Last Song (Heinlein's Finches Book 3)

by Robin Banks

  “You are using logic at me. And me in a weakened state.” His eyes are still glassy but a bit of his grin is coming back.

  “Sorry ‘bout that.”

  “Are you going to tell me what she hit you with?”

  “Do I have to?”

  “No. It’s none of my business.”

  “Are you using reverse psychology on me?”

  “Just stating the truth.”

  He looks out into the distance. I don’t know what he’s looking at because you can’t see shit from here, but it makes it easier to talk to him.

  “She says I don’t know shit about love and I’m breaking Quinn’s heart.”

  “Damn. She really doesn’t pull her punches, does she?”

  “Nah. Dunno where she got that from.”

  We both stare out at nothing for a bit, then Asher snorts.

  “You know what’s seriously funny? If your dad hadn’t been such a piece of shit, no offence meant, you wouldn’t have learnt how to do what you do and Quinn would probably be dead now. If I hadn’t crashed my ship and fucked my head up, I would have never gone into teaching and I couldn’t have heard you right now. I mean, I would have heard the words and they would have made sense, but I couldn’t have felt them so they wouldn’t have changed a damn thing. It’s weird how bad shit turns into good.”

  “Yeah. Shame that it goes the other way round, too.”

  “There’s probably something really deep in there about the human condition, but I don’t feel up to handling it right now. I’m glad I know you, anyway. I’m sorry my kid walloped you one.”

  His mouth curls up at the corners when he says ‘my kid’. That’s more like it.

  When it’s time to leave, I don’t believe it. Even when we walk towards the ship with all our gear, even when we find Asher’s lot all assembled at the spaceport to wave us off, even when Kolya hugs me hard enough to break something and weeps a river down my shoulder, I can’t believe it. This can’t be it. It makes no sense.

  Everyone saying goodbye to me doesn’t make it make sense. Quinn hugs me last, so quickly that you’d think I was on fire. When she lets go I can’t breathe. I just can’t get any air in. Alya pushes me into the ship and towards my seat because my feet got stuck. I hear the ship doors closing, and still I don’t believe it. None of this feels real.

  This is fucked up. I need to get my head around this. I need to make this into an ending so I can move on. I strap myself tight in my seat, lean back against it, and close my eyes. When we leave this place, I really want to feel it. I want to feel every bit of the g-force squeezing me out of here. Endings are important, even endings for things that never got started.

  I’m so focused on focusing that when something hard and heavy bangs into my shin it catches me totally by surprise and makes me yelp. When I open my eyes, Alya is standing in front of me, holding my bag. My guitar case is at my feet. She threw it at me hard enough to break skin.

  “Alya, what the fuck?”

  She lobs my bag right at my face. “Get out of my ship.”

  “You what? The fuck is up with you?”

  “Nothing. This is your last stop. Get out.”

  I look at her and she’s not kidding.

  “Alya, you can’t do this.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  I look at Raj behind her. He looks supremely uncomfortable but he’s not saying a damn thing.

  “Raj, come on. This is ridiculous.”

  He half-smiles at me, shakes his head, and squeezes my shoulder on his way out. So much for having my back. Alya is still in front of me, arms crossed and scowling.

  “You heard me. You’re not coming with us.”

  “You’re throwing me out? What the fuck have I done now?”

  “Remember when we stole us a zoo?”

  “No, you’ll have to remind me. Which time? Of course I fucking do! What the fuck has that got to do with this?”

  “You said some stuff back then, about me being a coward.”

  “That’s what this is about? I said I was sorry about a million times.”

  “You said I was handing you-know-who a victory. That I was letting him fuck up my life. You were right. Luke, she’s not worth it.”

  “Who? Quinn?

  “No, dipshit. Her.”

  She spits the word out, and I know which ‘her’ she’s talking about.

  “What the fuck has this got to do with her?”

  “You were right about me. You were a total asshole, but you were right. There was a time when you were braver than me, and smarter too.”

  I scoff. “Yeah, right.”

  “Yeah. And it wasn’t so long ago. I fucked up with her. I sat by and watched the whole fucking thing unfold, watched you go through it, and I didn’t do anything.”

  “What the fuck were you gonna do?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t care. I should have done something. I let her fuck up your past. There’s nothing I can do about it. I let her fuck your head up, too, and your heart. Literally. But I’m not going to let her fuck up your future. Kid, you’re in love with Quinn. It’s fucking obvious. Your alleged magic disappearing powers notwithstanding, you’re about as subtle as a shovel to the face.”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “None of my business? Of course it’s my fucking business if you’re about to fuck your life up!”

  “It doesn’t fucking matter how I feel about Quinn. That’s not the issue.”

  “What’s the issue, then?”

  “I’d only fuck it up.”

  “That’s not you talking: that’s the fear she put into you. I’m not letting her win. I’m not letting her hurt you: not again. You’re staying here, and you’re giving this a go.”

  “You can’t make me.”

  “What’s the worst that can happen?”

  Just thinking about it makes my chest clench up.

  “I lose everything. Again. I can’t take it. I fucking can’t. I couldn’t the last time. I can’t go through it again.”

  “Kid, if you had a chance to go back in time, knowing what you know now, would you do it all again?”

  “Now, I don’t know. Before this trip, yeah. Absolutely.”

  “Even knowing how it ended last time?”

  “Yeah. I know what I’d need to do not to fuck it up.”

  “Yeah, well, you can’t. That’s over and done with. So take what you’ve fucking learnt and move forward instead. Give it three months. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll come get you. Hell, if it doesn’t work out get Kolya to send me a com and I’ll be on my way straightaway. But for the love of all that is holy, give this a go. Do it for me if you won’t do it for yourself. Do it for Quinn. She loves you, you know?”

  “She doesn’t even know me, and what she knows of me she doesn’t like. We fight all the time. If she likes me now it’s because she got all spun out over that bullshit about saving her life.”

  “She’s seen you at your worst and she was in love with you way before you saved her life. Which you did: that’s not bullshit. Anyway, I don’t care. You’re doing this. Get the fuck out of my ship. Please.”

  “Alya, don’t say that!”

  “I’ve said it. Please, get out of my ship.”

  I look at her and her face is set. She isn’t taking that back. I get up. Suddenly she’s just a tiny, tiny person. I could squash her flat without really trying. I can’t begin to understand how she’s capable of turning my life upside down and inside out, but she is.

  “Can I say bye to Raj?”

  “Of course. Kid, I mean it. If it all goes to shit, you call me.”

  “And you’ll come get me?”

  “Yes. And if they’ve been unkind to you I’ll nuke the fucking planet from space on the way out.”

  “I’m almost sure Raj wouldn’t let you.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it. You’ll be alright.”

  She doesn’t even hug me. She’s got her arms crossed tight and doesn’t even fuck
ing hug me. Raj does, but it’s not the same. I walk down the ramp and for a moment I think this can’t be it, she can’t really be doing this, but the door shuts, the ramp retracts, and the tunnel alarm starts flashing and beeping, so I walk off. Another door shuts behind me and seconds later I feel the vibration of the ship taking off. She didn’t even wait until I got out. She didn’t even wait to see if they will take me in.

  I walk out of the tunnel and Quinn is still there. She’s sitting on the floor, hugging her knees, and her face is all wet. Asher is sitting next to her, his arm around her shoulders. Quinn sees me first, but she doesn’t move. Her face just goes all luminous, even though she’s still crying buckets, and my feet stop because I’m afraid to break this, I’m afraid of what comes next, I’m afraid of her, of what she could do to me.

  Asher gets up and walks over. He looks like he doesn’t have a clue what’s going on either.

  “Your ship left.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, are you going to stay over?”

  “If I can.”

  He nods. “I’ll tell Gwen we need to find you a room.”

  He slaps me on the shoulder and walks back to Quinn. He kneels down next to her and they whisper to each other for a bit. Quinn is still looking right at me. She hasn’t looked away yet. If she keeps staring at me like that, maybe I’ll stand here forever, a bag over my shoulder and a guitar in my hand, which seems to be the way I always end up standing in front of a new life. Maybe I’ll never take the next step.

  Asher slaps her on the shoulder too, gets up, and heads home.

  Quinn tilts her head. She’s so fucking beautiful like that, even with her eyes red raw and her beard all wet. She’s so beautiful that I forget about how fucking shit scared I am for long enough to get my feet working again.

  I go and sit next to her. Now comes the hard bit.

  24. Quinn

  When I see him walking out the tunnel I can’t believe my eyes. I saw him getting on the ship. I saw the ship going up. I thought I’d never see him again. Now he’s here. I didn’t expect this to happen, so I don’t have any expectations about how it’s going to happen, but he still manages to surprise me. When he sees me he stops walking and just stares. He stares at me long and hard enough that I begin to wonder whether he is quite well. He left me here only a few minutes ago. He can’t be that shocked at finding me still here.

  Asher goes up to talk to him. When he comes back he’s both amused and concerned.

  “Looks like Luke is here to stay. Are you ok with this?”

  “Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Plenty of lovely fantasies don’t translate terribly well into realities. I don’t want you to feel obligated.”

  “Obligated?”

  “Because he stayed behind for you. Quinn, if you ever change your mind and want him gone, I’ll fly his ass home the very same day, no questions asked. Just remember that, ok?”

  “I love you too.”

  “I’ll see you at home. I’ll tell the rabble. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t. Unless it’s fun.”

  Even after Asher goes, Luke keeps standing and staring. It seems to take him an age and a half to get over his paralysis, but at long last he comes and sits next to me. He’s stiff as a plank and looks terrified, but he’s here, on this planet, close enough that I could touch him. I don’t, because I don’t want to startle him, but I’m so glad my heart could burst.

  Then he opens his fucking mouth.

  “This wasn’t my idea.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Alya slung me out. She says I should give this a go. She said ‘please.’”

  “Seriously? Out of all the things you could be telling me right now, this is what you pick?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Do you want to be here?”

  “Yes!”

  “So that’s also the truth. You could have opened with that.”

  “I figured I’d get the worst bit out first.”

  “Because you’re trying to put me off you forever?”

  “Because I want things to be straight between us. You’ve been at me to open up more. This is me opening up, ok?”

  I’m tempted to tell him that I’m already regretting my request, but right now I don’t think him capable of parsing sarcasm.

  “Ok. So you’re here to stay? And you want to?”

  “Yeah. If it’s ok with you.”

  “I asked you to, haven’t I?”

  “No. You haven’t. And maybe you shouldn’t. You barely know me.”

  “We spent weeks stuck in a ship together.”

  “That means fuck-all. You don’t know shit about me. And half the time you can’t stand me.”

  “That’s not quite true.”

  “It’s not far off. And you don’t owe me shit, ok? I don’t want this to be about you owing me anything.”

  “Alright. You’re just some guy who risked his life to save mine. People do that all the time. No biggy.” He scowls. I guess I was right about his sarcasm-parsing ability. “I mean it! We can start from scratch.”

  “No, we fucking can’t. That’s bullshit. Everything we’ve been and everything we’ve done is coming into this. That’s the problem.”

  “I don’t know what you’re on about.”

  “Right. You don’t. That’s what I’ve been trying to say.”

  “Look, whatever may have happened…”

  “There was this girl.”

  I knew that all along: what else could it possibly have been? Hearing it still makes my heart sink, and the selfishness of that feeling disgusts me. I’ve wanted him to open up to me for ages. The least I can do now is bloody well listen, even if I don’t like what I’m hearing.

  “She worked for Raj’s dad. She was one of the domestics.” He flicks me a look through his eyelashes, as if to check my reaction to that. “They have a lot of them. It’s a big house and a big family and it’s traditional there, anyway. Most of their staff have been there forever. They’re good employers and Anteia’s not that great for working-class people. Anyway. This girl was new. Woman, really. She was a bit older than me. Bit younger than you, I think.” Again, that flash of blue through a curtain of eyelashes.

  “I’m 26.”

  “Yeah.” He nods. “Halfway between us, then. I noticed her around. Kinda hard not to. She wasn’t super pretty, but she was really striking, and she was always around, and… Anyway, I noticed her. But it’s not like I was going to do anything about it. She’d talk to me, though. Most of the staff won’t talk at all, even with me. If you try and talk to them, they get kinda spooked. It always made me feel weird. I’m not one of the rich folk, so I can’t really talk to them, apart from Raj’s family, and the domestics won’t talk to me, and I feel out of place most of the time, like I’m not one thing nor the other and I don’t fit anywhere. But she’d talk to me, if there was nobody else around. So I found ways to make that happen, because it was nice. But I didn’t mean anything by it. I wasn’t presuming.” His eyes flick up at me again, then he fixes them on the horizon.

  “I kinda don’t see people when I’m playing guitar, sometimes. I just get wrapped up in it and everything else goes. One day I was playing, and she heard me, and I didn’t see her for ages, apparently. She told me that she liked it – that she liked the music and how I looked playing it.” His eyes narrow. “I thought she was nice. And it all felt like a bad idea, but it felt good, too. I mean, everyone else manages to… I kinda started thinking maybe there was a chance. But I probably wouldn’t have done anything about it. I would have just carried on mooning about her. Probably written a bunch of tunes about her and dropped it. But then she…”

  A muscle starts twitching in his jaw. “I didn’t start it. I wouldn’t have. But she started it, and I went along. I’d never… She was my first.”

  “Oh.”

  I didn’t mean to say it out loud. I didn’t mean to say a damn thing. His words just caught me so much by surprise that I
blurted it out, and I regret it instantly. He looks straight at me for a fraction of a second, and in that small space of time manages to convey a mixture of defiance, hurt, and fury of such intensity that it almost floors me. Just as well I’m shielding.

  “Pretty bad, hey.”

  “Not bad. I just didn’t expect it.”

  “Why, ‘cause I’m such a stud?”

  “Actually, yes.”

  He snorts. “Whatever.”

  “Don’t be like that.”

  “Do you wanna know the end of the story or what?”

  “Yes.”

  “Stop talking trash, then.”

  I have to bite my tongue to stop myself from snapping back at him.

  “I thought it’d be a one off, but it wasn’t. It got to be a regular thing, kinda. It was hard to keep it quiet, what with all the people in that house, but we managed. She didn’t want people to know because of her work. I didn’t really want to go public with it because I didn’t want to have everyone feeling sorry for me when it was over. But it carried on going on. After a few weeks of it, I started thinking it was real.”

  He leans forward and rests his chin on his hands. “Then she found out she was pregnant. I couldn’t understand how. We’d been careful. Anteia’s not Fed, so there’s no baby quotas. You can have all the kids you can feed. But it didn’t seem like a great idea, and she already had a kid her parents were raising for her because she had to work. So we were fucking careful. Pun not intended. But she got pregnant anyway, so I figured I’d fucked something up.

  “I was scared at first. We hadn’t been together long, if you can even call it being together, and what do I know about babies? She wasn’t happy either. But after a couple of days I started thinking it was actually pretty great. We could make a proper go of it. Be a real couple. I don’t have much and everything I’ve got is thanks to Raj’s folk, but I try to pull my weight. I could keep us. She wouldn’t have to work and she could have her other kid living with us. Like an instant family, you know? She’s got brothers and sisters and parents and everything. Like normal people. So I told her that, she agreed, and I came out and told Alya and Raj. That sucked pretty bad.”