21. Adapting Support Pins
TWENTY-ONE
ADAPTING SUPPORT PINS
Vance
“Hey, man, you looking forward to the next mission?” Luke Bisbee, chief astronaut and the tallest astronaut to ever fly, claps me on the back as we get on the elevator.
“Yeah.” My tone belies the word. It’s been four days, and my mind is still reeling from Rose’s confession and good-bye.
Luke’s paw-like hand squeezes my shoulder. “You okay?”
“Hmm?” I shake off my mental fog. Since being doused with blue liquid, I haven’t been myself.
I say the things I need to say, and I do the things I need to do, but it’s like I’m not all the way here.
Like I left part of myself back at that artsy coffee house next to the ficus trees. “Yeah, yeah. I’m good.”
“You better be. Don’t think for a minute that I won’t boot your butt off that flight.” He pushes the button for the astronaut floor. “Building Bartolomeo sounds fun.”
“You looking to get back up there?” It’s a throw-away question, as what astronaut doesn’t want to get back in space?
Luke’s position as chief astronaut is rotational. For the past year he’s had the responsibility of assigning flights to all the other astronauts. Everyone takes their turn manning the flight schedule then hands it off to someone else. If it were me, I’d be antsy as hell to get back up there.
“You know it.” Luke confirms my thoughts, his smile getting bigger.
He leans into me. “And the next time I go up, I’ve got something exciting planned.
” Another cool thing about being chief astronaut is that you can assign yourself the best mission when you finally give up the managerial post and return to flight ops.
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
He looks me up and down, his evident excitement probably making him unable to see the lack of mine. “Can you keep a secret?”
I hold up three fingers on my right hand. “Scout’s honor.”
Picking up on my sarcasm, Luke shoves my shoulder. “Smartass. You’re spending too much time with Jules.”
I snort. In reality I haven’t seen Jules all week. And the last time I saw Jackie was in the VR room. It makes me wonder if Rose had given them a heads-up. Maybe they knew I was a single man walking before I did.
Ding . The elevator doors open, and Luke sticks his head out, glancing left then right around the cube farm. Finding the coast clear, he waves me out. “I’m going to be the first astronaut to propose from space.”
For some reason, his words feel like a shot to my chest. “You’re going to propose to Em?”
Luke’s been dating the public relations director, Emily Durant. She’s as short as he is tall.
“Hopefully.” He chuckles. “Not sure I can wait until I get a flight, but that’s the plan right now.”
I frown, his words not making sense. “Marriage?”
Luke frowns back at me. “Yeah, that’s what proposing usually means.” Both his hands drop on my shoulders. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah man.” I shrug off his heavy mitts. “I’m just surprised is all. I thought you and I were the perpetual bachelors at NASA.” Which, now that I’ve said it out loud, sounds juvenile and sad.
Luke shrugs. “Hey, when you know, you know.” His smile turns smirk. “ And”— he nudges me with his elbow—"from what I hear you’ve been getting serious with a special someone as well.”
I swallow. Unable to say the words she ended it , I deflect. “Now who’s been spending too much time with Jules?”
His laugh echoes across the quiet floor. “Touché.”
Reaching his office door, Luke turns, blocking me from continuing to my cube. “It is surprising, though, I’ll give you that.”
“What is?” I ask, though I’m pretty sure I don’t want to hear the answer.
He takes out a ring box, flips it open, and flashes me a large teardrop white diamond set in yellow gold. “Finding the person who changes everything for you.”
I want to argue, but I can’t, because I know what he means. Rose changed everything for me. My life, which before I’d thought full and important, now seems empty and pathetic compared to the time I’ve spent with Rose. Her laugh, her energy, her thirst for life.
Luke snaps the ring box closed. “But I guess that’s what love does, huh?” His smile is almost as blinding as the diamond.
“Love?” The word seems to echo in my head.
“Yeah.” He chuckles, pocketing the box. “Isn’t it great?”
“Yeah.” My voice is faint. But Luke doesn’t notice. He’s too hopped up on… love .
I manage to listen through Luke’s detailed outer space proposal plans until his office phone rings, allowing me to escape to my cubicle, my mind still spinning.
Luke’s laughter booms across the floor once more, and I wonder if he’s talking to Emily.
Love.
I didn’t believe Rose when she said she loved me. Part of it was shock. I hadn’t thought love was in the scope of possibilities. Not with the concrete parameters we set at the start of our relationship.
All Rose said in explaining her sentimental one-eighty was ‘things change.’
The engineer in me couldn’t grasp such a subjective, abstract explanation. I may have even chalked it up to woman’s prerogative.
God help me if my nephews heard me admit that. They’d rake me over the coals of a thousand burning bras.
And rightly so.
Because it isn’t things that change.
It’s love that changes things .
Love changes everything.
An hour later, I massage my temples, trying to ease the headache brewing and take a deep breath of stale office air.
I love Rose.
And to make matters worse, she loves me back.
Fuck .
And now I’m facing another, lesser problem. The problem that comes from distancing yourself from others out of concern for their well-being. Because now, as I’m drowning in self-pity and reflection, there’s no one around to get shit-faced with.
Not that I’m getting shit-faced. I want to, but as much as NASA prescribes to the work hard play hard mantra, I’m pretty sure they’d draw a line at cubicle drinking.
“Earth to Bodaway. Hello?”
Coming out of my reverie, I find Ian behind me, leaning against the half-wall of my cubicle.
“I’ve said your name three times.” He angles forward, glancing at the notebook I’m hunched over. “What were you doing?”
Too late I try and cover the graph paper with its straight lines and perfect angles of the Bartolomeo blueprints—now marred by my absent-minded doodling of Rose’s name.
Ian snickers. “What are you, twelve?”
I toss my pen on the desk. “Fuck off, Kincaid.”
“Nah, man. We need to talk.” He pushes my shoulder, rolling me back from my desk. “I’ve been voted in as the mediator.”
“Voted in?” I swivel my chair to face him. “What are you talking about?”
“Rose won’t take Holt’s or Flynn’s calls.” He sighs and rubs his hand over his face. “And to make matters worse, Jackie and Jules are acting weird as hell, dodging them when they ask about her.”
“What does Trish say?”
If looks could kill, I’d be dead.
“I wouldn’t know as she suddenly got the idea to take her trailer somewhere for a ‘writing retreat.’”
I try not to laugh when he air quotes.
“So the guys cast straws to see who had to come talk to you about it.”
I shoot him a sardonic smile. “Let me guess, you lost.”
“Nope. I won.” He raises an eyebrow at my dubious expression.
“And trust me, you should be on your knees thanking whatever god you believe in that it’s me and not one of the West brothers.
Because even though Holt is the more levelheaded of the two, after Rose cancelled tomorrow’s graduation party, which according to him he’s been planning for months, I got the feeling both he and Flynn weren’t going to talk so much as beat your ass. ”
I wince, the guilt in my stomach getting heavier.
“So it does have to do with you.”
I run a hand through my hair, trying to figure out what to say.
“What exactly did you do to the girl who can usually steamroll her way through life’s problems using just the power of glitter that upset her enough to cancel a party?”
“Hey.” I stand, poking my finger in his chest. “Don’t talk about her like that.
Don’t underestimate Rose just because she’s fun to be around.
” I think of the devastated expression she made when I, like an idiot, did just that.
“She’s more than a good time. She works hard at everything she does, and she cares . She cares deeply.”
Ian lifts his hands in surrender. “Yes, I do know that, actually.”
I lower the finger digging into his sternum. “Oh, ah, good.”
“I was just making sure you did.” He rubs his chest. “And I think I can say with certainty that you do.”
“Sorry about that,” I mumble, nodding at his chest but too disgruntled over him testing me to sound sincere.
“Yeah, yeah. I know.” He waves away my apology. “Come on.” He taps the hard plastic of the cubicle wall frame. “If we’re going to get any more awkward, we might as well do it over drinks.”
Ten minutes later, over a pint of True Anomaly at Boondoggles Pub, I tell Ian how Rose ended things.
“Wait.” Ian looks at me like I just confessed I think the Earth is flat.
“You’re telling me that after you told Rose that the very thought of her having your baby scared you so much that you scheduled a vasectomy you asked her to keep banging you until she finds someone she wants to have kids with? ”
I shift in my seat, thankful my Native American heritage keeps me from blushing. “Yeah, I know. It wasn’t my finest hour.” I take another sip. “But I’d like to think it didn’t sound that bad when I said it.”
Ian whistles low. “Man, no matter how you say it, it sounds bad.”
I drop my head in my hands. “Fuck, I know.”
“So is that why she ended things?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe? Don’t tell me there’s more?”
“She may have told me she loves me.”
“And…”
“And I may have not believed her.”
Ian rubs his eyes, looking dumbfounded. “I guess now it makes sense that Rose is MIA. The guy she loves just sucker punched her in the heart.”
I thought I knew, but to hear someone else say it pinches at my heart even more. “I was just… shocked.”
“Why?” Ian frowns. “Everyone else knows.”