That thought is so incredibly beautiful to me. He’s like a flower in my chest, my heart blooming anew, some dead and decrepit thing, and he’s blasting life into me with every word he speaks.
“I sometimes think of what it would be like to drown in the seas of Europa. To be swept away in a storm on Jupiter.” His wistfulness drops back to bashfulness. “I know it’s silly.”
“I don’t think it’s silly.” Some magnetic draw pulls my fingers a little wider, splays them just out of reach of his. What I’d give to feel the slightest brush of his finger, half an inch away.
“I know you could never get that far out in space anyway. I know it’s all toxic air and impossible pressures and radiation and solar storms and death in every breath. But it feels sad that no one witnesses it. It’s the most gorgeous thing, the serenity and the violence in balance. Like the most beautiful symphony. How can it be just playing out there, and no one ever hears it? It’s excruciating in its sadness.”
“I think you’re incredibly beautiful.”
His gaze cuts across to me, and I don’t think either of us can believe I just said that. His lips fall open the slightest touch, and they’re gorgeous, and he’s gorgeous, and I’ve never wanted anything as much in my whole life as I want him.
His little finger stretches out, the tiniest movement, and it’s like a live wire when his skin brushes mine.
This is the part where I tell him I adore him. The part where I tell him he’s changing my life, he’s changingme. That he’s made me feel things I thought I’d become incapable of feeling. That he’s sticking this filthy, painful humanity back inside me, and I hate it, but I crave it when it comes from him. That every time he’s close to me, it hurts.
That I’d give anything to know what he’s thinking right now…
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
GOOD AUGUST
IS THINKING…
Kiss me. Kiss me.
Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me.
Kiss me!
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
BAD AUGUST
UNFORTUNATELY CANNOT READ MINDS
Iwant to kiss him more than I want the sun to rise tomorrow. August and all his beautiful ideas about space. I need to play this off somehow.
“I bet you cry when you think about rovers too,” I joke.
I love the laugh it pulls from him, even if he looks a little sad when he turns his eyes back down to the city lights. “I don’t know about cry. But I think about them more than I probably should. It must be so lonely up there on Mars.”
I laugh too, softly. “They’re not sentient, you know?”
“I know, but… their little tracks in the dirt. The thought of their solar panels thickening with dust. Then one day, after all that work they’ve done for us, their little lights go out, and it’s just… silence. Forever. And they sit there. And our lives go on. And we forget about them. And they just sit there.”
Fucking hell. He has my heart in a vise. “You’re killing me.” I say it so it sounds like it’s in jest. Another lie.
Another laugh. “Sorry. I’m being morbid.”
“Don’t be sorry. You make me remember all the reasons I got into this. I used to see it all the way you do now. That it was this big, majestic secret. And I think I still do, deep down. I just… Iwent a little too deep. A lot too deep. And I lost sight of the big picture. It’s been nice to be reminded.”
His head tilts towards me, a distinct twinkle in his eyes. A spark of… mischief? “When was the last time you just… had some fun?”
“Me?”Stupid question. Who else but me?“A long time.” Literally years. Years and years. Years of maths and failure and death.
His finger slips away from mine when he pulls his legs in close and swivels around to face me. “Listen. I don’t want you to go.”
I try to act as though those words don’t mean the entire universe to me by giving a shrug. “We have to sleep sometime.”
