Chestnut eyes meet mine as I look down at Marlowe, not a shred of uncertainty behind them. She’s at least half a foot shorter, but you wouldn’t know it by the way she stares back at a person, like there is no height in the world she won’t reach for if she has to. It’s one of the first things I noticed—and respected—about her. It didn’t escape my attention either that my clothes mould to the curves of her body like the absence of light defines space: like a truth, like a phenomenon, like a wonder.I fight to keep my eyes above her mouth, even now, as I worry about what she’s going to say next. It’s not such a punishment, not when the corner of her mouth curls and her cupid’s bow deepens and there’s just the flash of white teeth through her lips.
I push my hands into my pockets to stop from reaching for her. She couldn’t even stand to look at me earlier.
Marlowe shrugs. “It just seems that someone who carries themself the way you do would be better at reading situations. It makes you come across as shy.”
“How do I carry myself?”
Marlowe drops her gaze and drags it from my boots to the top of my head with such weight that my stomach tightens. It’s a controlled burn simmering over my skin. My hands curl into fists.
“With confidence. Authority.” She cocks her head and meets my eyes. “Some might say prowess.”
It’s the first time anyone has ever said anything like that to me—then again, it’s the first time anyone has ever paid so much attention to me. This is how she sees me?
It takes me a moment to right my thoughts and think back to what she’d accused me of. “Again, what, exactly, makes you think I’m shy?”
“Like I said: you’re not very good at reading situations.” I open my mouth to question her on this, but she continues to speak. “Poor Beau on the bridge back there, trying to joke around... You just blew right past them. They weren’t really flirting with you, you know.”
“I know. I’ve experienced what it looks like when they really turn on the charm. I’ll tell you now, I didn’t find it very charming at the time.”
“But you don’t play along.”
“I’m the captain of this ship and Beau’s superior.”
Marlowe laughs softly. “Something tells me you wouldn’t even if you weren’t the captain.”
“Does that upset you?”
“No, why would it?” She raises an eyebrow. “I’m just stating a fact. I’ve noticed you like those.”
I don’t know how to take that, so I set it aside to examine later. Marlowe has the ability to get under my skin in all the best and worst ways, and it’s unbearable as much as it is intoxicating.
“I find it curious, is all. You might be the most competent person I’ve ever met, but I have yet to see you read a room.” Marlowe smiles suddenly and starts walking, taking the lead as I falter out of confusion. “Anyway, forget I said any of that—I’m supposed to be mad at you, Captain.”
Breathless and Repentant
The spacewalk starts with slightly less hyperventilating than before. Perhaps occupied with whatever intangible mood she’s in, Marlowe doesn’t lean on me as much for support, and we exit the airlock in silence—the same silence that followed us to the hatch in the first place.
Kit’s voice filters through the speakers as she expands a map across my visor, directing us to our first port of call. Despite all the ambiguity, I’m grateful Marlowe’s here because she’s already come up with several intelligent suggestions I would never have considered. Kit, though invaluable, can only do somuch. And so, with tethers trailing behind us, we each grab a handle affixed to the hull and start manoeuvring.
Initially, I thought we would tackle the damages sequentially, in order of priority, with the relevant tools. It took Marlowe to make me see that approach would be inefficient and tedious. A lot of the destruction is similar and can be tackled at the same time. With her suggestion, we now carry a few tools we’ll use to prepare the surface of the hull. Today, we prep before we start repairs tomorrow and this way, there’s no back and forth.
‘Simple, really,’ she’d said—yet something I hadn’t considered.
I weigh the words I want to speak, but struggle to get them past my lips. The last hour has been a tense one since that odd conversation in the hallway. The reason I ‘come across as shy’ is also the reason I’m finding it hard to explain myself. I don’t have to, I know that, but I’m surprised to find I want to.
Marlowe detaches the tool at her belt that works something like a floor sander but looks nothing like what I know to be one. She recovered it from the engineering bay, along with a plethora of other items, some of which are now attached to my belt. We approach the biggest dent, activate our boots and drop solidly to the surface. My job is to remove the debris with a specialised jet spray; a task I’ve been told anyone could do with their eyes closed. Marlowe will then treat the area. She gives me the go-ahead with a hand gesture.
It takes half an hour to complete the first dent, which is humbling considering there are dozens more, if smaller. The whole time, we don’t say more than two words to each other. I’ve only known the woman for four days, yet this quiet between us is biting. I don’t know how that’s possible. I’m tempted to fill it, an urge I’ve seldom experienced and one which I have even more infrequently fulfilled. Small talk is not my forte, and I like silence.
Yet here I go, filling it.
“I was an awkward child.”
Marlowe jumps as if I’ve shaken her out of her thoughts. From her place opposite me, she eyes me over the crater. “What?”
I’m glad it’s my turn with the jet because it gives me an excuse to look away.
“The reason I’m so bad at ‘reading the room’, as you say. I was an awkward child who grew into an awkward teen who learned to keep to herself. If I didn’t look, I didn’t have to see. I like to think I grew out of my awkwardness, but I don’t know that I ever learned to read between the lines.”
