Chapter 8
8
Sunny. Fire Ball prep meeting in the staff room in ten minutes. Don’t be late.
I won’t be late, I commed Elanie back, miffed. When am I ever late for anything?
Where should I begin? she replied. Morning meetings, Rax and Morgath’s birthday, the Solaris roast, the captains’ briefings. I could go on.
I was not late to the Solaris roast, I protested. I was an hour early.
An hour early for what? Elanie asked. Being two hours late?
No. I left because I was early. Then I came back. And that’s when I was late. So it doesn’t count.
You’re ridiculous. And you’re also late.
Whatever, I grumbled. I’m almost there.
But when I walked through the door seven minutes later, I found the staff room empty—aside from Freddie. He sat across the table, staring at me. Had Elanie set us up to meet like this? It seemed unlikely, but the fact that I was here and she was late was a little too ironic. And Elanie didn’t do irony.
“Hi, Sunny.” His cheeks were flushed, his hair slightly out of place, the top button of his shirt undone, his eyes twinkling. He looked relaxed, deliciously loose. He looked like?—
“Why are you staring at me like that?”
“Like what?” I blurted out, even though I knew exactly how I was staring at him. Like he was a snack, and I was hungry.
His lips twitched. “You’re staring at me like you know something I don’t.”
He’d been the perfect gentleman, treating me with kindness and respect, giving me all the space I’d stubbornly demanded. This behavior had only served one purpose: making my pink parts even more inappropriately perky in his presence.
I licked my lips. “Well, it’s just…”
“Just what?”
Fire raced up my neck, pooling at the base of my throat. “You look… The way you look right now… You’re reminding me?—”
“Sunastara Nex.” He leaned forward onto his elbows, grinning up at me. “Are you blushing?”
“No,” I insisted. “I just raced up here so I wouldn’t be late. So I’m…hot.”
He snorted at me, sitting back in his chair again. “You’re hot.”
“That’s what I said.”
“No.” He was the one insisting now. “That’s what I said.”
This conversation was spiraling out of control.
“Wait, are you getting hotter?” he asked. “Because your cheeks are even red?— ”
I groaned. “Fine, it’s just… You look like him right now, okay?”
His head tilted. “Him?”
“Oh, for star’s sake. Joshua. You look like Joshua.”
He frowned, glancing down at his shirt. “I do?”
“Yes.” Waving my hand in the air over him, I said, “Messy hair, loose shirt, loose tie.” I scowled—because he was doing everything he could not to laugh, and it wasn’t enough. “This is how you looked when you first walked into that bar on the CAK. When we…” I shoved my foot metaphorically into my mouth. “Anyway, it’s a whole Joshua thing.”
“Well,” he said, still laughing but also combing his fingers through his hair, straightening it into place. “I didn’t mean to.” He hiccupped.
Pursing my lips, I narrowed my eyes. Now things were making sense. “I think I might know what’s going on here. Is there any chance that you are currently intoxicated?”
He winced. “Quite, unfortunately. Garran found me this morning, and to make amends for damaging our serving drone, he demanded that I join him for a mimosa brunch on deck nine.”
“Demanded?”
He nodded. “Argosians can be very persuasive. And the mimosas were”— hiccup —“very bottomless.”
“That’s a job hazard, for certain. And with the Fire Ball still to come…” I tutted at him. “You, my friend, are going to have a rough day tomorrow.”
“Your friend ,” he repeated slowly, deliberately, looking like he’d nibbled on the word and wished he could spit it out. Staring directly into my eyes with a boldness only afforded by a morning spent drinking too much champagne, he said, “Such a small word to describe one of the biggest disappointments of my life.”
Within the space of a heartbeat, my breath caught and my mouth went as dry as a Neptune desert.
Freddie blinked, then his face paled, like he’d just realized what he’d said. “Oh shit. Sunny, I’m sorry.” He reached for me. “I didn’t mean it. I mean, that’s not true. I meant it. But I shouldn’t have said it. I think I might have gotten drunker than I meant to get. No, that’s not right. I hadn’t intended to get drunk at all. I’m only drunk on accident. Stars , I’m making this worse, aren’t I?”
I sat as gracefully as I could for someone whose legs wobbled like flicked springs. His arm was still stretched across the table, his hand open and waiting for me, and I couldn’t stop myself from taking it. When his fingers closed around mine, so soft and warm, I knew I’d made a mistake.
I was drawn to him; there was no denying it. But giving in to that pull, letting myself fall into bed with him, possibly into more, would be like willingly venting myself into space: exhilarating at first, painful later, and ultimately disastrous.
Taking a shaky breath, I pulled my hand from his. “It’s fine.”
“It is not fine.” His fingers curled in toward his palm before he placed his hands in his lap. “I was out of line.”
“No, you weren’t,” I said.
“Yes, I was,” he insisted.
“No, you weren’t.”
“Yes—”
Tig wandered into the room, saving us from going back and forth another round. She didn’t notice us, her attention focused on the techPad in her hands, her pink hair poking out from under her hood.
“Afternoon, Tig,” Freddie said .
She jumped, almost dropping her pad but recovering quickly. “Oh. To you too. Um”—she pulled back her hood, taking the seat to my right—“to both of you.”
“Thank you, darling,” I replied while my heart sagged against my ribs, either relieved that my conversation with Freddie was over, or miserable about it. Maybe both. “Are you ready for tonight?”
Tig nodded. “It shouldn’t be too bad this year. Only some fancy lighting, mist generators, sound effects. And, of course, the pyro.” Tig managed all the special effects for the ship’s various events.
“Any concerns about the magic show?” I asked. Apparently the Delphinian wizards planned to “wow the ship” with their tricks during the Fire Ball.
“Right,” Freddie said, straightening his tie. “I heard about what that other group did to the pool on deck sixteen. I wonder what they’ll accidentally mess with this year.”
“I think it’ll be okay,” Tig replied with some confidence. “They seem to know what they’re doing.
“There’s no unexpected group dancing during the show, though, right?” Freddie asked. “There’s a large group of Gorbies vacationing on the ship who want to come to the ball, and I’d prefer not to upset them. They’re already right on the edge with how dry it is in their rooms. The humidifiers are on the fritz, and apparently it’s a ‘nightmare situation’ for their hair.”
On a planet as humid as Gorbulon-7, big, frizzy hair was as much of a status symbol as bountiful crops on Argos or the number of bathrooms in a Martian billionaire’s mansion.
Tig shook her head. “No dancing. But there will be animals. Hopefully nobody has any objections to that. ”
“Animals?” Freddie and I said at the same time, equally concerned.
“Well, just one,” Tig clarified. “A goat named Dave. But he’s very well trained.”
“How in the worlds did they get a goat on board?” I asked. “I’ve had no luck at all trying to get a kurot for the FFKs approved for interplanetary travel, and they have a goat?”
Tig’s grin was mischievous as she twirled her fingers in the air and whispered, “It’s magic.”
“No shit? Any chance they could”—I mimicked her finger twirl—“ magic me a kurot?”
Freddie snorted.
I was only half joking, but Tig shrugged and said, “I can ask. Oh, and speaking of the pool on sixteen. One of the wizards fixed it for us. She said it was a fairly simple spell. Any child could do it.”
“What?” I scoffed. “We’ve had, like, twenty Delphinians try to reverse that spell. They all said it was impossible.”
Tig shrugged again. “Like I said, these wizards seem to know what they’re doing.”
That was music to my ears. Before that drunk Delphinian’s spell had made it unfillable, I’d gone to the pool on deck sixteen nearly every day. It was the smallest pool on the ship, almost private since only a few guests had known it existed. I used to love swimming laps before bed, or floating on my back and watching the stars slide by through the pool’s flexGlass ceiling. “That is fantastic news.”
Tig grinned. “I knew you’d be happy to hear it.”
Just then, someone barked a howling laugh in the hallway.
“What was that?” I asked, turning to look through the window .
“It’s Chan,” Freddie said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard him laugh like that before.”
“Me neither,” I muttered, squinting suspiciously at the back of his hoverchair.
“Who’s he talking to?” Tig’s pink brows pinched together as we all tried to catch a glimpse of the mystery being hidden behind Chan’s chair.
Finally, Chan drifted to the side, sliding away to reveal?—
“That’s her,” Tig shouted. “She’s the wizard who fixed the pool.”
The female chatting with Chan was Delphinian, but instead of the black-and-red robes her fellow wizards had been wearing, she wore a pair of skinny blue jeans, a simple black T-shirt, and strappy black flats. Her heart-shaped face framed a clever smile. Her long black braids were gathered into a ponytail that swayed past her hips. And somehow, impossibly, she started laughing too.
“Is Chan making a female laugh?” I asked. “That is laughter, right? Not tears?”
“Is that odd or something?” Freddie asked.
I spun back around in my chair. “Super odd. Look, Chan is the warmest and most genuine being I have ever met. But he has absolutely no game.”
“It’s so bad,” Tig agreed. “He’s, like, a chemistry black hole.”
“He can’t be that bad.” Freddie frowned. “Can he?”
“He’s catastrophic,” I said. “A few years ago, I informed him that some females liked being complimented on their shoes. And the very next female he took on a date filed a report with LunaCorp HR accusing him of being a ‘creepy foot fetishist.’”
Tilting his head to peek past us through the glass, Freddie said, “I don’t know. Looks like he’s holding his own to me.”
I turned back to the window just as Chan said something else to the Delphinian that, stars above , made her laugh again. She flipped the few braids that had escaped her ponytail back off her shoulder in a move that was unmistakable I am into you body language for every species that had hair.
“Remarkable,” I whispered, staring in pure amazement until Rax and Morgath stomped down the hall, grumbling past Chan and the Delphinian.
“What’s everyone staring at?” Rax grunted while he took one of the chairs next to Freddie. Morgath thudded down onto the other so that the twins flanked him like intimidating bookends.
“We’re staring at Chan,” Tig said. “Because he’s out there, somehow not blowing it with that Delphinian.”
“For real?” Morgath asked skeptically.
“Yes,” I whispered, watching Chan wave an exuberant goodbye to the Delphinian before cruising toward the staff room. “But don’t say a word. This is a monumental achievement for Chan, and I don’t want to embarrass him.”
Everyone nodded. But it didn’t matter. Because not two seconds after Chan entered the staff room, Elanie strode in behind him, staring over her shoulder at the Delphinian who’d already made her way back down the hall. “Who’s that?” Elanie asked at full volume. “She was laughing, Chan. Laughing . Did you actually make a female laugh?”
“Never mind,” I muttered as Chan stammered a stream-of-consciousness explanation about the Fire Ball and logistics and magic shows and how everything was “completely professional.” The poor man’s entire head had turned as red as Martian sand, but when he started in on the difficulties of organizing appropriate living arrangements for Dave the goat, I decided to step in.
“What are our assignments for the evening?” I asked, pushing my voice louder than the muffled snorts around the table.
Composing himself, even though he was still red-faced, Chan gave us our duties for the Fire Ball. Elanie would manage the Delphinians—and Dave the goat. Freddie and I would be stationed on the floor to keep the peace. Rax and Morgath would work security at the doors. And Tig—not a huge fan of crowds—would run the music, lighting, and effects from the master control booth above the main deck ballroom.
After the meeting adjourned, I gave myself three side assignments for the ball: 1. Learn everything I could about the Delphinian Chan had been speaking with. 2. Make sure the night didn’t end before Garran spun Kasa around the dance floor as flawlessly as he’d spun our serving drone. And 3. Avoid staring at Freddie all night like all I wanted to do was sleep in his suit jacket, preferably while he still wore it.