Page 7 of Adrift! (Cosmic Connections Cruise #2)

Remy hurried down the empty corridors toward her state room, where she fully intended to hide until rescue or the heat death of the universe, whichever came first.

If her lips kept burning in frustration from That Coulda-Been Kiss That Totally Didn’t Happen, the universe might just burst into flames instead.

At least she hadn’t kissed his finger to make it better!

She rounded the last corner—and almost mowed down Felicity and Mariah.

The Earther women skipped apart to make room for her, then pivoted, Mariah with eyes wide, Felicity with eyes narrowed.

The cruise director chuckled. “Who’s after you?”

Mariah gasped. “It’s not the energy monster, is it?”

Since she couldn’t keep running away, Remy paused.

“Sorry. No, it’s all good. I just… Actually, since you’re here, I wanted to ask about fabricating some clothes.

I’m not quite ready to knit a whole sweater”—she gave Mariah an apologetic look—“but I wanted to get out of this cocktail dress.” She plucked fretfully at the silky fabric. “Seems a little out of place now.”

“I think it’s beautiful on you,” Mariah said, and Remy wondered if there was a notation in some IDA handbook identifying unearned compliments as the rallying cry of randomly acquainted Earther women.

In mental apology for the snarky thought, she swore to make an extra-extra extravagant flower for her socks at the knitting circle as she smiled at Mariah. “I was just at the ship’s garden that has some fascinating alien flora you might find interesting.”

Over the other woman’s exclamation of delighted interest, Felicity gave Remy a closer look. “Oh. Did Ikaryo show you the atmo-hall?”

Was that a good guess or did staff gossip? Remy restrained a groan. “A distraction from the whole energy monster situation,” she said, aiming for casual and probably missing by lightyears. “Focus on customer service and all that.”

Even as the words left her mouth, she knew they sounded hollow. Ikaryo hadn’t shown her the garden out of professional obligation. The gleam in his silver eyes had been not just a desire for distraction, but something deeper.

Felicity’s feeling button twinkled, and her knowing smile suggested she wasn’t buying the blasé explanation either. “It’s good that he’s…dedicated,” she murmured.

“The garden sounds divine,” Mariah interrupted, clasping her hands together. “I need a place to gather myself before the session tonight. And there’s nothing like growing, living energy to enhance spiritual connection.”

“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.

But the hazardously hopeful part of her that had left Nebraska—the same part that had left Earth?

—kept circling back to Ikaryo. How he’d shared his own story of displacement and transformation and his continuing search for what eluded him.

The way he’d looked at her like he wanted to hear more from her, holding his breath when she’d leaned closer.

Are you so afraid of the thorns that you can’t even sing about the rose? Much less touch it?

The question stung because she knew the answer. She’d rather sit alone in the concealing comfort of fabricated fuzz than risk another rejection, another failure, another confirmation that the light in her heart was invisible to everyone else.

So then why did she keep replaying that moment when his augments had sparked under her touch, like her very presence ignited him from the inside? Why did her lips tingle every time she thought about the charming quirk of his not-Earther smile?

“Because all the worst poetry is patchworked from broken hearts,” she muttered to the empty room. “And somehow you think this time will be different.” Furiously, she jolted to her feet and swiped her hand—left—across the screen interface. Because it wouldn’t matter in the end.

But as the fabricator hummed to life, she caught herself humming too—that same melody from a moment before, with a fragmented lyric about the liminal infinity between almost and always.

She choked back the tune, but the unsung words lingered like an itch in a phantom limb.

If she hadn’t made a promise to Mariah, she would’ve stayed hiding in her cabin.

The show could go on without her. But she half suspected Felicity would come knocking, button shining gold like they weren’t all lost in space, and she didn’t want to be caught in the lacy underwear that was basically the only pattern in the fabricator.

So she yanked on the new clothes and forced herself out the door.