Before You Go

by Ella James

those—” he nodded at the big, bulb-like things on the end of what looked like cannon chutes— “are the telescopes.”

  They were pointed toward the dome’s top. Margo noticed patterns cut into the ceiling; flaps where it opened. “Cindy designed them,” she murmured.

  “Zhuscopes.”

  Margo had heard all about her mother’s special telescope, and had wondered about the name. Casa de Zhu, the Zhuscope, Zhu’s. How arrogant could you get? Logan’s arm bumped hers, and her temper instantly cooled.

  “Come over here and sit with me.” She followed him past a couple of desks to a long, couch-like thing she couldn’t really see in the dark. It was positioned just in front of the massive machines. Margo sat down tentatively, eyeing the rubber-looking floor, inhaling the funny scent of metal and plastic. He sank down beside her, and dropped a pair of goggles in her hand.

  Her fingers explored the plastic, finding that they fastened via a strap; it would be too tight for her hurt head.

  “Lean back against the couch,” he told her. “I can hold them up for you.”

  “You don’t have to that. I can hold them.” She suddenly felt shy, overexposed.

  “You’ll need your hands for something else.”

  He leaned away, then in, and dropped a small, smooth cube into her lap. She rubbed her fingertips over its rounded keys, and the thing beeped. Logan lunged, a second late. The ceiling was starting to vibrate. Its wide, segmented pieces shuddered and slid, descending slowly toward the floor. The dome’s walls continued to fold in, not loudly, but in bursts of cool, smooth air that tossed her hair around her cheeks. The walls slid down into the floor until the sky surrounded them. A warm breeze kissed her skin. Stars sparkled, billions of white pinpricks.

  Logan’s hand touched down on her knee.

  “This is it…”

  The air on the hilltop was wet and carried a thousand scents: pine sap, moist dirt, salt water. Her senses hummed as the crickets sang and frogs croaked. They were sitting up high; she could see the distant lights of Puerto Rico, a smear of gold amid a sheet of flattened black. And closer to her, tools to see the sky.

  When the dome was all gone, all that remained were pistons, sheets of mirror, and at the heart of it all, a giant lens.

  Logan snorted. “I thought that you might like to come up here. I guess Bach is more relaxing, huh?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, turning to him. “But this is incredible.”

  There was a little awkward moment, where she thought he seemed embarrassed. That or he thought she was cheesy and obvious. Then he bumped her shoulder with his, and the coziness fell back over them.

  “With this thing,” he said, taking the remote in her lap, “you can guide the telescope. It’s already set, so you just have to put on the glasses. The old way would be looking through those lenses there,” he said, pointing to the ends of what looked, to her, like pistons.

  “Your— Cindy invented these things,” he said, holding out the glasses. “The telescope sends the signal to them, so you can see everything from here. Most of us who work here stick to the old school way, but this gets grants. And,” he smiled, “it works well for the concussed. Wanna try?”

  “Absolutely.” Anything.

  “Sit back,” he told her. “I’ll get up and stand behind you. I can hold the goggles up and you can—”

  “That’s okay,” she blurted, desperate to keep him next to her. “I really can hold them myself. You can just steer this thing,” she told him, holding up the little box. “I trust you.”

  13

  Logan wanted to warn her that her trust was misplaced, that whatever she thought this meant, it probably meant more but would be worth less, but she was smiling.

  He’d told himself he could treat her like a friend, and for some reason, he’d actually believed it. The truth was, every second near her worked on him like Southern Comfort, heat gliding over him, tightening his stomach and clouding his mind, drawing his hands to her, until it seemed fine to touch her, linger. He could tell himself he was being nice, offering to stand behind the couch, so close that his chest brushed her back, his arms rested on her shoulders, her hair tickled his cheeks and tortured his nose, all so he could hold up some goggles.

  It was ridiculous. Asinine. Selfish and at the same time, completely stupid.

  He’d wanted to get off the planet since he was old enough to think. He’d worked tirelessly for the last decade to get to where he was. He was smart, sure, but he’d still worked his ass off to choose the right courses, impress the right people, and now that he was close—so close—he was preying on Cindy Zhu’s daughter?

  What was wrong with him? Was he so much like his father? So self-destructive?

  Logan took a steadying breath and smiled at her, telling himself to keep his shit together.

  “Sure. I’ll steer you.” …down onto the couch. He gritted his teeth, and she seemed to notice.

  “Or I can hold the controller, and you can do the goggles? It doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Nah, this way is good.”

  He needed to get on with it. He could show her a couple of planets and take her back to the casa. Surely Jana would be finished putting the boys to sleep by then. He felt guilty abandoning Margo when she was hurt, but that was better than driving himself crazy. Or more importantly, better than engulfing her in his bullshit.

  And there was a lot of it. Enough to fuel a space shuttle.

  “Um…”

  He blinked. She was watching him.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, sorry.”

  He took the controller and she raised the goggles to her face. She shifted a little, and her shorts bunched up, revealing a dangerous amount of thigh.

  “Oh my God.” She took the mask off her face and grinned. “This is very cool.”

  “Good. I wanted to....” He shook his head. Shut his mouth. She smiled at him, an understanding smile, like she could tell he had lost his mind and she didn’t mind being with him anyway. Logan felt a swell of guilt.

  She squirmed on the couch, trying to get comfortable, and he leaned back, too, narrowing the space between them to inches, coming in close enough to get another whiff of her perfume.

  “You can lean your head on me if the back of this thing is too high for you. It’s not very comfortable. I should have grabbed a pillow.”

  Margo’s heart missed a beat. Pillow. Logan. It was all she could do not to giggle like a lottery winner.

  Okay, obviously time to accept the fact that she liked him.

  But did he like her?

  “Sit back. Kind of lean against my chest. Like that,” he said, encouragingly, as she snuggled between his shoulder and the couch.

  “Are you sure?”

  She could feel his low mm-hmm vibrating through his arm into hers.

  It felt tense, the arm, and in a rush, she realized she was being stupid. He probably didn’t like this. He probably didn’t want to do it any more than he’d wanted to hold the goggles for her. Duh. He was just feeling guilty.

  She wished she could go downstairs. Her head ached suddenly, a throb that soon burst like some kind of firework. She squeaked, and Logan was on her in an instant.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine.” Her eyelids fluttered; his face was close enough to kiss; his hands squeezed lightly on her upper arms.

  “Are you really?”

  “Yes.” She leaned away from him, and he backed off.

  “What happened?”

  “It was just a little…burst. When I lifted up my arm. It felt kind of like when you hit your funny bone, but it went all the way up behind my ear.”

  “Do you want to go downstairs?”

  “No. Not at all. …Unless you want to.”

  He shook his head, then lifted the goggles from her lap. She tried to stay still as he came in close to her side, so close they were pressed together tight.

  His warm, rough voice was right next to her ear. “You shoul
d see some stars now.”

  Margo gasped when the night sky lit up before her like a high-definition movie. She almost dropped the box, and then his voice was in her ear, just a whisper, raspy, warm. “Find the button that’s shaped like an ‘X’.”

  “Okay.”

  “Press that, and I’ll give you a tour.”

  “A tour of the sky…”

  “We’ll start at the sun first. This isn’t real time, obviously. It’s a picture I took earlier.”

  Margo squinted, nervous about the light, but the image that came up was liquid brown.

  “If you’re wondering why it isn’t bright, I put up a filter. At its full light, it’d blind anybody, even from the ground, but for you it needs to be extra dark.”

  For her. Margo’s heart tapped its toes.

  “See those paler spots, coming up kind of like arches? Those are solar flares. That’s something we look at here. Press the button when you’re ready.”

  The sun looked like it had freckles. This pleased Margo. She pressed the X, and they moved to Mercury.

  “We don’t know much about this one. Nobody’s really looked at the surface. They did some stuff in the seventies, but only for about a year. It’s not quite as interesting as Venus.”

  He was quiet while she studied the images, big, bold things in dampened Technicolor. Mercury was grayish purple, almost like the moon without its holes.

  “Venus is the third-brightest thing in the sky. Most people think it’s a star…” Up close, it looked like a bowl of tomato soup with milk swirled in.

  Mars was incredible, rusty smooth. Logan’s tone changed when he talked about that. He spoke faster, lighter, his hands in her hair moving slightly, so he tickled her temples.

  “If there was going to be life somewhere in our solar system, it would probably be on Mars.”

  “And you’re going to find it one day, right?”

  He chuckled, liquid velvet. “Not me. I’ll be lucky if I get to go. But I’d like to help. And, hey, if I found it, I’m not complaining.”

  “You should name it Marge.”

  “Is that your nickname?”

  “Yep.” She smiled, and he made a sort of thinking sound, like maybe he’d consider it. She wished…

  Onto the asteroid belt, and Ceres. His voice was relaxing, hypnotic. Somewhere out near the Kupiter belt, she noticed that she was totally slumped against his chest. He noticed too.

  “Are you tired? I’m probably boring you to sleep.”

  “No,” she said. “I like this kind of stuff. It just seems so cliché.” His hands, over her ears, moved a bit, and she worried he was going to take down the goggles. When he didn’t, she went on, baffled by the way things just flowed out of her. “You know the whole thing about nature versus nurture?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Well, I’ve always liked to go with nurture. Like, how you turn out is about more than just who your parents were.”

  He chuckled. “Amen to that.”

  “Anyway, when I realized it’s not true—not entirely true—because some biology comes in, like DNA and stuff—it makes me kind of… I don’t know. It’s just weird. I mean, I don’t even know her.”

  His left hand tensed, holding the goggles while his right arm lowered. She held her breath as it slid around her waist. For the longest moment, they just sat there. She could feel his ribs press into hers. Finally, so quietly she could barely hear him he said, “My dad thinks reading is a waste of time.”

  Margo laughed; it was choked off when his hand landed near her hip.

  “Let’s go somewhere else… somewhere out into the Milky Way. Maybe about eighteen-thousand light years away. You’re not getting dizzy, are you?” The stars were sliding by, little lines of pearl.

  “I’m… good.”

  She could feel him breathing, hard chest going in and out. His arm around her waist was solid. Warm. He shifted, pulling her closer, so her back was flush with his chest, his chin almost resting on her shoulder.

  Figuring his hand must be getting tired of holding the goggles, she raised her right hand and grabbed the other side. The things trembled—her or him?

  She saw a picture that reminded her of Earth’s solar system, but with some shapes she didn’t recognize.

  “This is just a prototype,” he murmured. “Press the circle key, you can zoom in. I’ll show you something you might like.”

  She did, and a smeary picture moved mechanically in front of her.

  “It’s just a couple of pixels, but you see the color variation on the edges of that little dot?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re looking at a little slice of reality I like to call The Great Planet Marge. Discovered just a few weeks ago, it’s been confirmed by telescopes at some of the world’s lesser observatories. Its name will be changing from a long meaningless number to the name of discoverer’s choice sometime in the next few days.”

  Despite her focus on the blob, and the way her head still hurt, Margo whirled around, desperate to see if he was kidding. Logan grinned, and she slapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Don’t mess with me.”

  “I’m not.” He raised both hands in mock surrender. “I would have thought you’d be happy to be the namesake for such a…cool place.” He grinned at her, laughing at his corniness. “There could be ice on Planet Marge—and ice could mean water, which could mean life. You could be the prototype for billions of other little Margos.”

  “Or other big Margos, intent on gobbling up earthlings.” Margo laughed.

  “They’ll be studied for their…unusual qualities.”

  Margo froze as the pad of his finger found her temples— “…For their very pretty brown eyes.” —and lost her breath as his rough palm spread out around the curve of her jaw. “...and for their soft skin.”

  As his hands stroked up, into her hair, she knew that Logan was going to kiss her. His face came close to hers; she could smell the mint of his breath. “I think what they’ll be best known for is their hair. Envy of all the other aliens that orbit their same star.”

  As his eyes sparked, Margo reached out and caught the back of his neck. An instant later, his mouth covered hers.

  Whoa.

  He was soft and hot, like liquid silk. She opened her mouth, and his tongue glided in. She melted as his arm circled her shoulders, burned as her tongue met his; she trembled as she licked inside of his mouth. The taste of him, warm mint, and the scent—just Logan, making her head spin. His hand caressed her neck, fingers inching up her shivering nape. His mouth stroked and tugged, always gentle, slow and easy, until her heart had slipped down to her toes and she found herself floating off the couch.

  When he pulled back, she was panting.

  “I’m sorry.” He dropped his face into his hand, and she could hear his ragged breaths. “I’m sorry,” he said again. His head lifted. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “We should probably go.” He stood.

  “Was it bad?” It was stupid to ask, but she couldn’t help it. She watched him drag his hand over his face.

  “No,” he said, finally. “Wasn’t bad.”

  She took his hand and stood. His fingers curled over hers for just a second, then slipped away.

  “I had a nice night,” she said quickly.

  “Thanks for coming.”

  That was it? He seemed so cold now. Almost angry.

  “Logan, did I… I mean, do you regret that…”

  “No. But you should go.”

  She did.

  14

  Logan turned his phone off and slammed it into his fist. He wanted to chunk it off the balcony, but his logical side won. Doing so would be counterproductive. It was his only phone, and since it was the middle of the afternoon and he was outside the fourth floor of the O, someone could see him do it.

  Pushing his hand through his hair, he sucked a deep breath and remembered the hitches in his sister’s voice.

  “Log
an, I’m at the hospital. Mama stumped her toe and she broke it. Nothing really happened… She was trying to help Daddy get to their bedroom, and…I don’t know. She’s clumsy I guess.” That was the spot where Maggie’s voice had reached up—because that was the lie.

  He actually needed to talk to his sister to find out what really happened, and he knew she was the only person he might get it straight from. There was no sense calling his mother. He wouldn’t get anything out of her.