Page 83 of Meet Me in Another Life

Dread settles in Thora’s stomach. An easy solution gone, andnothing to replace it. She sits down against the tower, picking at the grass that grows between the cobbles. “It’s all right for you,” she says sourly. “You probably believe you’re going somewhere else after you starve to death inside a tin can.”

“I do,” Santi admits, sitting down next to her. “But I don’t want to die without seeing what we came here to see.” Thora follows his gaze across the square to the hanging sign of Der Zentaur. “Last time,” he says. “When I was dying. It was hard for me to accept that we might not make it. But in the end, I chose to believe that we will. I chose hope.”

“But hope isn’t always a good thing,” Thora argues. “Hope can paralyze you. Make you wait around for salvation instead of seeking it yourself.” She looks at him, pleading. “We might not make it, Santi. We have to accept that.”

He shakes his head, stubborn as always. “And if we’re sure we won’t make it, then we won’t be able to see a way out. Even if it’s right in front of us.”

Thora feels the void in her belly spreading out through the rest of her. “You’re right,” she admits.

“So are you.”

Even after all this time, he can still surprise her. She laughs, her head knocking back against the stones. “How can we both be right?”

“Because of who we are.” He bumps her shoulder. “Think about it. To make it here—to be the people who set out on this mission—we had to have both. Hope and despair. We had to hold them in our minds at the same time.”

“Know the difference between an acceptable risk and an act of desperation,” Thora says, not sure if she’s inventing or remembering. “Be willing to lose everything, but ready to fight to keep it.”

Santi nods. “Hold on with one hand, and let go with the other.”

She looks sideways at him. “Are you saying you can do all that?”

“Not yet.” He gets to his feet. “But I can try to learn.”

Thora sighs deeply, taking his hand and rising. “Maybe we both can.”

Balancing hope and despair. It sounds easy enough until you try it. A week later, Thora sits in front of the annihilation portal, throwing glow-in-the-dark stars stolen from the Odysseum gift shop one by one into the void. There’s an odd, bitter satisfaction in watching a fake representation of her dream dissolve into nothingness, over and over. She’s aiming the last star in her stack when she hears a familiar voice. “Are you okay?”

Thora’s heart turns over. Of course. Lovely Jules, who can’t stumble upon a stranger looking upset without trying to help.

She looks over her shoulder, considering her possible answers.Yes, I’m fine. No, I’m trapped inside a lie while my body whirls around a distant planet a few short days from starvation.“Hi,” she says.

“Hi.” Jules frowns as she climbs the fence. “So was that a yes or a no?”

Thora turns and shifts backward, putting herself between Jules and the portal. “It’s complicated.”

Jules sits down cross-legged in front of her. “Why not tell me about it?”

Thora laughs. “Because you’d think I’m crazy?”

“I like crazy.”

“Then you’re going to love me.”

“Am I now?” Jules smiles, and her dimples break Thora’s heart. “Why don’t we start with a coffee and see how it goes?”

Thora thinks about it. Maybe it doesn’t matter that Jules isn’treally here. Maybe there is enough of her in this simulacrum for Thora to love, to love Thora back. She knows now which version of her Jules likes best. She knows how to make her happy, how to make her stay. She could spend the last year of her life in a glorious dream, loved into oblivion.

She wants it so much it hurts. But this isn’t Jules, not really. This is her own idea of Jules: a partial, one-sided portrait that could never measure up to her reality. The real Jules loved her enough to know what she wanted more than anything, to send this echo of herself along for the ride. Santi was right: it’s a generous gift. But it’s not enough, not for the version of herself that Thora wants to be.

She shakes her head. “I don’t think so.”

Jules looks hurt. “I guess I got the wrong idea.”

“You didn’t. You got exactly the right idea.”

Jules laughs in frustration, the way she always laughs at Thora’s strange moods. “Then why not get a coffee with me?”

Because you’re an echo of someone real I left behind. Echoes aren’t enough to keep a person alive.“I just—can’t,” she says. “Not right now.”

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