Page 122 of Tail, Dark and Handsome: Celestial Mates
“Everything tastes weird.”
“A side-effect of medication. It will wear off. Eat. You need something in your stomach.”
A knock sounded at the door.
“I learned what step means,” Zero said, hovering in the doorway.
“Oh? Lay it on me.” Mari perched on the edge of a chair. On the ride home, Zero had acted withdrawn, like there was something else he was afraid to confess.
This family and their secrets.
She didn’t want to frighten him off, so she took another swallow of the syrupy sweet juice and waited. He’d talk when he was ready.
“Its origin is the wordsteop, which means bereaved. It was originally for orphans who lost their parents. Well, the people who adopted orphans.”
“Fascinating. Did I tell you I have a stepfather?” Well, had, but Mari didn’t see the point in splitting hairs. “He’s my brother’s dad. We have different fathers, by the way. He was a pilot too. I thought he was the greatest man in the universe.”
“Is that why you’re a pilot?” Zero looked at his hands, like he felt nervous asking, which was weird because the kid had no compunction about asking personal questions to practical strangers.
Oh. Maybe because she wasn’t a stranger anymore. Pride made her sit up straighter at the thought.
“I guess,” she said. “I grew up on starships. Joseph and I had to share a teeny tiny little cabin. Like, you don’t even know how small.”
“As small as this room?” His tail gave a brief twitch.
“This? Luxury. Smaller. And we had bunk beds. Okay, that was pretty cool, though. Our parents had a normal cabin, but me and Joe were stuffed into a utility closet.” She shared stories about how she and Joseph used to play in the cargo hold, if there wasn’t dangerous cargo. As their parents worked on a passenger ship, it was usually nothing more hazardous than stacked luggage.
“Is your stepfather still a pilot? What ship is he on? Is he still your stepfather, even though you’re an adult?”
“Tony will always be my father,” she said, meaning it sincerely. She hesitated on explaining the next part. “When I was close to your age, I caught a virus. From a bloodsucking insect.”
“Ew.”
“Yeah. Ew. It was on EF32. That’s an Earth-Fremm colony. There’s not a lot there except for some really amazing wildlife. We used to take tourists there.”
“To hunt?”
“No. It was protected.” Though she was sure poaching happened. “People just wanted to watch and take pictures. Anywhere, there’s an insect that carries a virus and can infect you when it bites. My stepdad and I ended up in the hospital. We were very ill for a long time.”
His ears went forward. “Oh. I guess he didn’t come home.”
Mari herself almost didn’t come home. “I try not to think about that. I think the universe is a huge place, just mind-bogglingly massive, and I was lucky enough to have my mom fall in love with an amazing man who was an amazing father to me and gave me a sort-of okay baby brother.”
Zero huffed, the sound just like the amused noise his father made. Then he sobered. “My mother’s dead.”
“I know.” Without thinking, she brushed the back of her hand against his cheek.
“No. I mean, obviously, but I knew that before. For a long time, I hoped that she got lost in the storm and she’d come home, but then she didn’t and I knew she had to be dead because she said there was nothing she loved more than me. There were zero things more important than me,” he spoke in a rush, his words tumbling one after another. “That’s why I changed my name. It’s not just the mathematical concept.”
“The absence of nothing that’s something.” Her heart hurt. The absence of his mother was more than something; it was monumental. Zero seemed so young yet so jaded for his age.
“She sounds like a wonderful mom,” Mari said, truthfully. Of all the stories and whispered gossip she heard about Rebel, no one ever cast doubt on how much she loved her child. “What was your name before? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“Revel. I was named after my uncle.”
“Oh. I thought that was a misspelling of her name,” she said. She knew that Tal had a tradition of changing their first name if they felt the need to mark a major event or transition.
“You reading up on me?”
