Zero Hour, Nine A.M.

Three

"How are you holding up?" Brandon asks me later, when we've walked back down the hall to my room. He's loosened his tie and rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt, and I've got my hand looped through the crook of his arm, so my fingers are resting on the warmth of his forearm. It's a touch just for the sake of touching; I'm now carrying my uncomfortable heels and don't need the physical support.

I don't bother lying to him when I answer his question; he'd see through it anyway.

"I just keep thinking about yesterday, and watching the planet disappear behind that sealed hatch door. In the little glass window, the whole Earth looked like nothing more than a dandelion. Like all the thousands of ships taking off in every direction were just tiny seed pods being scattered on the wind. Except there isn't a wind. There's just the endless vacuum and darkness." I bite my bottom lip: it's chapped from the low humidity in the ship's air. "This is supposed to be our new home, but it feels like a trap. And most of the time, I'm only barely hanging on."

"I'm sorry," he murmurs, concern forming a crease between his dark eyebrows. I reach up and smooth it away with my fingertips, letting them trail down the side of his face to the sharp line of his jaw.

"Don't be," I say, forcing myself to drop my hand away from him, "you're one of the only things making any of this bearable."

The blue in his eyes seems to darken, becoming the sea before a storm. The artificial gravity system seems to suddenly be in overdrive, pulling my stomach to the floor and making my limbs so, so heavy.

"You can't say things like that to me, Gretchen."

I frown and take a tiny step back. "Why not?"

"Because it makes me want to do things like this," he says, staring at my mouth for a long second before moving forward, cupping my jaw between his warm, paint-stained hands, and leaning in.

There's a long moment where I can feel his warm breath across my lips, smell the clean soap-and-ink scent of his skin. He's giving me a chance to decide if this is what I want, but I don't need it.

I shift the last inch and press myself against him. His mouth feels soft and sweet and familiar somehow, as if dreaming about something for years can make it a part of you, knit the idea of it deep in your bones.

I lean back just enough to breathe, his fingers tangled in my hair, our foreheads touching.

"What is happening?" I'm not even sure what I mean. Our lives, our future, our friendship, our...whatever this is. I want to giggle and scream, scratch at my skin and rip this horrible dress into shreds.

Apparently, stability is something reserved for people who have ground beneath their feet.

"I don't know," he answers, searching my face as if the answer might be hidden there. "Life?"

I laugh softly against his lips. "Life in space. Maybe your mom was actually right about that."

Brandon smiles and kisses me again.

*******

We're lying in my bed and I've turned the screen on in the ceiling to show us a live view of outside the ship. Darkness freckled with tiny shining stars, beautiful and cold, far too distant to feel their warmth.

"Is this just because I'm now the only available human girl in the galaxy?" I ask, running my fingers through the thick, dark waves of Brandon's hair.

He chuckles and tightens his arms around me.

"You were always the only available girl for me. I can't see anyone else."

This seems completely unreasonable.

"But you were always so distant and proper-"

"My home was your home. So I didn't want to make you feel uncomfortable in what was supposed to be your safe space."

"And now..."

"Now I can't keep waiting for my life to start, because this is it. This ship, hurtling through space for years and decades...this is the only life I'll ever know. So, while I still don't want to make you uncomfortable, I decided it was time that I had to be honest about how I felt, in case you felt the same."

I laugh, tracing the invisible lines between the freckles on his forearms. I've always pictured imaginary constellations there, a bear and a heart and a shooting star. It feels surreal to be allowed to draw them for real, feel the heat of his smooth skin beneath my sensitive fingertips.

"I do. I always have."

His chest rumbles beneath my ear when he speaks.

"I like that word. Always."

Our science teacher, Mr. Booth, always liked to lecture that those attempting to flee the planet's problems by taking to space were jumping from a proverbial frying pan into a fire. "Nature abhors a vacuum," he'd say, "and that's all space is. A vacuum, lifeless and cold and hated by everything else in the cosmos."

Everyone assumed he was crazy; he voluntarily stayed on Earth, so he's probably dead from smoke inhalation by now.

Even so, those words bounce around my brain more often than I'd like. Nature abhors a vacuum.

So I've felt like it's only natural that I hate being here.

But now, for the first time since before my parent's accident, my heart's so full that I can barely breathe. Like it's so swollen that it's occupying every centimeter of my chest, nearly bursting with happiness.

And yet I'm even more terrified than ever before, and I can't quite figure out why.

The screen above us stays black and silent, offering no answers; Brandon eventually dozes off, his fingers twitching in his sleep.

It takes a long time, but I eventually fall asleep listening to the quiet whir of the air filtration system and the rhythmic thudding of Brandon's heart.