Chapter Six House Rules for People Who Are Not in Love
Chapter Six
House Rules for People Who Are Not in Love
BECKETT
The Solstice Villa contained sixty-seven automated romantic settings and no suitable place to negotiate a sleeping treaty.
Sadie chose the dining table.
I opened the campaign agreement on my tablet.
She took the tablet away.
“These rules do not belong to Vale Orbit.”
“The villa belongs to Vale Orbit.”
“The bed belongs to Vale Orbit. The rules governing my body near it do not.”
She found a stationery folder in the desk drawer.
Every sheet had a border of small pink roses.
Sadie stared at it.
“There is plain paper in the operations office,” I said.
“No. I want future historians to understand the conditions under which this document was created.”
She wrote HOUSE RULES across the top in firm black letters.
Then, beneath it:
FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT IN LOVE.
“Is that necessary?” I asked.
“Very.”
“No one else will read this.”
“Then your objection is emotional.”
I sat across from her.
The pink sunset beyond the glass had deepened to copper. The dome lights glowed among the garden palms below us, and somewhere outside, water moved over stone.
The villa had been designed to make two people feel alone together.
I had approved every detail.
I had not expected to be one of them.
“Sleeping arrangement,” Sadie said.
“You take the bed. I will use the sofa.”
“The sofa is too short.”
“It is eight inches shorter than I am.”
“That is not a defense.”
“I have slept in airport lounges.”
“You own airports.”
“I do not.”
“You said that too quickly.”
“I am familiar with my assets.”
“That is the least surprising thing you have ever said.”
She looked toward the sofa, then the bed.
“We share.”
The words changed the room.
I kept my face still.
“The bed is large enough,” she continued. “Separate blankets. Separate pillows. No crossing the center.”
“There is no marked center.”
She stood, walked to the bedroom, and pulled the pink silk throw from the foot of the bed.
She laid it lengthwise between the two sides.
“Now there is.”
“You disliked the throw.”
“It has found purpose.”
She returned to the table and wrote:
1. SADIE GETS THE LEFT SIDE OF THE BED.
“Why the left?”
“Because I sleep on the left.”
“So do I.”
Her pen stopped.
“Do you need the left?”
The question was direct.
She could have tested me. She could have turned it into a contest and waited to see whether I would use ownership of the villa as leverage.
Instead, she asked.
“No,” I said.
She nodded and continued writing.
I had never been impressed by the allocation of a mattress before.
“Bathroom schedule,” I said.
“I take as long as I take.”
“The first call is at eight.”
“Then do not schedule anything before I have coffee.”
“The network expects an arrival interview at eight.”
“The network expected Trent.”
She added:
2. NO INTERVIEWS BEFORE COFFEE.
“That is operationally vague,” I said.
“It is spiritually precise.”
“How much coffee?”
“Enough.”
“You objected to reasonable.”
“Enough favors the person drinking. Reasonable favors the person withholding.”
“That distinction is invented.”
“Most contract law is invented.”
I took the pen from her.
“Operations meeting. Seven-thirty each morning. Thirty uninterrupted minutes.”
“With whom?”
“Priya, department leads, and me.”
“Am I required?”
“No.”
“Then why is it a house rule?”
“Because you cannot enter halfway through and ask the housekeeping director whether management has a better conference room.”
“That sounds like a very specific fear.”
“It is based on evidence.”
I wrote:
3. BECKETT GETS ONE UNINTERRUPTED OPERATIONS MEETING EACH MORNING.
Sadie added:
UNLESS THE BUILDING IS ON FIRE OR SOMEONE INVENTS A NEW HIDDEN FEE.
“No one will invent a new hidden fee.”
“Then the exception costs you nothing.”
I left it.
“The campaign schedule,” I said. “Changes have to be approved by the network.”
“Changes affecting staff have to be approved by Priya.”
“I know.”
“You said network first.”
“Because we are discussing our participation.”
She watched me.
I had learned that her silence was not agreement. It was an instrument used to create evidence.
“We receive the schedule at breakfast,” I said. “Either of us can veto a romantic activity.”
“Without explanation.”
“Without penalty unless canceling it breaches the completion requirement.”
“Then the requirement is the penalty.”
She was right.
This was becoming tiresome.
I revised the sentence.
“Vale Orbit absorbs any production cost caused by the veto,” I said. “The activity is replaced with neutral resort coverage.”
Her expression softened by a degree.
“Agreed.”
She wrote:
4. EITHER PERSON MAY VETO ANY ROMANTIC ACTIVITY. NO REASON REQUIRED.
“Physical contact still requires separate consent,” I said.
“The contract already says that.”
“It should survive contact with pink stationery.”
She looked up.
Then she added it.
I watched her hand move across the page.
Her engagement ring was gone. The pink campaign ring remained on her right hand, bright against the black pen.
I had noticed the change when we entered the villa. I had not asked when she removed Trent’s ring.
The contract specifically protected her from questions about him. Even without the clause, I would not have asked.
That fact did not make me comfortable.
“Camera-free time,” she said. “One hour after dinner. Every night.”
“The bedroom and bath are already camera-free.”
“I do not want to hide in a bathroom to stop being content.”
The words were quiet.
I looked toward the living room.
Two visible cameras had been installed for scheduled diary segments. Both showed white privacy lights, indicating they were inactive. The map of every villa camera waited on the table beside the tablets, as promised.
“One hour in the entire villa,” I said. “All recording equipment physically covered. Network access disabled.”
“No work calls.”
“I may receive urgent operations calls.”
“Priya is running the resort.”
“I am responsible for it.”
“Those are not the same thing.”
I disliked that statement.
I disliked it because Priya had said it to me twice.
“Emergency calls only,” I said.
“Define emergency.”
“A threat to guest safety, employee safety, resort function, or contractual completion.”
“Bad comments are not an emergency.”
“I do not read comments.”
“You know exactly what they are saying about your left eyebrow.”
I did.
This was irrelevant.
She wrote:
5. ONE CAMERA-FREE, WORK-FREE HOUR AFTER DINNER. ACTUAL EMERGENCIES ONLY.
“What are they saying about my eyebrow?” I asked.
Sadie smiled.
“You do not read comments.”
“Correct.”
She did not answer.
I added another rule.
6. NO DELIBERATELY WITHHOLDING OPERATIONALLY RELEVANT INFORMATION.
She crossed out OPERATIONALLY RELEVANT and wrote AMUSING.
“That is not enforceable.”
“Neither is the center of the bed. We are building trust.”
The word stayed between us longer than it should have.
Sadie looked down first.
She capped the pen.
“Anything else?”
There were several hundred things.
No rearranging my schedule without consultation.
No turning private pain into public intimacy.
No assuming a problem was mine to solve because I had resources.
No expecting thirty days to remain simple merely because we had numbered the complications.
“Door locks from the inside,” I said. “If either person closes a door, the other knocks and waits for permission.”
Her fingers tightened around the pen.
Then relaxed.
She wrote it carefully.
7. CLOSED DOORS STAY CLOSED.
“Agreed,” she said.
We both signed.
Our names appeared together again, this time beneath rules written by us rather than a legal department.
SADIE BELL.
BECKETT VALE.
She tore the page from the pad and attached it to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like two interlocking hearts.
“The magnet is inappropriate,” I said.
“The magnet is load-bearing.”
Before dinner, she walked the villa once with the camera map in her hand and checked every position against the wall.
I watched her do it. She was not looking for a lie.
She was establishing a baseline, the way an auditor counts the petty cash on the first morning so that everything afterward has something to be measured against, and I understood that the map I had given her would be worth exactly as much as the first thing she found wrong with it.
She found nothing wrong with it.
She wrote that down as well.
Dinner arrived at seven.
Nico had replaced the newlywed starlight bath with what he called a private restoration meal.
It contained six covered dishes, three kinds of bread, and one dessert labeled PERSONAL GROWTH FOR TWO.
Sadie lifted the lid.
The chocolate cake beneath it was shaped like a heart with a deliberate crack down the center.
We stared at it.
Nico had included a card.
HEALING IS SWEETER WHEN SHARED.
“I am firing him,” I said.
“No.”
“He sent us a broken-heart cake.”
“It is the first honest honeymoon amenity in this building.”
She cut herself the larger half.
“Four stars.”
“Only four?”
“The message is invasive.”
“You ate the word healing.”
“That was quality control.”
We ate at the table while the sky darkened beyond the glass.
She ate the way people eat after a day that has removed something from them, which is to say slowly and then all at once. I did not comment on it. I refilled the water twice and moved the bread within reach and said nothing about either.
For the first time since the terminal, no one watched.
Sadie told me the dome’s dining chairs were beautiful and hostile to the human spine. I told her they had passed ergonomic testing. She asked whether the test subjects had been threatened.
I asked what she would change first.
She gave me a list.
I listened.
At eight, the privacy hour began.
I placed the camera covers over both lenses myself. Each slid into place with an audible click. Sadie tested them, checked the network indicator, and locked the villa door.
Then she stood in the center of the room as if she did not know what to do when no one could see her.
“You are permitted to sit,” I said.
“Is that a house rule?”
“No.”
“Then stop managing me.”
She picked up her overnight case and went into the bathroom. The lock turned.
I opened my laptop at the table. There were two hundred fourteen messages.
The waitlist had tripled.
The arrival clip had become the most successful campaign segment Vale Orbit had ever released. The headline used by six outlets was identical:
THE LAST WIFE ON MARS HATES BEING CALLED THE LAST WIFE ON MARS. My communications director wanted approval to lean into the conflict.
I declined. Celeste had sent a single message.
She understands spectacle. Call me. I did not.
The bathroom water stopped. For several minutes, there was no sound.
Then I heard Sadie cry. Not loudly.
There were no sobs designed to cross a closed door. No request for comfort. Only one unsteady breath, then another, both quickly smothered.
My hands left the keyboard. Every instinct I possessed demanded action.
Knock. Ask.
Open the door if she did not answer. Call someone who knew how to help.
Solve the part of the problem that could be solved with transport, money, privacy, legal pressure, or the removal of Trent Maddox from every screen on two planets.
The rule on the refrigerator was visible from the table.
CLOSED DOORS STAY CLOSED.
I remained in my chair.
The bathroom stayed quiet.
I went to the kitchen alcove and searched the tea drawer. The villa offered twelve blends, all labeled with romantic outcomes.
DEVOTION. DESIRE.
FOREVER. There was no tea for public humiliation followed by interplanetary contractual marriage.
I chose REST.
I heated the water, added honey, and placed the cup on the floor outside the bathroom.
I did not knock. I returned to the table.
Several minutes passed. The lock clicked.
The door opened only wide enough for a hand to reach through. The cup disappeared.
“Thank you,” Sadie said from the other side.
“It is tea.”
“I know.”
“You are welcome.”
The door closed again.
I looked at the two hundred fourteen messages waiting for me, the campaign numbers climbing, and the house rules held to the refrigerator by an interlocking heart.
For once, I let the closed door be enough.