CHAPTER 14 LEE
LEE WAS one of few guests awake and taking advantage of the cool track a few mornings later, the resort-planet’s solar satellite not yet orbiting the faux-skies.
He wasn’t surprised, given the raucous hooting and laughter he’d heard coming from the deck below theirs last night.
But as that first hint of light glazed through the tiled archways, Lee couldn’t decide if he should be amused or annoyed at the attention to such frivolous details.
Half of their galaxy lived in fear of a tangible dark radiation threat while the other half enjoyed solar illusions.
His schedule was all sorts of topsy turvy, his body permanently on raider time, even with the zone shift.
Kat, however, had taken to resort life nicely.
She’d still been fast asleep when he’d left this morning, curled towards the center of the bed where she’d passed out facing him, the curve of a slightly inebriated smile still on her face as she’d closed her eyes.
Tonya had allowed them another of those Solar Flare drinks last night.
Seeing his mom so happy and Kat so at ease… It was the first time they’d had a chance to really bond. The two most important people in his life, both isolated with him in the same tempered eco-sphere.
He slowed his pace to a light jog as he let his heart rate ease.
Was it so wrong to feel happy right now? To take the time for them, to just be?
He and Kat had made some hard calls. This last term alone, it felt as if they’d dove through fire then doused it, only to find themselves standing in metal castings before the flames once again. And he knew without a doubt they’d withstand it again. A hundred times if they had to.
They’d done what they’d had to do to save their names with the Academy. They’d zipped up their suits and put their heads down. They’d earned this break and this time away.
So why did it feel like the universe was still tugging at him? Like every idle second was a second lost?
Lee let his thoughts waft through him, more of that synthetic breeze carrying them off the commercialized planet to the rest of the star system outside.
When the solar satellite eventually began its orbit up into the sky, Lee grabbed his water bottle, crossing back up to the mezzanine floor and their painted blue doors.
He was a little surprised to find that Kat wasn’t in bed.
But he followed the softly swaying bamboo blinds and gentle sound of Tonya’s laughter out to the patio.
Kat sat cuddled up in one of the woven armchairs opposite Tonya with her back to him, her legs tucked beneath her and his hoodie pulled tight around her.
“I thought I’d heard you get up this morning. Here, sit down.” Setting down a glass pitcher of some melon-colored juice, Tonya rose to her feet, slipping back into her room to grab, what Lee presumed, would be another cup.
But instead of sitting down, Lee came up behind Kat, resting his hands on her shoulders to plant a soft kiss to her cheek. “Hey you,” Lee said, unable to keep the smile from his lips. Especially when Kat stretched her head up towards him.
He met her lips this time with a sweeping kiss, the tip of his tongue brushing against her teeth. He kept it brief, light. But that didn’t stop the desire from beckoning as he took in the pert shape of her nose, her brow crinkling as he forced himself to pull away and keep things friendly.
Tonya returned with the extra cup as well as some fruit and cheese. She had on another beach sundress today—and that re-emerging glint in her eyes from a few nights before.
“You take this chair, Mom.” Motioning for Tonya to return to her comfortable spot near Kat, Lee grabbed one of the hard-backed chairs from the dining service, setting it down alongside Tonya and Kat.
Tonya shaved chunks of the wrapped cheese for them while Lee sliced into the skin of a black plum.
And again he was struck by the moment. It was all the little things, sitting here with his mom and Kat, sharing breakfast together.
When they were with Tonya, he and Kat could pretend they were just a couple of teenagers in love.
They could pretend that they weren’t professionally speeding towards a gaping and unforeseeable future, with inscrutable outside pressures and the hard questions he and Kat had yet to bring up to each other.
Kat smiled over at him then, as if prompted by his thoughts. She was a palm-lined path on the warm pavement and twinkle lights on the water, the dreamy reflection of their long walk around the pool the night before.
“I think I’ll go for a dip in the pool later this morning,” Tonya said, leaning back in her chair as she stretched out her berry-painted toes.
“Maybe we’ll join you,” Lee said, catching Kat’s dreamy gaze again as she clutched her ceramic cup to her chest. They’d walked past the pool many times this week on their way to the gym or the grille, and back up to the Mezzanine floor, but they had yet to go for a swim.
They finished their fruit and cheese. Tonya carried in the empty cups while Lee went to slip on his swim trunks. To give the girls their space while they changed, he headed down to the pool.
The water was still glassy smooth as he sat down at the pool’s edge with his shades clasped in his hand. He had the area all to himself. Easy refrains of timba music splashed out towards him, the late risers just sitting down to breakfast, while the cool water lapped against his shins.
A couple minutes later, his mom joined him, carrying a little umbrella drink in her hand from the grille. She dragged a pool chair over beside him, the legs scraping the pavement.
For a few minutes they just sat poolside, Lee with his legs dangling in the water, Tonya perching nearby. Together enjoying the stillness and the separateness of the moment.
He kicked his legs out one at a time, flexing the muscles there.
He secretly thought Kat might have chosen to go back to sleep instead of brave the pool.
He wouldn’t put it past her. He could feel the idleness creeping in, even with the quality workouts they’d managed to fit into the resort-planet’s odd schedule.
“She’s good for you, you know,” Tonya said. The ice swirled in her drink as she set it down on the ground between them.
Smiling to himself, Lee blew out a breath, imagining the warm breeze carrying it across the pool.
He and Kat were good together.
They were a lot of things—complicated. Restless. Borderline insane, depending on who was asking… They complemented each other in their own strange way. And they always came out stronger for it.
Kat had been the one constant in his life since starting at the Academy.
The one to call him out on his shit. The one to challenge him and to laugh at his lazy jokes.
And these last few weeks, she’d again been that constant for him.
Even when he didn’t fully quite know where his head was with everything.
“Kat is…” But how did he explain the person for whom he got up to fight another day, the smile who chased down even the dimmest of nightmares, the shining star in an ever-bleak galaxy?
He swallowed past the thickness in his throat. “She’s everything to me. She’s my world. She’s the stars. She’s the whole damned universe.”
He glanced over at his mom to see what she made of his declaration.
She gazed down at him and out over the water with the soft gleam and quiet strength that only Tonya Waters could wield. “I know,” she said, just as his mom had very possibly known what she meant to him since the first day he brought up her name.
A round of laughter floated down from the grille.
Lee could picture the drinks clinking, the stories being swapped by carefree hearts after another day lazing about.
The same thing he and Tonya and Kat had been doing the night before—and for days now.
But there were actual people, human and alien and creature, whose planets—whose homes—were every day being destroyed and overrun by the very real and tangible dark radiation threat.
He had personally played a role in displacing an entire people, robbing them of their home, and their lives, and sentencing them to live out there somewhere in the stars.
It was the natural course of a raid for him.
And there was nothing he could do about it.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, lost in his own thoughts, the pale dew of morning evaporating and fading away to the dull hues around him. Had the music faded as well? Or maybe that was just him.
“These are people too, Leland.”
How Tonya knew where his thoughts had taken him, and what she made of the directional shift, he didn’t know.
But when he turned to face his mom more fully, her gaze was instead cast upwards in the direction of the breezy palms and the stars hiding just beyond the solar satellite’s reach. The universe’s constant.
“You may not see it at first,” she continued, “like the subtle shifts from morning to day to night. But everyone is working towards something. For something. No matter how trivial they may seem in the moment.”
Light danced in her cheeks as her gaze finally lowered back down to Lee.
The comforting, silly aura of Tonya Waters.
Was there more she’d meant to do with her life and come up short?
Had her life always revolved around him and his dad?
Or were these simply observations from a sleepy belly and a Solar Flare?
She’d never tried to hold Lee back. Not when the Academy came recruiting, and not when she and his dad had dropped him off for his first transport.
And even now, when she could sense something troubling him with that legendary perception of hers, she wouldn’t hold him back.
Not when his future with the woman of his dreams yawned open before him.
Tonya wobbled a bit on her platform sandals as she stood, picking up her empty glass. She leaned down, kissing Lee on his forehead. A rare moment alone with her son. “I am proud of you, always.”
Lee watched the light from the solar satellite ripple over the water, and he ran a finger softly through it. Maybe Kat really had just gone back to sleep.
He had dropped his hand back down by his side when a shimmer across the other side of the pool drew his eye.
Lee glanced upwards slowly. His mouth had gaped open, but he didn’t have half a mind to close it. Not as she stared back at him.
His starflower.
Kat stood there on the painted orange tiles, fingers twisted shyly through the strands of her ponytail that hung loosely over her shoulder.
A pale, flimsy bit of knotted linen hung over her shoulders.
The white suit peeking underneath would have been fairly modest if not for the low dip of the neckline, the sides cut high to show off a pair of strong and capable legs.
He’d have to remember to thank Tonya some day.
But not right now.
The air left his lungs as Kat shrugged a shoulder, the sleeve sliding off one of her arms as if to say, well, I made it.
A smile tugged at his lips. Lowering himself into the pool, Lee crossed the length in three broad strokes, until he was looking up at this magnificent creature. “You’re coming in here with me.”
Kat laughed, her ponytail sweeping across her shoulders with the motion. “It looks cold.” She dipped a toe over the edge beside him. Lee traced the motion and traced up that leg. Oh, if she thought he was joking…
Placing a hand on either side of the ledge, Lee lifted himself halfway from the water. “Oi, Hanneman.”
“Yeah, Waters?”
“I’ve got something for you.”
“Oh yeah?”
Heaving himself the rest of the way out of the water, he wrapped both arms around her in a bear hug.
“Stop, stop!” she squealed, attempting to untangle his wet limbs from around her body. “You’re going to get your mom’s clothes all wet.”
“I really don’t care about the clothes,” Lee ground out, squeezing her tighter to him in emphasis.
She was still squealing but stopped fighting him, relaxing in his arms. Peering up at him with the wet linen hanging off her forearms, she held them up wide for him.
Lee made quick work shucking the damp whatever-this-zapping-thing-was, tossing it in a ball off to the side. Scooping her up in his arms, he pitched them both into the water.