Page 20 of Love Below Zero

20

TASTES LIKE CHOCOLATE

JAMES

Note slipped under Rebecca’s door:

The term “wormhole” was coined in 1957 by American physicist John Wheeler, and is named after the holes worms leave in fruits and timber.

@opbelowzero

Due to unforeseen technical difficulties, the cooking video will be delayed. Here’s a gif of a penguin to make up for it!

Invite to contribute to Men’s Health article “Dynamics between male and female astronauts on Mars analog missions.”

Message deleted.

I am, as the kids say, not having a good time.

Now it’s my turn to avoid Rebecca, and I am doing a terrible job. It’s like the dome decreased in size over the next week, continuously putting us in orbit of each other. Eli and Joanna were no help at all.

It took me a minute to pick up on their game, but once I noticed, it became obvious. They were finding increasingly convoluted ways to leave me and Rebecca alone in each other’s company. They were doing everything short of locking us inside one of the rooms, and if the pattern of escalation continued, that wasn’t far off.

I have to talk to Rebecca, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. It’s like all my cognitive functions shut down when she’s nearby. All I can think about is how fucking soft her skin was under my hands. How disturbingly well her body fit against mine. The way she tasted like chocolate.

I had to splash my face with cold water after the kiss to calm down. My body felt out of my control, and it took all of my willpower not to walk back into her room and beg her to keep kissing me like that.

Her touch was decisive, like she knew exactly what she wanted and how to get it. It turned me on more than I cared to admit. The way her fingers gripped my hair, firmly tugging, sent shivers up my spine.

I want her to touch me, the feeling both foreign and familiar. Dread and excitement war in my chest, and the conflicting emotions remind me why I prefer to avoid situations that make me feel anything. I already had my chance at love, and second chances for people like me don’t happen.

I gave everything I had to Sara, and she looked at it and decided it wasn’t good enough. Why would Rebecca be any different? I already frustrate her. What happens when she discovers just how broken I really am?

I was only able to hide it for so long because we had no reason to interact with each other. Now she sleeps three metres away from me every night. The cracks in my carefully crafted mask are starting to show. Exhaustion and stress eat away at me. It feels like this mission is falling apart in my hands.

Our solar panels are giving us issues, the backup generator has some kind of switch-over problem. The 3D printer needs repairs. Our waste recycler is on the fritz.

The forty-minute communication delay is not helping either. The ground crew are being unnecessarily cryptic in their emails, and I am starting to suspect that this is somehow part of the experiment. We have trouble getting the correct schematics and manuals out of them, and even with the communication delay, their responses are slow.

Joanna was forced to use duct tape and ingenuity to keep the waste recycler going, but it’s not a permanent solution. Without the 3D printer, we can’t build new parts, and Eli has gone out twice to scavenge in the spare storage container on site.

Aside from the mechanical issues, the mental issues are starting to show. Eli and Joanna put up a good front, but I can tell they’re tired. The crew is sleeping more, becoming more lethargic. Our shared meals are less convivial. Frances tries her best to keep morale up, but she has bags under her eyes as well. We’re nearing the halfway point of the mission, and the only bright spot in our days are the meals we got to make. Tonight Eli and I made hamburgers, and we were supposed to have our weekly movie night, but everyone claimed exhaustion and went to bed.

Everyone except Rebecca, apparently.

She trudges down the stairs, wrapped in a blanket. She stops short when she sees me. I was on my way to turn on an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise . I figure if the rest aren’t interested in movie night, I can co-opt the projector and watch my favourite show.

Seems like Rebecca had a similar plan.

“I thought you were asleep,” she says sheepishly.

I should let her have the projector. Being alone together is not part of my “avoid Rebecca” plan. If I hadn’t seen how tired Eli was with my own eyes, I would have thought he had planned this.

Instead I pull one of the chairs up beside mine, gesturing for her to sit.

“I’m going to watch Enterprise ,” I tell her. “Stay.”

She hesitates for a moment, eyes flicking back toward the stairs before landing on me again. She nods, almost to herself, before sitting down next to me.

A soft wave of her vanilla and chocolate scent washes over me, and I inhale deeply.

Stop smelling her like some creep, you weirdo.

It’s Jules’ voice in my head.

I clear my throat, sitting up a little straighter. “Or we could watch something else if you’d prefer?”

“No.” She shakes her head. “I love Enterprise .”

I nod, pressing play on the first episode. We watch in silence for a few minutes. I’m growing increasingly aware of the fact that we are alone, for all intents and purposes. Nothing would stop me from reaching out, pulling her closer, letting my hands roam all over her again.

Well, except for the integrity of the study, my future job prospects, and the fact that it will never work between us.

Shit.

She sighs suddenly, pulling my attention back to the show. Trip Tucker just made his first appearance on-screen.

“Would you like a moment alone with him?” I ask, gesturing to the engineer. She laughs, pulling the blanket she’s wearing over her face.

“I just love him so much. He’s the main reason why I started watching Enterprise .”

“Connor Trinneer is a handsome man.” I can’t argue with that fact. She turns her head to look at me.

“You kinda look like him. Only you don’t have his charm.”

“What a strange way to give a compliment.”

She shrugs, a small lopsided smile on her face that makes my stomach flip.

“I am only stating the facts, Doctor Reid. Don’t get too excited.”

I chuckle, glancing at the screen again. Trip and T’Pol are arguing about something.

“My biggest gripe with this show is that they didn’t end up together.”

Rebecca bolts upright so fast I almost fall out of my seat. She grabs my arm, partly to steady me and partly in excitement.

“I knew there was a romantic in you somewhere. That’s exactly how I feel!” She gives me a little shake. “I wrote the Traverse books to give them a happy ending.”

I blink at her. “You did?”

She rolls her eyes at me, a gesture I’m getting used to receiving from her. “Duh. One of the characters is named Trip! And Elara is from a planet similar to Vulcan. Did you not catch that?”

“Not immediately, no.” Her hand is still on my arm, my heartbeat rapidly increasing. “Now that you mention it, it becomes obvious. ”

“Now you need to read the books again to pick up on all the other clues I left.”

I have no qualms about rereading her books again, but I highly doubt I’ll catch clues other than the ones she just pointed out to me.

“I don’t do well with subtlety, as you might have guessed.”

She lets go of my arm and I instantly miss the physical contact. She frowns, looking down at her hands.

“I owe you an apology.”

I reach for the remote, hitting pause on the show before turning to fully face her. This is a strange turn of events.

“What for?”

“My behaviour during the cake making ... and everything that happened afterward. I shouldn’t have touched you like that. It was inappropriate, and I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable.”

I’m so stunned, the Yeti could burst through the front door and I wouldn’t care. I was the one who kissed her, and here she was apologising to me. No, I can’t let that stand.

“You didn’t make me uncomfortable. I wanted you to touch me.” I want her to do a hell of a lot more than touching, but saying that out loud would actually be inappropriate.

She sighs, still not looking at me. “You say that, but we’ve been stuck together in a small space for two months now. It won’t hurt my feelings if you just needed to blow off some steam and I was the only option, considering Frances is married and Joanna is gay. You don’t owe me anything, and I just wanted—” She yelps as I grab the chair she’s on, swinging her around to face me. I place my hands on the armrests, caging her in. I pull the chair close, slotting her legs in between mine.

“Rebecca, I am going to make this very clear. I did not kiss you because you were my only ‘option’ in here. I’m not that kind of man.”

Her breath catches, and I’m aware that once again we’ve wandered into dangerous territory. Still, I can’t help myself. I reach out, placing two fingers under her chin and lifting her gaze to mine.

“I wanted to kiss you. And I’m not going to let you labour under the delusion that it’s just because we’re alone on this continent.”

Her eyes shine brilliantly, pupils blown so wide they look almost black.

“Then why did you stop?” she asks, her voice soft.

I want to kiss her again. More than I’ve ever wanted anything. I slide the fingers under her chin across her cheek, tangling my hand in her soft hair. It would be so easy to close the distance between us.

“You know why, darling.”

She squeezes her eyes shut, making no move to pull away.

“The mission.”

And so much more, but that sums up the spirit of it.

“I—” I trip over the words, wondering if it’ll do any good to speak them out loud. “I like you, Rebecca. And I’m sorry for how twisted things have gotten between us. But we can’t risk this mission.”

She opens her eyes, a sad smile on her face. She reaches up, wrapping a hand around my forearm before detangling us. Cold washes over me as she puts some space between us. Not as much as there was before, though .

“I like you too, even when you’re being a bit of an asshole.”

My stomach flips again, and I have to shift in my seat.

“So what you’re saying is I need to continue being an asshole?”

She laughs, shaking her head. “Maybe tone it down to thirty percent asshole-ness.”

“I’ll try my best,” I grin.

“What happens after all of this?” She gestures at the dome. “You go back to London and UCL?”

I nod. “For a time. A teaching position is opening up in Oxford though.” Now it’s my turn to fiddle with my hands. “I’ve been personally invited to apply, if this mission goes well.”

“James, that’s incredible,” she breathes, and I venture a look at her face. It’s shining with enthusiasm. She seems genuinely happy for me, even though the job offer is part of the complicated thing between us.

“I’ve ... been waiting for a teaching position to open up for so long. They’re quite rare.”

She nods in understanding. “And you want to teach, not just be a research fellow?”

“How much time did you spend on my faculty page?”

“I told you I stalked everyone—you’re not special.” She reaches out to shove my shoulder, and the easy contact warms me a bit.

“Whatever you say, darling.” Her cheeks redden a bit at the endearment, and I make a note to call her that more often. “But, yes, I do want to teach. I enjoy it. Sharing my knowledge with young minds, opening up the world to them. Helping them make sense of things. I want to be a safe academic space, even if I just change one life. ”

My own schooling was fraught up until I discovered my love for planets. I found it impossible to concentrate on boring, repetitive tasks like homework and listening in class. I have always been fascinated by space, but it wasn’t until I made it to Year 8 and we received an introductory physics lesson that it finally clicked for me. If someone had seen the signs sooner, maybe I wouldn’t have struggled so much. And I know I probably won’t make that kind of a difference in the lives of college students, but I have to try.

“I think you’ll make a great teacher,” she says. “If I had someone like you looking out for me, maybe my academic career would have turned out differently.”

“You have a physics degree, correct?”

She snorts. “I barely have one. I scraped by, and no postgraduate program would take me afterwards.”

That doesn’t seem right. She’s smart as hell—I can tell just from the work she’s been doing on the water samples. She’s a quick learner too. All evidence points to someone who would be a competent, if not incredible, scientist.

“What happened?”

“My dad died during my first year.” She sighs, and I reach over to take her hand. It’s the only way I can offer comfort. She squeezes it softly before continuing. “He was the one who loved science, specifically space. We would watch the planets through this huge, old telescope he had. Nights on the farm were always clear. When he died, things just sort of fell apart academically. And I never got back on track. It’s like I missed the fundamentals and couldn’t catch up.

“After the grad school rejections, I turned to writing. I was always a big romance reader, and I still wanted to honour my dad in some way. I’m not sure he’d be proud of my books though. And I don’t know if I’m sad or relieved that I’ll never have to find out what he would have thought.”

Her voice breaks a little on the last sentence, and I have to fight the urge to pull her back into my arms. Instead I run my thumb over the back of her hand.

“I don’t know your father, but I do know you. You’re half of him, and you’re half of the person he loved most in the world. He would be proud of you no matter what.”

She gave a watery laugh, wiping at her eyes with her free hand.

“You think so?”

“I would be, if I were your father.”

I realise a moment too late that I phrased that wrong, but she’s already laughing.

“You can be my daddy if you want to, Reid.” She winks at me, and my entire face goes redder than the dust on Mars.

“Please never say those words to me again.”

“Whatever you say, daddy.”

She laughs again, and this time I laugh with her. Being with her like this feels like I finally understand the joke.

“But seriously, thank you for saying that. You don’t like my books and that’s fine?—”

“I like your books,” I interrupt. Apparently we’re righting all of my wrongs tonight, and she needs to understand that I don’t hate her books.

“You don’t have to pretend you like them. Despite my earlier reaction to your bad review, I promise I can take it.”

“Rebecca, I’ve never pretended around you. I was ... harsh in my initial review. I don’t always think about the emotional impact my words have. I should be more attentive. I just forget that other people handle their emotions differently. I should have been more tactful.”

She stares at me, mouth slightly agape.

“Surely you must have picked up my feelings from the annotated book I gave you?”

“I mean, I thought you were just being nice. Sometimes people say and do things they don’t mean just to come across better.”

I can relate, unfortunately. I’ve had a lifetime to deal with people saying things they don’t mean, or doing the opposite of what they were saying. Sometimes there was even a secret third thing that I was supposed to get through the use of cryptic language or emojis. Why can’t people just say and do what they mean?

“I wasn’t being nice. I meant it.”

“I see that now.” She lets go of my hand, gathering up her blanket and wrapping it around her body again. “Let’s finish this episode, and then I need to try to write.”

I’m happy to hear she’s finally writing again. I reach for the remote, hitting play before settling back in beside her.