Page 13 of Adrift!
“Just watch out for the roses,” Remy warned. “They have really long thorns. Ikaryo got poked.”
“Some beautiful things bite,” Felicity said. “He’s been around the universe enough to know that.”
Remy shuffled uncomfortably. “So about the change of clothes?” She needed to get out of this wilting floral cocktail dress that just screamed Date Disaster and into something dark and blah, like old jeans and a faded 90s band t-shirt. Surely ET bands still did t-shirts, right?
And if for half a yearning heartbeat she imagined someone else getting her out of the dress…
She cut off that beat like a mic drop.
Felicity consulted her datpad. A brief frown flickered across her face, and she muttered, “Chocolate?” but then she nodded. “You’re good to go on clothing. Even new shoes.” Her easy grin returned. “If you want them.”
Remy looked down at her fuzzy orange socks, which were ludicrous but actually holding up pretty well. She shrugged. “Not like I’m going anywhere. Might as well be comfy.”
“That’s the spirit,” Mariah said. “I’m choosing to think about this as the perfect opportunity for contemplation.” Her eyes took on that slightly unfocused look of someone grasping for a mystical thread. “We’re not aimlessly adrift. We’re exactly where we need to be. It’s just that sometimes the universe has to strand us so we pay attention to what’s right in front of us.”
Felicity’s button glimmered with rainbow colors. “That’s what the Intergalactic Dating Agency promises. Not the stranding part, I mean, but opening our eyes to what’s possible.”
“Or eye, singular,” Remy drawled.
The cruise director blushed, but her smile was incandescent, the button on her uniform lapel transitioning to a brazen shining gold—the same hue as the towering, golden-furred captain of the Love Boat I with his piratical eyepatch. “I realize this speed dating cruise is seriously off course and way behind schedule, but…” She brushed her fingers across the tattletale button without covering it. “I have a feeling it’s all going to be okay.”
About ready to disentangle herself from questionable cosmic wisdom and secondhand hormones, Remy still hesitated. She didn’t believe in the power of feelings anymore; how could she when she’d laid them all out in verse and chorus for the world to hear and been soundly rejected? But Felicity’s joy was a beacon too precious and bright to tarnish with her own failings.
“I’m happy for you,” Remy said softly.
As if sensing her weakening, Mariah moved in for the kill. “See you tonight at the knitting meditation circle?”
Restraining a wince, Remy smiled. “Wouldn’t miss it for any world.”
+ + +
Waking groggy from an unexpected afternoon nap—shoulda had more espresso and less emotional entanglement—Remy stood in freshly printed underwear in front of the cabin’s fabricator interface, squinting at the screen like it held the secrets of the universe as she tried to envision how the offerings would actually look on her.
Considering her botched socks, she should let the machine decide. Why she should particularly care, she couldn’t say.
Or didn’t want to think, anyway.
Definitely needed more coffee and less cosmic connection crap.
But all the automated choices tilted toward at least slightly sexy, which of course made sense considering it was a dating cruise. Forcing it to do casual had resulted in the fuzzy orange, so maybe she shouldn’t be so critical and defensive.
With a defeated sigh, she sank to the corner of the large bed.
Whyyy had she signed up for this cruise anyway? The question had been nagging at her since the moment the energy monster attacked and her whole disappointing life had flashed before her eyes, but somehow now the question felt even more urgent. She’d claimed the free IDA ticket, packed her bag (which she’d done a thousand times but with one hand unnervingly empty without her guitar) and flown halfway across the galaxy to find…what exactly? What even was she searching for? Love? Excitement? A reset button?
Just running away, whispered a cruel voice in her head. Because Nashville didn’t work out and LA was worse, and you thought if you got far enough away, you could forget the failures and become someone else.
Someone as different from who she’d become as…as an alien.
Or maybe, just maybe, she’d wanted to reclaim who she’d once been.
Someone brave enough to reach for bold and beautiful things, strange and unlikely things, even with the threat of thorns in the way.
The memory of the garden moments hit her like a bottle thrown from an out-of-focus crowd. Ikaryo’s half-moon eyes in the soft light, the way his skin and the cybernetics had felt under her fingers when she’d removed the thorn splinter, the tiny sparks—not just his, but hers.
A melody drifted through her mind, unbidden. Something about roses and walls without end and the space between wanting and reaching. Her fingers twitched as if over imaginary keys, black and white and silver-blue, and for a heartbeat she could almost hear the harmony, the rising bridge that would tie it all together if she could just—
She clenched her hands into fists, nails driving deep. Had she forgotten how she’d played her last coffee shop open mic night to an empty room? Well, a barista had been there; at least he’d gotten paid. She’d helped him upend the chairs before she’d slunk away with a few day-old scones. Pity pastries, as stale as her indie folk-pop songs.
