Page 17 of Adrift!
For a long moment, she stared at him. Though he’d been conscientious about his Earther studies before launch, he could not guess what darkened the amber flecks in her eyes.
Her suspended hand trembled. “May I?”
The discordant edge to the request nearly broke him. “Whatever you need.”
He thought she would sing. Instead, so lightly, she settled her hand on his cheek. Her fingertips traced the port at his temple where the nanotech threads pierced deep.
“You said it doesn’t hurt.” Her tone, still roughened, sounded as if she needed it to be true.
“Not for a long time.”
That was true enough. The ache in him now was much lower…
But he forgot his carnal pain when her eyes glistened with melancholy and she whispered, “How long for me before it stops hurting? Before I forget what I left behind? What I never had?”
“Remy.” Anchoring one arm behind her hips, he lifted her from the precarious position on the couch and lowered her to the cushions. When she hunched next to the curtains, he quickly retrieved the drink he’d made for her. “Here.” Kneeling before her, he pressed the small glass into her slack hand. “It’s real, just for you. Redjade flowers only once a millennium and makes one of the most potent liqueurs in the universe, so just a little.”
She took a sip, then coughed out a choking laugh. “Oh ouch. Burning all the way down doesn’t make it hurt less.” But themiserable slump left her shoulders when she took another tiny taste. “Is it pure fire?”
“Instead of tears.” Gently, he tilted up her chin to sweep away the droplet at the edge of her lashes.
But when she blinked at him, another tear welled behind it, as if the piquant liqueur had melted some frozen wall. “The last time I sang for real, it was basically to an empty room like this. Except the acoustics were way worse. It just felt so…hopeless. And the saddest part?” The quaver in her voice made his augments ache in sympathy. “I kept playing anyway. A whole set, for no one. Like I thought maybe if I just kept going, sang it sweet and true enough, no one would become someone. And someone would finally hear me.”
Boosting himself up to the couch beside her, he tugged the corner of the drape around her like a cape. He settled his arm lightly over her shoulders—to hold in the warmth against the darkness outside.
When she leaned even more lightly against him, he closed his eyes, focusing on that tentative contact. “What would they have heard?”
She was quiet for so long he thought she wouldn’t answer. Or couldn’t.
It wasn’t his place to push. He was still just the bartender.
But since they were stuck, adrift in a dark, lonely night of a last call that never ended, he could at least be here with her.
When she finally spoke, the answer was even softer than her humming.
“I was still a teenager when I left home with my used guitar and big dreams. Back then, I believed anything was possible. That’s what I sang. But I guess nobody else believed me.” Her voice grew smaller, dimming like a dying star. “Music used to feel like flying. Like I could almost touch something infinite. Butthen it just felt like falling. Like I was reaching for something that was never really there after all.”
When she let out a shuddering breath, the weary exhalation gusted through the secret hollow place in him, that draught of precious air crossing the lingering distance between them. As she tilted her head to rest on his shoulder, the scent of muddled redjade flower drifted around them.
He couldn’t stop himself from turning his face into the bright waves of her hair, breathing past the redjade fragrance to findher. He kept his voice almost as low as hers when he asked, “And when you discovered the IDA? When you saw the stars opening up in front of you as you left Earth? What seemed possible then? How close was the infinite?”
After a heartbeat, she shifted her weight, pulling away, and he would’ve ripped out all the biowires holding him together to hold her in place.
But she only gazed up at him, her lashes spiked from tears. “But what if it’s just farther to fall?”
“The wonder of it is, out here you drift.”
Her green eyes widened, her lips parting without breath. Very deliberately, he raised one eyebrow.
And she laughed, all the air rushing out of her. “Ikaryo!” She centered her fist on his chest with a small thump. “That is the absolute worst silver lining I’ve ever heard.” Then her fingers splayed wider, over his heart. “And thank you for that. For the drink too. For that little duet. For listening.”
He put his hand over hers, something flashing within him, a resonance that went deeper than the chance harmonic convergence of plasteel tuning to an unexpected melody. “Shall I play it again? You could sing this time.”
“No. I… I don’t have any words.”
“Just the melody then. I’ll do the harmony.”
With her lips curled between her teeth, as if silencing herself, she looked at him with something like fear, but also hope. Finally, she turned her hand under his to interlace their fingers. “Please.”
