Chapter 5
5
The air in the tent is warm and close. I take a long drink of wine, relishing the way it rolls thickly down my throat. I lick my lips.
Ben’s gaze falls on me for a breath. For a second, I wonder if he can tell what I’m thinking. Can he tell how hard I try not to look at him, touch him, laugh with him? He must think I hate him.
I become vaguely aware of the fact that I’m drunk.
Darcie and Julian are laughing about some shared joke, clasping hands across the table, tears streaming down their faces. A half-eaten sleeve of freeze-dried cookies Darcie fished out of the food store sits next to the wine. One of the cookies has fallen out onto the table and is soaking up a bit of spilled wine. The stew has long since gone cold.
Ben keeps looking at me, like he’s trying to get my attention.
My breath catches. The night creeps in and leans over me, fingers my throat. There is so much to see and touch, so many strands of life to follow, beating hearts and growing things. And Ben is distracting the fuck out of me. I need fresh air.
I push back my chair and stand abruptly. No one seems to notice. The floor tilts as I walk; I’ve had way too much to drink. I push open the tent flap, and the night greets me.
I take a long, deep breath of night air and gaze up at the sky. I have never seen anything like it, except in photographs. They don’t begin to do it justice. The sky is so clear that I believe, for a moment, I could fly. That all I’d need to do is push off gently, and up and up I’d float, called to the star-flecked night.
It’s not at all like looking out at space from a porthole window. It’s richer, more vivid, better. The stars curve over us like a net of fireflies, and there , faintly glowing, a drift of star-snow, is the Milky Way Galaxy. So far from home, each star unfamiliar, and yet we share this. In this moment, I know that we are all connected, from the worms in the dirt to the beacon-bright stars at the farthest edge of the galaxy.
I could stand here forever until I starve to death and collapse into nothing. I could do it happily.
“Jones, you okay?”
The warm hand on my shoulder doesn’t startle me, but my heart speeds anyway.
I turn, and there stands Ben. His jaw is darkening with five-o’clock shadow. His eyes are bright with wine. He drops his hand as if realizing belatedly it was too familiar. “Bit too much to drink?”
I nod stiffly.
“Me too.”
His presence irritates me. I was having a moment, taking in the beauty. And now he’s here, this unavoidable man, smelling faintly of sweat and wine. Doesn’t he know I can’t think of anything else when he’s this close to me? I wish he’d go away. But he just stands there, looking up at the stars.
“You know,” he says, “my buddies back home would never let me live this down.”
Back home . We’ve been away for months, in hypersleep for most of that time. And before that, we were training in a top secret base with zero outside contact. I hardly know what home is anymore.
“Live what down?”
I feel his gaze on me, but I keep my eyes on the sky. “Stargazing,” he says, then shakes his head. “Getting emotional while stargazing.”
“Are you getting emotional?”
“Impossible not to.”
Interesting. “I think your buddies would get it.”
“You don’t know my buddies.”
“It’s the stars .”
He huffs a breath, and it turns to condensation in the cold night air. “Maybe they’d get it if I was getting choked up over a new model of unmanned precision strike drone.”
I can’t help but laugh at that.
He smiles. “Nah, it’s not just the stars. This place… the Planet. I don’t know how to describe it, but—”
A soft alarm begins to chime. Ben frowns, checks his watch, then presses a button to turn off the alarm. “Anomaly on the sensors.”
“What is it?”
“Hard to say. Some kind of faint energy burst. It’s flickering in and out. I won’t be able to do a full read on the equipment until I can get our tech tent up and running.”
“Can’t you track it with your watch?”
He glances at me, searching. “Yeah. Maybe. When it’s daylight.”
“Right.”
“Jones?”
I stiffen. “Yeah?”
“Why did you come here?”
God, I’ve had too much wine for this conversation. Or maybe, I’ve had exactly the right amount. If I was sober, I’d ditch him right now. As it is, I can barely meet his gaze, so I look back up at the sky. “I had no other choice,” I say, surprised at myself for the honesty. Usually, I answer that it’s the scientist in me, an ingrained desire for progress, something palatable and good for sound bites.
“Which means?”
I grit my teeth. Why won’t he leave me alone? He disturbed my stargazing, and now he’s asking probing questions. “It’s just that my entire life has revolved around this planet,” I admit, shrugging like it’s nothing when, in fact, it’s everything. “I grew up in the public eye with a famous botanist mom who happened to survive a horrific and extremely publicized incident. It was kind of impossible to avoid. And unfortunately for me, I inherited the science gene.”
In my periphery, I see Ben smile crookedly. “I remember seeing you on TV.”
My cheeks flush hot. Oh, God. “No, you don’t.”
“I do. You’d just published a paper on the Planet’s ecosystem or something, and every science network had you pegged as the next big thing in biology. They kept saying people like you would change the world.”
“That’s fucking embarrassing,” I mutter, praying he can’t see how red I am in the twin moonlight. I remember the interview he’s referencing. I was on CNN discussing the Planet, arguing in favor of a new expedition. I didn’t just sign up for this mission, and Ben knows it. I made sure it happened.
“Why?” he asks.
I turn, and his expression is soft, genuine. Fucking irritating . “I sounded like such a pretentious dick,” I admit. “And the glasses I was wearing? I don’t even need a prescription. I thought they made me look intelligent. I’m so sorry you had to witness that.”
He smirks. “I’m not.”
“Well, I’ve improved as a person since then.”
“I thought you were great.”
“Oh,” I say, caught off guard by the night and the wine and, as always, Ben. “Okay. Well. Thanks.”
He stretches, arms above his head. His t-shirt lifts, and a sliver of skin appears above his cargo pants.
I quickly look away. “I should go to bed.”
Ben sighs, dropping his arms. “Me too. ‘Night, Jones.”
When I get back to my tent, I change into my pajamas. I wash my face with a cleansing pad and brush my teeth. Laughter and voices cut comfortingly through the silence as Darcie and Julian head to bed, as we all get ready to spend our first night on the Planet.
I lie awake for what feels like an eternity, listening to the wind and the cricket-like sounds. I wonder if Darcie and Julian will go to bed together. They’re both young, attractive. We’re all young, I guess. I don’t think of myself as attractive — my chin-length hair is too muddy to be considered brunette, my eyes aren’t much better, and I probably have too many freckles — but Ben is.
I squirm in my cot. Thank God I didn’t help myself to more wine at dinner, or I might have made a complete fool of myself out there with Ben. Whatever this is, this ridiculous crush of mine, it needs to die. It was bad enough in training, but everything on the Planet feels heightened. Sharper, hungrier. And I am hungry.
Rolling over and pressing my hot face into my pillow, I listen for the telltale sounds of the others hooking up. Breathy moans, giggles in the quiet. But there’s nothing.
I think of Ben, gazing up at the stars. Our fingers brushing, his hand on my shoulder. The fact that he liked those stupid glasses. “Fuck,” I mumble into the pillow. He’s annoying. A jock . Not my type at all , and kind of my boss. I need to get my shit together.
I toss and turn for what feels like hours, unable to sleep. The night is wide and wanting, and so am I. It’s been so long since I let myself feel .
Sighing in surrender, I roll onto my back. I run a hand from my breasts to my stomach, feather-light. I’m achingly alone in this cot, in the dark. The night agrees, and the sky comes down to join me, to cradle me in its soft blackness. In a half-asleep haze, I work myself to a breathless ache, needy for release. Only when I’m desperate, ready to cry out for my own touch, do I press a thumb to my tender core. Only then do I curl my fingers inside, stroking the tight, wet center of myself, my eyes shut tight against the world.
The Planet blooms around me. Sprouts break through the tent floor, curling up and opening, erupting in color as I cover my mouth with my hand to muffle my ecstatic cry. The stars are careening into me, and I’m opening up for them, my orgasm expanding and contracting like the womb of the earth.
I sleep well after that, and when I wake, I remember no dreams.