Wager: A Sci-Fi Romance (The Jekh Saga Book 4)

by H. E. Trent

  “Hey, man, whatever she wants. I haven’t pushed her. I’m happy she even gave me the time of day.”

  “Good answer.” Trigrian straightened up and worked Ara’s empty beer bottle between his hands. “So, the growler.”

  “Right. Getting one now.” Phillip retreated to the back.

  Trigrian turned to Sera.

  She carefully fixed her left arm over her body and studied the chalk writings on the board above the bar menu. The list appeared to be a rough draft of daily specials. There was some kind of ale, a non-alcoholic cocktail, and an appetizer called “jalapeño poppers.”

  What in the world are those?

  She carefully typed the words into her wrist computer to look up later.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked her.

  “Throw myself at a man,” she said glibly. “Is that how the Terran idiom goes?”

  “Jasper?” Ara asked, curling her lip. “You’re throwing yourself at Jasper?”

  “No. But he’ll go away once he sees. By that time, both will be telling everyone in town that I’m not a safe bet. That’ll get me out of the pool once and for all.”

  “What about me?” Ara asked.

  “Oh, I’m sure you’ll figure something out. You’re good at that.”

  Ara squinted at her sister for a few seconds, but then nodded. “Yes. I believe I am.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Marco let himself down from the ceiling in The Tin Can’s cargo bay and shouted an overloud, “Jesus Christ,” at the sight of Sera standing near the open rear door.

  She’d found a new sling, apparently. The floral print stood out in garish contrast against the plaid flannel shirt she wore. Seeing as how it wasn’t Smurf-sized, the shirt must have belonged to Brenna or possibly Precious. It was obviously a woman’s garment. The tapered shaping at the waist and the built-in room for breasts hinted at that.

  He wiped soot off his hands onto his jeans and waited for the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears to subside. “Didn’t hear you down here. How long have you been standing there?”

  “Not long.”

  “Surprised you’re not in the fields. You’re usually in the fields this time of day.”

  She cleared her throat and tucked her right hand into the pocket of her jeans. Those must have been borrowed, too. He’d never seen her in jeans. There wasn’t anything special about them. They were loose and rolled up a couple of times at the ankles. The look suited her somehow, though. She may have been dressed for function, but the drab clothing sent his gaze back to her pretty face.

  “I’m done in the fields today,” she said, rolling her gaze down to the metal grate on the floor in front of her toes.

  “Early for you, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, I suppose so, but I had to move more purposefully today to get Elken to her play date on time.”

  “For real? Who’s she playing with?”

  “Jouna Tervka’s daughter. She’s four and quite opinionated. Ara shooed me away so I wouldn’t hover, so I figured I’d distract myself from panicking by running some errands around the farm.” She pulled her hand from her pocket and gestured to the basket behind her. “Courtney and Trigrian made pot pies. Everyone’s so busy today, so I’ve been delivering them to farm hands and such. That’s the last few.”

  Hope bloomed, right in his empty belly. “Any in there for me, or do I need to go beg Court?”

  “There’s one for you, one for Edgar, and one for…Jasper.” She said “Jasper” as if being forced to speak a curse. Marco didn’t think the guy was that bad, or bad at all, really. She wasn’t being fair.

  “Well. We appreciate the food, that’s for sure. Want me to take it on back to the galley?”

  “May as well.” She stepped away from the basket. “Shouldn’t need to be reheated if you eat soon.”

  “I’ll let the guys know.” Marco grabbed the basket and shouted up into the open ceiling panel, “Hey, Salehi? Sera brought dinner. Still hot. I’m gonna leave yours in the galley.”

  “Smells good,” he called down. “What is it?”

  “Pot pie.”

  Sera cleared her throat again. “And brownies.”

  “Ooh. Nice.” He added, “And brownies,” to his relay to Salehi. He glanced over his shoulder as he strode toward the corridor. “Basket’s kind of heavy, huh?”

  She didn’t move. She shoved her hand back into her pocket and shrugged again. “That’s probably the growler.”

  “Growler?” He stopped long enough to lift the basket flap and peer inside. There was a glass jug filled with amber liquid and a label that read SOUM LIKE IT HOPS—SOUM BREWING CO., MYRTLE BEACH. “Whaaaat?” He whispered to himself, hooking his finger through the little handle and grinning like an asshole. “You brought us beer?” he asked, and walked again.

  “I brought you beer,” she said.

  She’d moved from her spot, but kept a safe distance behind him as if she were afraid he was going to jump her or something. She should have known better. She’d made perfectly clear that she had little interest in giving him any second chances, which was probably for the best. For days, he’d been convincing himself to take back what he’d said and to tell her, “Okay, let’s try this again”—Jasper be damned—but Marco was trying to be a good friend. There were other women. One day, Marco would find someone he liked just as much.

  I fucking hope.

  If he didn’t, he could only pray that he wouldn’t be overcome with resentment toward his friend.

  “You and Luke and Owen,” she said, walking slowly into the galley behind him. “You argue about beer. Phillip at the bar in Little Gitano had that imported. He was worried people wouldn’t like the brand. Since Luke and Owen aren’t here…” She shrugged again and leaned against the doorframe.

  “Right. That’ll be gone before they’re back for sure. At the rate they’re going, who knows when they’ll be back, huh?”

  “Indeed. Have you heard from Luke today?”

  “Yeah. They’re still trying to get tapped into the sound system. I think Alex is ready to resort to using the big guns because he’s supposed to be somewhere in a few days, but Luke’s not in any hurry, I guess. He wants to do things right.”

  “That sounds like Luke.”

  “Yep.” Marco slid out one of the mini potpies along with a brownie, put them on a tray for Jasper along with a fork, napkin, and a tall glass of the beer, and hurried down the hall. He wanted to eat his food before it could get cold.

  “Here ya go,” he said, setting the tray on Jasper’s bedside table.

  Jasper had managed to pull on a pair of sweatpants and was lying on top of the covers, skin slicked with sweat, curly black hair wild around his head, and dark circles under his eyes.

  He turned down the volume on the show he was watching on the vid-screen, cringing as he redistributed his weight. “Did the dinner fairy come?”

  “Yup. Eat up. Don’t tell Dorro I gave you booze, though. Alcohol is probably contraindicated with the painkillers.”

  “If you won’t tell him, neither will I.”

  “Friends don’t snitch.”

  “Damn right.”

  “How’re you feeling?”

  “Like shit. Tired, but can’t sleep. The painkiller is making me drowsy, but my heart is racing. Whenever I think I should taper off the dose, the throbbing in my hip flares up, and I remember why cutting back isn’t such a good idea.”

  “Come on, man. You’ve got a bunch of hardware in your hip. Take it easy.”

  “Trying to. Hate being so idle when I’m used to getting shit done. I knew I was long overdue for a vacation, but this wasn’t what I had in mind, you know.”

  “I know exactly what you mean.”

  “Want me to close the door?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  Marco left the room and heaved the door closed. The sensors had broken on that panel, like so many others, and the door didn’t automatically move upon his approach. He returned to t
he galley to find that Salehi had found his way down from the warren of air ducts in the ceiling. He was already seated and with his fork halfway to his lips when Marco stepped in.

  “Sorry for being rude,” he said, shoving food into his mouth and chewing. “Love the chicken pot pie. Hits the spot.”

  “Mrs. Cartwright’s recipe, probably,” Marco said. “I think Court has cooked her way through all the large group recipes her grandma sent, and is now working her way through the ones that can just be easily tripled and quadrupled.”

  “I’d like to meet her in person,” Sera said. She was standing by the sink, holding half a glass of beer. “I’ve spoken to Mrs. Cartwright on video COM a few times when I happened to be in the office when she was calling in to do chats with the McGarrys. She’s quite nurturing, not only of her grandchildren, but of anyone lucky enough to be on the periphery, as well.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Marco leaned his rear end against the counter’s edge. “We grew up, like, three blocks from her and Mr. C. We sometimes used to pile into their place after school and she’d whip us up some snacks, even if she wasn’t expecting us. There’d be all five of the McGarry kids plus me and Luke and Precious piled into the kitchen. The space was tight, but she didn’t mind.”

  “Tolerant woman, then,” Salehi said with his mouth full.

  “Mm-hmm. She loved us all. I think us all being friends was important to her. Where she grew up, folks in the community took care of each other. Was less like that in Boston. Everybody there tended to mind their own business.”

  “That’s nice in some ways. Dangerous in others.”

  “Exactly. You want some privacy, but at the same time, if something ever happened to your family, you’d want someone to notice and to care.”

  “Hmm.” Sera fidgeted idly at her sling’s hem and looked from Salehi to Marco, then back again. She seemed to have been waiting for something, and it dawned on Marco that she may have been waiting on the basket.

  “Ah.” He emptied out the rest of the items and closed the lid. “I’ll take the dishes back to the house later on. You don’t have to wait for them.”

  She gave her head a slow shake and said flatly, “I wasn’t waiting.” She left the galley, but instead of turning right at the corridor and back toward the cargo bay, she went left toward the cabins and the cockpit.

  “Probably wants to see what kind of mess we made,” Salehi said.

  Marco shrugged, and picked up his food and beer and headed in the same direction. “You gotta admit, we made a pretty impressive mess.”

  “By the time we get this piece of shit space worthy again, we’ll probably have replaced every damn button and panel.”

  “We can call this shit a learning exercise,” Marco called back, laughing.

  By the time they were done, there’d be no engineers more qualified to put junky spaceships back together than the engineers at the Beshni farm. That hadn’t exactly been the career Marco aspired to as a kid, but hopefully, it’d pay.

  Marco expected to eat his food in the quiet of his dark room and then go immediately into the shower, but he hadn’t anticipated a guest.

  Sera had every possible light turned on in the space, and when he set his food down on the narrow desk, she was standing in front of his clean laundry file, pinching the corners of a towel together.

  “Hey, you don’t have to do that,” he said.

  Saying nothing, she kept folding, making precise creases and perfect squares.

  He pulled the chair back from the desk and sat with his forearms pressed to his thighs. For a while, he watched her.

  She used the fingers of her weaker left hand to hold the laundry items in place while the right whipped them into stackable shapes.

  “I don’t usually fold my laundry,” he said. “Whenever I need something in particular, I root it out of the pile.”

  No response. She picked up another towel. An oversized bath sheet, actually, that was nearly as tall as her. She held it up one-handed, effectively shielding herself from view under the guise of folding, but only briefly. She shook out the wrinkles, laid the towel on the bed, and made quick work of turning the huge rectangle into a one-foot square, which she carried into the bathroom and tucked onto his empty linen shelf.

  Back down she came, rooting through the pile, the same way his mother used to whenever she visited his apartment. Ma couldn’t stand a mess.

  But Sera wasn’t his mother. She was a woman he’d slept with and was now on questionable terms with. She hadn’t given birth to him and didn’t need to treat him like a child.

  “Okay. Listen, about what happened last—”

  “Do you starch these?” She spun around on her heel and held out a pair of his boxer shorts. They were clay brown and had some bleach splatters on them.

  “For fuck’s sake, Sera.” He was across the room before he’d even registered getting to his feet and taken the underwear from her and stuffed it into his pocket. “You do not need to do that.”

  She huffed indignantly. “Then who will? Are you waiting to spontaneously develop magic so that you can be done all with the swipe of a hand? Well, don’t hold your breath.”

  “Ow. That’s cold.” He was going to handle the laundry when he needed to. The need simply hadn’t arisen.

  She blinked at him. “Are you going to drink that?” She pointed to the beer. “Better to drink while it’s cold.”

  “I will, but—”

  “So, no starch?”

  “What?”

  “Your underwear.”

  “No! I don’t starch my damned drawers. Who does?”

  She shrugged her right shoulder. “Perhaps my research was faulty. Oh well. What about your shirts?”

  “What about them?”

  “Terran men starch their shirts, do they not?”

  “I didn’t even starch my shirts when I was teaching. If I needed a crisp collar, I’d drop my stuff off at the dry cleaner’s, and let them press them. I’m a slob on Jekh, and I’m really okay with that.”

  Most other people were fine with him being a slob, too.

  Her gaze tracked down his body from his neck down to his booted feet. “You could do better.”

  Marco let out a startled guffaw. “I’m sorry, what?”

  She made a dismissive flicking gesture and returned to the laundry. “Eat.”

  “I will. I’m simply trying to understand what you’re doing.”

  “Organizing you, obviously.”

  “Yes, I see that, but why?”

  Her hand stilled atop a pair of his cargo pants. She was so pensive, so silent that he didn’t think she was going to answer, but then she turned her head a bit and peered at him out of the corner of her eyes. “Do you not want me here?”

  “You’re trying to get me in trouble, aren’t you?” He dragged his hand down his face and let out a breath. “You’re trying to trip me up so I say the wrong things and you have another reason to hate me.”

  “Should I hate you?”

  Probably.

  Of course, he didn’t really want her to hate him. He wanted the exact opposite. He wanted more mornings like the one when he’d woken with her beside him. He wanted her tenderness and patience. He wanted to enjoy her unique brand of teaching by example.

  But she wasn’t for him, and he needed to do the noble thing, even if the noble thing hurt.

  “Should I hate you?” she repeated since he didn’t answer.

  He still didn’t want to answer, because he couldn’t have what he wanted. Saying it aloud made things worse. He dragged his hand down his face and breathed out a ragged exhalation. “I don’t want you to hate me, sweet. I just… I want to say the right things so you’re not afraid to talk to me like you were before. I don’t want you to ever think I’m going to hurt you.”

  After a long stare and a lubricating blink, she nodded curtly and resumed her folding as if that was that.

  He was tired of trying to dissuade her. Sending her away seemed self-defeatin
g, even if breaking things off was right.

  He turned to his meal and ate quickly, but not so fast that he couldn’t enjoy the savory spices and appreciate the full-bodied flavor of the beer. It may not have been the best beer he’d ever had, but any beer was a luxury, and he relished every swallow.

  She moved from laundry to his bed and he watched transfixed as she efficiently snugged his sheets into place and straightened the quilt. She even fluffed the pillows. “Do you have a cleaning cloth in here?” she asked, crawling across the bed. “And something to spray this porthole with? You have streaks.”

  “I do?”

  “That may account for some of the dimness in here.”

  “I think the fact we’re in a tiny room in a tube-shaped spaceship is mostly to blame for that.”

  She pulled on the ledge to stand and squinted at the fogged, scratched plastic. Something else that likely needed to be replaced. “Can this window be opened? Some air in here wouldn’t be such a bad thing.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Ma used to say about my dorm room when I was in college. Really, Sera.” He reached across the bed, looped his arm around her waist, and pulled her to him. She smelled so damned good and he didn’t want to let go of her, but he did before he could do something embarrassing like nuzzling his face against her loose hair.

  He set her feet on the floor and spun her around to face him. “Sera—”

  “Do you have my other sling?” she interrupted, face a neutral blank.

  “Well, yeah, it’s around here somewhere. I meant to bring it to you, but—”

  “I’ll find it,” she said tartly, bordering on rudeness. She opened the topmost drawer of his dresser and gasped, and he knew why without asking.

  He didn’t actually fold anything in there, but the way he figured things, he was doing well to even have a system at all. The top drawer was T-shirts. Usually, he could find the one he was looking for.

  “The mess isn’t that bad,” he muttered.

  “I’m going to take everything out to be folded.”

  “No. Leave it. It’s fine.”

  “But how else will I be able to make room?”