A Crash of Fate

by Zoraida Cordova

  “Neither,” he said. “I know who I am.”

  The woman smiled. She turned to Izzy and asked the same question. He was expecting her not to answer, but then she said, “Both.”

  Before the strangers turned to go, Izzy hesitated.

  “Wait,” she blurted out. There was something bright in her eyes. “I know I wasn’t supposed to ask. But can you tell us what we’ve been carrying all day?”

  The two strangers looked at each other. Lejo nodded at the woman, who squared her shoulders and said, “You didn’t care before. What’s changed?”

  Izzy glanced at Jules, then back at the strangers. “Maybe my curiosity is getting the best of me.”

  “Imagine being pushed so far to the brink of something that you think you might fall,” Lejo said. “You’re alone in the galaxy. You’re cut off from the most basic necessities and medicine. But sometimes there is hope and allies surprise you. Does that clear your conscience?”

  Izzy gave the barest nod. “Good luck.”

  “If you want to keep doing some good,” the woman said, “you know where to find us.”

  A strange feeling sparked within Jules. He thought of the helplessness he’d felt throughout the day. Could he change that?

  “We have to go,” Lejo said.

  “Rising moons,” the young woman said, “and may the Force be with you.”

  Jules stared as the two figures disappeared into the dark caves that snaked beneath the cenotes.

  “What’s down there?” Izzy asked when they were out of sight.

  “I’ve only been down there once, and I thought it was a pit,” he said, remembering waiting in the dark for someone to find him. “I suppose I was wrong.”

  They stood there for a moment, listening to the sound of the breeze over water. He considered what might have happened if Calin had never abandoned his job. Would he have been sent instead of Jules? Dok never got involved in politics, as far as Jules knew. How long had Dok known about the “hermits” in the ruins? He was over two hundred years old and had seen his share of political upheaval and wars. If he wanted to stay out of it, he would have. Then again, the sooner the First Order got what it came for, the sooner the Resistance would leave. And then what? Black Spire would return to normal, or what passed for normal? Just when he thought he knew everything about the Outpost, he’d been surprised.

  “We did it, Jules,” Izzy said. “We should celebrate. I’ll wire you half the credits I get for the job.”

  He took her hand in his. “Dok can pay me. I’m not taking your money.”

  She smirked and glanced down. “You’d make a terrible smuggler.”

  “I wouldn’t say no to a celebratory drink at Oga’s. But I should wash first. I wouldn’t be the first person to show up there covered in dirt, sweat, and blood, but it’s really frowned upon.”

  He started walking away from her.

  “Wait, where are you going?”

  Jules turned and kept walking backward, daring Izzy to follow. “The cenotes. The waters are the perfect temperature.”

  “We shouldn’t go there. That’s where—”

  “You scared, Garsea?”

  Izzy and Jules shared a look. The entire reason she had returned to Batuu was gone, but he’d offered her a reason to stay. Part of him wished he could draw out the suns-set so he could always look at her bathed in those colors.

  He kept walking, and he thanked the stars that she followed.

  That was either the best idea he’d had all day or the worst. They might have delivered the parcel as they were supposed to, but when they returned to the Outpost, they’d have another problem: Delta, and perhaps even Volt. Salju would be finished with the repairs, and Izzy would need to find a place to dock for a few days.

  But as Jules walked backward with that crooked smirk on his face, she knew she wasn’t going anywhere but with him. The path deeper into the ruins were was lined with crooked trees. Patches of grass grew taller amid boulders, and vines clung to jutting rock walls. At the center of it was the cenote, its blue surface dotted with leaves blown in by the wind. It felt like entering the past, and not just because of the deterioriating structures around them.

  When she stood at the edge of the water and took in the crumbling stones and rock formations, she was overcome with a sense of familiarity. She had been there before. Not with Jules or her father. But with her mother. She squinted at the willowy trees that looked like they were bowing to the pool. She concentrated on the memory, tugging it closer. Her mother had loved to swim. When Izzy thought about swimming, she always remembered her father teaching her how to float, how to cut through the water. But before that, there had been her mother and these ruins. Izzy could see herself as she was then, scared of the black fish swimming. Her mother had laughed, but let her sit and play with the critters in the grass.

  She smiled to herself and thought that Jules was the best tour guide in the Outpost. He’d helped her retrace her steps. She wouldn’t have done that on her own.

  The cenote was illuminated in the colors of the suns-set. Tiny black fish swam at the bottom of the stone basin. If not for the ripples on the surface, she would have thought the creatures were floating through air. The water was that pristine.

  Now that they were alone again, Izzy was faced with everything she’d agreed to. She was staying, for a few days at least. But it wasn’t worry or anxiety that made her buzz. It was Jules.

  He stripped down to his underthings. She felt a blush creep up her face and turned toward the outcrop of trees. Thank goodness it was dark enough that he wouldn’t see how red her face was.

  Jules bunched up his dirty clothes in his hands. She allowed herself to look at the rest of him. She told herself it was just skin and muscle and there was nothing extraordinary about it. But as she had done many times throughout the day, Izzy was lying to herself. The crystalline light danced across his taut muscles.

  “My eyes are up here, Garsea,” he told her with a wink.

  “I wasn’t—” She was getting flustered. Honestly, there were dokmas with more poise than she was displaying.

  He jumped into the clear water, which was emanating a soft blue glow. Bioluminescent creatures cast a soft light that replaced the setting suns.

  He splashed her, but she would not devolve to his level. He brushed water out of his eyes and treaded water a few paces from her. The fish directly below him scattered into the pockets beneath the ground.

  “My mother brought me here once,” she told him. “She preferred quiet places like this. I hadn’t remembered until now.”

  “Did she tell you how this was created?” he asked.

  “I don’t think she knew. She wasn’t much into local history. My dad might have known.” She took off her jacket, boots, and socks, but did not get in the water yet. “Tell me.”

  “My dad said that thousands of years ago, when the original people of Batuu lived here, there was a small meteorite that hit right in this spot. It created these basins, and they filled with water. It was sacred. They’re ruins now, but they could have been temples before, homes.”

  “Why don’t more people come here now?”

  “It’s too far from the Outpost. Besides, not many people like to swim unless it’s terribly hot.”

  “But you do.”

  “Of course I do. I was about seven when my friends and I thought we discovered this. I had no choice but to learn because this kid, Lu something—I don’t even remember him, really—he shoved me in. I had to either learn to swim or sink to the bottom.”

  “I have this vivid memory of learning to swim when we lived on Glee Anselm. Back then it felt like my father and I were always waiting for my mother to come home from her trips.” She glanced at the stone, light reflecting off it. “After we left Batuu, we didn’t talk about our life here. It was like this unspoken agreement. Every time I thought of this place I thought about how we left. I didn’t want to feel that way again.”

  “You won’t,” he said. H
e sounded so optimistic that she believed him.

  Jules swam away, and everything inside her told her to jump in, to chase him. Why were the doubts louder than her heart, where there had been none when they kissed? She considered that it had to do with Damar. But as angry as she was with him for leaving her, she didn’t feel hurt to lose him. One day with Jules had been better than the past year with Damar.

  What are you afraid of, Garsea? Those words tumbled in her head, and she weighed them. Fear was a fuel that usually set her into action. The fear of starving and winding up dead in space made her keep searching for jobs. The fear of becoming her mother had troubled her for a long time. Now that she knew more about her mother, she wanted to hold on to her memories of her. Her mother had still chosen Izzy, for as long as she was able. The fear of being alone had kept her at the academy, with Damar, and then with Ana Tolla’s crew. She feared losing Jules again, but this time she was in control of the outcome.

  So while Jules was chasing the fish at the bottom of the cenote, she finished removing her clothes, adding to the dirty pile on the ground.

  She dove headfirst into the water. Julen Rakab had lied to her. It was cold—so cold that she couldn’t breathe as her arms flailed. She kicked to the surface.

  “Liar,” she said, her teeth chattering. When she licked her lips, she was surprised to find they were salty.

  “Swim to me,” he said. “You’ll warm up as your body moves.”

  She did just that, relishing in the movement of her arms and legs. It had been months, maybe even years since she’d done this.

  “See?” he asked, when she surfaced in front of him. “Are you cold now?”

  She wrapped her arms around his torso, her knees on either side of his waist. “Now that you’re swimming for both of us? Definitely.”

  He licked his lips. She dragged her fingers around the base of his neck. Droplets of water clung to his dark lashes. She found that she didn’t want to look away from him. She wanted to tell him all the things she’d been holding back.

  “I’ve thought about you all the time. Sometimes I’ll fly to a new world and think about how you would love the mountains or frozen lakes or the lights. I wanted to come back to you after my parents were killed.”

  “Why didn’t you?” His arms were moving faster, propelling them to the other side of the cenote, where it was shallower. When had the night grown so dark?

  “I was afraid,” she said. “We were friends when we were children. What if you didn’t remember me? What if too much time had passed? I couldn’t take the chance.”

  “All you do is take chances, Izzy. Why would this have been any different?”

  She considered this. He wasn’t wrong. If Damar was right about anything, it was that she didn’t like being alone. She thought about who she’d been during that time in her life. Scared, reckless, impulsive. Lonely. At times she’d thought of Jules, of charting a course to him. And then she’d convinced herself not to. “Because I’d lost my mother and father already. It was better to dream of what could have been instead of facing a truth I wasn’t ready for. What if you looked right through me? What if you hated me? I didn’t want to find out.”

  “Believe me when I say that I have missed you every day for as long as I can remember.”

  She couldn’t believe him. “That’s a bold statement.”

  “It’s true. You’re the one who said I was a terrible liar. Tell me, Izzy—am I lying?”

  She knew he wasn’t. But that familiar panic took hold of her. If he hadn’t been carrying her, it would have pulled her under. “What happens tomorrow and the day after? What happens if a week from now you decide that I’m too terrible, I’m not the girl you remember. What if you decide that I’m not what you wanted?”

  “I want you,” he whispered.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re everything. You are the reason I can find bravery when I don’t want to be brave. You were right. I did follow you around when we were kids. I wanted to keep up with you.”

  “I’m not brave, Jules.” Without wanting to, she was thinking of Damar again. Unlike all her moments with Jules, she couldn’t remember a single moment with Damar being so emotionally intimate. “If I was, I would have gone on my own sooner. I wouldn’t have followed Ana Tolla even though I knew she did terrible things. I went along with more than I ever want to tell you.”

  He kissed her jawline. “You don’t have to. I think you’re stuck with me, Izzy.”

  “I wish I’d spent yesterday with you.”

  Jules rested his hands on her waist to hold her tighter. The water was around their shoulders. “Is this about what Damar said?”

  She nodded. “When I was a little girl, my dad used to get these candles for my birthday. They had them on Coruscant or someplace he’d been to before. They lit up like fireworks. After he died, I didn’t celebrate my birthday.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was only me for a while. This might surprise you, but I don’t have as many friends as you do.”

  “I’m your friend, Izzy. What does that have to do with Damar?”

  “I was with Damar for almost a year. I knew things weren’t right, but when I tried to end it he told me that I needed to give him another chance. That he had something special planned for me. He said that on my birthday he was going to light up the sky the way I deserved. Instead, he left.”

  Jules watched her with dark eyes. The light of the cenote around them gave their skin an incandescent blue glow. She hated that she had taken the smile from his face.

  “I told you, it shouldn’t matter. I know how to be on my own. I should’ve known better—”

  “You said that he left you yesterday,” he said.

  She traced the outline of his shoulder, and somehow it felt like she had always been doing it. “It was the best thing that happened to me because it led me here. Oh, skies. I sound like you, don’t I?”

  Jules frowned, but it only lasted a moment. “We have two things to celebrate now. Tell me what you want.”

  They floated toward the center of the water, and everything around them fell away. If she would only look up, she’d see the canopy of stars above them, the shine of the moons. But her eyes were fixed on Julen Rakab, and for a moment, she was certain she was where she needed to be.

  “I want you to kiss me.”

  Julen Rakab had been imagining what it would be like to kiss Izal Garsea since the moment she’d punched him in the face. Then she’d kissed him outside the farm. He wanted nothing more than to do it again. So when she said the words, he should have jumped at the opportunity.

  If he were a different kind of person—a scoundrel, a scourge, a pirate who stole hearts for the sake of doing it—he would have kissed her in an instant. Perhaps he wasn’t the good guy everyone thought, because he so badly wanted to. But Izzy had just been through one of the worst experiences of her life since losing her parents. Being abandoned by someone who had professed to care for her had to have done something to her. Would kissing her be taking advantage? Before she’d confessed to him, he would have done it. Everything inside him ached to do it.

  “Are you sure that’s what you want?” he asked, needing permission.

  “Yes.”

  Jules pulled her against him and kissed her.

  She tasted faintly of salt from the cenote and sugar from the fruit they’d eaten at the farm. He felt her wet eyelashes against his cheekbones. He was forgetting to breathe, to kick and tread water. All he could do was hold her as they sank below the surface. She broke the kiss first. In the light of the water they could see each other clearly. The tips of their noses were touching. She bit his bottom lip and then swam away from him.

  As they resurfaced, his chest burning and aching to inhale, he saw the flash of her smile and followed her. Whatever Izzy was running from, he would follow her as long as she’d allow him.

  They swam to the edge of the cenote, and she pulled herself up and over the ledge where
there was a patch of grass. Water sloshed from his body as he climbed up beside her.

  She rested her head on his shoulder and intertwined her fingers with his. They looked up at the sky and watched streaks of light and distant ships arriving and leaving the planet. The thought of anyone hurting her burned through him. Then that thought was gone when she leaned in to kiss him again.

  Her kiss had a different effect this time. They were getting to know each other in a way he’d only dreamed of before that evening. He pulled her on top of him and held her tight. She gasped at the strength of his hold. For a moment he was unsure where to put his hands. He could hardly breathe from the warmth radiating off her, despite the cenote water dripping from their skin, despite the cold breeze that enveloped them.

  “Jules,” she whispered, pressing a kiss on each of his close eyelids, on the side of his neck, on his mouth.

  He couldn’t speak at first, afraid that if he did he would say something that would ruin the moment. He cleared his throat and took a long, heady breath.

  “Izzy?”

  “I have something that I want to give back to you,” she said.

  “Is it the kiss? Was it that bad, really?”

  Her laugh was low. She brought her lips back to his, and every other thought fell away. They ended up lying on the grass. Rather, she pressed her hands on his chest and the force of it pushed him back. He traced the soft skin of her lower back, where her top was riding up.

  When they couldn’t breathe, they broke apart. She sat on his lower abdomen, and he was struck by three things: One, there was nothing and no one in the galaxy as beautiful as Izal Garsea. Two, he was certain that the mechanisms of the world, the stars, luck, the Force itself, had brought her back to him somehow. And he loved her.