Chapter 9
Day Nine
(age twenty-four)
A sponge bath, food, and a full night’s sleep helped Kelli feel more human, but they did not do much for the tangle of emotions in her head.
If anything, in the morning her heart hurt worse.
What did Kelli have left of her old life?
One backpack with enough clothes and sundries for a weekend.
One ex-girlfriend, who was now a boy, and who probably wasn’t going to stay her ex much longer.
That was it. The rest was all gone. It hurt more now that she’d let it sink in.
Rowan gave her space. Orlando wouldn’t have needed it, maybe, but Kelli wasn’t him; she needed to take her time and think things over. Rowan had always understood that about her. He didn’t complain.
Mostly she used that time to float in the study, headphones on, and watch a show to calm her mind.
This one was about witches, who had fanciful powers that involved a lot of colored sparkles, dramatic gusts of wind, and turning people into cats, accidentally or on purpose.
The magic was silly but otherwise the setting was an attempt at contemporary realism; the witches lived, not in some fanciful land of witches, but on today’s Earth, and they spent their time healing what they could in its moribund natural world.
It was a sacred task that they mostly took seriously, except that they kept getting distracted by frothy relationship drama.
Most of the witches were lesbians. It was hard to tell, but it looked like it had really been filmed on Earth; apart from the colored sparkles, it had that odd, flat quality that she’d seen in We’re Okay Now, the look of imperfect reality seen through a lens.
She was in the middle of the second episode’s final scene when Rowan knocked on the doorway.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked.
Kelli shook her head, and he floated into the room. They didn’t quite touch. He was quiet at first, taking in the flickering picture, and Kelli unplugged her headphones so he could hear the actors talking. The witches, in this second episode’s final scene, had gathered around a campfire.
When the campfire scene first started, Kelli had almost reflexively turned it off.
Why would anyone make a video about fire?
She certainly couldn’t have watched a show about a fuel-leak fire, or a spaceship’s burning engines; it was too soon.
It would have hurt her. But the campfire was a gentler creature and something about it, to Kelli’s surprise, had drawn her in.
Imagine living on Earth, in the open air.
Imagine having so much oxygen all around that you could just burn random sticks of wood for fun.
Imagine feeling so safe around fire that you could lounge around it with your best friends, strum a guitar, even cook marshmallows.
Imagine a fire, small and precious enough to be kept like this, a fire that didn’t have to hurt anyone.
She couldn’t tear her eyes away.
But she couldn’t stop thinking about Rowan, either.
When he was in arm’s reach, it was hard not to imagine touching him.
It was hard not to remember the thrill that had gone through her when he’d brushed the antiseptic wipes over her arms, or held her hand in the airlock, or even given her the stupid anti-nauseants.
Kelli wasn’t confused about her feelings for Rowan anymore.
She knew that she wanted him. What she didn’t know was how to handle everything else that came with him.
Even ten years ago, she hadn’t really stopped loving him; she’d only put all of those feelings into a little box, sealed them up tight and put them out of reach on a high shelf, because it wasn’t safe to have them anymore.
And that was the problem. What ungodly monstrosity was going to crawl out of that box, after ten years of festering, if she opened it now?
As the credits rolled, Rowan looked over at her. It was a gentle look, undemanding.
“It wouldn’t work, you know,” she said. “You and me, I mean. The two of us.”
“How do you figure?”
She kept her eyes on the screen. The credits of AdventureVerse shows were short—they listed the script, animation, and voice supervisors, a few auxiliary professionals, producers, and management.
Then the Inspiration logo and that was it.
But the credits of these independent shows went on and on.
What was it like to work on a show like that?
How could anyone even keep track of that many people?
“Because if it worked out,” said Kelli, careful and solemn, “it wouldn’t have been the two of us. It would have been three.”
Rowan looked startled, but he didn’t deny it; he only gave her a considering look. “Is this you blaming yourself?”
“No. I mean—it’s not about whether we dated her. I still don’t even know how that would have worked. It’s just that, if it had worked out, we’d be alive. And if we were alive, we’d be the three of us.”
“QED,” said Rowan, rueful.
It was the strangest feeling, talking about Elaine. It hadn’t made Kelli fall over and melt down, the way she’d half-expected it would. But it hurt.
“You loved her,” said Kelli, controlling her voice carefully, looking fixedly at the dark screen. It wasn’t a question.
“I did. I told you the truth about all of it; I didn’t do anything with her.” His voice cracked. “I never even let her know I felt that way. But I did. And you didn’t, did you?”
“No. I mean—who knows. Maybe I could have eventually. Maybe I couldn’t have. I didn’t really have time to finish figuring it out.”
Rowan moved restlessly, twisting the fabric at the arm of his own pajama shirt, round and round.
“See, that’s the thing I never understood.
You didn’t love her. She was the other woman to you.
But you set the fire anyway. It was your idea.
And the only way I ever made any sense out of that was that I figured you did it for me.
I was hurting, so you came up with something to do about it.
How are you supposed to live with it, knowing someone did something like that for you? Something that broke them?”
“For you?” A derisive sound escaped her mouth.
“I didn’t set the fire for you. I did it for me.
I was angry. All my life everyone had told me that everything I am was wrong.
They made me memorize all sorts of stupid rules that didn’t even help and that nobody else had to follow, because maybe if I followed them all then that would make up for everything wrong with me.
And I followed them. I was so careful. I was so good.
But that wasn’t enough for them. They couldn’t just grind me down and make me a human robot and stop there. They had to start killing my friends.”
That rang out and left silence in its wake. Even the end credit music was over. There was just their breathing, and the soft whir of the life support.
“I was angry like that, too,” said Rowan at last. “Not just then. All the time. It’s why I . . .” He waved a hand vaguely, encompassing the whole ship.
“Why you joined a criminal syndicate?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you miss them?” Kelli asked. Rowan must have left all sorts of people behind, not just Ting and Zhaleh: friends and maybe girlfriends whose names Kelli hadn’t even learned. For all she knew, maybe he had more than one girlfriend at once, the way he’d wanted to before.
“It hasn’t really sunk in yet. I know I will later.”
Rowan disentangled his fingers from the arm of his pajama shirt.
It seemed to have dawned on him that he needed to fidget with something more substantial, and he dug in one of the bags and got out a spinner.
He held it in his left hand, knocked it against his arm, and got it whirling, clicking pleasantly as it went.
He let go, and it floated in the air in front of him, making its way around the study as the momentum of its own spinning propelled it.
“I still can’t believe they just threw me away,” he said.
“I can’t believe I was surprised. I knew they did that to people.
Even when I joined, I knew some of the shit they did was wrong.
But I was all wrong already, you know? I wasn’t better than them.
They did good things sometimes—the look on queer people’s faces when I sold them the data chips they needed, that almost made it worth it all by itself.
They loaned me the money for an actual goddamn spaceship and for my medical bills, and they gave me a chance to make that much back again and maybe even more, if I hustled good.
And they let me be a man, right out in the open with all of them, even before I had the surgeries.
Didn’t bat an eye. I wanted all that. It was wrong, sure, but I wanted to belong somewhere. ”
“It was like that with Inspiration too,” said Kelli, pulling her knees to her chest. “I knew I wasn’t doing the things I’d said I wanted to do.
I knew I wasn’t changing anything or saving anybody.
But I had a place I could go and think about stories all day and it wouldn’t be a trademark violation.
People thought I was weird but they liked me for what I did there.
And I didn’t know anything better to do.
I didn’t see how I could change anything, or save anybody, whether I worked for Inspiration or not, but I thought—maybe it’s enough just to save myself.
” Her voice wobbled, and she dared to look over at Rowan again squarely.
“That’s what we’re still doing now, isn’t it? Running off. Saving our own skins.”
Something of the usual wryness had returned to Rowan’s face. “Hey,” he said, spreading his arms in invitation. “What if I hugged you? I feel like it’d be ungentlemanly, not offering to hug you.”
Kelli sailed over, misjudged her speed, and barreled into him. Rowan wrapped his good arm around her with a little oof.
It was overwhelming, being held. When was the last time anyone had held her?
Years ago, probably. One of her parents, maybe, while she was still in school.
Rowan was so warm and so solid. She buried her face in his pajama shirt.
She could smell his skin, and the vanilla-cedar soap he’d used when he’d taken that morning’s sponge bath.
He sighed a little, as if the feel of her against him had made something lighter.
“We’ve got to run for now,” he said, stroking her hair.
“But we don’t have to run forever. Just long enough to get to Enceladus.
Or wherever we end up going, I mean, I’m not married to that one moon, but—the laws are different there.
Once you get settled into a place like that, there’s no telling what you could do. ”
Kelli tried to imagine it. She was still having trouble with the concept of the future.
But she could logically and abstractly game it out.
She’d write, of course. She’d told Rowan she didn’t remember how, but that had been more emotion than fact.
Inevitably, if she had the chance, she’d try to be one of those people who wrote things like We’re Okay Now.
But then what would that even mean? On a moon where queer media was commonplace, where everyone grew up being able to talk about it, what could she possibly say that a million better-adjusted queer people hadn’t already said?
“But—” she said, turning her head to look up at him. “The people on Enceladus aren’t the people who need it. Not the way we did, back then.”
To his credit, Rowan didn’t have to ask what it was.
“You’d be surprised,” he said. “It’s better than here, but every place is complicated. Writing’s complicated too, from what I hear. You’ll never know who’s lurking sadly and villainously in some corner over there, needing to hear what you have to say.”
His fingers in her hair were very distracting. There was a kind of zing every time that he moved them. She didn’t know if she could believe him, but she didn’t want either the words or the fingers to stop.
“Besides,” he added with a rakish grin, “what gets made on Enceladus doesn’t have to stay there, remember?”
“But it can’t—” Kelli’s tongue tied. “It can’t actually work. It can’t . . .”
But that wasn’t what she really wanted to say. It was just what she’d gotten used to telling herself. After a moment, she swallowed hard, and tried again.
“I want to try something,” she whispered. “Okay?”
“Okay,” said Rowan, raising his eyebrows only slightly.
“This isn’t me making a decision. About the long term. About Enceladus. You were right about that, we’re both in shock and we shouldn’t make any big decisions now. This is just . . . an experiment. To see if it works.”
“Okay,” he said again.
She reached up slightly and pressed her lips to his.
Kelli remembered so vividly what it had used to be like to kiss Rowan.
He had changed in almost every way. The way he moved his mouth was different, surer of himself, less hurried.
The feel of his body, as he reached up with his left hand to cup the back of her head, had changed.
She thought he’d shaved, but she could feel the faint rasp of the stubble on his face.
He even smelled slightly different from Am’s smell.
It was also different because they were in zero-grav: her own weight didn’t pull her in the directions she instinctively expected.
She had to be more mindful of where her body was and how they held on to each other.
Whether the drift of momentum pulled her closer to him or away.
But in another way, it felt just the same. Underneath the surface of her senses, this was the same heat and life that she’d loved before. All this time, it had been waiting for her here. Kissing Rowan felt like coming home.
She’d meant it to be a short kiss, but she couldn’t help lingering, luxuriating in it.
“Did that work?” Rowan asked, when she finally came up for air. He looked a little stunned.
“I don’t know,” said Kelli. “I mean, I think we might have to try again at least twelve more times. Just to be sure.”
He cracked a smile at that. “Okay.”
She leaned back in.