Page 57 of To the Moon and Back

STEPH FLASH FROM THE FAR FUTURE

I thought about Nadia nonstop, in the context of my own mess of a life.

My niece and my mother and my sister. And my sister’s message!

Why on earth, I thought, was she sending PDF transcripts, typewritten one hundred years ago, to my work email portal?

Like it was some kind of Ancestry.com archive?

What about my camp visits, which I had (unwisely) kept up once a month?

Was that not enough of a sacrifice for her?

And what if I got caught sneaking out, and then mission control assumed Nadia knew about it or was part of it or something, and one way or another I ruined her life?

Nadia could find someone better than me in just five months, when the mission ended.

She wanted someone who could commit to her, and I wanted to be okay with that.

We avoided each other, as much as was possible in a geodesic dome, for nearly a week.

Just get yourself to space, I told myself. That was all that mattered.

I threw open the door to her quarters.

“Nadia?” I whispered. Her bedside light was on. She was sitting up, reading, fully dressed in her uniform pajamas.

“Hm?”

I sat on the edge of her bed, facing her. “Forget the far future.”

“Terraforming?” she said. “Why would I? Terraforming is cool.”

“Sure. I don’t mean that far in the future. I meant like, how you said you don’t want anything short-term? I thought about it. I’m thirty-four. I’m an ascan! At this point, there’s literally nothing stopping me from having a girlfriend.”

Nadia scrunched up her face.

“I mean, you could stop me, obviously. But—” I reached over the blanket for her hand.

“This is wildly unromantic,” she said.

“I know. I’m sorry. I had this speech in mind. It had to do with short-term commitment and long-term commitment. And there was a terraforming metaphor I thought you’d like about Jupiter? But I thought of it like two seconds ago, so—”

“Oh, good, an impulsive decision!”

I covered my face and groaned. “Can I have a do-over?”

“No,” she said, but she was smiling. She turned off her e-reader and put it on the table beside her. She folded her arms. “You know what makes you lucky?” she said.

I shook my head.

“You’re funny. At least, I’ve decided you are. You’re cute. You mean well, I think.”

“I do!”

“And, if we’re on Mars, you’re my only option for an average of… 140 million miles.”

I laughed. What a relief to hear her laugh, too.

“If you can commit to a relationship in the near future—which basically means not wasting my time,” she said, “I’ll have sex with you.”

It felt too easy, like I’d dreamed myself through a locked door. I said yes.

I took her hands in mine, gently, and put them down beside her. I touched a finger to her cheek and chin and lips, and she took it into her mouth and sucked. I let out a soft sound, and she pulled me in deeper.

With my other hand, I hesitated at the drawstring of her pants. Afraid to ask and afraid to take. She nodded up at me, and whimpered when I slipped my finger from her mouth. Another sound, almost angry, when I pushed into her.

I lost all sense of fear and carefulness, many months of holding back. We moved fast, like we’d be caught. Or, despite what I’d just promised, like this was our only chance. Nadia shook under me. She reached up, gasping, and touched my stomach as I worked.

“It’s…” she said, before a gasp. She squeezed her eyes closed and lifted her hips. “It’s ridiculous that you have abs.”

I laughed, all-breath, careful in the quiet. I pulled out.

Nadia groaned. “Steph, what the hell.”

“Do you think we should slow down?”

She groaned, exasperated, and caught my wrist in her hand. Swift like a slap. She tried to pull it back down to her, but I smiled and shook my head. I freed my hand and leaned over her body, holding her by the wrists. There. There was a certain look in her eyes. Like she’d fallen out of herself.

I moved my fingers down. Lightly, little circles on her thighs. Her lower belly. Nadia bit her arm. Her eyes watered and I stopped to watch her. I could do this forever. A goal of no end.

“ Please .” There was a new urgency in her voice. She shook under me, breathing hard. She reached for herself with her own hand, and I pulled it away.

“You can’t tease me like this,” she whispered. “I’ll scream.”

“Hang in there,” I said.

Another moan; her hand a small fist over her mouth. “We’ll wake them up.”

I moved my fingers inside her.

A cry from Nadia.

“I’m not worried about it.” I started to move hard and fast. “You need that rec letter just as much as I do. Right?”

She closed her eyes, braced herself, and nodded.

Nadia tensed so completely, every muscle, the scratch of her toes on my leg as she pointed them.

A lurch in her hips. My free hand hot and wet over her mouth.

A low sound from the back of her throat, almost silent, but strange and strong.

I pushed myself to keep going, to hold on to her even as I’d taken on too much, like I couldn’t hold all of this in my hands.

Like I’d tipped over a glass too full, and Nadia was spilling over.

In the early morning, we lay still. I would have to leave soon, to appear to wake in my own quarters.

Nadia was tucked behind me in this small bed, holding me, making plans for the near future.

In two months, we agreed, if we were still together, we’d tell HR.

We were required to disclose formal relationships, but it was wise to make sure we were sure.

While Nadia talked about two months from now, I found myself thinking about the far future. The very far—what she’d said about the moons of Jupiter. Hadn’t she told me we’d be able to read outside at night? Not “we,” but our descendants. She’d said the new star would shine red.

I pulled Nadia’s arms tighter around me.

I recognized something. If not the image, the urge behind it to believe in survival.

The comfort of filling in those edges with a story.

I could see a girl—not really see, but sense a girl—reading a book on a front stoop, under a blanket.

The world red, like a sunset. The feel of the page in her hand.

The girl, I knew, came from Felicia. From my sister’s descendants, and not from mine.

I realized then, in that flash from the far future, that I would not have children.

And that it was okay, and also sad, but okay.

I would do other things, I would be—I would cry, I knew, later in my own bed.

I would feel a powerful relief, a letting out of breath, my hands against my body like an old friend.

In bed with Nadia, now, I wanted to be in space. Not because something was chasing me, or telling me to leave. Only because it was a place I’d like to know.

The promise of a place to go, beyond a place to run away from. I felt a kinship with my mother, who had found her place, who was maybe right then awake in her bed, in the house she brought me to, built on the memory of one peaceful summer.

Nadia’s breath was even against my neck. “Steph?” she said. “You still awake?”

She moved her hand gently over my face, then the hair I buzzed back every other Sunday. The heel of her palm came to rest at the top of my forehead, where I’d parted my hair as a child.

We began to speak about things we hadn’t. Her eyes closed, her voice soft. I asked her about her mother. I told her about mine.