Page 22

I opened the door before I could stop myself and marched into the common room only to stop mid step when I saw Sherrod reclined on the fold out couch bed, shirt off with a half empty bottle of some brown liquor on his lap.

The look he gave me was hollowed out, and the slump of his muscular shoulders gave him a deflated posture that struck me deep in my stomach.

It only lasted a moment, then a thin mask of calm indifference slipped over his features.

“Sorry, I didn’t expect you to…”

He started to get up when I waved at him to stop.

“Can I have some?” I gestured to the bottle.

“Yeah, there’s cups…”

I grasped the neck of the bottle and took it out of his hand before bringing it to my lips.

It was bourbon, a Valtoshan blend from the taste of the ashna berries.

It wasn’t what I should’ve been doing, but seeing him like this, a reflection of how I felt made me want nothing more than to wallow with him.

“Can I sit?” I asked.

He stared up at me in surprise and scooted over.

A part of me was trying to warn the other parts that sitting on his bed with him half naked, me in my jammies and both of us drinking was probably not the best way to draw a boundary about sex, but I was suddenly calm and way too tired to give a fuck.

Besides, friends drink in their jammies and it means nothing. It won’t mean anything here either.

We passed the bottle back and forth in oddly relaxed silence, the only sound was the thundering staccato of my heart and the gentle thrum of the ships engines. I’d come here to say something, but the longer I sat there, the more I wondered if I had to.

“I didn’t mean to keep it from you for so long,” he murmured, eyes on the hands in his lap. “I just…I didn’t know if it was something you’d want to know after all this time.”

“Why wouldn’t I? You were my best friend. You were…I was going to run away with you.”

“You built a life for yourself, a good life. I didn’t want to barge in and…I don’t know, remind you of the past I guess,” he ran a hand over his face and leaned back against back cushion of the foldout.

“You were scared,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“I would’ve been too,” I took a swig and handed it back to him.

When I did, his eyes latched onto a spot on my shoulder and I knew instinctively what he was seeing.

An old scar. I had dozens across my entire body, some I couldn’t tell you how I got, but this one?

This tiny scar was one I’d remember on my death bed, because it had cost me the man sitting next to me.

“You didn’t almost kill me,” he said, taking an especially large pull from the bottle.

“Neither did you.”

“Yes, I—”

“No, you didn’t. That attack was on me. I was the one who should’ve been more careful. If anyone almost killed someone it was me. Those men would never have found you and…and beat you so badly if not for me.”

Old guilt simmered up, thick and poisonous, choking me. I fidgeted with a loose string from my pajama pants, trying to reign in the emotions I hadn’t let out in two decades.

“Zephyr—”

“I didn’t come out here to rehash all that,” I said, my voice firm as I moved to the end of the bed so I could sit across from him instead of next to.

Our bodies were too close, the heat from him was doing things to me that I wouldn’t be able to control soon. Distance, however small, was necessary if we were going to avoid indulging in something we both would regret tomorrow.

“Okay…” Sherrod sat up straighter, his mask slipping into place effortlessly, and I was as relieved as I was missing him without it.

“We need to be sure we both understand what this,” I gestured between us, “is going forward.”

He gave me a short nod, forehead wrinkled as he frowned at me.

“And what is this?” he asked.

I took a deep breath, a swig from the bottle and exhaled fast.

“I’d like us to be friends.”

He waited, arching an eyebrow when I didn’t continue.

“Friends?”

“Yes.”

“As opposed to…?”

I huffed and got off the bed, needing to move. He was really going to make me spell it all out, wasn’t he?

“I don’t want to go back in time, to what we were then,” I said, not able to look at him. “I’m not sure if I could find that girl inside of me, even if I tried. She might still be there, parts of her but…”

“I’m not that boy either,” Sherrod whispered, his voice halting. “If I ever was.”

“You were.”

“How do you know that I wasn’t just pretending?” he asked with a sad lift of those gorgeous lips.

“Because I did know you then. And I don’t know who you thought Jacen was, but I knew it was the real you. Charming, lonely, scared, not exactly living on the side of the law most would consider ‘right’.”

He snorted at that and wiped his eyes.

“The boy I…” The words choked me and I washed them down with a stupidly large swallow of bourbon.

“Neither of us are those people anymore, we’ve changed, grown.

But we still have this past between us and…

I don’t know what to do with it. We can’t ignore it, we can’t go back to it.

But we have to work together so I think we need to work on being friends. ”

“I see,” he said slowly, not moving from the bed though when I finally look at him, his muscles are tense like he’s holding himself back.

“Do you?”

His eyes snapped up to mine, sharp and hard.

“Yes, Zephyr. In spite of how this all started, I know that it would only hurt both of us if we fucked. Like you said, we aren’t those naive children anymore.”

I flinched at that and he chuckled at me before taking the bottle from my hand.

“I’m just being honest. We were naive and we were children to believe we could…”

His voice trailed away before he took a swig from the bottle. In spite of the way he was trying to pretend, this was hurting him as much as me.

It’s very much like Jacen was when we’d first met.

The realization hit me hard and I turned away from him again. Tears pricked my eyes and a deep ache took root in my chest. I missed that boy, who taught me to swear in every language, who was my confidant, my anchor. He made me better in every single way.

“I missed you,” I whispered, though it hurt like hell.

“I missed your voice…the way you could make me laugh. And I don’t want to recreate it but…

can we be friends again? Can we try, please?

Because now that I know who you are, I don’t know what else to do.

I can’t ignore you, I can’t walk away from you. ”

“Why not?”

His voice was rough, strained as if he were begging me for something now.

“Because…” I swallowed the tears threatening to spill down my cheeks and turned to him.

He had shifted positions, and was sitting on the side of the bed, his back partly to me with his bare feet on the floor, the bottle dangling in his hands between his knees.

Sherrod stared at the floor but I spotted a glimmer of moisture on his face.

Was he scared of what I might say? Was he afraid to show me what he wanted?

“Because I don’t want to,” I finally answered. “But you can if you don’t want to stay. If this is too hard, if you don’t want me—”

“It is hard, it’s confusing and I can’t stop thinking about that night when I haven’t given it a second thought in years. But,” he shook his head, “I don’t want to walk away from you. I…I missed you too.”

He said the last part so quietly that I would’ve missed it if not for my aural implants.

It thrilled me in ways that were confusing and complicated, so I didn’t look too closely at it all.

There would be other nights for that, this was for figuring out how to move forward in a way that wouldn’t hurt us any more than we already had been.

I moved so I could sit next to him now, careful not to touch him. Sherrod looked at me, the promise of a smile on his mouth.

“So friends then?” I asked.

“Yeah, friends.”

His eyes strayed to my mouth, the air between us charged and hot. He was the first boy I’d kissed, the first one I’d loved. I still wanted him, but that didn’t mean I should give in to that want.

“Got anymore of that rot gut?” I asked with a playful grin.

His eyes widened and he jerked back like I’d slapped him.

“Rot gut? It’s five hundred credits a bottle.”

“And you’re just swigging it straight out?”

“Well, if I knew I’d be entertaining, I would’ve gotten the crystal and cartonum eggs out.”

I made a face.

“Gross.”

“Yeah, cartonum eggs are like eating seaweed.”

“And I’m not the hoity toity type anyway. So pass me the bottle and let’s turn this sad sack conversation around.”

“Okay,” he took a drink before handing it to me, “what did you have in mind?”

I took a pull and the answer came to me in a flash. I grinned wide and waggled my eyebrows.

“Oh no…you can’t be serious,” he sighed. “Twenty questions? Really?”

“It’s scary how you can still read me.”

“You’re kinda easy. To read I mean.”

I shrugged.

“I’m just plain easy.”

He choked on a laugh and I let out a long chuckle.

“I’ll go first,” I said, sitting cross legged on the middle of the bed.

Sherrod swore and waved his hand for me to go ahead.