Earth Mars Love (The Marsikons)

Chapter 40

Regina knew she was a coward when she'd told Kos that she needed to go to the meeting with Boss, instead of driving with everyone to the airport. But she just couldn't do it. Stand there and pretend that everything is fine, and her heart wasn't dying thousands of times when Marcus acts like she doesn't exist. So she called the Boss, and arranged the meeting herself to have an excuse to leave. Besides, she wanted to ask her to move Regina to Washington, which in the end she'd got.

After that she flew to LA on a regular flight, to pack her things and go back to DC. Near her house, she saw still standing Kia Soul. The bent door was glaring at her in mockery, a reminder of the adventures and adventurers it had transported.

Now this car is as lonely as me.

She had found the keys inside, and laughed bitterly. She was standing with opened doors and keys inside, and no one even touched her. Ridiculous. Either no one cared to steal such a car, or everyone had heard rumors about her watching this block, where no one dared to step a foot.

She changed the door in the nearest body shop, filled the backseat and trunk with her remaining clothes and other belongings, and drove to Washington repeating her road trip with Marsikons.

In such a short period they had come a long way, literally and figuratively. Alone it was harder to move at the same pace, and in some places, she stopped for a longer time. In the end, she made it in five days to Washington. She wasn't due to her work for another few days, and she let herself make longer stops and time to walk around cities and think about everything that was going on in her life.

Bittersweet emotions filled her while she remembered how their trip went. It's ups and downs. She laughed through tears when she thought about how she almost killed Marcus in the desert, or how he kissed her for the first time, or how he drank coffee and she saw another layer of his personality. She was mournful for so little time spent together, but she tried to be optimistic and looked forward to the new life with her family by her side, and being back to work.

She told herself, she did the right thing, letting Marcus go. She saved him from himself, from doing the worst possible mistake in his life. It would be so wrong and selfish to let him choose her instead of the whole planet, and she couldn't do that to him. She loved him too much to let him go. She hoped he would fulfill his destiny when Mars would be restored and Marsikons could find peace with Martians and live amicably on the renewed planet.

Her optimism stayed with her through her workdays and lazy weekends, but despite being always occupied with something, and wrapped up in the love of her family, after a couple of weeks it started to wane. It was hard to get up in the early morning, and she had difficulties falling asleep. She tried to plaster a smile on her face for everyone's sake, but inside her soul she was restless.

She kept thinking if she'd made the right decision of letting Marcus go. She felt forlorn and forgotten. If not for her Soul, who was her new best friend. She was the tie to her lost love, and she often imagined Marcus sitting in the passenger seat, telling him how her day went or what nightmares had plagued her dreams.

Escalade was sitting on a curb near the parent's home, waiting when his heart would be changed to eat N-fuel instead of gas. And Soul helped her to fight the loneliness.

***

Regina was sitting in the living room of her parent's house after her shift in ROTOR, meticulously studying her manicure. Her nails were painted in brick red, and the two of them had tiny painted craters. Like the landscape of Mars. It was her sister's perfect artwork. She insisted on doing her nails, and she gave her the freedom to draw there anything she wanted. But when she saw what exactly Clare had drawn, she felt a lump in her throat. Clare offered to redo her nails, afraid that it was too much, but Regina loved it.