Chapter 11
My phone pinged with a text not five minutes after I returned home from Frannie’s.
Hey Thea, this is Max from the dog park. Any chance you’re free tonight to meet at Griffith Observatory for a film?
What kind of film? I texted back without thinking.
My hand shook as I read the texts again.
Was I actually being asked out by someone who resembled the love interest in my book?
It seemed impossible. And yet, was it more or less impossible than randomly meeting a real-life astronaut on my pub day?
Before answering his invitation, I went to the Griffith Observatory website to confirm the movie was a real thing.
The show was billed as “an astronomical detective story” about signs of life in the universe.
It was in a public forum and I could meet him there.
I don’t even know your full name, I texted back.
Maxwell Q. Smith, he replied instantaneously. But before you google me you should know you won’t find much. I’m under contract with a private space company and I’ve signed NDAs up the wazoo. Privacy is crucial because I have access to so much confidential information.
That story might be enough to satisfy some potential dates, but not me.
If I didn’t find some corroborating evidence, then this date was definitely not happening.
A quick search turned up only a couple of hits.
One was a website mentioning him as a NASA trainee several years ago.
I zoomed in on a picture of several astronauts in spacesuits and was pretty sure he was fourth from the right, as the caption indicated.
The other hit was his LinkedIn profile. It was bare-bones, but at least it included a more recent photo, which meant he was probably telling the truth about his profession.
This was good, but it didn’t necessarily mean I should say yes to meeting up with him.
The whole situation seemed so ridiculous.
I should say no and then block his number. And forget this ever happened.
But then, I had literally written an entire novel imagining Sam’s return to me in the form of an astronaut.
Would it be so awful to see how far I could travel on this magic carpet ride?
Because what if Max’s sudden appearance in my life was a time-limited Sam sighting à la Halley’s Comet—here for a moment, then gone for the rest of my life?
I would never forgive myself for passing up the opportunity for even one more hour with him.
I also had to make room for the possibility that this was Sam’s hand, reaching down from a world beyond and pushing me to move on with my life. Then again, maybe this was just, as Frannie had put it, an uncanny coincidence, and I should stop overthinking.
No matter how I looked at it, the main reason I had written Love You to Mars and Back was to overcome my paralyzing fear of publishing. It seemed absurd to go to all this trouble to reclaim my writing career and then chicken out.
So there I was, standing in front of the planetarium, waiting for Max but wanting him to be Sam.
I was shifting my weight from foot to foot and beginning to question the wisdom of showing up on time when I glimpsed him striding toward me.
At the dog park, I’d been sitting on a bench the whole time, so I hadn’t been able to clock his height.
Now, as he approached, I guessed he was maybe an inch taller than Sam, which put him at about six foot two.
He was trim and muscular, and made an even cuter second impression.
He embraced me in a friendly hug. His hunky forearms grazed mine, triggering some unusual signs of life in my own private galaxy.
“You look great!” he said with an open smile that made my breath catch.
I looked down at the outfit that had taken me nearly three hours and two dozen selfies texted to Frannie to settle on: my favorite cropped jeans with frayed hems, fitted but stretchy enough that I wouldn’t die from organ rearrangement; low-wedge sandals; and a scoop-neck white tee that Frannie said hugged me in all the right places. I’d even blown my hair dry.
“Thanks,” I said, and blushed hard. Because of course I did. “Uh, you do, too. I like your shirt. And your pants.” For a writer, my word selection was feeling a bit rudimentary, shades of Lucy’s favorite song as a toddler: “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.”
“Thanks,” he said back. His mouth quirked ever so slightly, and I wondered if he was already regretting this date. “So I bought tickets for us online. We can go in and get our seats if you want?”
“Sounds good,” I said while I tried to think of a word with more than one syllable.
Max shoved his hands in his pockets. I hadn’t been lying when I said I liked his clothes.
He was wearing lightweight khaki pants and a sage button-down with—thank the lord—the sleeves rolled.
When I looked up, he was either watching me expectantly or wondering why I was ogling his thick wrists.
But then I suddenly understood that he was waiting for me to start walking.
Or talking. Or putting an end to my spot-on impression of an extraterrestrial being.
How was it possible I couldn’t think of a single topic of conversation other than Lucy, the one topic I wanted to avoid? Like a dope, I said, “Shall we?”
But at the exact same moment, Max grimaced and said, “Christ, sorry I’m being so awkward. I haven’t been this nervous on a date in a long time.”
I burst out laughing and he looked a little hurt.
“No! Oh my gosh. I’m not laughing at you!
I’m laughing at me.” He looked unconvinced.
“I’ve only been on a handful of first dates and no second dates since 2015.
I’m not exaggerating. So however nervous you are, multiply that by about a hundred and you’ll be approaching my state of mind. ”
“Well, I spent all day trying to come up with smart things to say to an author, but . . .” He hesitated. “It didn’t go very well.”
“Well, I spent all afternoon trying to find the perfect outfit, so I never made it to the other part of my plan: reviewing my research notes on space travel.”
We both laughed, and the tension evaporated like water in a sizzling pan.
“For what it’s worth, you totally aced the outfit,” he said, looking me up and down again. This time, he seemed to be drinking me in.
“Thank you!” I said and did a little shimmy. At least I hoped it looked like a shimmy and not a mini-seizure. “So you know I have to ask: What did you come up with?”
He dropped his gaze to the ground before peering up with a half-cocked grin that felt eerily familiar. “Um, what’s your favorite writing snack?”
“Popcorn,” I said, feeling a little off-balance.
“What about you? What nuggets do you remember from your space research?” he asked.
“Off the top of my head: air lock, liftoff, zero gravity. That’s it. Oh wait, and something about Houston and a problem.”
“Honestly, that’s not terrible. Most people wouldn’t know what an air lock was off the top of their head.”
“No, no,” I said. “I didn’t say I know what it is. Just that I know the word.”
“That’s fair,” he said with an amused smile. He gestured toward the planetarium, and we started walking. As the greeter scanned his mobile tickets, Max turned to me. “I thought of another one. Ready?”
A jolt of adrenaline shot through me. Max said “ready” exactly the way Sam used to, like he was jittery with anticipation about sharing his next thought.
“Fire away,” I said.
“Are you a plotter, or do you write by the seat of your pants?”
“Impressive. You went deep into the writing process,” I said. “Pantser. I’m one hundred percent a pantser.” As the words came out of my mouth, my face became a furnace. A little too suggestive for a first date. Yikes. Maybe I could find a way to revise my answer later.
Max lifted his eyebrows and gave me a cheeky grin. I had never been more relieved to not see a line at a concession stand. We turned our attention to ordering drinks and a package of Starburst candies to share before taking our seats in the theater.
Thirty-five minutes later, we emerged. “That was fun,” I said. “I learned a lot.” It was a bald-faced lie. I was absolutely no wiser about the mysteries of the universe, because I hadn’t been able to tear my focus away from Max’s intoxicating scent.
“I’m glad you liked it,” Max said. “I’m sure it was a fascinating exploration of life. Unfortunately, all I learned was that you have beautiful hands.”
I laughed. “Thanks?”
“I couldn’t stop looking at them during the movie.” He gave me a bashful shrug and then shoved his hands in his front pockets. Squinting into the early-evening sun, he asked, “Any chance you have time for a walk?”
My eyes scanned the walking path in case I’d misjudged and he was some sort of literary stalker. It was filled with people enjoying the warm evening. “Sure. I’d like that.”
Our conversation started to flow as we strolled around one small section of the enormous park.
“What’s it really like to be in a spaceship looking down at our planet?
I truly can’t imagine it, and not only because I get nauseated on merry-go-rounds.
But seriously, even with all the research I did for my book, I never felt satisfied with how I portrayed the astronaut’s perspective from space. ”
He looked up at the sky, then down at me, his eyes shining. “You know how people throw around the word ‘awesome’ sarcastically or casually?”
I nodded.
“In my opinion, that word was made for only one purpose—to capture that mind-blowing moment when you absorb how boundless the universe really is, and how insignificant we are in the grand scheme.” He stopped walking and turned to me.
“I’m not a very religious man, but all I can say is, it’s like seeing the face of God. ”