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T he asteroid floats in space like a rocky hedgehog. It’s a tiny hippo filling the viewport of my spacecraft. A baby moonlet hugging a larger asteroid, a speck of infant rock wrapped in glowing ribbons of nebulae. This is my happy place. This is my jam .

I shift my gaze from the viewport to the controller in my hand, tapping the minus button beneath the sticker that reads EARTH TO PANDORA to bring up my galaxy map. The data scrolling over my screen has me relaxing, the kinks in my spine popping. Numbers make sense. Numbers are easy to understand.

Space mining is part treasure hunt, part science.

Beneath the asteroid’s crusty, untouched surface runs a sparkling vein of pink geode, and I’m the only miner for a light-year.

No one visits this galaxy. They refuse and mutter predictably bad excuses.

The cost of fuel is prohibitive. Who wants to dodge asteroids the size of battleships?

I do. A girl needs a hobby, after all.

Since I travel alone and have no one to tell me this is a terrible idea, I guide my spacecraft down onto the rubble-strewn surface, dodging house-sized boulders to perch gingerly on loose rock. When I don’t sink, I congratulate myself. Well done, me!

A series of calculations flicker across my screen.

Even though I’ve meticulously planned each minute of my trip, I steal two seconds to snap a photograph of the milky band of cosmic dust floating overhead.

Starlight turns the soot-like bits of dying stars a dusky red.

I’ll post it on an online forum, where it will get no views or likes.

There is no one to talk me through this, no mission control center, no recovery convoy. I’d just irritate them anyhow. People make things complicated.

I suit up. Geodes don’t collect themselves. The air lock depressurizes, then hisses and pops.

Something surges outside the viewport. I glance over, startled out of the space simulator I’m playing on my game console and back into IRL by this unfamiliar deviation. My breathing picks up as my body releases adrenaline. No. This is my world, my safe space. I’m here for rocks, not human contact .

The man rushing toward me through the near darkness is muscled, a broad-shouldered package wrapped in black neoprene.

Wet hair falls around the chiseled lines of his face in glorious, riotous waves.

He could be the star of a shampoo commercial, and that’s before he shoves a hand through the waves, carelessly, effortlessly lasering in on…

me? He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, balancing with feline grace on top of his hovercraft.

No. Not a hovercraft. A surfboard.

“Hellooooo,” he hollers.

He adds an arm wave.

As if I’d overlook someone the size of a lumberjack (not that I’ve actually met one) with muscles on his muscles. He’s an unexpected invitation to stare.

So, I do. Blatantly.

He’s not a stranger, I realize. I’ve previously ogled him—on the down-low and entirely surreptitiously—on multiple prior occasions.

Strictly for work-related reasons, of course.

He stars in the YouTube videos the marketing team for Miles to Go has assembled to promote our software.

Marketing determined a sexy, shirtless surfer would get more clicks, eyeballs, hits, and other body parts to pay attention to our new app. This is a successful strategy.

Fun fact: Ozzy Wylder has tremendous appeal. This makes him the perfect smoke screen to draw attention away from the tsunami of bugs my engineering team has yet to squash. No one cares if the product doesn’t work when Ozzy smiles at them.

Sometimes, even I don’t care. The man is downright lethal to productivity.

For some reason—a reason that absolutely does not concern me at all—he’s in the ocean rather than up on the pier at the company launch party.

I. Don’t. Care.

I drag my gaze back to my screen. I have geodes to mine. Space rocks to add to my collection. Unexplored planets in the Crystal Cluster Cosmos to explore. Ozzy Wylder’s thoughtless surfing is ruining my self-care time.

He’s still talking to me. At me. Why?

“I’m coming in hot!” he yells. His loud voice booms off the pilings of the pier I’m hiding beneath.

I glare at him as I switch off my video game console and zip it into my tote bag, but he’s oblivious to his interruption.

He punctuates his noise with waving and pointing, expansive gestures that I can’t be bothered to interpret.

Mostly because I’m now concentrating on the impressive muscles flexing beneath his wetsuit. He is mesmerizing.

“Incoming!” He glides toward shore on a nineteen-inch-wide piece of wood as if he’s strolling along a sidewalk. He’s such a show-off. Fortunately, a roar of sound from the party drowns out whatever he says next.

I’m supposed to be at that party, a boardwalk-themed launch for the hotel booking application I’ve worked on ninety hours a week for the majority of my adult life. Ironically, I’ve devoted my professional hours to selling vacations to other people when I hate traveling myself. I’m Camp Stay Home.

When I’m not mining virtual space rocks for my collection, I’m a software programmer.

This means I spend 10 percent of my time coding and 90 percent in team meetings where we argue over a never-ending list of bugs and changing specs from the executive management team that has an average age of twenty-one.

At twenty-nine, I am ancient and will spontaneously combust like a vampire in sunlight the day I turn thirty.

Up until this morning, it was unclear if we would have a product to launch today, so the party overhead is merited.

The feat of coding that I pulled off after three consecutive all-nighters deserves fireworks.

Possibly a confetti cannon. I casually completed the big bug fix yesterday.

Ho hum, no need to thank me but I just rewrote your entire product and made it work.

I’m sleep-deprived and underappreciated, but it’s worth it, right?

Ozzy glides the remaining feet to shore, all muscled and coordinated.

He bestows a grin on me and jumps off the board into the knee-deep water, splashing about and doing mysterious things to his surfboard.

Crooning sweet nothings to it. It is a good boy and an awesome ride .

It is THE BEST BOARD EVER ! I try and fail to imagine someone saying these things to me, about my code.

I’m no longer certain that the law of time is immutable. A quick check of my smartwatch confirms that fifty-seven endless minutes remain before I can awkwardly excuse myself to go home to hide in my cozy loft. It will take an hour to get there thanks to the nightmare that is San Francisco traffic.

Watching Ozzy, however, I grudgingly add a check mark in the plus column of partying.

Is this why people go out and interact with other people?

He unzips his wetsuit to his waist, uncovering a Viking-worthy chest. I ignore the words coming out of his mouth—they’re polite, hi-how-are-ya syllables and therefore unimportant—in favor of admiring my view.

No wonder beach vacations are so popular.

God, he’s gorgeous.

I’m a weak person, because I’m disappointed that he settles for shrugging out of the top half of the wetsuit.

Even though he’s not technically a coworker, ogling him is more complicated than the simple social calculus that declares him a popular extrovert and me an introverted hermit.

I work for the software company that hired him to be the public face of their new product—or at least to say good things about it on his social media.

I am boss-adjacent. He also has approximately a million social media followers, give or take a few.

They likely share my interest in his tattoos.

The wetsuit descends to his waist, revealing a delightful collection of ridges, grooves, and stomach muscles. I am in no way prepared for spotting this six-pack in the wild.

Even though it’s darker than a black hole under this stupid pier, I can still tell that he’s sun-bronzed and glowing, a veritable golden boy.

He could do shampoo or self-tanner commercials.

He probably has. Right now, though, he blithely finishes peeling his arms out of his sleeves.

The empty neoprene flaps around him like the discarded skin of a snake. A…butterfly chrysalis?

I’m no expert in living creatures.

Or living.

Perhaps I should reconsider my life choices? Attempt voluntary people contact? I frown. Try to categorize Ozzy. Blink sand out of my eyes. Conversation is not in my skillset, but I give it a stab in the interests of self-reinvention.

“Are you aware that juvenile great white sharks tend to be active in this area after dark? They’re not just beyond the surf break.” He’s still knee-deep in water, so oblivious to the potential danger posed by five-foot-long baby sharks that I half expect to see a fin splitting the water behind him.

He flicks a semi-cautious glance at the surf surrounding him.

Yes, pretty boy, you could be delicious people sushi.

I spare a wistful nanosecond at the thought of the deliciousness of tasting Ozzy—I’m human, even if I prefer to live mentally in space—while he beams a confident grin my way.

His biceps flex. He could arm wrestle a shark if his charm ever failed.

“I like to live dangerously.” He pulls his board out of the water, punctuating his grandiose claim by stabbing the wooden slab into the night air.

I’m riveted by the interplay of shadows and moonlight on the muscled expanse of his bare, wet skin.

The last time I touched someone was when the train car came to an abrupt halt, and I slammed into a fellow commuter.

I desperately try not to look like I’m imagining touching Ozzy. “I don’t have time to apply a tourniquet to what’s left of your leg.”

From the smile tugging at his sinfully soft lips, that was the socially incorrect thing to say.