Page 16 of Lunar Blackout

He removes my glove from my right hand, and interlocks his fingers with mine. A blanket of relief falls over me. I’m still anxious, but nowhere near as catastrophic as I was moments ago.

“Listen to me, we are fine, we are going to land, we just need to know where. We both know how to fly this thing like it’s a normal aeroplane. Whatever airport we land at will just be like turning up to a Smart car convention in an Aston Martin, everyone will want to be us, and we’ll be all over the local social media groups.”

He gives my hand a squeeze, my heart is swelling for this man, how much he has changed in the last few weeks, how much I need him to know that—“I love you.”

I blurt it out, not even realising I’ve said it. Iolo’s face looks taken back, but before he can say anything, as per usual, we are interrupted by Comms. “This is Ground Control, we have located a suitable redirection and have installed a new flight path into the system. You’ll continue flying west, and will now be landing at fifty degrees twenty six minutes and twenty seconds north, by zero zero four degrees, fifty nine minutes and forty three seconds west.”

“Where exactly is that, Control?” Iolo asks. Even he sounds more relieved now a landing strip has been secured.

I tighten my grip around his hand. “Newquay airport,” I say. I may not know France, but I know the coordinates for every airstrip across all of the British nations, crown dependencies, and Ireland for good measure too. I really need to add France to that list.

***

The landing goes spectacularly well, and Iolo is amazing. He took control when I couldn’t, he flew us to safety, he didn’t even falter for a second. And I told him that I love him. FUCK. Definitely not the romantic declaration I had hoped to do, and definitely too early since his response has been to ignore the statement.

We’ve been on the tarmac for about an hour. UBNSA rushed over some technicians from the Cornish Space Operation, which essentially means their entire organisation is on the runway, since they are the smallest of the space programs in the UBN, and I can count their entire staff roll on two hands.

There are of course news crews already there as we land, and they capture the moment the Cornish team is able to open the hatch to the Spitfire, and Iolo and I descend the inflatable slide from the hatch, triumphantly and to applause coming from every direction.

Gravity is a bitch after a week of floating, my knees are already unused to the weight of my body pressing down onto my legs, and they buckle as I take my first step. But before anyone notices, Iolo holds my arm to steady me. Even now he’s saving the day. He gives me a soft smile that stops the spiral in my head about what I said. Even if he doesn’t love me yet, I am certain it is only a matter of time.

Hilariously, we have to walk through the airport to get to the meeting room where they need us to wait. A few pedestrians stop us and ask for photos. One man named Owen is completely baffled when he finds out that space travel is real—he thought it was just in TV and films. Thankfully, he knew the Earth was round.

We arrive at the small room on the other side of the airport and take a seat. A kind woman says she’ll fetch us both a tea, and suddenly we are alone. I have no idea how to talk to Iolo after such a big emotional declaration, made when I thought we were going to die.

ELEVEN

IOLO

“I love you.”

That’s what Winston said. Surely I didn’t mishear him in that moment? I was reassuring him that everything would be okay, like he did for me during the simulation, and he declared his love for me.

“Look,” he says, his large muscly body hunched over as he sits on a chair at the meeting table, making himself as small as he possibly can. “About what I said—”

“I get it, your mind was spiralling, you thought we were about to die, and we say weird shit in those moments, you don’t have to worry.” I try to sound confident, but instead an aura of sadness is projected through my voice. I wish what he’d said was real.

He just looks at me, no, he looks into my soul, his large blue eyes piercing into me. My mind gets lost in them, and they remind me of our view of Earth after our glorious date when we could see the entire planet over the horizon of the Moon.

“I guess this is where you tell me you regret what we did,” Winston says, so quietly I almost don’t catch it, but I do, and without a moment’s hesitation I sit myself down in the chair next to him.

“Never. That was the best first date of my life. Well, second. Are we classing the cocktail bar as our first?”

“No, I don’t want Justin anywhere near our first date,” he says with a sad smile on his lips.

“Also, who else can say that they ate chocolate-covered freeze-dried strawberries and had the hottest sex possible while looking down at the dark side of the Moon?”

I hadn’t even heard the whirr of the door opening, so I worry that the poor old lady just walked in on us talking about our incredible intimate moment in orbit of the Moon, but when I look up, it’s not the older woman I see, but my sister.

Her mouth moves from a gawp to an evil smirk, the type of evil smirk you only ever see on an older sister. In her hands are two cocktails, clearly from the bar in the foyer of the airport. It has been a tradition since I first went into space that the first thing she would do is bring me a “cosmic-politan” as we call it. She stands there and downs her drink in one smooth swoop. She moves as if she’s about to walk over to me, thinks about it and then downs my cocktail too.

“Hey!” Protest leaving my lips. “What about tradition? I needed that drink!”

“Not as much as I needed it after hearing my brother got railed by this hunk of a man overlooking the dark side of the Moon! We shall talk about the professional implications of this later.”

“How do you know your brother didn’t rail me?”

OH MY GOD, the mischief in his eyes right now is intoxicating, his love declaration may have been his mind in a panic moments before death, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t in love with Winston. Once I feel he has actually fallen for me, I will tell him, but right now we are just starting to date, so it would be weird of me to admit I have been in love with him for ten years.