But this isn’t a dream. Rooney is really here, and we need to work together. There wasn’t enough preparation in the world that I could’ve done to ready myself to ever see Rooney again.
It’s not like she’s going to require hand-holding every single day. I shake off my poor choice of words. There will be no hand-holding, obviously. Rooney will spend time with other teams in the agency, so it won’t be a twenty-four/seven situation. I’ll simply provide information about the mission. Answer questions. Offer more space facts. Ensure that this program is a success and get a promotion. Rooney has spent six months existing in my head. I can spend twelve months with her in real life. Then she’ll leave.
It’s going to be fine. This year is going to fly by.
Chapter 13
ROONEY
This is going to be the longest year of my life. I already thought it was going to feel like forever trying to get creatively unblocked. Now this.
I laugh so I don’t have an emotional breakdown. No. I am completely and totally fine.
“Definitely. The problems follow wherever we go,” I respond to Jack, who’s holding a baby weed between his fingers. I could sketch those hands from memory. I’ll never be able to get the thought of him playing bass out of my head. With those eyes. With that voice. With those fingers.
“Rooney!” Talia calls for me. I snap out of my thoughts and stand. “Jacksonis going to take you on a tour. I’m heading back to the gallery, but text me later. We have a lot to catch up on.”
I haven’t even had a chance to freak out to her about this—seeing Jack again, him being here of all places. I plaster a smile on my face and nod.
“If there’s anything else you need, please let us know,” Kenneth tells us. “Jackson, we’ll let you take it from here.”
Kenneth, Margie, and Nick walk with Talia out of the yard, leaving Jack and me behind. Just the two of us alone together.
“This way,” Jack says, pointing to a side gate in the chain-link fence.
“Great. Thanks, Jack,” I say with one eyebrow raised. “Or should I call you Jackson?”
He lets me exit the yard first. “Jackson is my full name. It’s what colleagues call me. But you already know me as Jack, so that’s probably fine.”
I nod. “It won’t be weird that I’m the only one calling you by your nickname?”
Jack wrinkles his nose. “I think it would be weirder if you called me Jackson.”
“Fine. And true. How about this? I become the offbeat anonymous artist who gives nicknames to everyone. That way you don’t stick out.” I nervously laugh to myself as Jack continues marching forward.
We begin crossing the campus to start the tour at what Jack explains to me is the Space Flight Operations Facility. Large buildings surround us. JPL, short for Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is practically its own little city within La Cañada Flintridge, though most people credit Pasadena as being JPL’s home, Jack explained. “It’s a whole thing,” he said with a shrug.
As we walk, my mind races with questions but nothing comes out. It feels like running into an auntie you haven’t seen since you accidentally broke her porcelain vase when you were thirteen years old but still to this day act like it never happened.
“Jack,” I finally say.
“Yes, Ms. Gao?” he says courteously. “Or Red String Girl? Which do you prefer?”
I make a face. “With you? Neither. Just like I know you as Jack, you know me as Rooney.”
“Rooney” is all he says. It’s been six months since I last heard my name on his lips, and after all this time, it still sounds sweet.
I smile. “That’s better.”
“It’s you. I can’t believe it,” he adds. Jack’s posture loosens, the muscles in his face relaxing.
“It’s me. Glad you remember,” I say. Honestly, it’s a relief to know he’s as shocked as I am.
“I knew it was Roo-something, so I took a wild guess,” he says clumsily like he’s trying to make a joke.
“You’re actually spot-on. My nameisRooney Something. Good memory, but I don’t remember telling you my middle name,” I say with a smirk.
Jack’s eyebrows pop up. “Yeah, and my middle name is N slash A for Non-Applicable.”
