Chapter Thirteen
Mara
Morning sickness has passed. Pregnancy still not showing.
And I am dressed, fed, and ready for work a full twenty-five minutes early, which has never once happened in my entire professional life.
I’d like to say it’s because I’m a dedicated engineer with a demanding contract. It’s not. It’s because Cayzor of Eighteen is going to be standing in that lobby when I come down. And I’ve become a woman who does her hair for a short walk to work. I look at myself in the little mirror. The hair will survive approximately eleven minutes of a Timbur morning and then the humidity will take it and I will look exactly the way I always look, which isfine, which is normal, which is a woman going to a job.
“You’re being ridiculous,” I tell myself.
I look around. Why do we have to meet in the lobby? It’s so public. Couldn’t we just start meeting up here, in the apartment instead? That’s the question. Because that male gets to thehousing block at some absurd hour andstands there, in a public lobby, near the lift bank like a very large, very patient statue, while techs and hall staff give him a wide berth and pretend they aren’t looking at him.
It is genuinely the best part of my day. The other best part is when he picks me up at the end of my shift, somehow always knowing which panel I’m on now.
But it’stwelve minutes of walking, most of which is spent on the path where you have to go single file because the vegetation’s eating it, and I get maybe six actual minutes of conversation out of the whole thing.
But…if I were to ask him if he wanted to instead meet up here every morning, then that same male would be sitting at my table. In my apartment. For twenty minutes, half an hour, before either of us has to be anywhere. Every single morning.
I smile wide.
That would be lovely. I can imagine him here, with me, each morning. I could make him something. I’ve still got the good coffee and I’ve customized the dispenser enough now that I could probably manage something with eggs, if he wanted to try out more human food. I want to watch him eat human breakfast the way I watched him eat lasagna, with that careful, considering expression, like every bite is a report he’s filing.
I take a deep breath. This morning I’m going to be bold and ask him up to my apartment.
Then I glance out my window and see the entire Fever Brothers crew, as well as some of the brides, walking together to the mine, from the public transport. Hmm, that’s odd. Aren’t they early?
Ever since that dinner at the compound, the Fever Brothers and their brides have become super friendly. I adore them. All of them. And I see them everywhere nowadays. I meaneverywhere.
Roxy turns up on whatever level I’m working, twice a day, minimum, always with a perfectly good lab reason and never in any particular hurry to leave. Leah has apparently developed an urgent maintenance interest in our corridor and I have run into her out there many times. Jana spots me the moment I walk into the cafeteria and waves me past the entire line like I’m visiting royalty.
Naomi was near the transport platform yesterday, when Andrew and I were working there, which was odd because Naomi does not work at the transport platform. Naomi is anartist.
And the miners, beings I have never exchanged a word with until now nod at me in the lift. I feel I’m getting to know the entire Fever Brother’s crew, which is nice. In fact, I feel proud of the fact that I can now combine a face with a name.
There’sa knock on my door.
I gasp with surprise and rush for the door. Did Cayzor decide to come up here, without being asked? I’m across the room in about four steps and I pull the door open, grinning like an idiot.
It’s Andrew.
Oh.
He’s got his tablet under his arm and his coffee in his hand, and he watches my face fall. “Huh. You thought I was him. Didn’t you.”
“What? No.” I step back to let him in, which he’s already doing. “I thought you were… nobody. I was just…good morning.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Goodmorning, Andrew.”
“Morning.” He drops into my chair, the good one, and takes a long drink of his coffee, and looks around my apartment. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with that Fever Brother.”
I pour myself another cup of coffee. “Of course I am. He’s helping with the audit.”
“Sure. And dinner at his family’s compound was also the audit.”
“That was…” I busy myself with the coffee press. “That was me networking, like you’re always telling me I should do. And I finally did and you don’t like it? I’m confused.”
