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I was blown away by how much I wanted that. Even more than I wanted sex.
This is too much. You’re getting too attached!
That panicky voice in my head was accompanied by an invisible weight on my chest, and I hesitated when she stepped back, opening the door wider.
“Are you coming in?”
For some reason I couldn’t understand, my eyes flickered down again, and I saw her toes curling under. When I looked back at her face, she looked curious and maybe… hopeful. Like she wanted to spend time with me as much as I wanted it.
That decided it for me. My desire overrode my doubts, for now.
Stepping into her room, I glanced around. It was a standard room with a queen-sized bed, a desk where I was unsurprised to see her laptop next to a thick book about aerodynamics, and a small sitting area with a couch that faced a TV mounted on the wall.
“I was just going to set up my telescope,” she said, crossing to the door of her balcony.
“You brought a telescope? Here?”
She opened the door, letting cool ocean air into the room. “It’s a traveling telescope, so it’s small and easy to transport, even while flying.”
I followed her out on the balcony, where two metal chairs had been pushed to the side and a telescope was set up on a tripod.
Heather went to stand beside it. “It’s not the best telescope out there, but it’s portable, and that counts for a lot when I want to bring it with me to an island with very little light pollution.”
There was an excitement on her face that made me grin. “I take it that you’ve used one of these before?”
“My dad was an astronomer, and he used to take me and my sister camping every summer. He’d always bring along a portable telescope so we could look at the stars. We live in Chicago, so it wasn’t as easy to see them there, but when we were at the lake or the forest preserve, the things we could see were amazing.”
“I bet you loved that.”
“I really did. Angela, not so much.”
“So, you two aren’t alike?”
“Only in looks, really. But we’re close anyway.”
“Because you’ve got that twin thing where you can feel each other’s emotions?”
Heather laughed. “That’s a myth.”
“That’s a shame. For a second there, I thought you were magical.”
“Oh yeah? I’ll show you something magical.”
She bent over a little to peer into the eyepiece, and I couldn’t resist checking out her ass, thinking that she was absolutely right about the magic. My fingers itched to reach out and pinch her plump backside, but then she straightened and stepped aside.
“Take a look.”
I had no expectations, having never looked in a telescope before. But I bent over and peered into the eyepiece.
“What is this?” I asked, looking at two bright points next to each other, one a warm orange color and the other a striking sapphire blue color.
“That’s Albireo, a binary star system.”
I kept looking through the telescope at the two stars. “I have no idea what that is.”
“They’re two stars that are gravitationally bound to each other and orbit a single point. To the naked eye, they look like one star. You have to take a closer look to see that there are two.”
Her voice was soft, and I felt her move closer to me. Something felt powerful about this moment, and I didn’t know why, but I felt a swelling of emotion inside me as I continued to look at those two stars.
