Page 12 of Azyr: Drifiting for Her

The evenings had a routine by then. He’d come down at six with the tide-tables book, I’d pretend to do paperwork, and we’d talk in the gaps. Except, the gaps kept getting wider.

“Why tide tables?” I gave up the paperwork pretense entirely. “You chart stars. That’s a book about when the water in Oregon goes up and down.”

“It was the only book you owned that I had not already read the science of.” He turned a page. “Also, the water here does a thing I find unreasonable. Two high tides a day, uneven. Most worlds have the decency to be predictable about their oceans.”

“You’re offended by our tides.”

“I have standards.”

“You’ve been on Earth for days and you’ve already got opinions on our oceans.”

“A few.” He looked up. “And they are not opinions. They are observations. There is a difference, which I could explain, but you would leave the room.”

“I would sprint from the room.”

“Yes. That is why I didn't explain it.”

“I hate that you’re funny.” I aimed it at the paperwork. “It wasn’t in your file.”

“I contain multitudes. Blame the translator.”

Later that night, I was closing up when the phone rang. “I can’t do it.” Tessa's voice was too fast. “I can’t get on a ship and leave my entire life for a stranger, that’s insane, tell me it’s insane.”

“It’s a big thing.” I slid down the filing cabinet to the floor. “It’s allowed to be terrifying. Tell me what you’d be keeping if you stayed.”

“My mom. My job. My whole...” A wet breath. “My apartment has a bathtub, Astoria. He lives on a ship.”

“The bathtub’s? Keep going. What else?”

“Everything. My whole everything.”

“And is your whole everything enough? Not is it good... is it enough? Because if it is, you sign to decline tonight and everything will stay the same except the new opportunity that awaits with your alien. I’ll respect it forever.” Silence filled the space of my words. “If you still want to go, you can give yourself until morning before deciding. You don’t owe anyone an answer tonight.”

A long pause. Then, small: “That’s a deeply annoying thing to be right about.”

“It’s the whole job.”

Azyr came down halfway through. I saw him in the doorway and waved him off. Whatever else was changing between us, this call was Tessa's. I kept the strain off my face and the fear out of my voice.

He left. When Tessa finally laughed, emotionally wrecked but stable, she said she'd sleep on it. I hung up and put my forehead on my knees. Azyr paused in the doorway again. This time I waved him in, and he sank down against the far wall.

“You asked me back.” His voice came from across the floor.

“I always send everyone away.”

“You did. Then you asked me back.”

There was cold takeout on the desk from a dinner neither of us had finished. He reached up, got it, and we ate it on the floor in the dark.

“I’m scared of how good I’ve gotten at this.” The words went out into the dark. “Watching people leave. It used to cost me something. Now I can do a flawless goodbye and feel almost nothing, and I don’t know when that happened, and I think it might be the actual thing that’s wrong with me.”

He didn’t tell me it wasn’t or try to reassure me. He did the harder thing and opened up to me.

“I have gotten good at the opposite.” He shifted against the wall. “I am never anywhere long enough for anyone to watch me leave. You hold the door. I go through so many, so fast, that no one is left in any doorway to see me go.” His careful spacing had smoothed words into something almost fluent, or I’d learned to hear him under the machine. “We have been running the same thing from opposite ends. You built a wall and stood in the doorway of it. I never built anything at all.”

“That’s the most words you’ve ever said to me at once.” I aimed it at the ceiling.

“For once, it translated exactly what I meant.”