Page 50 of Stars

Maybe another Russian president would balk at reaching out for support, but Sergey wouldn’t. If he needed her, he’d call. “Thank you,” Sasha had breathed. “He’ll text. When he has a moment to think.”

She’d squeezed his hand again. “He’s going a mile a minute, isn’t he?”

His chest had seized and his throat had clenched, and he’d closed his eyes as he squeezed back. “Yes. He is.”

That was the last they spoke of it. Mark finished grilling, and the five of them picked at their food beneath the looming shadow of launch pad 39A.

Sasha waited, watching the sun dip into the ocean, change the far-flung lightning bolts to flames of gold rising from the water to gild the sky, paint stars beyond the edges of the storm clouds. Light shifted from hues of indigo and orange to an endless diamond-dazzled midnight while a blue moon rose, gigantic against the slapping waves.

He pulled out his phone. Sergey would just be waking, if he’d managed to sleep at all.

Sergey answered before the first ring had finished. “Sasha?”

“Hello, Seryozha.”

Sergey let out a rush of air, as if he’d collapsed as soon as he heard Sasha’s voice. “Govno, I haven’t heard from you for two days. I thought—” Sergey’s voice choked off. His voice trembled when he spoke again. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“Did you… get my delivery from the consulate?”

“Yes,” Sasha whispered.

Silence, save for Sergey’s jagged, halting breaths. “Was I wrong?”

“Seryozha…” He held the ring up, haloed by the moon. Refracted starlight danced off the diamond and onto his arms, the touch as soft as Sergey’s kiss. The diamond was the color of Sergey’s eyes, the color of fire at the center of the sun. They were one and the same.You and your love were created in the same moment of the same atom, and then scattered for a billion years. You knew him once inside a star.

Was this what their beginning looked like? Two souls merged inside an endless fire, burning as bright as ice? The stone was like the underside of an Arctic iceberg, shifting riots of turquoise and midnight and endless starry skies. How had Sergey captured the sun and stars inside a stone? “Are you asking me—”

“No,” Sergey said quickly. “No, this isn’t my proposal. I won’t ask you to marry me over the phone.I wanted to propose to you before your first space flight, though,” he whispered. “I’d dreamed about it. You in your NASA flight suit. Some sunny day in Houston or Florida, the perfect moment before your first mission. When you couldn’t get any happier, any more excited, and then I could hopefully make you even more—” Sergey’s voice fractured. “I wanted to give you something to come home to. I wanted you to remember, when you’re up there, how much you’re loved back here. I can’t ever be with you in space, but I wanted you to keep part of me close. I’m a greedy man, and selfish. I didn’t want you to leave Earth without my love.”

Rumbling surf pounded his feet. He squeezed the ring so hard his fingers turned white, his nails blue, almost the same color as Sergey’s diamond. “I’m not going to put it on.”

Sergey hissed like Sasha had doused his love in a single sentence, like he’d guttered the fires of his soul.

“I’m going to wait for you to ask me the way you dreamed,” he continued. “When I get back. But you’ll have to start dreaming of asking me in Moscow. I’m not going to wait for you to come to Houston, Seryozha. I’m coming to you as soon as I’m back. And you will ask me then.Da?”

“Sashunya…” His name was a sob, Sergey’s voice a bolt of lightning that struck the center of Sasha’s soul.

“I don’t need a ring to carry you with me into space. You are always inside of me. Every day. Every moment. I am never without you.”

“I am never without you,” Sergey said softly. “Forever—”

“Is only our beginning,” Sasha finished.

Your love is imprinted on this universe, in all its intricacies, all its perfections, its imperfections, all the ways it twists and turns. And when you reach the end of time, your love will still be there with you. Because he is of you, and you are of him.

“You can’t wear rings in the space suit.” Sasha’s voice shook, but he pushed through it. “The pressure inside the suit… Rings could amputate your fingers.”

“The more you tell me about the details, the more dangerous this all sounds.” Sergey tried to laugh. “Why did I ever send that application to NASA?”

“Mark wears his wedding band around his neck when he’s up there.” Sasha pulled his dog tags over his head. They were battered, dented from his years of service and his one wild year at Sergey’s side in Moscow—and in the insurgency—but he still wore them every day. They were part of him, part of his identity. He’d worked so hard to earn them, had clawed his way out of the Arctic until he’d touched the sky, brushed the edge of Earth. The first time he made love to Sergey, his tags had fallen to Sergey’s chest, cool metal on his moonlit pale skin. He’d almost come from that sight alone.

Sasha undid the clasp and slid Sergey’s ring down the chain. It hit his tags with a softplink, metal nestling against metal. “I put your ring on my tags.” It would be next to his heart for the whole mission. “You’ll be with me every moment.”

“I will be useless for the next week. I will spend every moment looking up, watching the stars for you.”

“Every ninety minutes, the ISS will pass overhead.”