Stars On Fire

by E. L. Todd

  “So, you guys have known each other for a long time,” Jane assumed.

  “No, actually,” I said. “I wasn’t at the wedding because Hyde and I were at the moon. So, Charlotte and I didn’t cross paths—not until recently. My brother is really fond of her, so she feels like a part of the family, just the way Stacy is.”

  “Who’s Stacy?” Jane asked.

  “My sister-in-law.” The only woman who could make an honest man out of my brother. He had been the guy you didn’t want for your daughter, but then he became the only guy you would want for your daughter. It seemed like men stepped up when they met the right woman. It was an inevitable change.

  “What do you do?” Jane asked.

  “I’m a lab scientist at the hospital,” Charlotte said. “I run tests for patients and upload results for doctors. It’s pretty routine, the same thing every single day, but it’s a good job so I have no complaints.”

  “You have to be pretty smart to do that.” Jane drank her lemonade as she stared at Charlotte across the table.

  “Well…there are different degrees of smartness. I had to get my degree in chemistry in order to apply for the position…but I’m not a former test pilot in the military with an education from MIT. I’m probably the dumbest person here.” She chuckled before she took a drink of her lemonade.

  Jane rolled her eyes. “Neil and Hyde are a different breed. Don’t compare yourself to them. Besides, Hyde is still a very stupid man.”

  “Ouch.” Hyde placed his hand over his heart like he was truly offended. “Stupid man?”

  “Who’s the one who left Jeremy at the grocery store?” She shot him a venomous glare.

  “I told him to stay by the cart,” Hyde argued. “How hard is it to follow instructions?”

  “For a four-year-old?” she asked incredulously. “Pretty hard.”

  Hyde and Jane were a fun couple because they weren’t afraid to push each other’s buttons, but they were also stupidly in love. Hyde was constantly making jokes about his wife, but when the two of us were drifting in space and trying to pass the time, he was completely serious. I wished Jane could see him at his most vulnerable. He loved the missions—but he missed his family more and more with every launch.

  “Have you two ever launched together?” Charlotte asked.

  “Unfortunately,” Hyde said. “We’ve been stationed at the ISS once, and we’ve been to the moon together twice.”

  “The ISS?” she asked blankly.

  “International Space Station,” I answered.

  “How long are you stationed up there?” It was the first time she’d expressed interest in my work. Any other time, she didn’t mention it at all. Maybe she was only asking to be polite.

  “Between three and six months,” Hyde answered. “Six months is too long for the space station. But we have so much work to do at Lunar Labs that six months is necessary. One time we were docking with the space station and our navigational systems went out.” He turned to me, laughing at the memory. “Do you remember that, Neil?”

  I remembered everything. “Yes. But it wasn’t very funny at the time.”

  “What happened?” Charlotte turned her gaze on me, hooked on the story.

  “You go.” Hyde gave me the floor.

  It happened two years ago, and I remembered the details so clearly because lives were at stake—and not just ours. “The navigational system is essential because when you’re docking, coming in at the wrong velocity could endanger everyone on the ISS. We could have killed ourselves and the other astronauts on board. Without being able to determine the distance between us, we had to do everything by sight. So, I had to use the stopwatch to guess our velocity and dock with the space station at the right speed. Thankfully, we were able to pull it off.”

  “We had a biologist with us at the time. She was there to study plant growth under a different gravitational field. The look on her face…” He shook his head slightly. “She was redder than a tomato. The poor girl was about to pass out.”

  Charlotte stared at me incredulously. “So, you calculated your speed just using a stopwatch? How do you even do that?”

  “Guesswork,” I answered.

  “But when it comes to stuff like that, you can’t guess…” She was still in awe of me, like she couldn’t believe I had the brains to pull that off.

  I shrugged. “Sometimes, you have to guess. After being part of the NASA team, we quickly learned that it’s not if something will go wrong. It’s when something will go wrong. We’ve trained to be the best astronauts we can be and hope it’s good enough.”

  “You’re both good enough,” Jane said. “Every time Hyde takes off in that rocket, my heart falls into my stomach. But I know he’ll come back…because he always makes it back.” She rubbed his arm at the table side.

  As if that meant the world to Hyde, he leaned in and kissed his wife on the mouth. Of course, it was far above PG-13, so I turned back to Charlotte.

  She was looking down at her food, grinning like she found them adorable. “It sounds like you have the most dangerous profession in the world.”

  “Yes, it might be.” There were no other professions that required takeoff in a rocket. That was usually the riskiest part of the entire mission, hoping a hydrogen tank hadn’t busted and mixed with oxygen, causing the whole thing to explode…which was exactly what happened to my father. He trained so hard but never made it off the ground. It was such a waste…but I was finishing the mission he never got to complete.

  “You say that so calmly.” She brought her lemonade to her lips and took a quick drink.

  “It’s my job to be calm.” The flight surgeon recorded my heart rate anytime I had my suit on. During launch and reentry, everyone back at Houston could see my metabolic response to stress. They always teased me for having low numbers, for keeping my heart rate at 90 bpm throughout the entire process. Even that time we couldn’t dock with the ISS, it didn’t change. People asked how I managed to pull that off, and my answer was always the same; I cared more about the job than my own life—so there was no reason to be scared.

  “I can’t even stay calm when I get on the freeway,” Charlotte said with a laugh. “I’m screaming at everyone for not getting up to speed, and Torpedo is barking at everyone because he’s annoyed too. God, I’m anything but calm.”

  “You seem passionate.”

  She shrugged. “I guess that’s a better way to put it.”

  Hyde and Jane finally broke apart, like they hadn’t just had a make-out session a few feet away from us. “Alright, what’s for dessert?”

  WE SAID goodbye at the door.

  “Thank you for coming.” Jane hugged Charlotte goodbye then moved into me next.

  “We should be thanking you,” Charlotte said. “A lovely meal with homemade lemonade. Are you sure we can’t help with the dishes?”

  “God, no.” Jane waved off her comment then gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Take care of yourself, honey. And take care of my man. I know he can be crazy sometimes.”

  “Sometimes?” I asked. “Try all the time.”

  “Just keep him alive,” she said. “I like him crazy.”

  Hyde hugged Charlotte next. “It was nice to meet you. Any friend of Neil’s is a friend of mine.”

  I knew I would get grilled about Charlotte later.

  “Thank you for having me,” Charlotte said politely.

  We walked out of the house and got into my Range Rover before we drove back to the city.

  Her feet didn’t touch the floor, so she brought her knees to her chest. She was a petite woman who could fold up and fit almost anywhere. When she was underneath me, she was flexible and easy to fuck.

  It was hard for me to look at her legs and not think about sex.

  Come on, look at her.

  “Your friends are nice.” She broke the silence and the audible tension between us.

  “Jane is. Hyde is a dumbass.”

  “I doubt you would trust a dumbass with your l
ife in a rocket ship.”

  “When it comes to technical stuff, he’s the best of the best. But when it comes to anything else, he’s just a dumbass. He’s a smart stupid person.”

  “That’s sweet,” she said sarcastically.

  “I’m just being real. Who leaves their kid in the grocery store?”

  “True. I would never leave Torpedo anywhere by mistake. When he’s not with me, I feel off.”

  The skyscrapers in the city were visible from the freeway, the flat land making the city project from the ground like statues. “How long have you had him?”

  “About eight years now.”

  She’d been divorced for six months, so that meant he used to be her husband’s dog too. “You got him in the divorce?”

  “Psh, I took him. Cameron wasn’t happy about that, but I told him to get over it.”

  Cameron. I didn’t like that name the second I heard it. “I’m sure Torpedo prefers you anyway.”

  “He’s definitely a mama’s boy.” If she had a problem talking about her divorce, it didn’t seem like it. She was so carefree and easygoing that it didn’t seem like it bothered her at all. It was a part of her past that she never thought about. Instead of it being six months, it seemed like six years. “How long have you and Hyde been close?”

  “Since the air force.”

  “That’s where you met?”

  “Yep. We were both fresh out of high school and assholes.”

  She chuckled. “I can’t picture either of you being assholes.”

  “Oh, we definitely were. We took our training seriously, but we were smartasses the rest of the time. We were both determined to become pilots before our four years ran out. It was hard work and we became competitive, but that competition made us both rise to the top of our class. It’s rare for young men to rise in the ranks that quickly, but we made it happen.”

  “So, you were both fighter pilots?”

  I nodded.

  “And those are used in war?”

  “The country’s defense, in general.”

  “Did you ever do any missions?”

  “All the time.” Just because we weren’t at war with a nation didn’t mean there weren’t tensions. The activities of the military weren’t always known to the press. A lot of operations were covert…and the details never revealed. “The military isn’t just for fighting. It’s for intimidation. When people are intimidated, they are less likely to turn confrontational.”

  “That sounds scary.”

  It could be at times.

  “Did you go into the air force because you wanted to be a fighter pilot? Or did you go for experience?”

  “Experience and a free education. I got the pilot experience I would need to apply for NASA, and then I also got my education paid for. I always knew I wanted to go to MIT, but since it’s private, it’s extremely expensive. I didn’t want to put that burden on my mom or through student loans.”

  “So…you did all of that to be an astronaut?”

  I nodded. “Pretty much.”

  “How many astronauts are there?”

  “A few hundred. They only take new recruits every five years or so.”

  “So, the chances of you getting in were really slim?”

  I nodded.

  “But that didn’t stop you.”

  I smiled slightly. “I’ve always been that way. When I want something, I work for it until it’s mine.”

  “So, when did you know you wanted to be an astronaut?”

  “Since I was a young boy. Since I can remember, actually.”

  “And you never changed your mind?”

  I shook my head. “No. I thought if things didn’t work out, I could be a commercial pilot. Or I could use my engineering degree to work for a big company. Thankfully, my other skills gave me opportunities to do something else. But my endgame has always been the same.”

  “Wow…that’s amazing. It’s rare for someone to know exactly what they want so early in life.”

  I was so young when my father passed away that I didn’t even remember him, but his legacy shaped who I was as a boy and guided me into becoming a man. Anyone who knew him spoke so highly of him, and when I watched old interviews, he was so passionate about his commitment to exploring the unknowns of space. He didn’t even get to leave the surface of the earth before his time ran out.

  It was my job to finish what he started.

  I WALKED her to her door, and she didn’t hesitate before she entered her apartment and indirectly invited me inside. She headed straight for the fridge and grabbed two beers.

  Torpedo walked up to me, my wallet stuffed in his mouth. Pieces of leather were hanging off because he’d sunk his teeth all the way through the stitching. He still looked apologetic, like he knew it once belonged to me but couldn’t control himself.

  “It’s okay,” I said as I looked at him. “You can have it.”

  He lay down again and continued to gnaw on it.

  Charlotte handed me a beer. “Want to sit on the couch and continue this conversation? Or do you have somewhere to be?”

  I could go home and sleep alone, or I could continue my evening with this sexy and playful woman. After we’d slept together, she didn’t seem to want anything from me. Once a woman got her claws into me, she only dug them deeper and deeper. Soon, it was impossible for her to let go. Laura threw a hissy fit when I called it quits. Charlotte seemed far more easygoing. “Even if I had somewhere to be, I’d rather stay here with you.”

  When she smiled, it lit up the entire room, even the dark corners where the light from her lamp didn’t reach. “Good answer.” She sat on the couch and pulled her knees to her chest, her white halter top a brilliant color on that tanned skin. Gold earrings hung from her lobes, and the angles of her slender face were hypnotic.

  I sat beside her, the beer resting on my thigh.

  Torpedo jumped onto the couch then snuggled into my side. He laid his snout on my thigh and closed his eyes.

  “Aww…he never does that with anyone.” She sat close to me as she watched her dog, motherly affection in her eyes. “He really likes you. That’s a compliment because he usually doesn’t like anyone.”

  “What about Stacy?”

  “He likes her and Vic, but it took him a while to warm up to Vic. He likes Kyle too. He hates my ex-husband. He bares his teeth and turns into a wolf anytime they’re in the same room together.”

  “Was he like that when you were married?”

  “That’s the weird part…he wasn’t. But when we got divorced, Torpedo turned savage.”

  They say you should always trust a dog’s instinct. They could see and sense things that humans couldn’t detect. Maybe he felt some bad energy from her ex-husband. “He’s just protective of you.”

  “Yeah. Maybe he can sense what’s going on better than I realized.”

  I never asked what happened to her marriage because it seemed too personal of a question. I didn’t know her well enough to pry like that…even though I was curious. I assumed her husband cheated and left her for someone else, but that seemed hard to believe considering she was stunning and awesome. Why would he want to be with someone else? Who could be better?

  “There’s nothing I hate more than someone asking a million questions about something I don’t want to talk about. When I first got divorced, that became my entire identity. That’s all anyone wanted to talk about. So that’s why I’ve never really asked you about being an astronaut. I just assumed it would annoy you because people probably ask you a million questions about it every single day.”

  People did grill me about it a lot, even people I didn’t know. It never offended me, but it was exhausting answering the same questions over and over…especially when people asked dumb questions. But I didn’t mind having deep and meaningful conversations about the profession that comprised my entire purpose for being alive. “People do ask me a million questions about it. Sometimes, it does annoy me. But with you…it wouldn’t annoy me at a
ll.” She was a smart girl who would ask smart questions, and if listening to my adventures turned her on, then that was even better.

  “Wow…I can ask the most famous astronaut in the world anything I want. That’s a lot of power.”

  “With great power comes great responsibility.” I took a drink of my beer, aware of the heavy dog that had gotten comfortable in my lap. His eyes closed, and he breathed deeply as he fell asleep right away. His hot breath fell across my jeans, warm enough to be felt through the thick material of my pants.

  “What do you like most about being in space?”

  “Good question.” People usually asked me stupid questions, like how did I pee when there was no gravity, and how could I drink the recycled urine from other astronauts even though we did the exact same thing on Earth. “Whenever I’m up there, I feel connected to the rest of the cosmos. It makes me realize that the bickering we have on Earth simply doesn’t matter. My life doesn’t matter. No one’s life matters. We’re just very small pieces of the universe. And the parameters of Earth are so unique that it makes me treasure our planet so deeply. From the space station, you can see just how beautiful it is. And you can also see how delicate it is, how our climate is changing the way it looks from above the stratosphere. Just knowing I’ve had the privilege to evolve and live at this moment in time…is so humbling. I feel like everyone should visit the space station just once so they can feel that…feel how insignificant they are.”

  “I don’t think people want to feel that way. They want to feel special.”

  “But we aren’t special. No one on this planet is special. And that’s oddly peaceful.”

  She set her beer aside and continued to watch me, like she was absorbing my final words and letting them soak into her soul. Her beautifully bright eyes were filled with curiosity as well as respect. It was obvious she was impressed with me like the rest of the world.

  I’d never cared what anyone thought of me—until now.