“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.
LEDA
LEDA COULDN’T STOP thinking about Watt.
It was the strangest thing, but her anger toward him was deflating. It felt like an artifact left over from long ago; like something that belonged to a harder, more bitter Leda, the Leda who was still feuding with her parents. Who had never visited Eris’s grave.
Leda no longer believed that Watt was some kind of human trigger for the darkest side of her. Not anymore. Maybe because she had confronted her darkness—had looked it squarely in the face and wrestled it away—and now there was nothing left for her to fear.
She wanted to talk to Watt, to tell him that she had confronted her dad about his affair with Eris’s mom. That her family was reforging itself into something new and whole again. That if there was hope for her family, then maybe there was hope for Leda too.
She wanted to recount it all to Watt, to share her victories and her defeats with him—because unless he knew about them, none of it felt quite real.
At some point Leda had come to rely on Watt, and she couldn’t bear the thought of losing him again.
And so Friday night, the day before the inauguration ball, Leda decided to ping him. But Watt didn’t pick up. He didn’t answer her flickers either.
When Leda rang the doorbell to his apartment, Watt’s mom answered. She blinked, unable to mask her surprise. “Hi, Leda. I’m afraid that Watzahn isn’t here.”
Leda stuffed her hands into her pockets, surprised that Watt’s mom remembered her. She felt suddenly nervous. “Do you know where he is?”
“I’m not sure,” Shirin admitted. “I’ll let him know you stopped by.”
As she turned away, Leda remembered something Watt had told her once—that when he felt truly upset, there was one place he liked to go, to be alone. She logged on to her contacts to find the address and let their embedded computer calculate the fastest route. Then Leda set off, following the directions overlaid onto her vision.
The Game Preserve was an eclectic spot a few floors upTower. It was set up like an old-timey arcade, with a bright tile floor and neon tube lights snaking along the ceiling. Nostalgic rock music blasted through the speakers. The entire space was crowded with a haphazard collection of old vid-game consoles, shooter games and space-invader games and even the kind where metallic claws grabbed at stuffed-animal prizes. Along the far wall were the more expensive holo-suites: the small rooms you could rent out, complete with headsets and haptic gloves, for one-on-one virtual reality. Leda saw a few gray-haired men sitting over coffees, playing 3-D chess on a touch-board.
She swerved down one aisle and then the next, knowing precisely what she was looking for. When she found it, she smiled in involuntary relief.
Watt was ensconced in a plastifoam gaming console shaped like an old wooden pirate ship, complete with the signature skull-and-crossbones insignia. He leaned over the ship’s studded wheel, furiously tapping a serious of commands, as the holo-screen before him depicted a row of enemy cannons. Leda was amused to see that Watt’s avatar was a woman with long red hair, in a very historically inaccurate dress and high boots.
“Playing as the pirate queen, I see,” she remarked, sliding onto the seat next to him.
Watt dropped the controls in shock. “Grace O’Malley has the best weapons,” he croaked after a moment. “It’s all about strategy.”
He stared at her curiously, almost warily. The lights of the game played over his face, making it seem as though he were underwater. “How did you know I was here?”
“You told me last year that Armada was your favorite game,” Leda reminded him.
Watt didn’t look so good. He was wearing ratty jeans and an old sweatshirt, but it was more than that. There was something dispirited about him, as if he were a muted, crushed version of himself.