Page 29 of Until the Stars Fall

His eyes still searched the cosmos, but a muscle tensed in his jaw as he shook his head slightly. “Gemma, you’re—”

I cut him off. “I’m not fishing for compliments.”

“I didn’t think you were,” he said, an edge to his voice. “I just—”

He shook his head, his mouth open, like he was struggling for words. I both wanted him to refute the things those men said but also not to be another man passing his opinion over my body.

He continued more softly. “I think your real problem is that you’ve been dating men who aren’t good enough for you.”

Disappointed, relieved, and pleased all at once. “Maybe so.”

“Definitely so.”

The silence lengthened again, grew more comfortable. His breathing got slower and slower, until I almost thought he was asleep.

“Hey Gemma?” he asked suddenly.

“Yeah?”

“If you ever want to talk, I’m here.”

I smiled, pleased to my core. “Thanks, Beck.”

It was a quiet afternoon, for once. In the past several days, we’d had two near-emergencies that had been neatly handled by the organized beauty of The Interstellar Grimoire. I definitely wouldn’t trade the past several boring hours of sorting and cleaning mechanical parts with Beck for a life and death emergency, but this task was wearing thin. It was far past lunch, but we were so close to the bottom of this box. I sighed and tossed another lost-beyond-hope piece into the scrap metal bin, stretching my neck and back.

Beck sat on the floor across from me, cross-legged and barefoot as usual, polishing what appeared to be a particularly ornery manifold until it shone. He looked up. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Just a little drained.” At two weeks into travel, my thoughts were less and less occupied with the debacle that was San Francisco, and more and more with where to find a job while I waited for my appointment with Madam Indigo. I’d waited tables in college. Summer probably wouldn’t mind if I stayed on the ship for a few months. I could earn enough money to pay Madam Indigo and to live on while I figured out what the hell to do with my life now that I’d killed my professional career.

But could I stay that long with my family without them finding out about my magic? Could I stay that long around Beck? Since the dam had broken on whatever he’d been holding back, he’d been the kindest friend, attentive and caring, funny and wonderful to be around. When we worked together, we were as harmonious as a perfectly functioning antimatter drive. There was no drama, only flirting and the best conversations.

Was what I was starting to feel for him real and important, or only fueled by proximity and his potent pheromones, which were custom-blended to turn my body into one big pleasure ache? His presence distracted me from figuring out my future. Clouded my thoughts and stacked my opinions into the wrong boxes until my brain felt like it’d been wired by a drunk electrician.

I caught him looking at me. “Give me twenty minutes,” he said, standing up, “then meet me in the forest.”

My stomach politely growled. “Will there be food involved?”

“That’s the idea.” He winked and was gone.

Twenty minutes later, I pushed open the door to the forest, the spot on B1 that was a small farm and orchard. I still hadn’t spent much time in here. The bright light hurt my eyes after so long in the relative darkness of the rest of the ship. When my eyes adjusted, I took in the vegetable garden and a Celtic knot herb garden to my right, the flower gardens to my left. Lilacs were on the cusp of blooming, and roses and lavender swayed in the artificial breeze.

Dozens of trees grew close together in a mini-forest and stretched tall toward the blue sky of sun lamps on the ceiling. A manufactured breeze skimmed across my bare arms, through my hair, ruffling the leaves. I sighed and turned my face up to the fake, warming sun, eyes closed, and pulled my ponytail out to let the breeze in. The room was far lovelier than most of the other enclosed forests I’d been in on Earth. This one had been tended with love.

I followed the sound of Beck singing “Dream Girl” again through the grove of trees before me, my tennis shoes crunching through the mulchy ground as I passed apples and oranges, a few elms. I found him in a small clearing in front of a mini waterfall and lagoon. He sat cross-legged on a quilt spread over the ground, his hair pulled up in a messy bun and his plaid flannel shirt lying on the ground beside him. I tracked the sinuous lines of his black tattoos, down his muscles to where his hands dug inside a picnic basket. Beside him, Oby rolled around in the sunny grass with all his white belly fluff on display.

“Where did you find a picnic basket on the ship?”

“Ah-ah!” He held one hand out to stop me as he put another plate on the quilt. “You don’t come into the forest with shoes on.”

“Oh! I didn’t know that was a rule.” I slipped off my shoes.

“Socks too!”

“Really?” I reached down to remove one sock, then the other. The grass in the clearing was soft and feathery on my feet. I almost forgot I was on a spaceship.

He chuckled. “It’s not a rule. I just thought some grass underfoot might do ya some good.”

“You’re probably right. I think that little Devil’s Ivy on my table is keeping me sane.”

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