“Was that the space station?” I felt a little stunned. People had done that, had created something capable of soaring through space. There werepeopleup there, living and breathing and going about their lives, and we could look directly at them from thousands of miles away.
Cora readjusted the telescope. “Fast, right? It orbits Earth every ninety minutes.” She motioned Ethan up.
“Pretty fucking cool,” he murmured, and neither of the adults said anything about language, just smiled.
“Here.” Cora tweaked the view again. “Now look.”
I looked back through the eyepiece and sucked in a breath.
Now came a very different kind of awe, the kind created by witnessing something in nature so much larger than yourself. Jupiter. Dusty brown, the color of sand both pale and dark, striations circling the planet. A wholeplanet, something I could see simply by the effects of curved glass and mirrors. It made my breath shorten, even as my chest felt overwhelmed by air.
I could have stared at it forever, but I moved aside so Ethan could look, and Dad. Then Cora adjusted the telescope again so we could see Saturn, an even more foreign planet with its great rings.
“It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?” Dad said. There was a soft yearning in his voice, an earnestness that came when he talked about the vastness of space or history. Like he was an explorer who knew he would never reach the other side of his journey.
I leaned my shoulder into his. “It really is.”
An hour later, Ethan and I dropped Dad off at his apartment, then returned to Golden Doors. We parked in Ethan’s usual spot, but instead of heading up the porch stairs, I tilted my gaze toward the stars, toward all those far-off balls of gas and plasma. Energy whirled inside me, a galaxy of motion, like I too hurtled through space on an unending mission. I turned to Ethan. “Wanna go swimming?”
Ethan looked at me for a long moment, then a smile burst out of him. “Heck yeah, I do.”
We went down to the beach. The surf was rough and loud, waves taller and more forceful than usual. I drank it in, the way the night was unending here, the way we were two minuscule specks in a world of blue, the way anyone in any time could havestood on an empty shore and been overwhelmed by the crash of the waves and the diamond sprinkle of stars.
“Can you recognize the planets?” Ethan leaned back his head.
“Sometimes,” I said. “There’s not so many during summer nights, though. More in the mornings, and more in the winter. But I know some constellations. There’s the Tree, see? Those three bright stars in a row, with the fan of faint stars at the top? That’s what the Arborids are named after, because it looks like the meteors are coming from the Arbor constellation.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.” He looked out at the rippling black water, at the pinpricks of light hanging above. “I’ve always thought the sea and sky are similar. They’re both so wild. Dark and vast and cold and amazing.” He nodded into the distance. “When I’m at sea, I can…I don’t know,feelhow connected the two of them are.”
I nodded. “Cora told me when NASA looks for life on other worlds, they talk to marine scientists. Since the likeliest place for life would be a water world, and who best knows how to look for life in water? And Dad told me one of the space shuttles was named after a famous British explorer’s ship.”
“TheChallenger?”
“Oh! TheEndeavour, actually. James Cook?”
He laughed. “I guess there’s a few. TheChallengerdid the first global marine research expedition.”
“I like it.” My gaze drifted to the ocean, the white-edged waves, the streak of moonlight. “The synchronicity of the two. Even the articles I’ve been reading use nautical references for space. ‘The cosmic sea’ and so on.”
“They go together,” Ethan said. “And even though they’re wildly different, they’re also wildly alike.” Ethan gazed at the sky, the water, then me. “Jordan…”
“Yes?”
“Can I kiss you?”
He’d never asked before; asking made it feel more serious, intentional rather than accidental. A contract we’d agreed to. I couldn’t tell myself,Whoops, just slipped up, overcome by hormonal longing.This made it 100 percent my fault. I’d looked at the choppy waters, said fuck it, and dived in.
But oh, I wanted to kiss him. Desire slid over me like a silken web, trailing shivers over my shoulder and down my back. Like a whisper at the ear, a kiss on the neck. Ethan looked at me with his sure, strong gaze, not hiding how much he wanted this, his desire and intent clear.
And I had never been very good at saying no to things I wanted. “Yes.”
He slid his hand up my neck, his fingers finding their way through my hair, tugging my head gently back as he touched his lips to mine. I pushed myself closer, my hands over his shoulders, rising on tiptoe, holding him tight.
Oh no.
I had fallen head over heels for Ethan Barbanel.
Fifteen
