Page 5 of Stars

Sasha opened his mouth.

“Don’t say anything. Not yet,” Mark growled. “Dan came up through the ranks, and he was one of the brave men who came out early and fought for his career. He’s out and he’s proud, and no one will take that pride away from him. Or make him uncomfortable here at NASA. Hishome, with his family.”

“I made him uncomfortable?”

“Last night, at his welcome-home party? Acting like he was some kind of circus freak? The way you kept staring and glaring at him and his partner? Yeah, you made them uncomfortable!” Mark exhaled, scrubbing one hand over his jaw. “It rattled Dan enough that he brought it to me. Dan’s been through more than you’ll ever know, andyourattled him.”

He felt like he’d been stabbed, like he’d been held down to the ground as a drill bit dug through his spine and his heart and kept going, drilling his soul down into Hell. How could everything have gotten so twisted around? So upside down? He shook his head, squeezed his eyes closed. “I’m—I’m not good at parties—”

“I don’t care how good or bad you are at parties. The bottom line is this: I will flush you from the program and put you on a plane back to Russia, today, if you don’t drop your homophobic bullshitright Goddamn now. This isn’t Russia. This isn’t 1981. We’re fifty years beyond that, and you need to fly right with the program. You wanna be at NASA? You have to play by our rules, and that means inclusion. Means valuing everyone, in every way.”

Words swam around Sasha, Mark’s voice and the thrum of his rage bleeding into the humidity that choked his throat. “You care about gays that much?”

Wrong thing to say. Mark’s face turned purple, and suddenly he was incandescent, more heat pouring from him than the Houston sun. “You’re Goddamn right I care about my friends,” Mark hissed. “These people are myfamily. And I will protect every one of them fromanyonewho wants to hurt them.” A pause. “Even you, Sasha.”

Gasping, he stepped back. His hands threaded through his hair, gripped his scalp. He groaned, noise punching out of his soul through his gritted teeth. “I didn’t mean—”

“I don’t care what you meant. I care what youdo. So what’s it gonna be? You gonna stay here, or you packing for Russia tonight?”

His breath came hard and fast. His heart pounded. He wasn’t getting enough air, there wasn’t enough oxygen in the miserable heat. His head spun, Mark’s words tumbling end over end, crashing into memories from the night before. Dan and his partner, Jerry, showing up at their welcome-home party. Dan had been on the Lunar Gateway for eight months. Sasha had never met him.

And then he was suddenly face-to-face with Dan. Someone had decorated Freddy’s with rainbows and stars and rainbow-streaked spaceships. Dan had laughed, had hugged everyone. He’d held hands with his partner. They’d looked radiant, ecstatic, in love.

Sasha felt like an orphan looking in on Christmas morning through a frozen window. He wanted to pour himself into Dan’s skin, feel what living life was like through him. What color was happiness? How did the world look, sound,feelwhen someone was that joyous? That proud of who they were? He’d wanted to slip into Dan’s life for that night, try to imprint that joy into his soul. If he just watched carefully enough, maybe he’d find some answers. He’d been like a bug circling a light, keeping Dan and his partner in sight at all times.Show me how to be like you.

Apparently, all he’d looked like was a Red Robot homophobe.

Groaning again, Sasha dropped into a crouch, his fingers gripping his hair with his head almost between his knees. The ground was spinning, the air too thick and too thin all at once.

“This shouldn’t be hard. It shouldn’t be difficult to decide not to be an asshole.”

“Mark, you don’t understand—”

“Sasha, God damn it.” Mark sighed. “I thought you were better than this—”

“I’m not a homophobe!” Sasha snapped, spinning around. He swayed. Stared Mark dead in his eyes. He gambled everything. He saw his future twirl away, stardust on a solar wind. “Iam gay!”

Sasha had just enough time to watch every speck of color drain from Mark’s face, see his jaw go slack and hang open, before he had to spin and crouch again. His breakfast came up hard and fast, a half-digested bagel and coffee spewing in bile-strewn chunks across the baking pavement and beneath Grayson’s tires. Exhaling, Sasha pressed his forehead to the truck’s quarter panel. He closed his eyes. The Earth spun, wobbling off its axis.

Behind him, Mark whispered, “Fuuuuck.”

* * *

They endedup on the far side of the longhorn enclosure, twirling hay through the metal fence. For some reason lost to history, there was a fifty-acre pen of longhorn cattle in the middle of Johnson Space Center. Sasha slumped through the wide railing, hanging his long arms over the chipped paint of the warm metal. Mark tried to call one of the longhorns over.

The bull stared at Mark as if he was a derelict.

“I’m sorry,” Mark said again. “I really had no idea.”

Sasha nodded. “That was the point.”

Mark’s gaze cratered to the dirt. “I thought you were secretly living the bachelor astronaut dream. You have the looks. And you have the brooding, serious vibe that women go crazy for. We all bet you were secretly killing it out there with the ladies.” He snorted, shook his head. “I never guessed. I’m sorry. I was so wrong.”

Sasha’s lips thinned.

“You’re not out to anyone?”

“There are a few people.” He could count them on one hand. “Back home, it’s not acceptable. You were right about that. Russians are not okay with gay people.” He hesitated. “For a long time, I was not okay with me.” He squinted into the distance, into the enclosure and beyond the longhorns. Was he okay with himself? If he could wave a magic wand and fix himself, would he?