Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
Vivian deplaned her flight to Venice’s Marco Polo Airport, looking for—
Joe strode toward her, a bouquet of flowers clutched in his hand, a smile on his face.
By the look of things, he’d come straight from work, and he was still dressed in his flight suit. She never in a million years thought she would feel this way, but he made the green uniform look good.
“Viv.”
Joe swept her up in his arms, kissing her so enthusiastically that a few good-natured cheers erupted around them.
“It’s been too long,” Joe said when he finally set her down, seemingly unconcerned by the attention they drew.
“It’s been a month,” Vivian teased, although it had felt much longer.
Maybe because they were still in the early stages of their relationship, in that honeymoon phase where they couldn’t get enough of each other.
The twenty-four hours they’d had together in Houston hardly felt like it was long enough, and the letters and occasional phone call they’d exchanged had only left her wanting more.
“It felt longer,” Joe complained. “I can’t believe I have you all to myself for a week.”
She couldn’t believe she was here. With him. In Italy.
“I missed you,” he murmured, pulling her in a half hug against his body.
“I missed you, too.”
Joe drove her from the airport to the Air Force base with their hands linked, as he called out sights of interest, places he wanted to take her during her weeklong stay.
Joe lived on base, and as he drove her onto the installation, she glanced around, wondering if she would feel any familiarity from living on a military base in Arizona when she was a little girl.
What would her father think of her life now?
Would he be proud to see her with a fighter pilot like he’d been, or would he be filled with paternal worry knowing the challenges that lay ahead?
A wave of grief covered her, the knowledge that she would never know, would never be able to share this part of herself with him. He had forever known the little girl, would never get the chance to see the woman she’d become, to be proud of the choices she’d made.
There were so many moments—her graduation from college, when she got hired at the TV station—that she imagined sharing with him, missing him all over again.
They drove by the flight line, and a memory came to her—so vivid that she knew it had to be true—of listening to the roar of thunder in the air and looking to see if she could spot her father up there in his airplane.
She had a sudden vision of her childhood bedroom in base housing; of how she used to perch herself at the window each afternoon and look to the sky to see when he was coming home.
She couldn’t have possibly known which one he was, but she remembered the sense of connection she’d had when she looked up and knew he was out there. Strange how she’d forgotten it for all these years.
“Are you alright?” Joe asked her.
Vivian nodded, belatedly realizing her cheeks beneath her sunglasses were wet. She wiped away the tears.
“I—I don’t have many memories of my childhood, or of my father, but being here, on base—I remembered something. We lived on base at Luke Field in Phoenix when I was a kid, right before he died. I used to watch for him to come home.”
—
“Sorry, I know it isn’t much to look at,” Joe said, walking her into his apartment on base. “Kind of spartan, but I’ll be honest, I’ve never really bothered to accumulate too much stuff. It’s a pain having to move it around; easier to travel light, I guess.”
“It’s fine,” Vivian replied, looking around the quarters. She grinned. “Very clean.”
Joe laughed. “I’m glad you noticed. It wasn’t about twelve hours ago, but I got to work. I wanted it to be perfect for you.”
He set Vivian’s bags down near the couch in the little living area.
She’d never shared a space with a man for so long—never mind such a small one so far away from home.
That they were staying in his apartment so early in their relationship felt like a big leap.
What if they discovered that they didn’t enjoy each other’s company?
What if he had little habits that annoyed her? What if her idiosyncrasies annoyed him?
Suddenly, Vivian felt a need to move, to release some of the nervous energy inside her.
A bookshelf sat next to the couch, and despite Joe’s pronouncement that he liked to travel light, he’d amassed quite the collection of paperbacks in his travels. Curious to know more about him, his interests, Vivian walked over to the bookshelf and glanced at the titles there.
Her lips curved.
Even in his reading, he gravitated toward space.
She picked up one title with a picture of a man in an elaborate space suit on the cover.
“That’s a good one,” Joe offered, his gaze on her rather than the book. “You wouldn’t like it.”
Vivian laughed. “That’s hardly a ringing endorsement.”
“Don’t get me wrong. It’s a great book. And you’re, well—”
“ ‘Wonderful’?” she teased, referring to the way she’d described Polly when she was trying to push them together the night they met.
“I believe ‘wonderful’ was the word you used to describe my romantic prospects at the bar on the night we met.”
“I did.”
“I’m not sure I’ve ever been so interested in a woman who was so clearly trying to vector me in another direction.”
Vivian flushed. “I wasn’t trying to ‘vector’ you in another direction. Not entirely, at least.”
“That’s what it felt like. It was a crushing blow to my ego.”
“I don’t believe your ego gets dented very often.”
“Touché. It did that night, though. Or maybe it was my heart.”
Her heart sped up rather rapidly at that pronouncement, even if he did deliver the words in a light, teasing voice.
Vivian was beginning to realize that when he used that tone, it was his way of testing things out, offering his feelings up in a casual manner to gauge her response.
It felt a bit like he was easing her into this relationship that was developing between them.
“You thought I was ‘wonderful’?” Vivian asked, glancing back down at the bookshelf as she set the book with the man in the space suit aside, no longer able to meet Joe’s gaze.
“Something more than that,” he replied, his voice soft.
Suddenly, those titles felt like the most interesting thing in the world.
Why was she giddy like this with him and only him?
With Graham there had been an early bit of hero worship for sure, considering how much she admired his career, but that had quickly subsided, and she’d settled into a comfortable rhythm in their relationship.
But this—Vivian couldn’t make sense of it.
There were times that she felt more herself than she had with anyone when she was with Joe.
There were also plenty of moments—far too many for her to be comfortable—when she felt like she was jumping off a cliff with no assurance that the fall wouldn’t break her.
It was more than a little terrifying for someone whose approach to the adage of “look before you leap” was to keep two feet firmly planted on the ground for as long as possible.
“What is it about these books that speaks to you?” Vivian asked, selecting one of the titles and flipping through the pages. “Beyond the obvious fact that they’re all about space.”
“Picked up on that, did you?” Joe grinned.
“I’ve always wondered what’s out there. The universe feels infinite, like it could contain wonders we’ve never seen, possibilities we’ve never imagined.
Sometimes we feel like a very small piece of something far larger than us.
I want my chance to explore it. To know if the things that exist in the pages of these books are possible—extraterrestrial life, time travel, undiscovered planets, all sorts of wonders. ”
“Time travel?”
He laughed. “You should see your face. What’s so hard to believe about time travel? It’s just a matter of physics, if you think about it.”
“I try not to think about physics as much as absolutely possible.”
He laughed again. “Fair enough. Maybe one day I’ll convince you otherwise.”
“Do you really think there’s life out there?” Vivian asked. “Other people or beings besides us?”
Vivian picked up another book that had an alien figure with five heads and tentacles staring back at her. She set that one aside, too.
Joe’s brow furrowed, and she got the sense that he took his response more seriously than the gravity she’d put in the question she asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied after a beat.
“Maybe. Or maybe there’s something else, something we haven’t even imagined.
I know some people think that the scenarios in these books are ludicrous, but not so long ago the idea of sending someone to space was unbelievable.
I like to think we still have a long way to go before we reach the limits of our known universe.
And maybe I’ll get a chance to be there when we do. ”
It was a daring ambition, but she supposed that when you were used to pushing the envelope, life seemed limitless.
“Why do you say I wouldn’t like these?” Vivian asked, her gaze drifting over an H. G. Wells title before she glanced at him.
“Because you’re practical, not given much to the fantastical.”
She wrinkled her nose and pulled a face even though she knew the description was spot-on. “That sounds awfully boring.”
“I don’t think it’s boring at all. It’s one of the things I like most about you.”
“That I’m practical?”
Hardly a romantic sentiment.
“You keep me grounded. Remind me of what’s important. I don’t know—this lifestyle can be all-consuming. It’s not just my job, it’s my life, my identity. It’s nice to see the world from a different perspective, to have that tether to hold on to.”
Now, that was romantic.
What did it say about her that despite her propensity toward the mundane, one of the things she liked about him was that he was given to the fantastical, as he so aptly put it?
That he was so romantic and passionate about the things he dedicated himself to.
Maybe part of what made him so irresistible was that he inspired a romanticism in her that she rarely indulged.
“Now this one,” Joe said, reaching to a shelf above her and pulling a book down. “This one is my absolute favorite.”
He placed the title in her hands with something akin to reverence.
Vivian glanced down at the cover and title.
Infinity. By Michel Robert.
“It was my favorite when I was a kid,” Joe told her.
“It’s still my favorite, to be honest. My dad gave it to me when I was a boy.
I’ve probably read it a hundred times. It’s pretty incredible that you can pick up a book at so many different points in your life and still love it every single time.
If that’s not the sign of a great book, I don’t know what is.
“The first time I read it was in the hospital after the accident—well, my uncle and I read it together. He helped me with the hard words. I was so scared, felt so alone without my parents. It gave me hope, I guess. A man goes to space, and he comes back as a different version of himself. It’s probably the first book that made me want to be an astronaut. ”
“Have you heard anything else about your application?”
“Not yet, but—”
A ringing sound interrupted his answer.
He glanced at the phone, an uneasy look on his face. “Excuse me for a minute. I should answer it.”
Vivian flipped through his copy of Infinity while Joe went to answer the phone.
When he finished the call, he walked back over to her, his expression serious.
“I’m sorry, Viv. So sorry. But I have to go. My squadron just received orders.”
“ ‘Go’?”
“I’m sorry. It’s an emergency. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”
Vivian watched as he moved through his apartment methodically, packing up a military-issued duffel bag with the rhythmic precision of someone who had done it many times before.
She couldn’t help but contrast it with the haphazard way she had packed her own bag to come here, how she had agonized over and ultimately discarded choices.
“You can stay however long you want. Stay forever if you want to.” He said it like it was a joke, but everything felt as though it was taking on a hysterical air, the world around her tilting madly.
She had flown halfway around the world to see a man she had met in person four times, only to spend a few hours with him, and now he was leaving.
She had no idea where he was going or how long he would be gone, if she should wait for him or not, or how the hell she was going to navigate the next week in Italy by herself.
She wanted to ask him why he had to leave, wanted to ask him where he was headed, so many questions that she sensed she shouldn’t ask, so she settled on the one that felt the most pressing for now.
“Will you be safe?” Vivian whispered against his lips as he kissed her goodbye.
He rested his forehead against hers. “I hope so.”
An hour later, when she was by herself listening to the radio, she realized what had called him away with such urgency, and even though she didn’t know exactly where he was headed, she had a fairly good idea:
The Soviets had sent nuclear weapons to Cuba.