Page 21 of Love Below Zero

21

UPSIDE DOWN

BECKY

Sticky note on the downstairs bathroom:

For Mars’ sake, replace the toilet paper roll when you finish it!

Note slipped under Rebecca’s door:

Naturally occurring wormholes, if they exist, would be extremely small. About 10 septillion times smaller than an atom.

Anne

Hi Rebecca

We’ve been anticipating chapters from you but haven’t received anything yet. Please let us know when we can expect them.

Thank you.

The world is upside down.

Instead of bickering, James and I now flirt with each other. Very covertly, I might add, and he wasn’t lying when he said he was terrible at being subtle. But somehow we make it work. It’s the most innocent form of whatever is happening between us. There is plausible deniability, and no chance for us to ruin the mission.

Still, I did accidentally call him daddy in front of Eli earlier this week, and it took several hours for Eli to stop laughing. Later I caught him exchanging money with Joanna. Just how many bets do those two have going, and should I start looking into gambling addiction programmes?

I understand the need to do something to stay sane though, because I am slowly losing my mind.

You’d think that being locked up with a stuffed e-reader and nothing to do but eat and fill in surveys would be a dream, but it’s not. The survey questions become more inane every day.

How hungry were you today? How full? Who did you interact with the most? The least? How satisfied were you with today’s meal options? What was the best part of the day? The worst?

I can’t report on the fact that the best part of my day is seeing James, at least not directly. I have to answer the questions honestly, though, so I add our chess games and Star Trek: Enterprise marathon as the best parts of my day. The worst part? That’s harder to pin down these days.

I still can’t write. At least not my book. I write a multitude of other things. Two reports every week. Three articles for the New York Times . I answer email questions from journalists. I keep a personal journal as well, but I’m not as honest in it as I should have been.

I’m steadily ignoring emails from Anne, claiming communication issues. It isn’t untrue, our solar panel issues caused multiple comms failures. Now that it’s mid-February, the sun sets a little earlier and rises a little later each day. Meaning the lack of sunlight is making our solar panel issues worse. James and Joanna have gone outside twice already, and each time they return they look more frazzled than the last.

I’m also getting sick and tired of replacing the fucking toilet paper in the upstairs bathroom. It feels like every time I get there I have to change it. Who just leaves an empty roll there? I’m in here with people who have multiple PhDs and STEM degrees, and they can’t think of changing the toilet paper roll when they’ve used it up?

And don’t even get me started on Joanna’s humming, or Eli’s incessant foot tapping when he works. It makes me want to rip my ears off.

I’m only annoyed by their quirks because we’ve been breathing the same air for so long, and for some reason I also can’t bring myself to ask them to stop. We’ve all been relatively at ease with each other so far, and Frances is really good at handling minor disputes, but as we pass the halfway point of the study, things feel different.

Some days I want to sleep for twelve hours, other days I can barely manage four. The artificial lighting is getting to me. I never thought I’d be grateful for a regular day/night schedule, but here we are. The sun didn’t set at all our first month here, and I really took darkness for granted.

Night time in Antarctica is dark . No ambient light from cities. If there is no moon, it’s almost impossible to see outside. I spend a lot of time in front of the one window we have, but looking at the same snow-covered rocks every day got boring real fast.

It’s Thursday, I think, don’t quote me on that, and I’m reading before bed when the lights go out.

In fact, the whole dome goes eerily quiet. Normally you can hear the water recycler and the soft hum of the generator, but everything goes still. The sudden dark makes me freeze, my grip tightening on the plush toy cat Mac gave me before I left. I named him Spock Junior. She sent me a picture of her and Mr Spock this morning and I spent ten minutes crying real tears about it. I miss my cat.

It takes my body a minute to react, but then I’m up and reaching for my jacket. This is how horror movies start.

I pull the door open, stopping short. James is already in my doorway, flashlight in hand.

“You alright?” he asks. His gaze dips down to where I’m still clutching Spock Junior.

“Yes,” I breathe. I want to take his hand, but Frances and Eli are also coming out of their rooms. He hands me a smaller flashlight, giving me a strained smile.

“We’re heading downstairs. Will you check on Joanna?”

I nod, taking the flashlight before heading for Jojo’s room. I knock, listening for sounds of life. She’s a heavy sleeper, and I’m not sure if the power tripping would have woken her up.

“Jojo, are you awake?”

A grunt and a thud come from inside, so I push the door open. She’s sitting up in bed, rubbing her eyes. Her leg is on the floor next to her bed—maybe I heard it fall over. She looks a little shaken.

“Are you okay?” I ask, carefully stepping into the room and grabbing her leg. I sit down on the bed next to her.

“Fine.” She takes the leg from me, turning around on the bed to put it on. As soon as it’s attached, she sighs, dropping her head into her hands. “Sorry, it’s dark and I don’t have a flashlight. I knocked over the leg and couldn’t find it.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for.” I slide closer, wrapping my arm around her shoulder and giving it a little squeeze. “I hate the dark. I always panic a little when I wake up in a dark room.”

“But you’re normally so calm and level-headed.” She teases, poking my thigh. She still looks a little pale, but I’m relieved to see her smiling again.

“You really don’t like to be woken up unexpectedly, do you?” I shake my head before getting to my feet and holding out a hand for her. “Come on, we need that big brain of yours to fix whatever mess we’re in now.”

“I can’t fix it,” Joanna says. We’re gathered in front of the fuse box, each with a flashlight in hand. I tucked Spock Junior into my jacket for comfort. “At least not from here. Something must have tripped on the generator.”

Frances checks her watch, her expression pinched. “I don’t want anyone going outside in the dark. Especially since we have no comms and no working beacon lights on the dome. Sunrise is in six hours—we’ll make do until then.”

“There are more battery-powered lights in the workshop, and two battery-powered heaters,” James says. The temperature inside the dome is already rapidly dropping, and I dread to think about how cold it will get the further the night wears on.

“We can all sleep in one room?” Jojo offers. “Conserve some body heat, and we won’t have to fight over the heaters.”

“Good idea,” Frances says. “Let’s get set up in the living room. Eli, Becky, and I will bring down the mattresses. James, you and Joanna set up the lights and heaters. We’ll put some of the spare space blankets on the floor to keep the cold out.”

We quickly splinter off, getting set up for the night in the cold. I grab my extra jacket and a beanie (and Spock Junior obviously) just in case before heading back downstairs. It feels a little like we’re having a very nerdy sleepover.

We made a giant Christmas bed with heaters set up on both sides. Frances is already sitting on her bed in the middle, a giant bowl of popcorn in front of her. Oh yeah, this gives major slumber party vibes. Eli has a Red Vine hanging out of his mouth, and he’s busy fluffing up his pillow. He sees me and winks, inclining his head toward the empty bed next to him.

I’m about to take a step in his direction when a firm hand closes over my bicep.

“Don’t even think about it, darling,” James says lowly, glaring at Eli. Eli just shrugs, a smug expression on his face, as James steers me to the bed next to his.

He’s flirting with me only to annoy James. I probably should have put a stop to it as soon as I realised that’s what he was doing, but to be honest, I also enjoy annoying James. Eli isn’t serious, but James doesn’t know that and I find it kind of funny.

“Think about what?” I ask innocently as I flop down on the bed. James sits down next to me. He has a beanie pulled over his head, his glasses slightly askew on his face. I can tell he’s worried about the power thanks to the set of his jaw, and I desperately want to cup his face and ease the tension.

“About sleeping next to anyone who isn’t me,” he says pointedly. I feel my cheeks flush, my stomach twisting at his words. I want to say something witty back, but my mind has gone blank. My mouth opens and closes like a goldfish gasping for air, and I flounder. James just laughs as he sees my expression.

“You can’t just say shit like that with no warning,” I hiss at him, looking over at the others. Joanna took the bed next to Eli, and she’s threatening violence if he keeps chewing Red Vines with his mouth open. Frances is exasperated, trying to get the two of them to behave like adults instead of toddlers. They aren’t paying us any attention.

“You’re one to talk. You have no filter.” He’s referring to the daddy incident from earlier this week.

I huff, pulling the covers down and getting into bed. “That was an accident.”

“It’s called a Freudian slip, love.”

My body warms at the endearment. He probably doesn’t mean it like that, it’s just the way British people speak sometimes. Still, my brain takes it and runs. I’m starting to become a fool for this man and it’s not a good look.

He was clear that he doesn’t want anything out of this. There’s too much on the line for him. Hell, there’s too much on the line for me. I can’t go from hating him to wanting him to fuck me silly when I still have a manuscript to write.

“You need to stop flirting with me,” I tell him. Okay, I’m not entirely innocent either. “We need to stop flirting with each other.”

He gets into his own bed, pulling the covers up to his chin before facing me.

“Why?”

Because I’m going to get the wrong idea, asshole.

“It isn’t productive,” I say instead. Maybe if I approach this logically, he’ll understand better. “You’ve already said nothing can come of this. You need to focus on Oxford. I need to focus on writing.”

He looks at me for a long minute, and I wish I knew what he was thinking.

“You don’t want me flirting because it won’t lead to a relationship?”

I nod.

“That’s understandable. I apologise if I made you uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t,” I reassure him. “We can be friends though, right?”

I hate myself for even suggesting it. I’m a romance author, for fuck’s sake. I know what happens when the two love interests claim they are just going to be friends. But the worst part is that I’d rather have some part of him than having no part of him. It’s so cliche I want to set myself on fire.

I always hated how platonic relationships, friendships, are treated in some romance books. Like somehow being friends with a person you’re sexually attracted to is the worst thing in the world. Friendship isn’t a bad word, and neither is it some sort of consolation prize. Yes, I want James Reid to fuck me, but there’s so much more to it. I want to be his friend, which comes as quite the shock to myself. I enjoy our chess games and bickering over Star Trek . I like annoying him. It won’t be bad if it’s never more than that.

Maybe this whole thing makes me a hypocrite and I’m no better than every other author.

“Friends?” James asks, like he’s never heard of the word.

I raise a brow at him. “You have one of those, right? Besides Eli.”

“Yes. I have my best friend, Jules. And Eli, but he’s more of an annoyance than anything else.”

To prove his point, Eli starts loudly chewing popcorn at Joanna, who looks like she’s ready to smother him with a pillow.

“Right, so you have room for one more?”

“I’ve got plenty of room.” He smiles at me, the crow’s feet appearing around his eyes. I reach out, tracing the lines softly before pulling my hand back.

“Friends then,” I breathe.

“Do you guys think rocks have feelings?” Eli asks loudly, snapping us out of our conversation.

“I swear to god I’m going kill you and feed you to the penguins,” Joanna groans into her pillow.

“Alright children, settle down,” Frances chuckles. “It’s lights-out time.”