Archive of Our Own

I'm actually on an EVA when Rocky asks his question.

"Grace?"

"Yeah, pal?" I'm doing some minor repairs to the hull of the ship, xenonite blowtorch in hand. If he'd continued just then, I might have been caught off-guard and ended up burning myself. But he waits. He's considerate like that.

It's only when I lean back away from the ship, and the blowtorch turns off, and the safety turns on, that he finally continues. "Why Grace not ever discuss old mate, question?"

"Oh. Uh…" I suddenly feel very preoccupied with checking my tethers, which, it turns out, are just as secure as they were when I put them there. It's not a weird question to ask, and it's not like I have some kind of horrific answer I don't want to give out, but I wasn't expecting it. We've spoken about it once or twice before, and I mostly dodge any invitation to talk about my past partners, but it seems the time for subtlety has passed now.

The silence from the other end is deafening. When he wants to, Rocky can really wait out an awkward pause. It's one of the things I most admire about him, and also one of the things I most hate. Because I always, always fall for it.

I sigh and start pulling myself back towards the airlock, movements measured. "Why do you ask?"

He trills on the other end of our connection, a low sound I've come to recognize as what Eridians do when they're trying to avoid answering a question. On Erid, it might be polite for me to back off now, but I'm an annoyingly persistent human, so I just wait for his response.

"Rocky talk about Adrian often," he finally says. "Grace … not have mate to talk about. And never mention old mate unless Rocky ask." I hear him tap two claws together. "Why not mention, question?"

My second tether clips into place and, feeling pretty well moored, I pause to figure out how I'll explain this to him. "Well … I mean, my ex—my old mate—we were together a long time ago. And it definitely wasn't as serious as what you and Adrian have going on." It's hard to imagine spending over a hundred years with anyone, much less an ex. "So, it's, uh, not important to me, I guess."

"Not important," he repeats.

"Yeah. I guess human dating is a little different from what you're used to." A pinprick of light is burning in the corner of my vision. It's a light blue color, and just small enough to view and feel pleasant about the experience. My grip on the hull of the ship loosens a bit. By now, I mostly trust the tethers, and, I've discovered, floating weightlessly while chatting on the radio is more appealing than it sounds. "Sometimes, our partners just kind of come and go. Dating can be kind of casual."

"Moving in with mate is not casual," he points out.

"Well, that one wasn't all that casual." I shrug, and my eyes trace the outline of the far-off star. "But now that it's over, I can kind of … forget about it. Make it not matter so much anymore."

For a second he's quiet, thinking this over. "Eridian memory maybe too good for this," he finally concludes.

I laugh and pull myself back towards the ship, resting my head on the metal. I'll go inside in just a minute. For some reason, I sort of want to leave this conversation outside the ship. "I might be the wrong person to judge on this, but human memory is pretty bad."

"I know this."

My hands find the tethers again and I move, bit by bit, to the airlock. Rocky's making a small, satisfied sound, probably monitoring my progress on the radar. We're both wordless as I move along—lately, we find we sometimes have no need for words at all. Little conversations happen anyway.

Outside the airlock, my tethers go slack, and I gather them up in a bundle in one arm. I reach with my other hand for the button that opens the airlock and press.

Ding-DONG!

Michael opens the door in what is likely record time, a grin on his face, rock music pumping from some deeper recess of the house. I'm ushered inside and guided to the living room, where he shows off his setup—plasma-screen TV, speakers larger than my torso, a dedicated control panel for each of the components. He's explained to me in the past that he's an audiophile, which seems to mean that he's constantly searching for better ways of listening to music. I don't get it, at all, but I did listen to him talk about it for long enough that he thought I might want to come over and check out his speakers.

We settle in. He tells me about how faithful the sound is to the original recording, how he worked really hard to make the music bounce off the walls just right. It's really fun to hear how passionate he is about this thing I didn't know about until last week.

An album or two passes by. The hours go with it. It gets just dark enough out for drinking to be acceptable, and a six-pack appears. He drinks more voraciously than I do. The conversation turns from music to our personal lives to stories from undergrad, his time in a frat, my time in a library.

I guess I didn't notice, but he must have drawn closer at some point. His hand keeps coming back to touch down on my arm, light and quick, like a hummingbird. I'm on the way to drunk at this point, and Counting Crows is playing.

At some point Michael asks if I have a girlfriend. I tell him no, which is the truth. He asks if I have a boyfriend. I tell him no, which is also the truth.

His fingers dance around the cold metal of his beer can. Then he straightens up suddenly, puts a hand on my shoulder, and asks if I'd be interested in going out with him.

Immediately I feel something in my stomach twist uncomfortably. It's not disgust, or anything. And it's not like I don't take it as a compliment, because of course I do, it's, you know, nice to be loved. Just, well… I didn't think this was like that.

Michael's kind, really, and it hits me as I'm thinking about this that tonight's brand of kindness has been just a little different and I probably should've seen this coming. Oh god, what am I, stupid? Have I been leading him on all night?

He's kind and he's handsome, sure, but I don't think it's a good idea for us to go out together. I like being his friend. I kind of thought that's what this was, a friend thing, two bros hanging out and talking about music. Though it seems like I should have picked up on his intentions, maybe. I don't know.

The alcohol is making my thoughts strange and stupid and fuzzy, and I have to stammer out some apology about how I'm not looking to date right now, and I really value our friendship, and everything. Michael looks crestfallen but takes it like a champion, offers me another beer, gives me the pick of the next album. In a daze I pick something inoffensive like Queen, sit out about three songs before I come up with an excuse, and head home. It's awkward. Michael gives me a hug, and I get the sinking feeling things are going to be weird between us from now on.

I get in my car and drive a few blocks down before I pull over, parking just under a streetlamp. My eyes fix on the way the light glitters off the hood.

I really mean it when I say I'm flattered, and I know this should be nothing but a boost to my ego. To be pursued, to be wanted romantically or sexually—that's the sort of thing everyone tells you to strive for in life. I guess I'm not bad-looking, so it only makes sense that at least one person would ask me out in life. And if someone asks you out, that means they like your personality too. It's the ultimate compliment for someone to want to spend more time with you, potentially the rest of their life.

So why on Earth do I feel like, more than anything, I've just lost a friend?

The airlock cycles and hisses open, and I'm just standing there, stock-still in my EVA suit. That memory … it was just a small thing, easily overlooked, so I'm not surprised it took me this long to recall it. But that feeling that came with it is something that my amnesiac brain is entirely unfamiliar with. My heart is clenched in someone's fist.

I try to remember more about Michael. He was a coworker, or maybe a co-volunteer, of some variety. I guess I hadn't known he was gay. Or, if I had, I hadn't suspected he had anything but friendly intentions. We were just, you know, guys being dudes, hanging out and listening to music, cracking open a couple of beers. That's how friendship works.

Something is clanking faintly in the ship. It takes me a moment to realize it's Rocky, headed towards me in his ball, singing something to me that I haven't been paying attention to. It pulls me back to reality—I am here, not on Earth, light-years away with only one friend in the universe—and I start to unburden myself of the tethers, blowtorch, and EVA suit.

"Hello? Erid to Grace." And here's Rocky, steadying his ball a few feet away and tapping one leg on the xenonite. "Why not respond when Rocky say name, question? Grace hearing okay, question?"

"Yeah, Rock, sorry," I grunt, popping off my helmet. "All good. I was just thinking about something."

"Hmm," he hums noncommittally, then rolls a bit closer to me. "Hull fixed, question?"

"Done and dusted."

"Good work!" he trills. A rare compliment from him. I'm willing to let it slide, but then he adds, "Grace do good good good job."

I turn a suspicious eye on him, and as I expected, he's tapping one of his magnets against the ground in a rhythmic, slightly nervous fashion. Weird, but seeing as I don't smell smoke or hear alarms, I decide to peel off the EVA undergarment and start redressing before I start addressing. Ha.

Once I'm sufficiently clothed, I turn to him and put my hands on my hips, adopting a mock sternness we're both very familiar with. "What's with the positivity?"

His carapace jerks up a few inches. "Don't understand."

"Yes, you do. You gave me a compliment."

"I am not so mean to Grace that compliments are cause for alarm," he says indignantly. To make his point, he turns 180 degrees in his ball and rolls away from me. "Grace do repairs. Repairs are good. Grace do good work."

I follow him. He heads into the lab, bumping into science detritus as he goes. I trail behind him, kicking the kickable objects to the side. I'm going to have to do some serious cleaning soon. The whole spaceship bachelor pad thing is great, but having no guests over really lets the mess get away from you. Someday soon, I'll make it look nice again, but not today. "Well, thank you, Rocky."

A little self-satisfied hum escapes his vents. He pauses and rolls into the center of the lab, where he sits for a minute, repeatedly tapping one of his legs against the inside of the ball.

It feels like I've sorted things out there—just Rocky being Rocky, a little unpredictable as always—so I start pulling myself around the lab, giving the Taumoeba tanks a cursory look, brainstorming what I'll spend the next four hours of simulated daytime doing. Maybe some video games, maybe a movie with Rocky…

"Grace okay, question?"

I turn back to him. He's just standing there, magneted in place, carapace pressed up against the side of the ball closest to me. I can read his body language fairly well by now—tension vibrates along each one of his five limbs, and he's emitting a very low hum. What's he so worried about?

"Yeah, of course I am." I pull myself along a well-placed cord until I'm a few feet from him and anchor myself in place. "What's gotten into you?"

Usually, I'd expect him to dismiss my concern by lying, you know, Don't understand Grace stupid nothing get in Rocky, but he doesn't. Instead, he just keeps tapping on the inside of the ball. He might be trying to bait me out with another long silence, but I don't give in. Finally he says, voice dipping solemnly, "You came back inside sad."

Oh. Did I? I guess it took me longer than usual to speak to him once I got back in, and then maybe I was a little distant. Even as I'm trying to remember what tipped him off, I remember this is Rocky, who knows me better than I know myself and can hear all my biological processes at all times. I can't hide my feelings from him.

"I wasn't sad, buddy, don't worry," I tell him, even though that's probably a good descriptor for how I felt. Downtrodden, affected, emotional, distant … all pretty much sad. I might be saying it more for my own benefit than anything else: "I wasn't. Just, um, remembered something I wasn't expecting."

He rocks forward a little bit, pressing himself against the side of the ball again. "More memories!" So far, he's proven equally horrified and fascinated by my amnesia. "About what, question?"

For a second, I debate if it would be worth it to lie to him. I don't like doing it, of course, but when it comes to this? Even I don't know why I was so upset. I imagine explaining it to Rocky: On Earth, someone wanting to be your mate is a very positive thing. And for some reason, I didn't like it. Thinking about it now makes me a little nauseous, actually, if you could move to the side while I vomit—

Okay, stop that.

"Grace." He waves a claw in front of my face. "Acting strange. Something is wrong," he warbles, a note of concern in his voice, "when last sleep, question? Eat, question?"

I'm being stupid, is what he's saying, and he's right. I push off of the cord until I'm zero-g crouched in front of his ball and take a deep breath, focusing on him, holding up my hands in surrender. "I'm okay. Not sad anymore, okay? Our conversation just reminded me- I remembered something from my time on Earth. Someone, um, courting me, asking to be my mate." That feels stupid, too. It's not a big deal to humans to ask someone out, and Eridians—well, Rocky seems to put so much value on Adrian that I'm afraid what I'm saying might actually be offensive.

I drag a hand down my face. "I don't know. I-I thought this person was my friend, and wanted to hang out with me and, like, get to know me, but that wasn't the case. I mean, it was the case, they were nice and all, but there was more to it than that. …They wanted a different kind of relationship." My voice tapers a bit towards the end until it's nearly a whisper. Something is starting to click into place in my head.

Rocky fidgets a little, tapping two legs on the sides of his ball. "Understand. Grace not 'feel same way', question?"

That makes me smile a bit. Sometimes, when he knows I'm down, Rocky will deploy a tactical reference to human culture. He thinks I find it funny, but it's really more charming than anything else. "Yeah. I didn't feel the same way."

I met Sascha at work. She was the department coordinator for microbiology, or 'microbio' as she so economically put it—not an especially glamorous position, but a necessary one. She put together department meetings, organized where and when we taught, and spoke to the powers that be for us. Put simply, I had a lot of occasion to see her.

She dropped by my office with some regularity, usually to ask about my availability, which I didn't put together until much later was unnecessary. She had access to our schedules. I chalked it up to her being more personable than most, and, later, to her being my friend.

On occasion, she'd show up with coffee. She learned how I liked mine and then never forgot it. I was infinitely grateful.

After some time—maybe half a year since she started coming by to see me—she asked if I'd like to come out to a bar with her and some friends. A few other people in the department, actually. I wasn't particularly close with any of them, but it had also been a while since I'd spent any time with them outside of work, and it seemed that the perfect occasion for fulling my coworkerly duties had presented itself.

The bar's small, pretty loud, and very crowded. Half the microbiology department crams into a circular booth, Sascha on my right. As it turns out, the place serves exclusively Chinese food, which is a nice surprise. Ginger and garlic are god's gift to man.

We're talking about work. Someone's complaining that we're always talking about work. The conversation turns, then, to personal lives: weddings, kids, the minutiae of adulthood that I never paid much attention to. When the conversation comes around to me, I entertain with a brief, mostly false, story about my brother and I shopping for a couch. That one gets some good laughs. Sascha elbows me in the ribs.

Food arrives. It's mediocre, as I probably should have expected from bar Chinese food, but I don't mind. My colleagues start to turn their attention to their drinks and each other—there's some kind of bar trivia happening that I must have missed the entry round for. Sascha asks me where I'm from.

I've certainly told her this before. She wants me to tell her again. Then she asks about my brother, my hobbies, my home. She wants to know if I live alone. She's close, so close I can smell the beer on her breath, so I scoot to the side a little. She follows not long after.

She keeps asking questions, and I ask a few in response, but she keeps steering the conversation back to me. It's weird to talk about myself so much. Usually I try to shut up a bit, make sure the other person gets their fair share, and then some. But it seems that tonight, the rules of conversation don't apply.

She asks if I'm single. I tell her yes. She asks if I'm looking. I tell her kind of. She kisses me.

It's the last thing I was expecting tonight and I pull away sharply, my mouth falling open as I do. My lips sting—I bring a hand up, touch my fingertips to my mouth as if I'm checking to make sure it's still there. Sascha stutters something I don't hear. Her eyes meet mine, hurt, confused, apologetic, trying to ask a question without having to speak it aloud.

Oh, God, I think, it happened again.

I've been stupid, again, and led someone on, again. This keeps happening. It has to be something I'm missing. Maybe it's something out of my visible light spectrum, some kind of glow people emit when they're interested in you that I'm unfortunate enough to be blind to. Sascha is nice—but it hits me now that most people aren't that nice to someone they're just friends with. Was there always an ulterior motive there? Every coffee she brought me, every time she came to see me, were there just signals I wasn't picking up on?

My stomach churns. It's just like Michael. Of course I like Sascha's company, and she's fun to talk to, but in a relationship? I don't even know if I want to be in a relationship, much less who I'd want to be with. Every time I try to think about dating, it's like staring down a dark tunnel with train headlights bearing down on me. Being involved with someone like that … I don't know if I'd even be good at it. As I turn the idea over in my head, going over the trappings of romance and affection and sex and et freaking cetera, I feel like I've just downed a bottle of acid. The thought of anyone feeling that way about me, from a passing stranger on the street to my someone I consider a friend, makes me want to cover my face and body and hide from the world. Anyone I know or could have known might have been seeing me this way the whole time, with me none the wiser. My eyes flick over to the rest of my coworkers. Do any of them feel this way? Are any of them looking me over and picking out what parts of me they like most, trying to decide where they'll put their hands first?

I can't do this.

Sascha is saying something to me, and I'm shaking my head, apologizing and inching my way out of the booth. The words that come out of my mouth are garbled, incoherent, but I know what I was trying to say: I'm so sorry. I don't feel the same way. She reaches for my arm but I'm standing now. I don't know if I'm imagining the stares on my back as I race out of the bar.

I cower in my car for five minutes, then peel out of the parking lot and race home. My apartment is empty, always empty, and I'm grateful. At least here I don't have to worry that I'm being dissected by every pair of eyes in the room. Here, I don't have to discover over and over again that there's something broken inside me. I don't feel the same way, I can't feel the same way. Which one is it does it matter what is wrong with me that made me like this?

Michael and Sascha aren't bad people. I don't hold any of this against them; besides, it's my fault for being so oblivious in the first place. But when I go back through my memories their faces twist and distort. Their eyes flatten, their grins sharpen, and I can see them looking at me like I'm a prize to be won.

I could hit myself. That's not what it was like. The very act of having feelings for someone is an innocent one. My reaction is irrational. It's something about me, some inherent quality that makes me shake like a leaf at the thought of being desired. Something that should have disappeared by now, as put together as I am, but it follows behind me relentlessly. And as long as I'm speaking to other people, I'll be tormented by the idea that they might want me in ways I don't understand.

I dig into my bedsheets like an animal seeking a small hole to die in and sleep, just barely.

It would be nice if I could say the memory bowls me over. Dramatic, that would be, befitting how I feel all of a sudden. But zero-g makes theatrics a lot harder and what really happens is that I end up frozen in place in front of Rocky, wide-eyed, one hand cradling my own face for support. My grip on the cord loosens and I float a little. My body drifts, my mind drifts.

"Grace? Grace." Rocky rolls forward and bumps into one of my legs, just forceful enough that my slight stupor breaks and I glance down at him. My insides still feel like they've been put through a blender, but the world comes back into focus a bit, leaving the realm of memory firmly behind.

"Sorry. I, uh, remembered something again." My voice breaks. "Same kind of thing."

The rest of it, I don't know how to explain to him. My confusion has dissipated and left me largely sure of what I'm feeling—not why, which is the more important part, but I'll take what I can get. It freaks me out a little bit, honestly. It's the kind of feeling you discover one night in bed and bury almost immediately, loath to touch it ever again. Maybe that's why it took so long to remember any of it at all.

Were I alone right now, I'd do the same thing. Take that feeling and submerge it under my surface until it stops kicking and gasping for air, discard it forever. It can go in the small but mighty file of Things I no longer need to think about now that I am never, ever going home. I could pack it up and be done with it now.

But I'm not alone. Rocky is here.

I look at him, really look at him, let my eyes trace the contours and pockmarks etched in his carapace. The beige-colored tattoos on his upper arms, the turquoise embedded in places I can name from memory by now. He's making that concerned sound again. It's so low that it's nearly out of my range of hearing, but I pick it out, save it together with the way he's leaning forward as if he might phase through the xenonite and crawl into my lap.

I pull in a deep lungful of air. Okay. Of course I'm going to say it out loud—there's nothing I don't tell him anymore.

"When I was on Earth," I begin haltingly, focusing on Rocky's vents for something to look at, "there were times when I was courted. People in my life spent time with me, gave me gifts, stuff like that, to convince me to be their mate."

"Rocky understand courtship. Did for Adrian, many years ago."

"Right, sorry." I huff out a nervous laugh. I'm just trying to delay saying it aloud. "Okay, well, usually courtship is, like, really nice. Even if you don't feel the same way, you feel flattered." My hands come up to rest, interlaced, on the back of my neck. "To have someone want you around and look for opportunities to hang out together and- and be interested … it's like, okay, great, someone thinks I'm worth spending time with."

Rocky's humming. He has something to say about that last part, clearly, but if I don't keep rolling on this I might never tell him. Okay, just say it, it's not like he'll get mad at you. You have to say it now.

I inhale and my lungs stutter a little. "But whenever people courted me, I hated it. I remember that now. In my memories, I get, like, sick about it." I only remember two times in detail, but I get the feeling that there were more. The depth of the emotion I felt couldn't have appeared from out of thin air. "I don't really understand why, but I think it made me feel like…" I swallow past the lump in my throat. "Like I wasn't valuable. As- as a friend. Like people only spoke to me so they could eventually have sex with me."

Here come the tears. I force out a laugh and shake my head. "That's stupid, right? Totally irrational. Talk about … egocentric." My vision is blurring. I can see the rough shape of Rocky, starkly set apart from the white of the lab. Even though I can hear how badly he wants to chastise me, he's waiting patiently for me to finish speaking.

He's good. He knows what I need better than I do, sometimes.

I can be so stupid. Now that I really think about it, I never should have hesitated earlier. Rocky never judges me, never tries to make me into something I'm not. He doesn't come with all of the social expectations that everyone I've ever known had built in, coloring their perspective on me from the first moment we spoke. Even if there is something really wrong with me, it's not like he would mind. He isn't exactly the model Eridian himself.

If I had something more to say on the matter, it's completely vanished from my head. I blink away enough tears that I can see him clearly, but almost immediately my eyes well up again. I bring my hands up and brush them away.

"Grace." Rocky sings my name with an affectionate slowness, a concerned warble, and an upwards inflection on the notes that I've learned indicates a serious familiarity with your subject, a casual and warm 'tense' reserved for only the closest of friends and mates.

"Rocky." I can't keep floating here like an idiot. Through my tears I spot the rough outline of his xenonite ball and, after a bit of flailing about to find a cord, push myself towards him to wrap his ball in an embrace. I collide with him quite bodily, wrapping all four of my limbs around him and not even attempting to arrest my forward velocity—but mercifully, the magnets hold, and he stays tethered to the ship floor. Rocky presses himself flush against the barrier. Through it, I can just barely feel his warm body. My heart literally aches.

He sings, and the words vibrate through me. "Not stupid," he says gently, comforting, in the soft but firm way he always does when I cry. "I understand. Not perfect. But understand." Two of his claws tap against my chest. "Like in movies. When Harry meets Sally."

I bark out a laugh, jarred out of my self-pity for a moment. "Yeah, buddy."

"Some Eridians never mate, and that is no problem. But Earth … very different." He shifts around in the ball for a moment, then reunites his body with mine with enough force that we both sway a little. "Of course Grace good friend. Good good good friend. Rocky know this." He pauses, and sings the next words a bit lower, as if there's people around to hear and he wants this to be only for the two of us. "Grace valuable," he sings in that same familiar tense, "Valuable for many, many reasons."

Okay, really now, here come the tears. I don't know why that does it, but the second I hear those notes from him I feel my entire body hitch upwards, and then I'm sobbing. My lungs shake as they inflate. I'm clutching Rocky's ball desperately, fingers scrabbling at the xenonite as if I can somehow phase through it and touch him.

I'm so obvious. I don't know how I didn't figure it out until now—I wanted to hear this from Rocky. Specifically him. He's always respected me as a scientific mind, then as a friend, then as … whatever we are, now that we'll be together for the rest of my life. We met and I didn't spend a second worrying about what he thought of me. It's not because he's an alien without my ideas about love, either (though that's a pretty glaringly obvious fact). It's because he's Rocky. We've each been drawn to the other from lightyears apart, and we saved each other's lives, and I can't think of a single thing I wouldn't trust him with.

I have to blink a lot to get the tears out of my eyes. Some of them smear on Rocky's ball and he chitters beneath me, an imitation of my laugh, and my heart clenches again. I feel like I might be sick, but in a good way this time.

"I'm sorry," I tell him. I really mean it. To an alien, this must seem so ridiculous: our cultures have views on sex that are sometimes nearly opposite, and also obviously have very different standards of attraction. Then again, I think Rocky knows enough about my culture by now that he understands, in some regard, how I feel. At the very least, that baser desire—to be seen and entirely known by someone else, without being expendable in their life—is something that we share. Otherwise, we wouldn't have each other like this.

Rocky bangs a fist against one of his panels. "No need for 'sorry'," he chastises me. "Grace always 'sorry'. Not necessary."

Despite the state I'm in, a small laugh escapes me. "Thanks, Rock."

We fall silent. He shuffles back and forth a little. Presses himself closer to the xenonite, experimentally touches each of my limbs through the panels. Starts to sing and then stops. I don't want to let go of him yet. I'm going over in my head how lucky I am to have found him. For what is probably the first time in a very long time, I've made a friend who I'm not constantly worrying over in my head, trying to sort out their intentions using the esoteric hints of body language and expressions. He doesn't even have expressions. It's a real relief.

From the very second we met, Rocky has seen right into the center of me. He's sifted through every last bit, put me back together when I needed it, held the gross lump of emotion that's always been knotted up in my chest and made it loosen. He's special. He's like nobody else I've ever met before.

I give his ball one last full-body squeeze before pulling away a little. He angles himself up to 'look' at me, and I smile at him, still blinking a bit to clear my eyes of the remaining tears. "Really. Thank you. I guess … that's been bothering me for a while now."

"Always." His carapace wiggles up and down as he sings. He hums something so soft I can hardly hear it, definitely more for himself than it is for me. Then two of his hands push the magnets forward so he can bump his ball into me again, and he points up at me with a claw extended. "Grace good friend. Best friend. Rocky love Grace."

Some traitorous part of me nearly wails at the assurances. "Okay, okay, don't do that," I cut him off before he can continue, controlling my voice so it doesn't shake. "You're going to make me cry more."

Another one of his little laughs. "Rocky say it more. Until Grace no longer leak," he pauses, "until Grace know truth. Grace best friend."

Sometimes I think about pushing his little ball right over and watching him tumble down the hallway. Other times I think about being able to hold his entire body close to mine, regardless of the atmospheric and thermal and biological differences that make it impossible. I'm not sure which I'm feeling more of right now.

I press my forehead against the ball, basking in the warmth that radiates off of it. "I love you too, Rock," I tell him. My voice breaks a little on the next words. "Love love love you."