Page 33 of Love Below Zero

33

STARLIGHT

BECKY

The family farm is a good place for me to be. Minimal distractions and really shitty internet mean I can focus on writing, but I mostly find myself sitting on the porch, staring at the fields for hours at a time.

There is so much colour after the monochrome of Antarctica. It’s autumn in South Africa, the grass turning yellow, the trees a riot of orange and brown. The mornings are cool, the afternoons scorching. I step with my bare feet on the grass and run around like a toddler experiencing the world for the first time. Frances was right: going to space really changes your perspective on the Earth.

My phone beeps next to me. I’m lying under the large acorn tree next to the house, savouring the feel of the world around me. A slight breeze blows through the leaves, the rustling sounding like ocean waves. Mac is phoning.

“Hey,” I answer.

“You sound way too relaxed for someone on deadline,” she says .

I roll over onto my stomach. “I am strangely relaxed about everything.”

I won’t say that writing is going well. Every word I put down feels like I’m pulling teeth. But there are words. Not good words, but words nonetheless.

“Mmh. That’s not why I’m calling though. I am calling about this.”

My phone vibrates with a text and I put Mac on speaker so I can look at it. It’s two photographs taken the day we got out of the dome. The official Operation Below Zero account posted them. There are thousands of comments and likes on the post. The first photo is one of the five of us, posed officially. The second one is an outtake. It’s not immediately obvious why it’s garnered so much attention, but then I check the comments.

@readerbee

Am I the only one seeing the way James Reid is LOOKING at Rebecca Baxter? Someone tell me what happened between them in that dome STAT.

I look at the photo again, pinching it to zoom in. Eli sneezed in the middle of taking the photo, his face scrunched up. Joanna is laughing at him, her head thrown back. Frances is rolling her eyes. I’m laughing too, my attention on Eli. But James. His attention is firmly on me. He looks at me like I’m the most precious thing in the world. Like he can’t get enough of my laughter. Like he’s in love with me.

“Well ...” I say, clearing my throat. A pang of longing shoots through me. I miss him.

“Well,” Mac echoes. “Are you going to give me the details or not? ”

I was planning on telling her, and the crew, eventually. But I wanted to get through these two months first. There is no use in telling them if we decide to break up. It would make for really awkward crew reunions. But Mac is asking, and I trust her. People can speculate online all they want, and the ESA would have reached out to us if they were actually concerned about the comments. For all intents and purposes, it was an innocent photo. We were all just happy to be outside. Maybe he spotted a penguin.

“Fine,” I sigh. “We hooked up. We’re together. We’re keeping it a secret from the rest because we don’t want it to negatively affect the mission or skew the results. Happy?”

There’s a moment of silence on the line before she laughs. “Not even a little bit. I want more details.” I can picture her sitting down on the pink couch in her living room, a cup of Earl Grey in hand.

“What do you want to know?”

“Was the sex good?”

I should have seen that coming.

“Yes,” I say simply, my cheeks heating up.

“Excuse me, you’re an award-winning romance author. Paint me a better word picture. He looks like he knows how to use his hands.”

I’m transported back to the container, to his hands on my body. The way his long fingers made expert knots around my wrists and ankles.

“I can neither confirm nor deny that,” I say, a little out of breath. Mac cackles, and I laugh too. It feels good to talk to her. I give her as much detail as I can, about the snowstorm and what happened afterwards. About all of our small moments in the dome.

“Why isn’t he there with you? ”

“We agreed some time apart would be good for us.”

She’s silent for a moment. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

My therapist made me walk through my decision-making on that for two weeks. I’ve already psycho-analysed it enough.

“I needed some perspective. And time to write.”

“I still think it’s dumb.” There’s rustling in the background, and a loud meow. “Mr Spock heard your voice. He’s come to investigate.”

“How is my little demon?” I ask, seizing the chance to change the topic.

“Antsy. I think he can tell you’re almost coming home. Right?”

“Sure,” I say. Really, I have no idea when—if—I’ll be returning to the UK. I’m not thinking about it. I’m just thinking about this book.

We talk about Mr Spock for a few more minutes before we hang up.

I should go back inside to write, but the trees and the grass and the leaves keep me rooted to the spot.

The sound of a car door slamming pulls my attention to the front of the house, and familiar voices float down the drive.

“You’re supposed to be writing, not lollygagging,” Joanna says as she comes into view, my mother half a step behind her.

I sit up, my brain not fully comprehending what’s happening.

“You’re supposed to be in the US.”

The farm isn’t easily accessible. It’s six hours by car from Cape Town, and there are no reliable forms of public transport available. How is she here right now? My mother has only been gone for an hour, tops.

Joanna reaches me, pulling me to my feet and giving me a hug. “I wanted to explore more of Cape Town, and then Reid said you were struggling, so I asked your mom if I could come visit for a few days.”

I look between the two of them. That’s one hell of a thing to conspire about behind my back. How did James reach my mom?

“How did you even get here?”

“I took the bus,” she says, as if that’s the obvious answer. It really isn’t. “Your mom was kind enough to pick me up from the bus stop. Which isn’t actually a bus stop, just the parking lot of a gas station.”

I shake my head at her in disbelief. That must have been one hell of a bus ride. “You are unbelievable.”

Joanna just grins at me like it was no trouble at all. This insane woman spent hours on what was probably a very cramped, uncomfortable, and dangerous bus ride to the middle of nowhere in a country she’s only been in once, just to see me. My eyes prickle with tears, my heart starts doing funny things in my chest.

“I’m making dinner,” my mom announces, her speech slow. She only speaks English in self-defence, her accent heavy. I drape an arm around Joanna’s shoulder, following my mom into the house.

“Come on, I’ll show you around.”

Dinner is a little awkward. It’s mainly me trying to translate between Joanna and my mom, but neither of them seems to mind. I’m still not entirely convinced Joanna is actually here, but after dinner she clears the table and offers to wash the dishes. No hallucination of mine would go that far.

“Your mom’s cooking is fantastic,” Jojo says, handing me a plate to dry.

“That’s probably what I miss the most.” My own cooking really doesn’t compare. Even though I miss home, miss my mother, miss the quiet days on the farm, I’ll never come back. This chapter of my life is over, and I’ve moved on to other things. But it’s nice to have a safe space to land when I need it.

“This place is really incredible.” She stares out of the window for a beat before returning to the dishes. “I can see why you came here to get rid of your writer’s block.”

“James told you about that?”

She rolls her eyes. “He didn’t have to. Anyone with a brain could see it in the dome. You never even touched your manuscript.”

Guilt settles in my stomach. I blamed the spotty cell service on the farm for my lack of communication with Anne. She’s expecting a draft soon and I have next to nothing to give her. Mac is holding her off, but it’s not fair to ask her to take accountability for my failures any longer. The circle of people who depend on my ability to write has far outgrown my fans. Mac is counting on me, and now James as well.

I write to tell stories, to show people they are enough no matter what society says. But now it’s more than that. It’s a career. It keeps a roof over my head and gives my best friend a job. When I wrote my first book, there was no pressure. No one even knew what I was doing. Now people have expectations. Readers want answers. Publishers want income. And soon enough they’ll see what a massive fraud I am.

I dry another plate, placing it in the cupboard. “At first I blamed James. But if I’m honest with myself, the writer’s block started settling in long before his review. I’m just not convinced that I’m good enough.”

“No one is good enough. At least according to some people. When I first started at NASA, I was so far out of my depth. I’m trained for combat, not sitting in an office.”

“How did you do it then?”

She scrubs at one of the pots, inspecting it for any leftovers before handing it to me. “I faked it. And then I found out that other people were also faking it, and I felt better about myself.”

“I feel like a child who’s just cosplaying as an adult.”

“That’s all of us, sweetie. There really are no rules here, despite what you might think.”

“What if this book isn’t any good? Actually, no. That’s not what I’m worried about. What if my books are only good because of the smut in them?”

Joanna looks at me like I suddenly started speaking Klingon. But that’s the heart of the issue, isn’t it? My own internalised misogyny coming out to bite me in the ass. I’m not just a sci-fi author. I’m a female sci-fi author who writes smut that a lot of women enjoy. And if it’s something women enjoy, then it can’t be a worthy or serious piece of literature, right?

“So what if they are?” Joanna says. “No, seriously. So what? Oh no, a large group of people read my books and find joy in them, how horrible.” She rolls her eyes at me. “Your books make people feel. That isn’t any less serious because of the sex.”

“What if people are disappointed?”

“Someone is always going to be disappointed. If it’s not good then it’s not good. Even great writers have flops.” She pulls the plug, letting the dirty dishwater drain down the sink. “Nobody is perfect. Hell, if people who barely scraped through high school can become president, you can write a book. Far less qualified people have done far greater things.” She taps my forehead with her wet hand, leaving suds of soap behind.

“Hey!”

“Stop thinking so hard.”

“I’m a writer, it’s my job to think.” I swipe at the soap with the dish towel before hanging it up to dry.

“About your characters and your world, not the real world.”

“But the real world is so pressing,” I groan.

“Is it?” She raises a brow at me before looking around. “I don’t see the real world anywhere.”

I hate it when she’s right. This farm is as far removed from my real world as I can get. No publisher can reach me, and James is in Oxford. We don’t even have any neighbours out here. There is nothing outside but starlight. It’s why I came here in the first place, yet I still feel my problems sitting on my chest like a sleep paralysis demon.

“Tomorrow we’re going to go for a nice long hike, and after that, you’re going to write. Yes?”

Maybe it’s time to finally wake up.

“Yes.”