to the next and landed on a picture of Tatooine—beige, plagued by windstorms, sandworms and…fictional.
“You could try it for a year. It pays so well, you’d have enough to start up your own construction company when you got back.”
My fingers drummed the table. Could I really leave it all behind?
Outside of my work crew, if I were kidnapped tomorrow, I could count the people who would notice on one hand—two fingers, to be exact. Ginger and Cameron. And Cameron wouldn’t miss me so much as he’d miss how much I babied him.
“They have an orientation session this weekend at the Center for Interplanetary Accessibility.” Ginger’s sing-song voice carried over the sharp whistle of the café’s milk steamer.
My jaw tightened and I twisted my fingers around my coffee mug. “Ging.” I swallowed the hard knot in my throat. “You think they would let me take Charz and Pika?”
Ginger reached across the table and took my hand. “Maybe…you could negotiate it into your contract?” Despite her lethal fingernails, a wave of comfort filled me. She paused for a second. “You know I love those little rats. I could keep them for you for a year.”
My eye twitched over leaving my dogs behind, but no matter how unlikely, visions of aliens with large teeth and no manners swallowing them whole horrified me more.
Besides her persistence about sending me off-planet, Ginger’s advice had always been sound.
Still, the outrageousness of this proposition blindsided me as if I were the star of a blooper reel.
My resolve weakened, and my heart raced at what the future might hold.
Cameron would finally appreciate me if we had time apart.
Right? Plus, my own company, shiny and new—just a year away.
“But what about my house?”
Cameron loved living in my house, but he sure as hell didn’t take care of it.
Ginger’s brazen smile, hidden behind her espresso cup, flashed in her eyes the way it always did when she got her way. “You just leave that to me.”
I scratched my three-day-old stubble as Charz and Pika pawed at my legs. The two eager Jack Russells yipped for my attention. I crouched low, and my socked feet slipped on the kitchen tiles. “Damn it.”
Cameron always put the dog treats in the far reaches of the floor cabinet.
As I struggled to reach them, his fresh-from-the-shower scent drifted down the hall.
Next, he’d pull on some sweats—the ones that dipped low enough to show his v-line and perfect abs—pocket his cell phone off his bedside table, then turn the house upside down to find his glasses.
Lastly, he’d dig through the dryer for some socks.
Good luck there. I hadn’t done the lazy bastard’s laundry this week.
“Gah, that man turns me into a raging bitch.”
I tossed chicken sticks, their favorite, to Charz and Pika. My empty hand clenched. Their tails slapped like happy whips, heedless of my annoyance. Without Ginger, the only unconditional love and acceptance in my life would’ve come from them.
So what if their love is artificially bolstered by treats?
“Geo, did you put my glasses somewhere?” Cameron called from the laundry room.
No, I didn’t put your glasses anywhere.
“They’re on the kitchen counter.”
Where you left them last night, after conveniently ignoring that it was my turn to pick the show?
Instead, we watched three episodes of yet another athletic endurance competition, where every contestant had the same over-the-top charisma to match their over-the-top ego.
Now that other planets had contacted Earth, the contestants might be green or horned, but not much else had changed since my grandmother’s time.
I picked up his glasses and pushed the silent vacuum cleaner to the laundry room before I passed them to him.
He glanced up. “Thanks.”
My head used to rush when he pushed the frames over his long, straight nose. A Superman to Clark Kent moment—his perfect features made more human. But that old lightheadedness was gone.
“Er, did you happen to throw any of my clothes in when you did yours?” His eyes flicked a little sheepishly to the vacuum now stored in the wall hanger.
“No.” I stood there, rocking from one socked foot to the other, as he maneuvered around me out of the laundry room.
The clink of the leashes and the harnesses he knocked together alerted Pika and Charz of an imminent walk.
Their tiny nails clicked like a troupe of miniature tap dancers across the hardwood floor.
The floor we’d agreed he would clean today.
Mired in defeat, I reminded him again. “So…you said you’d do the floors today?”
“Damn it, Geo.” He eyeballed the too-small shirt I’d put on this morning. “Isn’t it enough that I walk your dogs for you? You could use the exercise.”
I pulled back my shoulders and sucked in my belly, even though no amount of sucking in would prevent it from poking out under the hem. Daily physical labor at the construction company I co-owned built muscles, but I enjoyed bread and beer, and my abs were buried under a thick stomach. “Our dogs.”
“Whatever.” He dragged out the ‘er.’ “I do enough things I don’t want for you.” Cameron strode away.
Like a happy family, the three of them slipped out the door without a backward glance, and yet again, cleaning the house fell on my shoulders. This time with my heart cowering like a kicked dog’s.
Is he worth it?
The corner of a familiar off-planet employment brochure peeked out from under the vid-screen controller on top of the coffee table. After I’d resolutely blocked all the electronic junk mail Ginger spammed me with, these paper versions still showed up on the regular.
An out-of-place image of two aliens stood out among all the pictures of space shuttles, foreign landscapes and heavy equipment.
Blue, with long tails, the taller one had an arm wrapped around the shorter one’s shoulder.
The goofy grin he wore transcended species.
I wasn’t sure if it hurt more to know love existed beyond Earth or if it hurt more to hope.
Inhaling deeply, I raised my gaze to the vaulted ceiling and scanned my home.
A smile formed on my lips. House proud, I’d renovated the entire upstairs, removing the second bedroom and adding a huge en suite bathroom and a walk-in closet.
I walked over to the open window and inhaled the sweet fragrance of the native plants I’d relandscaped with.
Honeysuckles, wild roses and overripe blackberries wafted through the screen.
Slightly calmer, I finished cleaning the shit out of the house. And because Cameron wasn’t home, I did it blasting retro Lizzo remixes. Forty minutes of pondering intergalactic love later, the house shone, and now with the busy work out of the way, reality returned.
I scrubbed my palm over my beard. On more than one occasion, Cameron had said, “There are more important things in life than a clean house, Geo. I’ll do it later.”