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“A man who loves to cook but doesn’t love to clean will always find his counterbalance.” I hand Chris the last freshly washed, wet plate for him to dry. “It’s one of those ‘for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction’ things.”
His chuckle is as close to the real one as I’ve heard since Boreth fractured his sense of time — and sense of humor.
Am I selfish to miss when he was haunted by things like losing a member of a landing party or a security officer underestimating an enemy? Those wounds could be soothed. Not like this, haunted by himself, the ghost of Christopher Future shaking chains of fate that may never entrap Christopher Present except Christopher Past believes them to be a sort of destiny.
Destiny is for romantics.
And, yes, Chris is a romantic. But counterbalance isn’t just for wet dishes and dry towels, gleaming cutlery and scrubbed serving pieces.
“Chris,” my fingertips, wrinkly from so much water, rest on his hand as he dries the dish and lowers it onto the stack he started earlier, before we were called to the bridge for a comet on a collision course that seemed certain but wasn’t, “do you want me to stay tonight?”
His hand turns, holds mine. Is his grasp appreciation? Desperation? He’s been tougher to read lately. His eyes shine, but they so often do. He’s a man of affections — for his ship, for his crew, for the women he truly believes he’ll see again before he leaves on another tour of duty. Chris can’t lie to anyone, even himself.
Counterbalance: I lie to everyone, including myself.
“Una,” there’s a breath, a quick glance downward as if he’s embarrassed by his newfound frailties, “I —”
“I’m not upset about last time.” My forehead tingles where he’d kissed me that morning, a sleepy, gauzy kiss that could have meant anything from “thank you, friend” to “I want to fuck you.” But we’d shared a bed so many times before, had woken up to versions of that kiss so many times before, that I hadn’t thought much of it until he’d murmured something about watching the sunrise together, then apologized, said he’d been confused, thought he was still on Earth, didn’t mean any offense.
As if his Montana Ice Capades with Captain Batel had worried me in the slightest.
But his temporal confusion did, so I’d urged him to talk to Dr. M'Benga about it. Later, though, I had wondered if what Chris got from Batel was more than endorphins and a place to hitch his horse and his heart for a few months.
“I wasn’t upset either once Dr. M'Benga diagnosed me with a case of good, old-fashioned jet lag.” Chris takes my other hand, gives them both a little squeeze and it’s ridiculous to think the room is spinning just because he’s doing it again, he’s being so damn sincere, and I forget how much I need that until it happens. “I just wanted to be sure that I didn’t make you feel guilty for not staying in Montana.”
Pieces of the mental puzzle snap into place. Chris didn’t think I was Captain Batel the other morning. He thought that he and I were still on Earth.
And even though Chris can’t tell a lie, the lie that invisibly stains everything I do had threatened to spill out when we were on Earth — lazy days and busy nights — and I had to leave, was getting itchy with truth and secrets and, besides, I figured it would be easier for Chris to ship out again if I did it first. But he was worse afterward, almost as if time to think compounded his fears, gave them darkness to grow in and then crowd out what was left of the light.
Maybe I should have stuck it out in Montana.
Maybe, in the long run, I was right to go.
“I don’t feel guilty.” I’m pretty sure that’s true. “But, Chris, if you don’t want me to stay tonight —”
“I want you to stay tonight.” He drops my hands and his arms fold around me and it’s breaths together, his chest pressed to mine, warmth in his arms and the tickle of his whisper in my ear. “I promise not to snore.”
The old joke makes me smile. He wants this to be normal and I want that, too. “I promise not to kick you if you do.”
The rejoinder works and I know I choose to live in space, but Chris’ soft, contented sigh is something like home.