Blurb

She’s still as beautiful as I remember, but she hates my guts... and I don’t blame her.

But now I have a chance to do what’s right…

And I will.

Whatever it takes…

Chapter 1- Emily

February 3, 2077

He was going to be a space jockey, and I was going to save the planet.

Boys had been telling me all my short life that they loved my eyes, loved how intelligent I was, how pretty …but Felix was the only one who truly understood what really made me look up from my books and pay attention. He had said to me: “we’ll make history together, baby, just you wait and see,” and I had laughed at the time but admittedly, in hindsight, he wasn’t exactly wrong.

Let me start from the beginning.

Felix Stone was too tall, too loud, and had too much energy. But in weird ways that were hard to pinpoint, he was also completely adorable. He had the bright, wide blue eyes of a kitten, but biceps that always made you a little nervous he’d knock something over in the middle of one of his impassioned explanations of exactly how the auxiliary thrusters on the new D series airships worked, or why he thought cosmologists were full of shit.

Felix was the boy who’d get worked up explaining some new concept he learnt in his aeronautics course, complete with the salt and pepper shakers standing in for different planets, or a napkin held in his broad hands to show what happened when space curved. He was a little crazy. He was the kid who had scraped though the math and physics modules by averaging a semester of hangovers with an impromptu term paper that impressed even the most cynical professor, and had them eating out of his hand.

Like I said, adorable.

But let me explain something – he might have been adorable, sure, but I was no idiot. I knew I was a conquest for him, plain and simple. He liked a bit of a challenge, and …well, let’s just say that I could make Galois theory look like a cake walk.

He had pursued me in that goofy, clumsy way of his all summer. And all summer I had pursued my studies.

I didn’t care much about the new space program or that he was enrolled on it. As far as I was concerned, we had no business expanding the Mars colony until we fixed up the mess we already had on Earth. I didn’t care about the mass emigrations, or about the outbreaks at the new settlement sites, or about the few superstar pilots that came back, pretending they were in their own sci-fi movies and gloating about expanding the frontiers of science. To be honest, the frontiers I was interested in were …smaller. Subtler.

One day, Felix had cottoned onto the idea that I’d be thrilled to take a peek at the new colloidoponics lab on the west campus, and he had wrangled a special pass for us to visit the facilities, probably by smiling and flirting with the project head. Of course, I agreed – I’d be a fool to pass up the opportunity – but quietly decided ahead of time that he would not be ‘getting lucky’ that evening, and while he slowly figured that out, I’d be soaking up all the interesting things they were doing at the lab.

“Hey, Em,” he said, “what would you say if I gave you some cheesy line about the stars and your eyes right now?”

It was a few hours past sundown, and some faint droplets of dew were forming on the isolation tanks. The wide, cold night sky lay distant and lonely above us and all the colloidal tanks and cells were lined up, powered down for the evening.

I lay my hand over the reinforced plastic and felt the chill run through me. Forget about the glory of shooting around the solar system in rockets …if Earth had any chance of survival, it was in here, in these quiet, humble wombs of the future. We had torn through the resources our planet had gifted us. Now, we could only rely on this new, truly renewable energy source: ideas.

I couldn’t explain the feeling of awe and peace I felt when I thought these thoughts. I only knew that our global crisis wouldn’t be solved by more narcissistic men with more narcissistic plans. It wouldn’t be solved by big ships and clunky spacesuits inspired from violent video games. It would be solved like this… by the small seedlings growing as if by miracle in a life-giving jelly crafted by scientists who were as good as alchemists. Zero-input farming might not have seemed radical to the boys on the space program, but to see these little maize hybrid plants burst out from their seeds seemed to me like much more than a giant leap for mankind.

I turned to look at him.

“Sorry, what did you say?” I said, my hand still on the tube.

“Forget it,” he laughed, and blustered off, looking at the rest of the outdoor cell system.

It’s not that he wasn’t hot. In fact, he was annoyingly good looking. So happy and carefree you’d swear he didn’t have an early tutorial the next morning or a coveted scholarship with the space program to work for.

“That’s the immersion tank! Ooh, I remember reading about this!” I said and raced over to look at the equipment he was now in front of.

“Hey Em?’

“Yeah?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you are a serious nerd,” he lauged.

“Whether that’s true or not, do you know what you’re even looking at here?”

“Some mangy weeds in a glass container?”

I laughed again, and peered inside.

“No, you big idiot. This might be nothing less than humanity’s last hope. Without these weeds we’d be really fucked.”

“I love it when you talk dirty, Emily,” he said, his breath fogging the glass up as he pressed his face to the surface alongside mine.

I couldn’t help but giggle. I turned to look at him directly. Though I had had all semester practicing my sharp one-liners on him, at that moment my tongue was tied and I could think of nothing biting to say to his sweet, playful face and the way he lifted one naughty eyebrow at me.

“Can we just be honest for a second, Felix?” I said, and tried to put on my best serious face. “You know I’m not looking for …anything right now, right? With my course load I just don’t have time for a boyfriend or anything and--”

“Woah whoa woah,” he said and lifted his hands out in defense.

“Miss Emily Warren, are you trying to suggest…?” He hoisted his naughty eyebrow even further up and hammed up looking positively shocked.

“Oh my goodness, have you lured me out here to … to …seduce me?” he said in a silly voice, and covered his mouth with his hands. I giggled and slapped him.

“Be serious Felix!”

“Oh I’m deadly serious,” he said, shaking his head. “Here I came out to see these …these …amazing weeds in all earnest and now I found out you’re just planning to take advantage of me?” he said, eyes twinkling in the semi-darkness.

I tried not to, but I couldn’t help but laughing.

“You big idiot. How did you ever convince them to let you see the facilities, anyway?”

“Easy, my boyish good looks and winsome charm,” he said and leant in close. “I don’t know why it never seems to work on you though,” he added, more quietly this time. With his face just a few inches from mine, I could make out faint swirls of his breath going cold and white in the night air. He smelt good. Not like soap or cologne or washing detergent or anything like that. He smelt like skin. Warm, soft skin that was suddenly the only thing I could think about.

I cleared my throat.

“I’m sorry I’m such a hard ass all the time,” I said, trying to squirm my gaze somewhere other than directly at his beautiful blue eyes. His voice was suddenly deep and serious.

“Are you kidding? You’re not a hard ass. You’re smart. You’re the smartest person I know. That’s why I like you.”

I suddenly became aware of his lips. Of the heat of the words as they left him. It was getting cold out here, but it was beginning to feel so easy to lean in closer to him, to where it was so warm. Damn, he smelt good.

Too good.

I pulled away and tried to clear my head.

“Felix, I …please don’t take this the wrong way, you know I like you too but…”

“Just kiss me,” he breathed.

I could hear myself swallow.

“And then what?” I asked. The bright green of the seedlings inside the gel tanks blinked out through the foggy glass at me. It was an easy question, and had an even easier answer: then I’d fall in love with him, and then he’d leave me, and then I’d be heartbroken, and what would be the point of any of that?

It might be fun for some people to prance around college hooking up and treating one another like temporary entertainment, but I didn’t want to start something unless I knew it was real. That it would last. Human beings had wrecked everything with their consumerist greed, their throwaway attitudes, their desire to use and discard… I wouldn’t be like that. Unless it was sustainable, unless it was permanent, I wasn’t interested.

“What do you mean then what? Then you kiss me …again,” he said and flashed me a mischievous grin. I sighed and made my way to the exit. This was pointless.

“Hey Em, please, don’t go.”

I spun around and tried to hide how irritated I must have seemed.

“What will it take for you to trust me?” he asked.

I was taken aback. This was Felix, the class clown, the eternal jokester, being sincere for once. And even more crazy was that I didn’t have an answer for him. What was I going to tell him? That the ice-princess-good-girl spiel was just a convenience, and that deep down, it’s not that I didn’t want what a life would him would involve, but rather I was afraid of just how much I’d want it, and how vulnerable that would make me.

“It’s not about trust, Felix, it’s about …values. For me sex is not something cheap and meaningless. Sex is about love.” This last word I almost whispered. It was the final taboo among my peers. The only remaining, hideously old-fashioned idea that deserved universal scorn. Wasn’t I a scientist? A rational, liberated woman? Didn’t I want to take charge of my sexuality, and relish it, and be a free and sexual agent? Well, fuck, I don’t know. I just knew that without that unspeakable L-word in place, the prospect of ‘sexual liberation’ simply left me cold.

And since it was more or less forbidden to say, “it’s all or nothing for me”, I toned it down to my usual objection: “I guess I’ll just go for nothing, then”. This at least painted me as a relatively harmless bitch or a prude and not the far worse option: a damn romantic.

He was walking slowly towards me now, and I felt unable to unglue my feet from the ground and continue flouncing out the door with indignation.

“But I agree with you,” he said.

“You’re just saying that,” I spat.

“Come on, Em. Seriously. Not to be rude, but if I was only after some cheap fling, well, you wouldn’t exactly be my first choice,” he said, the beginnings of that naughty smile appearing again.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

‘Well, either I’m a sucker for punishment, or I actually like hanging out with, have you considered that?”

“I’ve told you I can’t …I’m not ready for--”

“Hey, Em, I get it. Seriously. I’m not going to pretend that kissing you tonight wouldn’t make me the happiest guy in the world. I won’t say I haven’t been daydreaming about it since Monday, and praying like an idiot you’d want to, and, I don’t know, god forbid, that maybe you’d even like it …but I want you to understand, kiss me or not, I’m not going anywhere. If all we ever get to do together is look at these fucking plants and shit, well, I’ll consider myself a fortunate man.”

It was the most impassioned I had ever seen him. Felix never spoke like this, especially not to me. The smile was gone, and in its place was a certain stubborn tightness around the jaw. I instantly wanted his face close to mine again.

“Felix, I’m sorry…”

“For what? You have principles. That’s what makes you awesome.” He had pulled his jacket more tightly around him and was making for the door.

I felt awful. Without thinking, I reached out and grabbed him as he walked by, and he turned softly to look at me. For a split second, I recognized something familiar. How had I not seen before that he could also be vulnerable? How had I missed all this time how hard it must have been for him to keep throwing himself at me and for me to cruelly reject him over and over again? He looked at me expectantly, but with a kind of tiredness that broke my heart. I took a step towards him, my intent clear. To my surprise, he backed away.

“Em, don’t. Please. I don’t want your pity. It’s all or nothing for me,” he mumbled, and looked hurt.

Before I knew it, I had plunged forward and planted my lips against his, and in instant we were frozen there together, tasting the strangeness of the new moment, both with eyes squeezed closed just in case the whole dream fell apart when we opened them. It was the most tender, sweetest bliss to kiss the tip of his warm tongue, to breath him in, to rest there so safe and close to him, that I could hardly believe the effect it had on the rest of me. I was on fire. Like electricity snapping through long-dead circuits, my limbs came buzzing alive, every little atom of my body almost painfully awake, painfully aware of him.

“Emily,” he mouthed but I kissed the words hard off his lips and leant in further, thrilled at how good it felt to just sink into him, to abandon myself for a moment. Locked to his delicious lips I didn’t notice his hand clasping at my waist. I didn’t notice his other hand float to my neck and pin me there, tilting my dizzy head so he could angle me for a deeper kiss. I didn’t notice the full length of his tall, hard body pressing up close against mine. My whole universe folded away to one tight, hot spot that radiated out from that amazing place where our lips met. It was a revelation.

The feeling of the wall bumping against my spine made my eyes flutter open a little. He had guided me against the exit door and had me pinned now against it, and I had seemingly followed, half chasing his lips. I had known Felix for a long time. I had spent countless evenings with him over popcorn and cocoa and textbooks before finals. We had helped one another move apartments. I would always make him chicken soup when he got sick and he was always my wing-man and sure fire way to get rid of creeps whenever we went out at night.

But this was another side of Felix that was completely alien to me. A physical side. A breathy, warm, delicious side that I suddenly couldn’t get enough of.

I stood on my toes to offer up more of my tongue, and realized with a thrill that the entire front side of my body had become electrified, completely switched on against his hard abs and chest. I didn’t want to think too closely about the rest of his anatomy, I only knew how amazing it felt to press up hard against his firm thighs, his flanks, the hard muscles knotted at the center of his chest, so different to mine.

He moaned.

Trailing his lips down onto my jawline and then further down to my neck, I realized with pleasure that I wasn’t the only one distracted by the electricity in the moment. I had never touched anyone like this. Never …kissed anyone. As my hands pawed hungrily over him, my brain slowly caught up with the sensations. This was actually going to happen. We were actually going to have sex. I couldn’t think clearly anymore. I didn’t want to think anymore, I just wanted to feel, and it was him that I wanted to feel. His body, His warm breath. They all melted together into one smooth wave of pleasure so that when he began to peel of my jacket, I shrugged it off easily just so I could find his lips again. When he shook his own jacket off and then glued himself back against me, it only allowed me to feel his form more distinctly under his clothing.

What happened next came in a hot, frenzied blur. His lips and mine kissed hungrily over each new patch of bared flesh, piece by piece we removed the barriers, till we stood together small and naked before one another, nothing but a ravenous glint in the eye and four greedy hands that couldn’t decide where they wanted to settle.

He was beautiful. Even today I can remember every outline of his body, every scent, every fine blonde hair that twitched on every muscle. Without his clothing, I could make out all the ripples and bulges on his torso, all the veins on his shoulders.

I ran curious hands over the slightly paler skin here, mesmerized by the contrast of the soft skin and the hard muscles underneath. A few licks of his ash blonde hair had broken free and were hanging loose and wild across his forehead. Though his eyes were as blue as ever, they had taken on a steely quality, so hot I felt that they must be the source of the delicious burning all over my near-naked body.

“You’re …you’re beautiful,” he gasped.

Again I saw a flicker of that tender look I had only recently glimpsed on his usually confident face. I held out my hands and realized I was shaking. He smiled and took them both in his hands, easily folding them inside his warm, dry palms, and then pressed them to his chest. I looked around. We had bumbled into a side room and were sprawled out in a dark stockroom, soft carpeting on the floor and an old fashioned incandescent light glowing yellow on our naked skin. He pulled me close, and bare skin against bare skin I heard him whisper to the top of my head, “do you want to keep going?”

His voice alone sent a wicked thrill deep through the pit of my stomach, ending in an almost painful buzz right between my legs. Almost without thinking, my hips swiveled and pressed desperately against his, the smooth skin of his body the only place I wanted to be. We kissed again, scrambling to the floor, clumsy, our hunger for one another’s bodies surpassing our familiarity with them. He was an alien landscape to me. But one I wanted to discover as soon as possible, in detail, with my mouth, my hands, my hips…

Lying on our sides, I gasped for a moment to feel his cock pressing into me down below. I pulled back and looked at him. It seemed too …big. Too much. Had he really been going around with that thing all this time? I blushed hard. I rolled my hips and enjoyed the sensation of the head pressing loosely into the hollow of my navel. I was still shaking.

“Hey Em?”

“Hm?”

“I’ve …I thought you should know I’ve never done this before.”

I noticed his hands were shaking too. I loved the way his skin prickled up into goosebumps when I trailed my hand down over his belly, each blonde, curled hair springing to attention. It seemed like a miracle, that his body should respond to mine.

I trailed my hand down further. His eyes rolled back in his head and he sighed loudly, thrusting his hips a little toward me. I shimmied down and took the hot, swollen length of his cock into my hands, feeling the weight of it, enjoying how it seemed to bounce and pulse with each breath he took. The ache between my legs thrummed and twitched. I couldn’t believe this was happening. In my heart, somehow, I had always known that Felix and I would …would …

“Put it in your mouth,” he moaned.

I smiled.

The tip was soft and salty, and felt even more amazing than kissing him. I closed eager lips around his shaft and gently lowered, relishing the girth of him against my tongue, slowly inching in to see how far he would go. With eyes closed, I could feel even more acutely how every flick and stroke of my tongue made him shudder and jerk in response. I hated the look on his face just a moment before. That hurt look. I never wanted to make him feel like that again. In fact, I only wanted to keep sucking him like this, to see just how much pleasure I could give him, just how far I could go.

“Fuck, that feels amazing,” he blurted. His broad hands were resting gently on my head, his fingers laced into my hair. His cock slid out and I kissed a trail all the way up the line of fuzz on his belly, between his pecs, up his neck and back to his gorgeous face, which now had an expression that was part gratitude, part shock.

“I love your tongue.”

“It loves you,” I giggled.

“Now you turn,” he said.

The tension between my legs had completely morphed by now, and when he gently pried apart my legs and began to stroke lazy lines up and down my inner thighs, I squirmed involuntarily to follow his touch, desperate for him to drag those fairy light touches just a little higher up.

Felix was my best friend. Didn’t I already ‘love him’? What had I ever been thinking, to turn him down over and over again? Why had all of this taken us so long? I wanted the ‘all or nothing’ too. And this – his beautiful, musk-scented skin, his full lips, the glorious sensations that flooded through me with his every touch – this felt very much like ‘all’. But the mounting tension had a tinge of regret to it. I almost felt like I had to kiss him extra to make up for all the opportunities we had missed in the past, all the times I had smiled coldly and sent him home.

I writhed and squirmed, spreading my legs for him. He took a moment to look down at me, smiled strangely, then traced his fingers lightly over my inner thighs again, over the soft fuzz hidden at the cleft, at the now wet line nestled in between. I was on fire. The first time he leant down and pressed his tongue against me, it felt strange. But almost instantly, my body melted into the sensation, and I too found myself with rolled back eyes, head lolled back and gentle, shuddering hands balancing on his head.

His hot tongue passed frictionless over the most tender, molten parts of my body. It was as though he knew precisely where I needed him, where I wanted that sweet, perfect sensation, and before I could even moan and tilt my hips in approval, his swirling tongue had found just the right spot, and was now teasing delicately around it, stirring up an ecstasy in my clit that felt like it would burst and break free of me at any second.

My body groaned all by itself, a guttural, animal sound escaping my lips as I flopped back and allowed my body to open to him. His touch was tender but firm. He seemed as surprised at my body’s reactions as I was, and smiled back up at me occasionally, a look of intense wonder and focus flitting playfully over his face.

Here I was, Emily Warren, the world’s most forgettable wallflower, legs spread with a boy doing very, very bad things to her with his tongue …it almost made me burst out laughing. I had woken up this morning a virgin. And now I could barely reign in the thought of what was coming next.

My heart kicked a little flutter and then …oh god. With as much elegance as someone falling over backwards down the stairs, my body bucked and twitched under his tongue and soon a bright, delicious spark exploded right through me, sending my hands clutching at his head and clamping down hard with my thighs.

“Felix …oh fuck,” I whimpered.

He partially lifted a ruffled gaze at me. We looked at one another, shocked.

“Did you …did you just…?”

I shrugged and gave him a helpless look. Did I just come, just like that? Why, yes. I think I did.

He grinned at me and bit his lip, both of his hands firmly cradling my ass cheeks before him.

“Huh, well, that was easy,” he said and gave me a saucy wink. I laughed.

“Hey Em?”

“Mmmm?”

“You’re cutting off my circulation.”

I laughed again and released my thighs, but the second I did, I was struck by the sight of his sweet, youthful face, the gleam in his eye, the way a tiny drop sparkled a little on his lower lip… it was enough to bring that aching thump straight back to my clit and have me turned on all over again. I couldn’t believe it. Neither could he.

When he carefully slid first one finger and then another into my still pulsing body I thought I had died and gone to a heaven made exclusively of the white stars that now flooded my vision. With an excited growl, he sunk his broad fingers deep into me, to the knuckles, then collapsed his chest down onto mine and stole a kiss while he worked me easily to the edge again. He took my chin in his and kissed me deliberately, decisively.

“Hey Em?”

I could only respond in gasps.

“Em, are you listening?”

I groaned and gyrated my hips along with the rhythm of his fingers, his hand tucked tightly between my legs.

“I want to tell you two things, but I really want you to listen.”

With great effort, I peeled open my eyes and looked at him and the damp locks of hair falling into his smiling face.

“I’m listening,” I said, feeling that the edges of this next orgasm were much bigger, much wider than the first.

“Number one,” he said very softly, and kissed my brow, still stroking that delicious, hidden spot inside. “The next time you come, I want to be inside you.”

“And number two?”

“Number two… is I love you.”

Chapter 2 - Felix

March 12, 2077

Sound too good to be true? Well, it was. Long story short, we broke up a few weeks later.

But let me start at the beginning. Emily was no ordinary girl. Not by a long shot. She had that rare combination of smoking hot good looks and …strangely low self-esteem. If it meant she gave a meathead like me a second look, hell, I didn’t much care about the discrepancy, but the longer I knew her the more obvious it became: she simply had no idea how awesome she was.

She was a fox. I mean it almost literally. She was kind of fox-colored, and her hair was wild and her nose small and pointy, and she’d peer at you sideways with sloping, golden eyes that gave you the impression she just might be sizing you up for dinner. But in a cute way. Whatever, I’m not real good at metaphors; you get the picture. But she had this fragile, sort of delicate air about her, and if she ever just stopped talking for half a second, she had this way of looking almost otherworldly.

We met one summer back at one of those things they make you attend to ‘trade’ skills with other students and, I don’t know, make friends or something. We kind of clicked and so I said I’d help her with her stats modules and she could teach me what she was learning about biofuels. Man, I did not give a flying fuck about biofuels, but then we agreed to meet up during the weeks and she’d go on and on about it, and I got to just …well, look at her, I guess. It was amazing.

And in that almost-foxy way of hers, she reeled me in, one lazy summer day at a time. It took me at least three full weeks before I realized that I was utterly, hopelessly in love with her. I laid low and tried to figure out if her standard term of endearment for me (“you big idiot”) could possibly have any hidden romantic connotations, and spent the following few months alternatively daydreaming about what we’d name our children and telling myself to quit being such a …well, big idiot.

As you can maybe gather, emotions are not my strong suit. I just knew I loved her. It was a warm, deep, open feeling. Easy. Simple. Sure, I felt like throwing up every time I wondered if she could possibly feel the same. So, when we spent that night together at the colloidoponics lab, and she held me close and whispered back those words I myself had agonized over for months and months, it felt like a triumph. That if she loved me, the rest would just fall into place. I didn’t much care how it all happened; I only wanted her there with me. We would be scientific pioneers, boldly going where no couple had gone before and, ahem, boldly coming there too. With her perfect face in the middle of it all, the future looked rosy as hell.

Until it didn’t.

I had travelled back home for a few days to catch up with the folks and touch base with some old friends from High School. My sister peeled my mother off from the conversation one evening and left my father and I alone.

“Your mother and I have never been more proud of you,” he said.

Dad always spat things out like that, cutting right to the chase. I smiled and raised my glass to him, wondering why he looked a little nervous.

I had been offered a spot on the fastest track the program had, one which would likely lead to a chief engineering position overseeing the military base on one of the new settlements that were set to be built within the next five years. I hadn’t accepted yet, but soon would. It was the chance of a lifetime; the stuff TV dreams are made of.

“We’re also a little surprised you’ve agreed to go ahead with the placement they’ve offered you,” he said slowly, not making eye contact.

“Surprised? Dad, I should be thanking my lucky stars.”

“Of course you should. I just want to make sure you’ve really considered all your options. It’s a big decision.”

“I know that.”

“And my first thought was for Em.”

I looked at him.

“What about her?”

“What does she say about the fact that you may never come back?” he said and raised concerned eyebrows at me.

I scoffed and took another sip of my scotch. “That’s being a bit dramatic.” People came back all the time.

He frowned at me.

“What does she say about you choosing this path?” he asked. My glass made a hard clink on the table as I set it down. The truth was I hadn’t actually told her the good news yet.

“What ‘path’? Dad, this isn’t the dark ages anymore. I know it made sense for you to turn down your mission back then because of mom and--”

“This is not about mom and I,” he snapped. “This is about being smart and taking responsibility for your decisions. And I want to make sure you’re making those decisions with both eyes wide open. What’s more important to you, at the end of the day?”

It was always like this with him. I knew Em would take it hard. I knew she wouldn’t be happy about me going off for months, about me taking on all that risk. But I’d come back.

“I don’t have to choose, Dad.”

He frowned at me again.

“You might not agree with the choices I made, Felix, but I made them. I made them with a clear conscience. Your mother is more important than anything in the world to me. You and your sister…” he trailed off. I’d already heard the old martyrdom speech a million times before and knew how it ended. Love trumps all. Family is what matters in the end. Blah blah blah.

I shrugged.

“Times are different, dad. I’ll come back. Going out to the settlements is no longer the death sentence it used to be, you know.” The words were from a news headline I had seen just this morning.

The frown deepened.

“What will happen if you break up with Em now?” he asked.

I flashed him an angry look. But before I could reply he spoke again. “Will that be better or worse than having her wait here on earth for you, pining after you, knowing she can never move on but having no idea what her future holds? Wondering everyday if you’ve caught a virus or worse, wondering if she’ll never see you again, knowing that every single communication she sends to you will take at least two weeks to reach you.”

I looked at him.

“Well, if you love her so much, which is it? Which would you rather she experience?”

I clenched down hard on my jaw. Those weren’t the only two options.

“I can come back,” I said again, but this time not quite believing my own words. Admittedly, I had put the decision well out of my mind so far. I hadn’t told Em a thing yet. To be honest, I knew deep down that it would change everything between us. And my life with Em was perfect. The last thing I wanted to do was change anything.

“Here’s some advice from your old man, kid,” he said and leaned back in his chair. “Take it or leave it, I know you always were headstrong. But don’t half ass things. Decide what you want and go for that. But you’ll get nowhere sitting on the fence. The program doesn’t want people with attachments here on earth. You want that life, well, it’s all or nothing. Lead Em on and all you’ll do is jeopardize your career and your relationship. You have to commit.”

“But Em and I aren’t really ready for that…”

“I wasn’t talking about Em.”

I sighed loudly. I couldn’t argue with him. The return rates were slowly picking up but the ugly truth was that less than a quarter of those who left ever came back, let alone came back multiple times. It was dangerous out there. It was lonely. But it was also the dream I’d held onto for as long as I could remember.

The next evening, Em and I broke up in her dorm room. She had looked at me confused for the longest time, like I was speaking a foreign language. And then she started crying. Why had I bothered to start a relationship when I knew I was going to throw it all away to leave for Mars? Why had I led her on? Why had I told her I loved her only to break her heart?

I didn’t have answers for her. I tried to be stoic about the whole thing. I knew that if I tried to explain that I had never lied, that I had always been sincere but that I knew that this was best in the long run, best for her, she wouldn’t understand. I heard the words leave my mouth but didn’t recognize them. I sounded like my father. Like the space jocks who gave their ships female names and swore allegiance only to the ideals of Progress or Exploration and wouldn’t be bogged down by petty things like college girlfriends and other worldly attachments.

I’m not so good with emotions. It took me weeks to realize that I was as sad as she was, and whole months for me to cry as much as she did that night. But I did cry. I told myself the story that broken up was better than widowed. That if I had to leave, it was better that I did so without taking all her future hopes and dreams with me. None of it mattered of course. Her sloping eyes tilted the other way and she looked at me like I had slapped her. I tried to apologize, tried to explain. Tried to say those simple three words again. But nothing came out. She screamed at me to get out; I left.

Three weeks before my very first mission was about to embark for Mars, I heard through the grapevine that her father had passed away and that she had unenrolled from all her classes, dropped out of college and disappeared off the radar completely. For all of it, I felt responsible. On the trip over I fantasized about a grand gesture, about returning, about giving up everything if she’d just forgive me and let me into her heart again. But my own heart was already hardening. I had wanted to join one of the terraforming operations on Mars for as long as I could remember. There was no point in leading myself on.

I cared about progress. About exploration. I would be working miracles in brave new worlds, carving out a mission on mankind’s furthest horizons, with nothing but my own wits and persistence. I would throw every last drop of myself into the mission, blurring the edges of my small, temporary human identity with the noble goals of an undertaking far greater than anything achieved by the generations that came before me.

I never forgave myself for breaking her heart. To punish myself, I learnt to forget her.

Chapter 3 - Emily

Five years later. January 19, 2082.

“Waste not, want not!” I said, maybe for the hundredth time that day, then flung open the huge recycling vat and threw in a few pastry offcuts.

I had spent a lot of money on this small-scale fermentation/recycling unit and even though it was just a few scraps here and there, it provided me with almost a quarter of the energy needed to run the bakery’s ovens. Soon, I’d invest in my own colloidoponics kit, too, or find a way to build my own.

‘Waste not, want not’ was more or less the personal philosophy of the last few years of my life. Thinking positive. Looking for solutions and all that.

When the virus took my father, he left the bakery to me, and I took the opportunity to manage it since I couldn’t let the family assets go to waste. And just because I had spent my early youth in a college program I never completed, it didn’t mean that that should go to waste, either. A bakery seemed like such an old-fashioned idea these days, but I made the best of it.

I was slowly refitting the place to eventually be zero-input, a lofty goal for a family bakery, but I chalked up my DIY science experiments as a hobby and allowed myself to dream a little. After all, just because my future didn’t turn out how I thought it would, didn’t mean I still couldn’t do some good, right? And as for what happened in college, as for Buck Johnson and all the others, well …I was still trying to figure out a way to look at that whole mess and see what could be salvaged.

But life was good. Life was OK. It was …bearable.

My ‘morning rounds’ consisted of making sure all the equipment was thoroughly cleaned, that the workers all understood their schedule for the day and that our baking stocks were looking good.

It was all a balancing act.

My father had grown this business from a small backyard operation to one of the region’s most successful bakeries, and he had done it all within those little margins – the tiny spaces where the right flour can save .6% of the cost on the croissants, or where buying smaller, more expensive batches of couverture chocolate actually meant less of it spoiled prematurely and we ended up with more viable chocolate eggs in any one month.

Honestly? I was no good at the business side of it. Not really. I’m an academic. Or, I was an academic. But like I said, there’s no point holding onto pain from the past. Buck has his own life now and as for Felix? Well, I didn’t even dare to let myself think of him too often. He made his choices, and life doesn’t give second chances.

I stood at my work station, fresh new apron knotted at my waist and the broad stainless-steel surfaces gleaming back at me. In a few minutes, we’d open and start serving the morning crowd, and then quickly get busy with the lunch time rotation. I could already smell the sourdough baking in the enormous vaulted ovens. It was an archaic way of doing things, sure, but it just goes to show that no matter how technologically advanced humankind gets, there’s always a part of us that just wants a warm slice of toast and a break from it all.

Becky, one of the servers, came in and switched on the corner projector. The news flickered to life on one of the far walls. It was a story that felt depressingly familiar. Prometheus, an American funded terraforming corporate on Mars, was having contamination issues with a new corn hybrid they were trying to establish. Harmful microbes in the soil were thwarting all their efforts, killing crew members and making investors back home nervous enough that the talks had seemed to change from rescue missions to court summonses.

“Have you seen this, Em? They’re going to eat each other one of these days. Doesn’t look like we’ll be opening a Warren’s Bakery on Mars any time soon, doesn’t it?” Becky said with a smile, then got to work wiping down the tables and arranging the café chairs out neatly.

I laughed.

“Oh, I don’t know, I think you and I could pull off something interesting. There has to be a market for politician pie or something,” I said and, came to help her straighten things out.

She laughed.

The image of a tiny, two-leafed seedling growing secretly inside a colloidal tank flashed into my mind. Of course, that project was now done and dusted. Nobody cared about that kind of research anymore.

But I still couldn’t help feeling that it was all a missed opportunity. That if I hadn’t …well, hadn’t made such a spectacular mess of my life, I could have done something really special. Maybe, instead of military bases and greedy corporates taking over the Mars project, I could have contributed something more valuable, maybe even made a difference somehow.

But no. My life was now meringues and custom-made ice cream cakes. Taking over the bakery was a second chance for me, in so many ways. Of course I knew I shouldn’t complain about any of it. Better people than me could try and save the world. I mean, who was I to talk, when I had such a crummy track record as it was?

“Oh shit!” I said and looked at the time. I tore off my apron and dashed out the door. Becky looked at me wide-eyed.

“The meeting with the bank!” I said. “I almost forgot. I’m gonna be late if I don’t leave now.”

She looked crestfallen.

“But you were going to look at these Easter designs with me,” she pouted.

“Shit, I know. Can we do it later?”

“But, we have to place those orders by tonight, remember?”

I cursed under my breath. “Becky, can you just take care of it? Just choose what you like, send the order, it’s fine. If we don’t have enough cash just put it on the card for now, I’ll sort it out when I get back. Just for the love of god, remember absolutely no—”

“No bunnies. Got it. No bunnies and no carrots.”

“Good.”

“Not even carrot cake though?” she asked, tilting her head to the side. I gave her a stern look and she nodded and got back to work. I grabbed my jacket and flew out the door.

I blustered out into the chilly January air and pulled my scarf more tightly around my neck. I didn’t care if she thought it was weird. Honestly, I had stopped asking myself about who knew and who didn’t know. Who still remembered and who didn’t remember. I just assumed that everyone I met knew of my scandal in detail and was judging me, but after so many years they probably had the decency not to mention it or ask questions about the gossip they’d heard. I didn’t want any fucking bunnies, or carrots in my bakery, ever, and I wasn’t going to discuss it.

It was my bakery. My business. It was slowly generating more income and after I’d done the renovations, we’d save huge amounts on overheads alone. It needed improvements, I know, but I would handle it. The past was the past. If leaving the past where it belonged meant I had a somewhat irrational hatred of rabbits and carrots, well, so be it. It could have been worse.

I arrived at the bank just on time, and settled down in the waiting lounge trying to catch my breath. It wouldn’t take much. A small loan to cover some new ovens and a larger biofuel tank would already make a huge difference. And in any case, Warren’s was basically an institution in the town. People here had known and loved my father and besides, who hadn’t personally enjoyed one of our popular chocolate chip cookies?

They’d have to give me a loan.

I caught myself fiddling with the zip on my jacket and mentally berated myself. I had to play it cool. I checked my watch. Fiddled some more. A woman in a pant suit came over to say that the representative I had arranged to meet with could no longer see me today, but that their new loan manager would be over shortly to discuss my application. I nodded and then nearly fell over when I saw who was walking quickly behind her.

He extended a meaty arm and smiled mockingly at me. Fucking Buck Johnson, in all his glory.

I meekly took his hand and struggled to remember how to speak. He wasted no time in whisking me off to a consulting room and clicking the door shut behind us. It felt as though my entire abdominal cavity had been sucked out and replaced with champagne bubbles. Clearly, he knew to expect me. I sat down feebly and tried to think of what to say to the person who ostensibly ruined a good chunk of my life.

“Em, it’s been a while huh? You look well.”

I wanted to puke.

“Um, if this is awkward, I can just reschedule with the other guy, I honestly didn’t expect--”

“Awkward? Come on, relax. It’s no problem. Please. Water under the bridge.”

The way he said it was almost as though he had graciously forgiven me. What a fucking asshole. I stood up quickly and made for the door.

“I really want to just speak with the other guy actually,” I said and squirmed away from eye contact. He was still good looking. In that cocky, stupid way.

“Em, Joe Caspello is on leave and will be for almost a month.”

“Well, then I’ll go to a different bank,” I blurted. He was already on his feet too and standing to block my exit.

“Another bank? Come on, Em, you and I both know that everyone else has turned you down. You need a loan? Let’s get you a loan.”

I stood in shock for a few seconds as the words seeped in. Yes, this was indeed a special version of hell that I had landed myself in. I was groveling at the last bank in town that would hear my case and the man I had to deal with was none other than Buck Johnson. I didn’t have to look at his stupid face to see that he was grinning. Those were the same lips that had first uttered those evil words, the words that had haunted me for years. But instead of saying them, he said, “Em, please, sit down,” and gestured to the chair.

I felt the room spin around me.

Already I was planning an escape. Maybe I could sell. Maybe I could downsize. Limp along on the credit card and afford the renovations piecemeal. Something else, anything else but this. Sure, Em, and how long would that take you?

He swiftly tapped his fingers and brought up some documents on the projector and in oversized letters I suddenly saw a giant snapshot of the bakery’s financial history. There had been loans before. Several loans. In fact, my father’s history with this bank was the only reason they hadn’t thrown my application out the window in the first place.

“So, as you can see the bakery’s not in the best shape and you yourself have little in the way of personal guarantees or collateral,” he said, in a tone of voice that almost made me forget who he was for a moment. “You also haven’t provided us with any insurance information for these new power sources you want to have installed, which, just as a little insider tip, was a really red flag for us.”

I bristled at the prospect that this, this oaf was sitting in judgment of me. Just who the hell did he think he was?

“Those are experimental units, though. They’re new, so the insurance company couldn’t quote me yet… They’re devices intended to bring the building to zero-input in a few years,” I said, realizing how jumpy I sounded.

“For a bakery?” he chuckled. “Even worse than I thought.”

I fiddled with the zip of my jacket, furious. He carried on scanning idly through the documents when I had a sneaky suspicion he had already pored over them at length. I sat and tried to maintain a shred of dignity.

“My father was a very astute businessman. Warren’s is an institution. It’s a household name around here. It just needs some time to recover after his death.”

“Pardon me, but your father …how do I put this? Just because he made a good Danish doesn’t mean he knew what he was doing in the finance department, you know what I mean?” he laughed.

Ah. There it was. The arrogant, haughty-as-hell asshole that I knew. I wanted to punch him.

“I don’t need this shit,” I said through clenched teeth. He smiled and shrugged.

“Again, no offense, but you kind of do.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to think. The worst thing, of course, was that he was right.

“Well,” I said and shot him an icy look, “if you know so much then just tell me straight up whether it’s a yes or a no and let me get on with my life, how about that?”

The cocky smile remained plastered to his face.

“You know a loan application is not that simple, Em.”

Of course he would try to do this. Of course he would enjoy manipulating me, now that he knew he could. What else did I expect? I was fuming. The bakery was my bakery now. It was my second chance. This was real life, the past was the past, and I was going to make at least something work in this disaster I called my life. And if that meant getting over the embarrassment of being in the same room as this halfwit, then so be it. I tried to think quickly. Then I took a deep breath, pulled my shoulders back and stared at him head on.

“Let’s just cut to the chase, shall we?” I said slowly and deliberately. “You and I have a history, one that I’m not proud of. I would be happy if I never had to lay eyes on you ever again, but since we’re here now, let’s just be frank with one another. If you think you’re going to have your fun with hinting at what happened in the past, well, you’re wrong. People have forgotten. Nobody makes fun of me now. And I won’t let you bully me, either.”

I couldn’t help but breath heavily as I delivered this little speech. He raised one impressed eyebrow at me and held up his hands in defense.

“Look, nobody mentioned anything about the past, nobody’s bringing up any of those, you know, those issues, that are no behind us, and--”

“I’m not Fuck Bunny anymore,” I spat.

He looked at me with amusement.

“I’m not embarrassed anymore. That’s all in the past,” I said. The words still felt like poison on my lips. It was the nickname that had nearly destroyed me, the two words that felt like choking to even speak out loud, but I had to show him that if he thought he could humiliate me again, he had another thing coming.

But he was smiling. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

“You always were so feisty,” he said affectionately. “You haven’t changed much, you know that?”

The puking sensation returned.

He looked down at his hands and then smiled suggestively at me. “I still think about it sometimes… how wild you were,” he said, so quietly it was almost a whisper.

“This is inappropriate,” I said. I didn’t know if I wanted to cry or scream.

“Em, aw jeez Em, I’m sorry. I’m an asshole I know. Please don’t get upset. I know it was hell on you.”

The nerve of him.

“Hell on me? What would you know about it? They basically gave you an award, for fuck’s sake,” I said without thinking. My whole life had been ruined. Felix disappeared, my dad died and before I knew it I bumped into the human hurricane named Buck who tore right through what little I had left.

“I know, Em, it was embarrassing for me too, I promise you that.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m serious. I thought about you every day for so long. I felt so bad about it all.”

“Poor you.”

He looked pained.

“Em, Jesus, I’m sorry. I said I’m sorry. What do you want me to say? I can’t change what happened.”

I scowled.

“Give me a second chance,” he said suddenly.

“To …do what?”

“To say sorry. To make it up to you. Let me take you out somewhere, for old time’s sake.”

I couldn’t believe it. The asshole was hitting on me. It was almost too much.

“Is this part of my formal loan application process?” I said cynically.

He smiled.

“Can I take that as a yes?”

He was still smiling.

“And what if I don’t? Then what? You’ll turn down my application?”

He thought about it for a while.

“Then nothing. Your application will be judged on its own merit, whether you come out for a drink with me or not.”

A drink.

That’s how all of this had started. A drink. Then another drink. I nodded and stood to leave. I wasn’t interested in him, not even remotely, but I couldn’t jeopardize the bakery and who knows, maybe this would be my chance to prove that I really had gotten over everything that happened four years ago.

I extended my hand to shake his. A younger version of myself would have told him to stick his loan up his ass. But I couldn’t do that now. There was no more time for childish dreams and hopes. I had to grow up, live down the reputation I had earned and do whatever it took to save the bakery.

He shook my hand and took his time gliding his eyes up and down the length of my body. Shamelessly. As though it never occurred to him that I might have a say about any of it. I pulled back my shoulders and glared at him. With a sickening realization I suddenly understood that for Buck, what happened all those years ago wasn’t shameful for him. In fact, what I could see now in his eyes was how much he relished the memory. He had another thing coming if he thought he had a snowball’s chance of hooking up with me again.

“Yeah, so, just make sure you submit those outstanding insurance docs and get back to us with those little niggles on the business plan and I’m sure you’ll have it all done by the end of the week,” he said with a smarmy grin. “And as for our little date, here’s hoping I can …do things right this time,” he said, stepping too close.

I backed away and opened the door.

“Whatever, fine. It’s just a drink. I have to go. I have a business to run, remember?”

I was already halfway down the hall when I heard him call out after me.

“Yeah, I remember, hop to it!”

My skin prickled as I picked up my pace and left, yanking the scarf tightly round myself against the cold.

Fuck him.

Fuck all of them.

I bet he’d have a nice little laugh about me later. Asshole. But it didn’t matter. If I could get a loan out of him, then that was all I cared about.

Chapter 4 - Felix

Do you know where the word ‘saboteur’ comes from?” I asked. “It’s from the French word for shoe, and it comes from factory workers who would throw their wooden shoes into the cogs of machinery to sabotage their employees as a form a resistance.”

She gently rolled my knee back down while maintaining a slight pinch on my patella tendon. Her hands were tender but firm as they pawed up and down my leg.

“Hm, is that so?” she said absentmindedly.

As the only female physiotherapist on a base of dozens and dozens of horny men, I was pretty sure she barely even registered me and my pathetic attempts at small talk. But she was nice to look at. And her small, white hands felt good against my skin. I hadn’t been touched in so long.

“You know, Felix, you’re doing really well. I have to say I’m impressed. And when you get back to Earth and see a more jacked up professional, you’re going to recover even more quickly,” she said, clapped her hands together and stood to look down at my purple leg with satisfaction.

A month ago, protestors had infiltrated the latest arrival to Mars and someone had rigged an explosive to one of the water filtration rooms, destroying all $3 billion worth of investor money and my entire left leg and hip in the process. Sabotage, you see.

“And as soon as I’m all better, I’ll come right back and they can get my other leg,” I said and laughed.

She didn’t laugh back. Fuck. It wasn’t even a joke, really. I don’t know, I was just trying the whole black-humor-to-deal-with-tragic-near-death-experience thing …but I didn’t seem to be pulling it off too well.

“What would colonel Wilson say if she heard you joking around like that?” she asked sharply. Her face was serious and hard. I felt like an ass. Colonel Wilson had probably already arrived back on Earth by now. In a body bag, though, and she’d be getting ready for a fancy military funeral to distract everyone from the fact that nobody up on this godforsaken planet knew what they were doing anymore.

I shrugged and looked away. Whatever.

I’m the kind of guy who pulls the band aid off all at once. It was a lot to take in but fuck it; I didn’t come out here to have a vacation. I had seen my file. I knew what was up. Unfit for further service. PTSD and idiopathic seizures. Some fruity bullshit about survivor guilt that if I’m honest didn’t quite fit right but hell, I already told you I was never any good at emotions, so who knows.

“Remind me when you’re scheduled to fly back home,” she said and peered down with interest at my folder.

“Three days, doc,” I said, and rolled down the hem of my trousers to cover the purple, mauled shape in the place where my leg used to be. She nodded, made some notes and closed the folder again.

“You got a lot of people back home?” she asked. It was usually a forbidden topic of conversation. But since I was already on my way out, it probably didn’t count.

“Well, you know, I got some family,” I said, shrugging off the question. I did have ‘some family’. I had a mom and a dad and a sister. But I also had a full suitcase of letters I had written Emily and never sent. I had her picture that I kept tucked into my pocket wherever I went on this base. And more than that, I carried her around in my head. I had tried to forget, but memories of her just burst through into my dreams instead. I imagined that I was chatting with her on free evenings, explaining all the Prometheus program politics and drama, gossiping with her about who had been seen doing what with whom after hours. I sometimes just imagined her curled up on the sofa while I worked.

On the isolation of this shitty red planet, she became my imaginary friend, my secret confidante. When the bomb went off and one entire wall of the water filtration room blew out and whipped off into space, my first thought was her. It’ll sound weird, I know, but I instantly felt worried for her. As I lay losing consciousness on the floor, the sirens blaring for the emergency personal, I remember telling her silently not to be afraid, and that they had protocols for this kind of thing, and it was OK, because I was there with her. Fucked up, huh?

Of course, I have no idea what the real Emily Warren was doing these days. I hadn’t spoken to her since that awful night I told her I was breaking her heart for her own good. Last I heard she dropped out of school but after all this time, anything could have happened to her. Part of me kept reminding myself that she was probably married with six kids by now or something, and that if I had any brains I’d stick to my imaginary Emily and remember that the old one probably hated my guts.

But another part of me, that same stupid part that liked to talk to her in my morning shower, well, that part of me ran free and unchecked. We’d get married. We’d buy a place and settle down. I’d say sorry. A million times over: I’m sorry. She’d cry and say it didn’t matter, that she was just glad I was back.

“They say it’s a big shock to the system when you return,” the physio continued. I snapped to attention.

“Yeah, no doubt.”

“Hey, so they tell me you’re not even that bothered? About leaving the mission? I mean, this far in,” she said.

I knew what she was getting at. With the experience and connections I had made here, I would easily be manning my own unit by next year and would have some serious clout when it came to the international Mars talks the year after that. Many people would have killed to go even part of the way on that career path, let alone as far as I had managed in these lonely few years. And all of that was over now. She wanted to know why I wasn’t more upset. To be honest, I didn’t know the answer myself.

I smiled at her and shrugged.

“Are you kidding? I don’t know if you read the news, but Earth is like the wild west these days. Plenty mischief for me to get up to over there!

She gave me a pitying smile. I hoisted myself up, grabbed my walker and inched my way out of the consulting room.

“Did you say you had a wife or something back home?”

I turned to see the physio looking kind of sheepish. Interesting.

“No,” I said slowly. “No wife.”

“Oh! Just wondering,” she said breezily and came to escort me out into the waiting room. Then she gave me the slightest squeeze on my arm and traced her hand over to my back and down, stroking nearly to my butt.

“If you experience any pain after the work we did today, just come over and I’ll get you some pain meds. Even after hours is OK, I don’t mind,” she said, and looked at me. Very interesting.

“Thanks,” I mumbled and scuttled off.

It was a tempting idea. Kind of. But in truth that part of me had switched off a long time ago. There had been nobody before Em and nobody since. How could there? She was singular. Unique. Unless it was her, why would I bother at all? Later that evening I lay myself out a glass of water and two pills, and pretended that it was her who had left them there for me. I thanked her profusely for being such a sweetheart, what with my leg being so fucked up and all. And then I played a few rounds of Death Ops V until I fell asleep. On the bright side, it might not be such a bad thing that I was heading home. It was time. Mars has a way of making it just that little bit harder to hold onto your sanity.

Chapter 5 - Emily

Had I gone mad?

I passed the mascara wand one more time through my lashes and wiggled out the clumps. I mean, if I had to go on a date with him, I might as well look good doing it, right? I fretted over the lashes on the other side and gave my reflection one last look. Did I look like someone who had completely lost her mind?

Of course, the story I was going with was easy to buy into, provided I didn’t think about it too closely: I had simply endured an ill-advised but in retrospect mostly normal teenage lapse in good judgment, and ended up having my name and image dragged through dirty, dirty mud, but it was all OK now, because everyone was an adult now, and people had forgotten the video after all these years, and I certainly didn’t care, what with being a sophisticated, adult business owner type woman.

Right?

I sighed and scowled at my reflection. Maybe I had just gone mad.

I looked at the dress I had picked out. I had spent nearly every waking moment since the bank meeting deciding on this specific dress. It had to be confident and sexy but not inviting. Competent but not enough to suggest anything boring. Up-to-date but not trendy. Showing how poised I was in my body but not so much that I needed to flaunt anything.

Fuck. I didn’t know.

I tried to look at the swell of my hips, at my breasts, and see what Buck might see. A regular girl? A reformed slut? Current and practicing slut? I didn’t know. I stared hard at my reflection. I had been known for more than three years as fuck bunny. The words alone still had that poison in them, still had the ability to conjure up the past:

It’s hard to say what came first. Drugs, death, sadness, sex …they all seemed to be tightly knotted somewhere inside my stomach, and I had never had the strength to really unpick the details.

Maybe I was depressed because of my dad’s death, and that’s why I started with anti-anxiety medication, and that’s why, on that fateful night, my body reacted the way it did. Or maybe the slutty behavior was there all along, and that’s why I ended up being depressed, and taking all those pills, and doing what I did. Or maybe, and this is something I only allowed myself to think in my darkest moments, just maybe, my father’s death was because of my anxiety, because of my depression. Maybe, in some strange, invisible ways, I got everything I deserved.

I had started with one pill. Then I took another, just in case. I didn’t want to go. I was still sad. Still upset about Felix. But what did being sad helped? I swallowed back the entire bottle of pills with some vodka and wiped my mouth on the back of my forearm.

It didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered.

The Sigma Chi party could have been anywhere, and with anyone. But if it offered just a moment of relief, even the faintest promise of escaping from the pain, then I would have to go.

And as I laughed and flirted and threw back countless cups of beer and who knows what else, I felt that finally, finally I was beginning to bludgeon away the sharp edges of that pain. As they swarmed around me and laughed and cheered as I drank cup after cup, I found with a sick thrill that …I felt better. I felt dead inside, but for me, that was an improvement. I didn’t want to feel anything.

And as I wobbled dizzy and danced with strange people I had never met before, I fell deeper and deeper into that blankness. That sweet, merciful emptiness. At last I had found a precious quiet spot, a little hiding hole far away from the pain of my awful life… it didn’t matter to me that this little pit was filled with strange, drunk frat boys who were looking at me like they wanted to tear me to shreds. What did I care about my body anyway?

I tumbled down a strange rollercoaster of intoxication. I knew they were giving me things. I didn’t care. The knot in my stomach tightened but my head felt light and empty. Good. I flitted in and out of awareness, in and out of a numb, shimmery dream. I remember climbing unsteadily onto a table, my ankles wobbling violently on my high heels, and by some miracle standing up tall and raising my hands up to a crowd of cheers. They turned the music up. Some of them touched me. I let them. I danced. But I wasn’t really dancing. I was falling. I was dying.

I remember being on a sofa. A camera was thrust in my face; a hand went to the base of my neck to prop up my head and show me to the screen.

“Say it out loud. Say you want it,” said a jeering voice from somewhere behind me.

“Want what?” I mumbled, struggling to focus my eyes.

They erupted into laughter around me. Buck’s face appeared before mine like the atoms in the air had arranged of their own free will to form the contours of his stupid, brick-like head.

“We take our dares very seriously at Sigma Chi baby. No backsies. Say loud and clear that you want it” he said, leaning close to my face.

I could smell smoke on his breath. I suddenly became aware that I was no longer wearing my top, and that my breasts were exposed. Was I on somebody’s lap?

I dimly became aware that soon, they were going to fuck me. I couldn’t hold onto the thought for very long, and each time I tried to speak, it felt like the words were squirming away from me.

“I want it,” I whispered into the camera. “I want all of it.”

The room erupted into cheers again. What did I want? Who knows. I wanted my father back, I wanted Felix back. I wanted not to want that so badly anymore…

When the hands went to my skirt and yanked it off, I didn’t protest. In its own revolting way, it felt good. Maybe I wanted them to use me. Maybe I wanted to be obliterated once and for all, and to forget about hope and dignity.

Something bright and orange caught my eye, and I swiveled to see a boy marching over with an oversized …carrot? The image flickered and blurred in front of my eyes, so I just closed them.

“You want this, little fuck bunny? This is what you want, isn’t it?” I heard Buck’s voice say. Maybe I nodded. The chant of fuck bunny fuck bunny fuck bunny melted into the beat of the music and I felt my legs being spread open.

I allowed it.

My head fell back and they pressed the carrot into me. They were playing a game. I lifted my head and tried to focus on their conversation, but the vagaries of language seemed like magic to me. I caught only snippets. Only jeers and smiles and lewd gestures.

“Shit, guys, she’s actually really wet.”

“Loser eats the ass carrot.”

“Fucking whore.”

“Go for it, Buck, she wants your carrot too!”

I remember looking down and seeing what they were doing to me. It was as though I saw it all unfolding on a faraway cinema screen. It was happening to someone else, not to me. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t real. Then I remember Buck climbing onto me, his shirt still on but his shorts bunched around his ankles. His face was again close to mine, and all at once I felt a deep, strange pressure all through me, one that felt wildly dangerous. Forbidden. Like it wasn’t supposed to be happening. Then why was I pushing my hips up and into him? Why was I groaning and laughing as they cheered?

It had token me days to sober up. The aftermath took a while to process. Where was the ‘rape’ line, and which side did I fall? Where was the ‘consciousness’ line, and on what side of that line had I been on? In which exact parallel dimension did fuck bunny even exist?

Retrospectively, I had put the details together. One bottle of anxiety meds. More than a dozen bottles of beer. A frat party of at least fifty guys. A single carrot. An entire hellish landscape opening up to me as I showered myself the next morning and found countless finger-shaped bruises on my thighs and arms. A scratch on my lower belly. The feeling that my brain had liquefied and spilled out my ear. Dull, dirty aches in places I didn’t even want to look. My hair smelt of beer and cum. There was a bright pink, half-moon mark on my left breast. A bite mark. I had also been bitten.

I don’t know how I ever survived the days that followed. I don’t know how I didn’t literally die at my doctor’s appointment. My psychiatrist went pale and told me that it was a miracle I hadn’t killed myself. When I discovered that the video had been shared on the school bulletin board, and that most of the college had seen it and probably thousands of others too, I felt …nothing. I watched myself in jerky, dimly lit motion on the screen. I watched my loose, clumsy limbs moving over countless shoulders of men I didn’t recognize. I watched my mouth open to whatever was thrust at it. I watched my legs flop open, and my eyes roll back into my head. It was me …but it wasn’t me.

“You want this, little fuck bunny? Is this what you want?” Buck said and pulled a thumbs up at the camera.

I grinned and took my time mouthing the word yes. I paused the video and never looked at it again. But I felt calm. Something inside me had died. I had nothing left. I vaguely remember trying to think of legal action, of calling it an assault, of getting campus admin to intervene. But there I was. Fuck Bunny. And I was clearly, boldly, provocatively, asking for it.

And so I took what I asked for. All of it. I took the mountains of shame they heaped on me and the very next day I dropped out. Like giant spotlights had been shut off all at once, my world went dark and small very quickly. People snickered at me as I packed my things and left. People I thought were friends muttered “fuck bunny” under their breath as I walked past them in the dorms. I had already died. So I decided to take my ghost elsewhere. To my deceased father’s failing bakery business. Here I rolled cinnamon buns by hand until I forgot. Until the bruises faded and I no longer woke up screaming. Till even the biggest douches in town had gotten bored of leaving carrots on my mail box.

And then it was now. And I was putting on mascara for the boy that had orchestrated it all. For the boy who had not only kept his scholarship after the whole debacle, but who achieved something close to celebrity, a kind of attaboy infamy that was condoned silently by the professors and explicitly by the other frat boys. Clearly, I had gone mad. There was no other explanation.

I sighed, redid my lip gloss and made for the front door. I had grown since then. I was a successful small business owner, and that was all in the past. People had forgotten. Not only was I going to show Buck how little he had really hurt me, I was going to look good doing it.

The hilarious irony, of course, was that I wasn’t a depraved frat slut but a kind of timid, sexually inexperienced biology nerd. Before the …incident, there had only been Felix. And nobody after the incident either. In their own ways, I had written Felix off just as hard as I had written of the frat night. They both didn’t ‘count’. In some ways, I almost felt virginal. Hopelessly naïve. And I had no idea what to do with myself as I waited for Buck at the restaurant. Order a drink? Act casual? Could everyone tell I was nervous?

The first surprise was that he looked so good. I hadn’t expected him to clean up so nice, or to walk so tall. He had clearly lost some puppy fat, cleared up his youthful acne and spoke more quietly now, more seriously. The second surprise was that I started to actually enjoy myself. The whole sob story fell away for a second and almost without me noticing I slipped into a perfectly normal, maybe even fun date with a perfectly normal, maybe even fun guy.

He had the faintest crinkles around his eyes. He wore a collared shirt that fit him well, and talked about how he had landed up with the bank, and how he was gearing up to buy an investment property in Europe somewhere. It was surreal, and not in the way that I expected.

“More wine?” he asked and held up the bottle.

I smiled and lay my hand over my glass.

“For me? Now that’s not really a good idea, is it?” I scoffed.

“No? I think wine is always a good idea,” he said and poured himself another glass. I made a ‘yeah right’ face and pushed the glass aside.

“Well we all know I can’t be trusted with alcohol,” I said offhandedly. He stopped mid-pour and looked at me.

“Why? What do you mean?”

“Come on, you know exactly what I mean,” I said, blushing.

He silently placed the bottle down and gave me a serious look.

“Actually I don’t. I don’t know what you mean.”

I sighed loudly and stared down at the half-eaten lasagna on my plate.

“Oh please. I don’t know why you keep pretending you don’t remember any of it. Or maybe I keep forgetting, it was no big deal for you, right?”

It was the first tense word of the evening. We had made it an hour into this ‘date’ but I could no longer contain my resentment. He looked troubled.

“I know it was hard on you,” he said quietly, after some thought. I laughed under my breath.

“You have no idea.”

“Oh come on, Em,” he countered almost instantly. “You weren’t the only one in that video, you know.”

I pushed my plate away and shook my head.

“That’s the thing, Buck, I wasn’t. But I was the only one who was bullied afterwards, wasn’t I? I was the only one who received threats and …propositions for more than a year after it happened. I was the only one who got harassed, right?”

He frowned.

“You know, I get that you’re still hung up about all of that, Em. I honestly do. But at what point do you move on? Nobody remembers any of that stuff anymore.”

“Oh, I’ve moved on,” I blurted.

“Have you?”

I returned his frown.

“What business is it of yours anyway?”

“It’s none of my business. But you did bring it up.”

I opened my mouth to argue but realized that he was actually right.

“Look, Em, it’s cool. I’m just saying that it was hard for me too, that’s all.”

“Hard for you? What could have possibly been hard for you?”

He seemed to be getting angry.

“Are you serious? Em, it was a huge humiliation. Do you know how I had to beg them not to kick my ass off the scholarship? How much groveling I had to do?”

“Bullshit, they didn’t give a damn.”

“You really think that? Em, it took me months to get over what happened. I had to find a new place to live. I lost all my friends, I—”

“Then why did you post that video for everyone to see, then?”

He looked shocked.

“Wait, you think it was me who posted it?”

“I honestly don’t even care, Buck” I said and tried to loosen the tension in the room. “Like I said, I’m over all of that.”

“Em, I would never do that to you.”

“You’d just stick a carrot up my ass and call me fuck bunny, on camera?” I said, raising my voice. He was taken aback. The people beside us cast curious glances at our table.

“Em, please calm down… just try to imagine for a second that I regret that day as deeply as you do.”

“Regret what?” I hissed. “You got exactly what you wanted!”

“I didn’t. I fucked up. I should have protected you,” he said, his voice breaking a little. I gave him an incredulous look. This was not the Buck Johnson I knew.

“Well, nice try, but like I said, I’m older and wiser now, if you thought you could bullshit your way into my pants again, sorry to break it to you,” I said and folded my arms.

He rubbed his temples. “You know what Em? Don’t forget that you agreed to all of it, OK? Everything. You were there. You made choices too.”

“I was drunk.”

“So were we.”

I threw my napkin down and started scanning for the waiter.

“Look, I knew this was a bad idea. Let’s just call this a night, OK? I’m not even sure why we met.”

“I don’t know either,” he said and pushed the food around his plate. “Maybe because I thought we could have a second chance or something.”

I looked at him.

“You were the single worst thing to ever happen to me, Buck,” I said coldly,

“I thought you were really cool. Long before the party.”

“You took advantage of me when I was vulnerable.”

“Then let me make it up to you. Let’s put the past to rights,” he said. I nearly laughed out loud. Was he really suggesting what I thought he was suggesting?

“Look, Buck, I don’t know what crazy ideas you have. I might have made some stupid choices back then but it doesn’t mean I’ll just sleep with anyone you know.”

“Then don’t sleep with me. Just kiss me.”

I was stunned. I struggled to respond.

“I’m …my main focus right now is the bakery, that’s it.”

“Then let me help you with the bakery,” he said, and extended his hand to take mine across the table.

I looked down as his fingers closed around mine. It sent cold chills right through my body. This was all wrong. I hated this, I hated that he had …seen me. That not only did he know about my scandal and shame, but that he had been present throughout all of it. That even though I desperately tried to avoid the thought completely, the truth was that him and I had already fucked. I didn’t really remember any of it. But clearly he did. The thought made my stomach lurch.

I pulled my hand away.

He was smiling easily now, the charm tap was now on full volume and he was shrugging, then offering me the wine again. I found it disgusting that he would try to get me drunk. Again.

“No, thank you,” I said coldly.

The check was mercifully placed on the table. He swiftly took it and threw down his credit card. The symbolism wasn’t lost on me. We walked out together in silence, his hand hovering at the small of my back but never actually touching, never actually giving me the chance to shrug him off, like an animal shrugs off a fly.

We stood outside the restaurant, the first dim ribbons of evening starting to darken the sky. I was irritated. Irritated that I had agreed to come out here at all. Irritated that he had the nerve to not only try to explain himself, but to actually make another pass at me. Most of all, I was irritated that in fact, his positioned seemed nearly reasonable. How could I be mad at him? It was highly inconvenient, to have him play the role of the bad guy so poorly.

I made some excuses about why I had to leave and pulled my jacket around my shoulders. Before I knew it, he had leaned in and pecked me on the cheek, and then all at once he was kissing me, forcefully, fully, his thick lips against mine.

I froze.

He pulled back a little, looked at me with an expression of dark pleasure in his eyes, then brushed the tops of his knuckles against my cheek.

“Don’t kiss me again without asking permission,” I said.

“Kiss you again? How many kisses do you think you’re getting?” he laughed.

I bit my lower lip, determined not to lose my cool and swear at him.

“You know I had forgotten how much of a spitfire you were,” he chuckled. “But I’ll never forget what a good kisser you are, and that’s not all you’re good at,” he breathed, now close again.

It was like a magnetic field was vibrating around his lips. Though my head was buzzing with unmistakable disdain for him and everything he represented, the rest of me was… not pulling away.

As though on an endless tape loop, all the jeers from that night raced through my head. They had called me a slut. A filthy whore. They had pulled my legs as wide open as they would go and they had taken turns with me, their laughter morphing into moans, then back into mocking laughter again. They were dumb kids, but with the bodies and appetites of grown men, and I hated them, and yet they were in my mind right now, and somehow, somehow …it was hot.

Beyond all reason, beyond all decency, it was there. Right at the front of my mind. And here was my biggest, dirtiest secret. Way more disturbing than what they had done to me with a goddam carrot. Way more upsetting than blacking out on pills and booze while more than a dozen strange men fucked you. No, what I had spent all these last years battling to repress was the simple fact that when asked, I had agreed. I had stared glassy-eyed into the camera and licked my lower lip and smiled and whispered …yes.

“Come over to my place,” he said, still stroking my hair.

It was an invitation from the devil himself. But in the still air outside the restaurant, I was struggling to come up with reasons to say no. It had been a long time since I’d been with a guy. In fact, the last time might well have been with Buck. My life had been so small since then. So quiet and chaste and secret…

I pried myself out of his grasp and shook my head.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” I said emphatically. “I should go home.”

I turned to leave.

“Hey, Emily,” he said. I turned to look at him. “You’ll probably hear from the bank soon. They’re being a bit sticky about a few things but if you come in tomorrow I’ll see what I can do.”

Chapter 6 - Felix

And then we’ll just need a signature here, and your initials here,” she said curtly, and handed the forms to me.

The thing about military shrinks is that they always know how to double up as hard-nosed bureaucrats when the time is right. I scratched my name on the documents and handed them back to her. Really, the cords between me and the mission were severed right about the same time the bomb tore my kneecap tendons to hell …all of this other shit was just a formality.

“Look, Felix, I’m going to say it one more time. I know you’re tired of hearing it, but please, please don’t disappear on us. Stay in touch. Your symptoms may feel like they go away sometimes, but we should expect some flare ups. You know how to recognize the signs, how to step in before things get too hard to deal with on you own.”

I liked the physio back on Mars better. No molly coddling, a massage every session and the occasional flirty remark seemed like it would work better for me now than being treated like a little broken toy soldier who couldn’t play in the big games anymore.

They had thrown competent, careful doctors at me and they had put my shattered leg and hip back together again. And running behind the scenes, they scrambled to put things right on paper, too. It was an ‘unforeseen circumstance’. I counted the word ‘unavoidable’ thirty-nine times on the official incident report that had taken them three weeks to compile. I was compensated, nothing could be done. I had their sympathies. And so on.

The day before I had had a small ceremony where a glossy blue badge was pinned to my uniform and various stiff suited dad-figures saluted me and told me with grave faces that I was a hero, and that no words could express the sacrifice I had made in service to not only my country, but to humankind at large. Load of bullshit, in other words. I had shaken their hands, eaten the chocolate eclairs they handed me and agreed to the final counselling session where I would be released back into the wild, a little jumpier and messed up than I started, but oh well. They were done with me. And I was done with them.

Like the good big sister she was, Claire had put me up in her and her new husband’s guest room. My little nephew, himself barely skilled at walking, was mesmerized by my lumpy, purple leg. I didn’t mind. I let him touch it, and he asked questions, and Claire smiled and tried to make things seem less depressing than they were. But they still were.

The route back to Claire’s place from the shrink’s office was surprisingly pretty. I lingered, not wanting to go ‘home’, kind of freaked out by how easy it was for me to think now of Mars as home, and Earth as the strange planet, hostile to life and hard to understand.

I took a detour, stuck my hands in my pockets and kicked up loose bits of tarmac as I walked. I’d pay later for putting this much strain on my knee, but I didn’t much care. That particular pain was the least of my problems. It was staying out here and feeling the tendons of my knee and thigh pull and twinge, or going ‘home’ and feeling like I was in Claire’s way, with nothing but my shameful stash of letters to Emily to keep me company.

No, pain was OK. I could handle pain. The nightmares were fine, too. And I didn’t mind the anxiety too much, if I’m honest. It was a step up from how I’d felt before I had my leg nearly blasted right off. I kept walking, playing with my weight as I placed it down again and again on that tender joint, wincing into it but feeling the discomfort roll over me with each step that passed under my body, curled back and lifted again, not so smooth but getting the job done.

I passed by the same old houses that I swear hadn’t changed a bit in five years. In fact, they had held up better than I had! Still, it was all an illusion. I passed people on the streets, watched them fretting over their dogs or their kids or their grocery shopping or whatever, and I was struck by how completely fragile they were. Bustling around, never realizing how blessed they were to be sheltered on all sides by a perfect atmosphere, how hard life would be if gravity didn’t cooperate with them as much as it did, or the sun overhead wasn’t so perfectly suited to all the meaningless little activities they bused themselves with.

I envied them their ignorance. Their carefreeness that felt to me like it bordered on stupidity. Their smiles. Their strong, healthy legs. I walked on, my mood darkening. Ladies and gentlemen, a ‘hero’. I turned the corner and stopped to take in the sight: the sun had already set but was still throwing out some dying colors into the hazy sky. On the horizon was Jeb’s grocer, the same one Em and I would creep off to late on exam nights to stock up on Pringles and beer to power us through the last-minute cramming.

On a whim I walked on towards it. Screw my knee. I walked inside as a woman left, and as she lifted her gaze to mine I wondered if she recognized me. But she hurried off, not saying anything, just casting a glance at my leg. Or did I imagine all of that? It didn’t matter. Inside, the supermarket was basically empty. It hadn’t changed much, either. I grabbed a basket and walked idly up and down the aisles. Before I knew it, I was idly throwing in a few cans of Pringles, some jelly sweets, a bag of peanuts, some beer. Up on Mars I had chiseled myself to perfection, one perfectly balanced and pre-packaged, government approved ready meal at a time. But, I wasn’t on Mars anymore. And fuck it, maybe I wanted some cookies.

I ambled into the veggie section and saw a timid looking woman hovering over the fridges. I threw in a bag of apples and went to stand a few feet beside her. Her massive hair was shielding her face, but I could clearly see her basket filled almost completely with bunches of carrots.

“Woah! You got a craving too? The heart wants what it wants,” I said and laughed and gestured to her basket. Her hand froze in the air, just as she was reaching for yet another bunch. She didn’t turn to look at me, but I could tell she was side-eyeing the junk food contents of my own basket. She looked pissed.

“Anyway, looks like you’ve made the healthier choice, right? I don’t know why I’m eating all this crap, your stuff looks a lot better …and more filling too,” I said, trying to sound friendly. She snapped her hand away from the produce and dropped the basket at her feet with a clatter.

“Oh my god,” she muttered under her breath, and spun around to yell at me, but when she did, my heart nearly stopped.

“Em?” I said.

I suddenly felt a wave of hot prickles rush over my face. Would she recognize me? Had she seen all the scarring on my face? My leg? Fuck, if I had known there was a chance of bumping into her…

“Felix?”

She didn’t sound happy about it.

“Holy shit is that really you?”

I broke out into a huge, stupid grin. I couldn’t believe it. She was still the same. The same big, fluffy hair, the same amber-colored eyes …the same everything.

“In the flesh. How …how are you?” I said, struggling for words. I had a million things I wanted to say, but none of them sprung to mind. But the surprise on her face was turning sour. She looked down at my basket, then up at my face again, then scowled.

“So you came all the way back from Mars just to insult me?” she blurted.

“What?”

“Just …just forget it,” she said and spun on her heel and went for the door, leaving her basket behind.

“Em? Wait, where are you going? What’s wrong? Can we talk?”

Insult? How could I ever insult her? She spun around and gave me another poisonous glare.

“Just stay the hell away from me, Felix. I’ve moved on from all of that,” she said, and in a second she had raced out the supermarket, nothing to suggest she’d ever been there but the gust of cool wind from the doors and a basket weirdly filled with carrots. I stood blankly for a second, wondering what the hell just happened. I flung down my own basket and went running after her, but she was gone.

My mood went from dark to something resembling a black hole. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I know I was an asshole to her back then. I know that I should have been there for her when her father died, should have handled it all better. But how could she just move on? How could she still be so mad at me for that? I know I was a meathead back then, but had I really insulted her?

On the walk back to Claire’s, my mind was racing so fast I barely noticed the pain welling up in my knee.

“Oh, Felix, hey, we were wondering where you--” she said as she opened the front door for me, but stopped short when she took one look at my face.

“Oh my god …Felix, what happened?”

I walked inside silently, tossed off my jacket and slammed the door behind me.

“It’s …it’s nothing. I’m gonna just chill for a bit on my own, OK?” I said, and hastened towards the spare room, praying that just this one time, my sister would take a hint and not push me.

“Felix, you’re all pale. Is it the counsellor? Did you have a really traumatic session?” she mumbled, following after me down the hallway to the guest room. I said nothing.

“Hey, don’t worry if you don’t want to tell me, I completely get it, we haven’t seen each other in ages, I know that, and you might not feel perfectly comfortable with sharing that stuff with me yet, that’s completely understandable, but I want you to know that if you do want to talk about anything, just get some stuff of your chest.”

“Claire?”

“Yeah?”

“I need to just chill out on my own for a second.”

As a kid, my sister once accidentally killed her first pet – a goldfish – because she insisted on taking it out the water on the hour to give it a ‘kiss’ on its head and then put it back in the water again. That right there told you everything you needed to know about her.

“Oh! Sure, got it!” she said and gave a little pretend salute. “You need your down time. You need your privacy. You’ve been through so much, I’m probably just cramping your style.”

I grabbed her by the shoulders, gave her a firm hug and looked longingly at the door.

“Right! Ok, yeah, you want me to go now. Of course. Makes sense. Off I go then!” she said and left, but not before peeking her head back around the corner to make sure that I knew to call her if I needed a snack or anything.

I collapsed down onto the bed like someone had deflated every last breath of air out of me. My knee, suddenly catching my attention after being ignored for so long, came screeching into awareness. Fuck that hurt. I winced and tried to haul myself back up on my elbows again, scratched around for some painkillers on the bedside table, swallowed some straight and flopped back down again.

Emily Warren.

My first, my only, my secret goddess that I kept tucked in my shirt all those long years, the woman who had played through endless future pretend scenarios: Emily my lover. Emily my wife. Emily the mother of my children. Then back again. Emily my girlfriend. Emily my everything. Perfect, haunting Emily, my Emily, in an open-all-hours supermarket in the same shitty town I had abandoned her in all those years ago.

In my fantasies, her hair was somehow redder. I had forgotten how slight her body was. I guess being up there with all the other meatheads for so long makes you forget just how small a woman can really be. But she was still Emily. Still beautiful. Still fucking hot.

I got off the bed and dashed to the mirror. Examined my face. No wrinkles or anything, but I for sure wasn’t the baby face I used to be. I lifted my shirt and examined my abdomen. I was thicker than I used to be, back then. Bigger, heavier. But the skin seemed stronger somehow.

I took a step back and examined my reflection in full. I was a bit dinged up, sure, but I wasn’t …ugly, right? In fact, more women had paid attention to me since I was put in uniform and sent to fly airships around Mars than I ever had in my entire life. So what was so bad about me that had her dropping everything and running off like that? Why did she tell me to leave her alone? I wanted to cry. Or punch something.

I squared my shoulders and glowered at the pansy ass I saw in the mirror. I had to face facts. I had lost Em a long, long time ago. My father, much as I hate to admit it, had been right all along. I had made a mistake. Thrown away the best thing in my life for a flimsy enamel badge and a fourteen second clip on the regional news station. And now I had nothing.

I pulled back my fist and then, in one swift, brutal I arc I brought it crashing down again onto the bed, silently slamming the pillows. I punched down again, then again, face contorted. Hot tears burnt the bottom of my lashes but I brushed them away with the back of my hand.

You’re already down one leg you stupid motherfucker, don’t make it worse by feeling sorry for yourself.

Angry as hell, I tore my clothes off and threw them aside. A hot, hot shower always got me out of these moods. So hot it burnt. So hot that each pummeling drop became a needle raining down into my skin.

I should have just died out there. But since I didn’t, at least I could fucking be clean. At least, in the white, faceless steam I could forget everything for a while, just wash it all away and come out pink and buff and born again, or as close to it as you can get when you’ve ruined your life as hard as I have.

I went into the bathroom, turned on the tap and let the steam fill the air around my head. I sat on the edge of the bath and tried to think. I had a long road ahead of me. I had to work. I had to get back to gym. Maybe go back to school, I don’t know. Learn something. Make friends again.

But as I sat there, naked on the clammy white porcelain, all I could think of was her. Like I had done almost daily for the last five years, my mind couldn’t help running through those same, delicious pathways I was well familiar with. The memories of her, before I broke her heart. The strange and thrilling new things we had discovered with one another, the things we did to one another, the ways our bodies met all tentative at first, and then with complete trusting enthusiasm. We were fellow explorers mapping out new, hidden sexual galaxies, just her and I, each new horizon better than the last…

Absentmindedly, my hand found its way to my cock. It felt wrong to think of those things now. Back on earth, while I knew that real flesh and blood Emily hated my guts. No matter how indulgent my fantasies up there were, they were always tinged with a faint hope that she might reciprocate, that it was still possible, one day, for them to be real… but the only image I could call back into my mind now was the look of sadness and anger on her face in those harsh supermarket lights, both of us five years older and a lot more cynical than we were in our explorer days.

The shower rained down and the steam filled the room. With a steady hand I stroked and caressed myself, pausing at the sensitive tip, hips leaning into the sensation with one arm balancing against the tiles and eyes shut tight. My cock stiffened quickly, unaffected by the weird torment going on in my mind. But as my hand slid over the shaft again and again, my mind began to clear. I had to get a grip. Stop feeling sorry for myself.

Long ago, I had sworn that I loved her, that making her happy was all I wanted. And fuck, didn’t I still mean it? I stepped into the shower, flinching at the pain radiating out from my knee, but groaning quietly as the warm water poured down onto me, making quick rivers down my thighs. I didn’t even know what it felt like to jack off unless it meant thinking of her. Emily was bound up forever in my brain sex circuitry. What was hot was Emily, what was Emily was hot, end of story.

Soon the hot water had soothed my muscles and my cock jerked in my hand, spurting a few thick ropes of cum onto my hand which then blurred away into the water. My knuckles went white against the tiles; my muscles clenched over my shoulders. I moaned and shuddered silently, alone in that hot cloud of steam.

I knew what I had to do.

If it took me the rest of my life, I would make it up to her. My body missed hers. My body missed fucking hers. But more than that, something deep inside me ached for her. Something that even I wasn’t willing to give up on just yet.