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When I entered the park, Pavani was sitting on one of the benches. Our eyes met, and I resisted the urge to look away as I pushed myself over and sat beside her.
“Thank you for this,” I said, glancing at the flower in my hand.
“What makes you think it was me?” The corners of her mouth twitched.
I stared at her for a split second, then burst out laughing. “Let’s examine the evidence, shall we?”
“Go ahead.” Her eyes were dancing with amusement.
“Okay, first, the quote. I’ve lived here almost a year, and to my knowledge, there is only one person who has ever quoted Shakespeare on Shambhala.”
She pursed her lips. “Hmmm. Circumstantial at best. That would never hold up in a court of law.”
“Wait, I’m not finished. Then there’s the invitation.” I looked around. “I don’t see anyone else here but you.”
“Also circumstantial. Maybe I spend every morning here and am just an innocent bystander.”
“Could be, could be.” I nodded. “This is turning out to be a very complicated case.”
“I’m sure with your superior powers of deduction, you’ll solve it.”
“Thank you for your vote of confidence.” I smiled, then looked toward the far wall, heart pounding in my chest. “I’m not very good at this,” I admitted in a quiet voice, chewing on my lower lip, gut tightly clenched.
She laughed softly. “Who is? Aren’t we all just bumbling along, trying to figure it all out?”
I gave a little shrug. “I’m afraid I’m worse than most.”
“Hey,” she said, and I turned to look at her. “I don’t have any expectations, and I’m not asking anything from you. I like you, Calli, I like you a lot.”
“Me, too.” My eyes dropped to my hands hovering above my lap, clutching the rose stem in a white-knuckled grip.
“How about we get to know each other, see where things go? In any case, it’s just a 232
rose, I’m not asking for your hand in matrimony.”
I started laughing, and the tension in my body released. “No?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Not yet, anyway,” she said, her smile playful. “I have to save something for next time.”
Next time. I liked the sound of that. “It’s a deal,” I said, and held the flower up to my nose for another sniff.
“Did you know that a rose has a distinct odor in space?” she asked.
“I thought this smelled different!”
“Flowers produce fewer volatile compounds in microgravity, changes the scent.”
“Seems like a rose by any other name might not smell as sweet after all.”
She smiled. “All depends on where it’s grown.”
I inhaled deeply. “This one smells amazing.”
“So, Calli,” she said, stretching her legs out in front of her. “It’s your turn.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Why did you choose physics?”
“Ah, yes.” I thought about it a moment, ordering my words. “I started out thinking I would be an engineer. I like to fix things, solve problems, and figured it would be a good fit. But in my first circuit analysis class, when I asked my instructor how diodes worked, she said that for the purposes of the class we could think of a diode as a black box—there was no need to understand the inner workings, just the characteristics. You know, reverse bias, one-way current valve, voltage-versus-time waveforms, the usual.
But I wanted to know why. The following semester I switched to theoretical physics.”
“So did it work? Do you now understand the mysteries of the Universe?”
I gave a little bark of laughter. “Not even close! That’s the paradox with knowledge.
The more we learn, the more there is to know.”
“Knowledge is like a sphere, the greater its volume, the larger its contact with the unknown.”
“First Shakespeare, now Pascal! Wow, Pavani. You’re like a walking encyclopedia.”
She laughed, and I stopped myself from shifting closer to her. She seemed so relaxed, so at ease in her body.
“Do you ever miss Earth?” she asked.
“I don’t,” I said, surprised at my answer. “What about you?”
“I haven’t been her very long, so haven’t had much of an opportunity to miss anything yet. But I can imagine missing nature, the mountains, the horizon, you know.”
I looked at her profile, the gentle arch at the nape of her neck. She was so beautiful.
When she turned to me, I glanced away.
“I … I had kind of a bad experience recently, with a woman, I mean.”
“Okay.”
“I guess it messed with my head a little bit, and now I don’t feel like I can trust myself.”
“Or you can’t trust other people?”
“Yeah, no, I don’t know. I’m just confused.”
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“And a little afraid?” she asked.
“Maybe a little.” I glanced at her.
She smiled, her expression warm, eyes tender. “I want to get to know you, okay? I’m not in a hurry. Let’s take our time, do this right.”
“So no proposals on the horizon?” I managed a little smile.
She leaned closer to me, and I caught my breath. Was she going to kiss me? Did I want her to? There was no question my body wanted it, and so much more. “How about this proposal?” she said, voice low and husky. I stared at her mouth, and my brain shut off for a moment. “Meet me here tomorrow night, and we can compare battle scars.” The curves of her body under her jumpsuit were mesmerizing. I nodded, forcing myself to meet her eyes, and seeing my desire reflected in hers, I felt weak.
Then she shifted away and stood, offering me her hand. I took it, and she pulled me up. I ignored the overpowering urge to press my body against hers, and followed her out the door and through the corridors. We stopped in front of my quarters.
“Tomorrow night, then? Eight p.m.?”
I was staring at her lips again. I jerked my eyes up. “I’m looking forward to it.” My mouth felt dry.
Her eyes traveled down my body, just for a second, and my insides melted, then she pushed her way down the hall and disappeared into her quarters.
234
I worked all day Monday on the warp drive manual, eating energy bars when I got hungry, though it was a struggle to keep my mind focused. The clock on my computer seemed to drag, and I even did a quick diagnostic to make sure it was working properly.
Finally, at seven, I rushed to my cabin to change clothes and brush my teeth, then by seven-thirty I was sitting in the ops park, waiting, barely breathing.
At eight exactly the door opened and Pavani came in. She smiled when she saw me, and my heart skipped a beat. Settling onto the bench, she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, her lips warm and soft.
“How’s the manual coming along?” she asked.
For a moment I had no idea what she was talking about—her eyes were enchanting.
“Oh, good, it’s going good.”
She leaned back, draping her arms over the back of the bench, feet firmly anchored under the bar on the ground. I drank in the sight of her lean yet curvaceous body. She cut her eyes to me. “I’m committed to taking things slowly, but if you keep looking at me like that, I can’t be held responsible for my actions.”
“Oh, um, sorry, I ….” My face, I knew, had turned beet red.
“Hey, I’m not complaining.” She gave me a wicked smile. “But remember, we’re in the getting-to-know-each-other phase.”
Squirming a little in my seat, I said, “So how was your day?”
“Good,” she said, laughing, then turned to face me. “Okay, now that we’ve finished with the platitudes, I think we’re ready to move on to more substantial conversation.”
“Agreed,” I said with a smile.
Pavani’s face grew serious. “Want to talk about that bad experience?”
“Um, not really.” I picked at the sleeve of my jumpsuit.
“Then how about I tell you some things?”
I nodded eagerly.
“Let’s see.” She looked up at the ceiling, index finger to her lips. “When I was around five years old, I left a bucket of water out on the edge of our garden, and a few days later it was teeming with mosquito larvae, not that I knew what they were. I was so excited, and showed my grandmother, who nearly poured out the water, explaining that they would turn into mosquitos, but I begged her to let them live. I checked on them every day after school, and when they finally matured, I sat next to the bucket all day, arms and legs bare, so that they would have something to eat.” She laughed. “I spent the next few days covered in calamine lotion. It was pure agony.”
“I have a calamine lotion story, too! Once my best friend and I wanted to get out of going to school, so we found a poison oak patch and rubbed the crushed leaves all over our bodies, including our faces. We thought it was a great idea at the time.”
“Ouch!”
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“Yeah, it was pretty bad. And want to know the worst thing?”
“What?”
I leaned toward her, voice low and conspiratorial, and said, “We still had to go to school!”
“No!”
“Uh-huh. Can you believe it?”
“Life is full of injustices.”
Her smile was radiant, and my anxiety, I realized, had disappeared. She looked at me steadily, and I felt … safe. “Madison was my best friend when I was twelve. We were inseparable, and once we built a little fort in the woods behind our houses, to hide from the world. Well, for me, it was to hide from my mother. I was a big disappointment for her. My dad, too, but he had his work, so wasn’t around all the time like my mom. She thought of me as an extension of herself, and when I didn’t act the way she wanted, she was very vocal about her deception. Sometimes she would get angry, and to be honest that
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