“YOU ARE ALLOWED to take me out in New York, you know.” Rylin pulled aside the curtain of their enclosed private deck to gaze at the view.
“Where’s the fun in that?” Cord laughed, seeming unconcerned.
They were on the evening cruise of the Skyspear: the most luxurious, and most famous, of the space tourism vessels now in operation. Though this hardly counted as space, Cord insisted. They would remain at an altitude of three hundred kilometers the entire time, never leaving the comforting band of Earth’s low orbit.
“I mean, you don’t have to always be making big romantic gestures with me,” Rylin insisted. Last year he’d whisked her off to Paris, and now this?
“Maybe I like big romantic gestures,” Cord replied.
“I know. But next weekend, let’s cook tacos and watch a holo. Something more . . . low-key,” she finished, and smiled. “I guess I feel silly being on a flight to nowhere.”
They had taken off from New York a few minutes ago, in the late afternoon, and would land back in New York just two hours after departure, having circumnavigated the entire globe. They had already technically reached orbit, which meant that they weren’t burning any more fuel. The Skyspear worked like a high-speed satellite, propelled by the slingshot effect of Earth’s gravity.
Their “viewing suite,” one of several dozen in first class, was essentially a private living room, containing a stone-colored couch and a pair of armchairs. No bed, Rylin had noted right away, in a confusing combination of relief and disappointment.
The real showstopper was the flexiglass that lined most of the floor and one entire wall. Rylin could scarcely look away. It was heart-stopping but exhilarating, watching the view unfurl beneath them. The entire world felt like a secret, wild and full of promise, revealing itself only to her.
On the edge of the glittering patchwork quilt, a golden crescent of sun just tipped over the planet’s curve. That was one of the highlights of this evening cruise: that they would fly straight into the dawn and through to the other side. Rylin wished she’d brought her vid-cam.
“This isn’t about the destination, Rylin. It’s about the journey.” Cord came to stand behind her, wrapping his arms around her and resting his chin on her shoulder.
But Rylin felt as if most of her life had been about the journey, rather than the destination. Now she finally had a sense of purpose, and she didn’t want to make any moves unless they were in the right direction. She didn’t need to slow down and enjoy the ride. She wanted to get where she was going, and then enjoy being there.
“Besides, I wanted to do something special tonight. Isn’t it nice, being so far from New York?” Cord gestured down to the city, which was already a tiny, pulsing firefly receding behind them. “Really puts things in perspective.”
“The world does look small from up here,” she agreed.
“The world is small.”
“Maybe to you!” Rylin spun around, her breath catching at how close Cord was. Her blood felt as if it had rushed to her fingertips, her lips. “To me, it’s enormous.”
“For now. It’s my goal to change that.”
Rylin hesitated. She knew she should probably say something, point out that Cord was trying to throw money at their relationship again, just as he had the last time. But she didn’t want to ruin the moment. She liked Cord for Cord, not for the expensive things that came along with dating him.
“You have that wrinkled-nose, lost-in-thought look.” Cord smiled. “Whatever it is, you don’t have to take it so seriously.”
“Maybe you don’t take things seriously enough.” Rylin meant it as a joke, but her delivery wasn’t quite right. Cord looked hurt.
“I take you seriously,” he countered.
“Sorry.” Rylin glanced back down at the view, still pensive. “I wish my mom were here. She would have loved to see this.”
“Really?” Cord sounded skeptical, as if he couldn’t picture Rylin’s mom up here—which he probably couldn’t, she realized. He had never known her mom as anything except the maid.
She tried not to sound defensive. “She loved adventures. She was the one who always dreamed of getting to see Paris.”
Cord seemed to have nothing to say to that. He never did, Rylin thought in chagrin, not when the conversation got heavy like this. For someone who’d suffered plenty of losses of his own, he wasn’t very good at talking about them.
He settled down on the couch, letting her study the view in silence. Eventually Rylin came to sit next to him, leaning her head on his shoulder. “Tell me everything I missed this past year,” she demanded.
“Where should I begin?”
“At the beginning,” Rylin teased, and Cord smiled.
“Fair enough. I guess the first story is what happened to Brice on the way to Dubai. . . .”
Rylin tipped her head back, listening to Cord’s smattering of anecdotes from the past year: the trip he and Brice took to New Zealand, the time his cousins came to visit from Rio and overstayed their welcome, the prank Cord pulled on his friend Joaquin. She listened, and yet she didn’t actually care that she had missed any of these things.
Cord had a tendency to focus on the big, epic moments, things like this Skyspear cruise. But a relationship wasn’t made or broken on the dramatic stories. It was built the rest of the time, during the drowsy late-night conversations, the laughter over a bag of pretzels, the quiet study sessions after class. That was what Rylin loved.
She realized that Cord had finished talking, and was looking at her in a way that brought color to her cheeks. “I’ve missed you, Myers,” he said. “This might sound weird, but I missed having you to talk to more than anything else. There were a lot of things that I only talked about with you.”
Rylin reached for his hand. She knew what he meant—that underneath the romance, they had also been friends. “I missed talking to you too.” She really had missed him, she thought, even when she was with Hiral.
She wondered how Hiral was doing right now. Maybe his floating city was big enough to be visible from this high up.
“Look.” Cord nudged her gaze toward the window, where golden flames licked above the horizon.
Rylin gasped. They were flying directly into the sunrise.
Banners of fire spun out into the darkness. It was dazzling, blinding; Rylin wanted to tear her eyes away but she couldn’t, because there it was, the sun, the closest star within reach. Her whole being felt flooded with a rush of glorious lightness. To see the face of the sun, she realized, was a lot like falling in love.
“You know,” Cord said with a mischievous smile, “the natural state of low orbit is actually zero-g. The gravity in this thing is optional.”
“Is it?” Rylin felt a delicious shiver trail down her spine. She could guess where this was going. “I’ve never kissed anyone in zero-g.”
“Neither have I, but there’s a first time for everything.” Cord reached for the touch panel on the wall and tapped the gravity controls to off.
Rylin didn’t realize how tightly she’d been clenching the armrest until the gravity had melted away, and she was drifting upward. She quickly let go. How ridiculous of her to be nervous; this wasn’t exactly her first time with Cord. But she couldn’t help the way she felt.
She floated upward, her hair waving and floating about her in a dark cloud, as if lifted by her heartbeats. Cord had maneuvered himself to her side; he stretched out his hand, reaching for her, and when her fingers laced with his he pulled her to his chest.
They were fumbling and awkward at first, getting used to the lack of gravity. When she lifted Cord’s shirt over his head and tried to toss it aside, it didn’t stay put the way it would have normally, but kept hovering alongside them like a troublesome gnat. Rylin swatted at it. Suddenly she was laughing, and Cord was laughing too; and she knew with an unshakable certainty that this was right.
And then they were no longer giggling, because their mouths were pressed together, all the awkwardness between them dissolved. Rylin wondered why she had ever doubted them. How could she when her skin was on fire, when Cord’s skin was her skin and they were tangled like this, hot and slow and elemental all at once?
Their ship kept on orbiting farther into the sunrise, the dawn bathing their bodies in a warm golden glow.