Page 44

Twenty-Six

D espite working forty hours a week on Crystal Cluster Cosmos (Rosie insists that I need to maintain a healthy life-work balance and threatens to install parental control software if I start pulling ninety-hour weeks again), the first thing I do on Friday night is launch my spaceship and head off into space. I’m not sick of it at all.

I’ve customized my spaceship since the last time I flew: it’s bright yellow now, the color of rudbeckia and bananas, and it sparkles in the starlight. The nose cone looks like it’s been plated in gold, just like a real spaceship.

I skip my favorite spots and head out into a corner of the galaxy that is largely unexplored. It’s also ever so slightly near the planet I built for Ozzy, but that’s completely happenstance.

I float around in space, taking gorgeous pictures. Stars, meteors, a belt of purple gas. I flit from one to the other, picking up a few space gems along the way. It’s all super relaxing until I make the mistake of looking over at Ozzy’s planet.

There’s a rocket ship hanging out in orbit.

Crystal Cluster Cosmos is an online world that supports multiplayers. This means that I’m by no means the only person who flies around collecting space gems, but you do generally have to know where to go to get started. You need to code your spaceship. Not just anyone can play in my world.

The rocket ship is the blue of Sour Patch Kids or toilet bowl cleaner.

It’s vibrant and totally obnoxious. Not only have I never, ever seen someone else in this part of my galaxy, but this craft is an eyesore.

Too bad there’s no space homeowners association that can board the offending vessel and lay down the law about acceptable paint colors for ships.

A message flashes across my console. Incoming Message. Accept?

This is new. I dither for a moment but I’m curious (and nosy), so I smash the Accept button and wait to meet my new neighbor.

When Ozzy’s picture flashes across my screen, I suck in a breath.

My ribs squeeze my heart. I have puncture wounds.

No one warned me that love would be so bad for my physical health.

I haven’t seen Ozzy in weeks, other than furtive, guilt-ridden forays onto YouTube where I’ve illegally downloaded his shirtless surfing videos.

That’s historical Ozzy, though, someone who once was and who is no longer.

He’s frozen in time, always smiling and wearing his happy face, although now I know he’s not a one-note song.

Ozzy is a rainbow of emotions, even when some of them leave me feeling raw.

My heart flutters disturbingly. I’d like to dismiss it as a panic attack, but experience says it might be love.

Ozzy is not looking his best. His man bun has come apart and his hair fills the screen. His jaw has more grit than sandpaper; I’m not sure he’s shaved since Mexico. He’s haggard, his edges rougher than they used to be.

“Panda Bear.” His smile still lights up his eyes, though. It tugs at the corner of his mouth, rueful and hesitant, as if he’s (rightly) afraid that I’ll terminate this call right now and ban him from the galaxy forever.

I should do it.

Instead, I snap, “What?”

“I love you.”

He puts it right out there. His hazel eyes meet mine, because he always sees me.

They hold hope, anxiety, and a whole lot of heat as he looks at me.

I’m suddenly reminded that since I’ve been working from home and moping, I haven’t put a whole lot of thought into showers or hairbrushes.

He doesn’t look as if he cares about that.

“I’m sorry.”

He cares about me .

I let that sink in for a moment before he launches into a speech.

I suspect he may have practiced or written out talking points.

I would have. And as he talks on and on about how he’s sorry, and for what—not telling me about the VC stake, about making me feel less than and invisible, for not making it clear that the only reason he had for going on that road trip from hell was me—I think about the lede.

Ozzy Wylder loves me.

And he’s here.

I don’t know what to say, which isn’t a first, but it is a problem because I’m staring, mouth open, and it’s not a good look.

I should be responding or asking questions.

Engaging . But my brain is entirely disconnected from my heart, which has taken over absolutely every inch of my body and is beating so hard that this time I’m definitely having a heart attack.

Or a love attack. Or something equally, horribly, wonderfully cheesy.

“I love you,” Ozzy says again. I think I need him to repeat that every morning for a century or two if it turns out that’s where we’re headed.

“Permission to dock? Pandora, can I come over?”

“We can try?” I don’t know how this will work. Intergalactic boarding missions are not something I’ve coded into this game.

Ozzy’s rocket ship hovers over the planet I built.

There’s a knock on my front door, and when I look out, he’s standing there. I open the door.

He looks uncharacteristically solemn, his body tense. I stand there in the open door, wondering if I look the same. If my road trip tan has faded. Whether we’ll go somewhere together ever again. If I really want to play this game again, and if he’ll let me.

My stomach pinches. No one smiles forever, not really, but an unsmiling Ozzy makes me worried.

Sad. A whole lot concerned because, when he smiles, he is the most beautiful person I’ve ever known, and I can’t not think that.

He starts to relax, lounging toward my door frame, then catches himself and stiffens. “Hi again.”

My stupid heart leaps. It tries to escape my rib cage and launch itself toward Ozzy. It recognizes him. It’s hopeful.

Ozzy is just a person, I remind that stupidly optimistic organ. And he’s not my person. There are a thousand reasons he could be here IRL.

To drop off something I left in the van. Maybe Benji wants to buy a gaming start-up.

He does none of those things, though. Instead, he extends his closed hand.

His eyes search my face. Not for something so much as taking inventory.

As if he’s really, totally glad to see me and wants to remind himself of everything he’s missed.

He’s wearing a flannel shirt over a T-shirt that’s the hunter green shade of pine trees.

I stretch my own hands out automatically, and his fingers unfurl like a sea anemone. Something lands in my palm.

A gold spider carved out of topaz, the rock still warm from his grasp.

“You didn’t take the job.”

Yes, I lost.

No, I no longer care.

I’m silent for a moment, turning that over in my head.

And then I give him the truth. “TripFriendz didn’t offer it to me.”

“Didn’t offer it?” He frowns, shoving a hand through his hair. The lion’s mane is tousled on end. “You earned it.”

“Did I? I tried, but—” It was a job, a really good one, but that was all it was. I poke at my feelings again, and decide I mean it. The wound stings, but it’s feeling better. It will be better. “Actually, I’ve moved on. I started my own thing. Company.”

I almost demur, undersell what I’ve done, what I’ve decided to do, but my galactic mining game is good, and it deserves to be acknowledged. I’ve accomplished things, and I’m owning them. I won’t sell myself short. Not to Ozzy, at any rate.

“It’ll be the best, although I can’t recommend a VC to you.” His lips tighten, his jaw all tension beneath its layer of stubble. “Benji and I are not currently on speaking terms.”

My stomach drops. My mind turns into a time travel machine, whisking me back and back some more to that stupid hotel ballroom.

I can’t forget the confidence with which Benji dropped down into the chair beside me.

He’d been so sure he was top dog, that he could call the shots.

I’m not surprised that Ozzy’s pushed back.

He likes to pick his own path, after all.

We’re headed somewhere better… We don’t need that map.

“Can we talk about my dad?” he asks. “And then we need to talk about what I did.”

“All right.” I watch him shove his hand through his hair again. Scratch his jaw. Shift his weight. I think he just planted his feet, but I could be wrong. “If you think it will help.”

If you think it will help is something you say, right?

Just words and not a commitment.

“Please.” He’s bold, as fearless as always, and yet, underneath the calm expression, the resigned amusement I see on his face, I discover new strata.

Discomfort. Embarrassment. Fear. This conversation matters to him.

“What happened in Mexico was not okay. I told him that. I told the TripFriendz board that. I resigned, of course. It wasn’t a fair competition, and they took advantage of you.

” He is nodding now, agreeing with himself, rushing his words a little because he really wants to get them out even if neither of us knows what comes next.

“I think I took advantage of you. I should have told you about Benji, about him being my dad and my having an inside track.”

He’s right. “You should have.”

A car drives past. An owl calls.

“I should have,” he agrees. “But I didn’t. I made the wrong choice.”

He did. But so did I. Maybe.

“What about your start-up funds?”

His hands tighten by his sides. “They don’t matter. I’ll find another project. There will be something else to do. But I’m not working for my dad, and he’s not going to play any role in my future.”

Ozzy taught me about the importance of following my passions, of allowing myself to—not color outside the lines, but maybe to daydream ever so slightly near the edge?

He plays hard, competes hard, but he does it the right way.

Benji might not have broken any laws, but it wasn’t fair what he did, and I’m not surprised Ozzy wants nothing to do with him.

“I’m sorry I got between the two of you. He’s your dad—”

“Yeah.” Ozzy inhales. Exhales. It’s his Pilates breathing, the one he swears by when things are hurting.

I hope it helps. I hope there’s a cure for the way he feels right now.

“He’s my dad, and sometimes he’s a good one.

Right now, however, he’s the one who’s screwed up, and I don’t know how to handle it.

That’s my job. I’m the one who messes things up. ”

He says things and I think…

It’s code.

For you and us and Pandora Fyffe .

I inhale. I’m a rocket on a launchpad. I may not have gone anywhere. There have been some high winds. Fueling issues. Unexpected cloud cover. I’ve been grounded—or have grounded myself—but now…

“Why didn’t you tell me that your dad was one of TripFriendz’s backers? He found out about the company from you. You must have told him all about it.”

He nods, owning it. “I did. I went to dinner with him, and I went on and on about this amazing girl and the work she was doing at this travel start-up. It was groundbreaking, really original. She was so smart and so undervalued, and I knew that, someday soon, people would recognize her for what she was. Benji agreed she sounded amazing, and it took me a while to realize—weeks, really—that he’d been pumping me for information.

He saw a business opportunity, while I saw—”

“What did you see?”

“You,” he says. “I saw you .”

I think it’s a true story. He won’t look away and I look right back. Our eyes are locked in a staring game. I don’t have to compete for his attention or demand he look or play stupid pick-me games. He’s just here, waiting for me to choose him back.

“I thought… I thought you picked TripFriendz. And that you’d be mad at me for ruining your shot at chief play officer. And maybe your relationship with Benji, and…it won’t be as easy to…”

“I can always be a wildlife photographer, Pandora. All I have to do is pick up a camera.” He mimes framing the squirrel running through my new yard with the lens of his fingers.

The moth that’s come to check out the porch light.

“That’s just a choice I make, the same way you can choose to fly a spaceship through the cosmos.

If you want to do it, you’ll do it.” He tosses aside his imaginary camera, hazel eyes holding mine.

“Will I make money? I don’t know. Will I shoot the cover of National Geographic ?

Don’t know. I can’t control that—and it’s not what matters, anyhow. ”

“What matters?”

“You,” he says. “Me.”

I take a step closer, wanting to reach out, needing this. “Us.”

“Yes.” He nods. “Us.”

My fingers close around the spider. I’m keeping it.

“I feel,” he continues, “like I should either climb up your wall in the spirit of starting over or fall on my knees and grovel. Rosie urges the grovel, but I know how you feel about drama.”

“To be strictly accurate, we met on a beach.”

He points to the patch of dirt where my newborn marigolds are incubating. “Sand.”

“Close enough. And maybe it’s my turn, anyhow. To climb up your wall and invade your space and make it absolutely, completely impossible to ignore me.”

The smile that spreads across his face is beautiful. It moves up his face like a sunrise. “Yeah?”

I cup his face between my hands and gently tug his face down to mine. “Hi. Remember me?”

“Always. I missed you.” He whispers the words against my skin. “Fuck, I missed you, Pandora.”

“Permission granted,” I say. My lips brush his.

I throw my caution overboard. There’s no if statement to test this condition.

I’m in or I’m out. He’s in or he’s out. We either love each other or we don’t.

The man bun doesn’t survive my fingers threading through his hair.

We’re leaning into each other and then we’re kissing.

Hello, how are you, I’ve missed you, let me make it better, I’m sorry, I love you so much.

His lips say these things with warm touches, tender nips, the soft stroke of his tongue.

Mine say them back. I love you and you’re home. Please come in.

When we come up for air, I’m pretty sure my neighbors are aware that I am no longer single, solo Pandora, and that Ozzy Wylder is mine.

I fist the front of his T-shirt and tug. “You better come in.”

He does.

And then he stays.

* * * * *