EPILOGUE
“Cheers.” I held my glass out to Chan, and he clinked it with his. But there, in the bar above the main deck atrium, in the amber light of sunset sim, he wore the same distant expression he’d worn since I’d returned to the ship two weeks ago. “Darling, what’s wrong?” I asked, resting my hand over his.
“I don’t know, Sunny.” He stared down into his drink. “I thought… I let myself think that maybe, this time, it was real. It was really happening. And maybe I wouldn’t be alone anymore.”
“Makenna?” I guessed, and he gave me a nod.
Makenna had disembarked with the senator and her family last week, taking a piece of my heart with them in the shape of a ten-year-old boy. Maybe they’d taken a piece of Chan’s as well.
“I’m sorry, Chan.”
His shoulders rose and fell, his hoverchair humming softly. “I should have known it was all a trick. She seemed way too into me. She didn’t even flinch when I accidentally asked her if her eyelashes were real. ”
Deciding it would be best not to comment, I only gave his hand a squeeze.
“I got carried away,” he said, straightening with a sudden and fierce determination. “It won’t happen again.”
Chan cared about Makenna, and he’d thought she’d cared about him too. It was just like the conversations I’d had with Tig since I’d returned to the ship. They both felt betrayed by someone they’d thought they could trust, someone they thought they could love. Maybe every one of us—Chan, Tig, Rax, Morgath, Freddie, me…maybe even Elanie—spent far too much time on this ship, seeing the best and worst of love played out in real time in our every waking moment. When we finally risked the hope that we might have a love of our own, it was devastating when it all fell apart.
“I understand,” I said, but inwardly I promised him, I will make sure it happens again for you, if it’s the last thing I do .
After we shared another silent, pensive glass of Venusian whiskey, Chan turned to me with a solemn expression. “Sunny, would you ever consider telling me what happened to you? Not what happened on Kravax, but before. I know something happened, something awful, something you never talk about. But I’m your friend.” He squeezed my hand now. “I’m here for you. Always. You can talk to me, if you ever need to.”
This caught me so off guard I couldn’t think of what to say, how to say it.
“I’m sorry.” He turned away, his cheeks flushing red with embarrassment. “I shouldn’t have asked. That was rude of me.”
But as the sun set over the treetops, casting long pink and purple shadows across our table, I realized he was right. Chan was my friend. One of my best friends. He loved me. I could tell him about Jonathan.
And so I did.
He didn’t say a word, no stranger to loss, but his hand continued to hold mine as pools of silver lined his eyes. We sat together in silence until the first twinkling of simulated starlight pierced the darkening dome suspended over the atrium.
“Chan?” I said after taking another sip of whiskey. “Will we be okay?”
“I suppose,” he replied. “We carry on, don’t we? What else can we do?”
“What else can we do?” I repeated softly, distantly, feeling the truth of it in my bones. Tilting my glass his way, I said, “If it’s any consolation, even with the eyelash comment, I think your game is improving.”
“You do?” His eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “I’ve really been working on it. I’ve been reading romance novels.”
Smiling at him, I said, “Absolutely.”
We’d been so busy over the last few weeks that Freddie and I had barely spent a single moment alone. After the press interviews, the sentencing trials for the FFKs, and the fallout and restructuring of LunaCorp after Proposition 2126 passed the KU Senate by a wide margin, life aboard the ship, I hoped, was returning to normal.
What are you up to? Freddie commed while I walked back from the airlock to the staff pods.
Just welcoming that adorable pop band from New Earth Korea aboard. I’m headed up to twelve now.
Adorable? How adorable?
I grinned. Extremely. But nowhere near as adorable as you when you get jealous.
Did you chat with Sai today?
My smile grew while I stepped into the elevator. I did. He’s starting middle school next week. He’s nervous. Sai and I had a standing video chat every week, something I hoped would continue so I could watch him grow—with the ultimate end goal of becoming his campaign manager when he ran for KU President, of course.
Aww. Poor kid. He’ll do great.
That’s exactly what I told him.
We received a digcard today, Freddie commed while the elevator doors opened on the staff deck. An invitation to Garran and Kasa’s handjoining.
“ What ?” I screamed, making the Blurvan across the hall spin around so fast his lower half kept going before springing back with a rippling wobble. Wincing, I whispered, “Sorry,” to the Blurvan, then commed, Really? That’s wonderful. When?
Next year, on Argos. We could take a holiday. Maybe combine the joining with a visit to Tranquis. If you wanted to, that is.
My pace slowed. You want to visit Tranquis?
After a brief pause, he said, I thought maybe I could—only if you’re ready—meet your parents.
You want to meet my parents?
I do, he replied.
I was a second away from saying several nauseatingly sweet—and a few suitably filthy—things to him when Elanie stormed toward me, her eyes red and swollen and… are they wet?
I do too, I commed him quickly. It’s a wonderful idea, and I want to come kiss you for thinking of it. But something’s up with Elanie. This may take a minute.
Comm me if you need backup.
“Out of my way, Sunny,” Elanie barked when I stepped into her path, my arms stretched out wide.
“No,” I said sternly. “Not until you tell me why you’re so upset.”
Slowing to a halt, she stared at me for a long moment. Then she hung her head, buried her face in her hands, and started to sob.
I took her by the elbow, spun her around, and walked her back to my pod. “What in the worlds is going on?” I demanded after depositing her on the edge of my bed. “Why are you crying?”
Through her tears, she said haltingly, “He…he told me… He said he thought I was…b-beautiful.”
I frowned. “Who? Who told you that? And why are you crying over it?”
Blowing her nose on the tissue I handed to her, she blurted out, “His name is Blake. He was the bionic staring at me at the New Year’s party. I said hello to him in the hallway one time ,” she said, holding up a finger. “And now he won’t leave me alone. He keeps smiling at me whenever I see him, waving at me, asking me how my day is going. Why is he torturing me like this?”
“Torturing?” Something was wrong. This wasn’t like Elanie at all. She was distressed. She was crying. She was… emotional . I stumbled back a step, running ass-first into my dresser. “Elanie,” I gasped. “Good gods, have you upgraded?”
“Whatever,” she cried, throwing her hands into the air, the tissue landing in a crumpled ball somewhere on my floor. “Who even cares? It’s all so ridiculous. ”
“You upgraded without telling me? Why? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know.” Her shoulders slumped, her arms hanging limply from her sides. “But I hate it. I can’t think straight. Everything hurts.” She squeezed her belly. “And I feel so puffy all the time.”
“That sounds about right,” I said, oozing sympathy because puberty was one thing. Puberty as a twenty-eight-year-old bionic was something else entirely.
“It’s just, you and Freddie seemed so happy,” she said, cutting me off. “So I thought maybe I could be happy too. Well, guess what? Joke’s on me. I’ve never been so miserable in my entire existence!”
Joining her on the bed, I tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “It’s all right, Elanie. It will be all right, I promise. We just need a plan. All this requires are some anti-nox tabs, a lengthy conversation, and a lot of food. Would you like to get some ice cream?”
After picking the tissue up off the floor so she could blow her nose into it again, she looked at me, sniffled, and said, “That sounds really good.”
“I know, darling.” I pulled her in close. “It always does.”
One hour and two scoops later, I stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for deck sixteen. Freddie had been waiting for me on twelve, but I hadn’t been to the pool on sixteen once since Makenna reversed the trick that had drained it dry. The pool that now was silent and blue and beautiful, with starlight through the flexGlass ceiling shimmering across the water.
Stripping down to my underwear, I dove headfirst into the deep end. After coming up for air, I opened my Squee app and sent a message.
Hello, Joshua. Any chance you’re available for a date at the pool on sixteen? Say, nowish?
Even though we were openly dating, sometimes we still liked to play.
In the space of two heartbeats, he responded, Good evening, Phoebe. I’m on my way.
I was floating on my back when he arrived, turning to lock the door behind him before walking to the edge of the pool. Staring down at me, he said, “Sunastara Nex, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on. How in the worlds did I get so lucky?”
Rolling over onto my belly, I swam to him, close enough to pull his shoelace free of its tight little bow. “Come swim with me.”
I loved watching him undress, shedding his suit coat, his tie, his pants. The professional costume of Freddie the L&C fell to the ground to reveal the soft skin and long limbs of Freddie the man. Freddie, who’d loved me even when I’d pushed him away. Even when I’d refused to let myself be loved. Even now, when I loved him back so much it sometimes hurt. Freddie, who saw me for the broken woman I was, and, instead of running, he stayed, waited, helped put me back together.
After kicking off his boxers, he dove into the pool with predictable grace. And when his head emerged, I reached behind my back, unhooked my bra, tossed it onto the deck, and said, “Come here.”
Instead of swimming the short distance between us, he dove under the water. When he reached me, his fingers curled into the waistband of my underwear, sliding them over my hips, down past my knees, off one foot and then the other. After coming back up for air, he pushed me back to the edge of the pool, setting my underwear on the deck with a wet slap.
When he kissed me, his tongue slipping between my lips, his hands cupping my ass, sliding to my hips, he lifted me out of the water. Placing me on the edge, he hooked my legs over his shoulders and nestled between them. “Beautiful,” he said while I slid my fingers into his hair. “So beautiful.”
I grinned down at him. “Who are you speaking to, darling?”
Not taking his eyes from between my legs, he said, “Both of you.”
I laughed, then sighed, then panted and writhed and cried out his name as he kissed and licked and sucked until my body went taut, my fingers gripping his hair, holding him in place while flashes of white heat pulsed through me, brighter than the stars shining above us.
I was still hovering somewhere on the outer edges of consciousness, lost to pleasure, when he pulled me back into the water with him. But my body knew what to do, my legs wrapping around his waist, my hand reaching down, guiding him to my entrance, my arms clinging to him as he thrust up into me. My chest pressed against his so tightly I felt each beat of his heart across the skin and bones that separated us.
Sometime later, after he found the edges of his consciousness too, I kissed his shoulder and asked, “Do you remember that poem you read to me?”
“I do,” he said, his lips brushing along the skin of my neck.
Looking up through the flexGlass into the infinity of time and space above us, where stars burned and expanded and collapsed, where planets spun and revolved around their suns, where it was the fate of all objects to push inexorably away from one another—except for us—I said, “Fredrick Caruthers the Third, I vow to love you forever under these stars that formed us, so long ago.”
He kissed me deeply, fiercely, and then softly as we floated together in the water, staring up at the stars. And I smiled, thinking about luck. Despite the odds, despite the gravity of our pasts conspiring to keep us apart, we’d held on. And even though we’d been lost once, we’d found each other, and now we were both finally home.
Thank you so much for reading.