Falling Like Stars

by Eve Kasey

  Chen much preferred her scowl over the sadness that had clouded her features. He glanced at the fish and realized that her expression was about to get a hell of a lot darker.

  “Is it still romantic if Melvin’s floating upside down?”

  She followed his gaze to the bag on the counter, then lunged at it with a shriek. “No, no, no. No, we made it this far! Melvin, don’t you dare!”

  “Yelling at him isn’t going to help.” Chen moved toward her but he knew there wasn’t anything he could do to save a damn fish.

  “Yelling at me isn’t going to help,” she snapped back. She shook the bag gently, but that only solidified what they both already knew. The fish was dead.

  She moaned, not in a good way. “Oh, Melvin.” She drew out his name in sorrow.

  Chen tugged the bag gently out of her fingers. She let him, her shoulders sagging. “Damn it,” she said. “I really liked that fish.”

  “Want me to take care of this?” he asked.

  With a long sigh, she turned off the faucet. No more need for a full tank. Chen shook his head at the irony. His stomach crashed when she looked at him with pained eyes. She nodded. He headed toward the door with no idea how to correctly dispose of a prized pet fish.

  “Wait.”

  He turned back. Elle’s eyes swept the room. Finally, they landed on the colored rocks and plastic plants she’d obviously planned to put in the tank. She snatched them up. “I’m coming, too.”

  Disposal options whittled down to just one if Elle was standing witness. He was going to have to bury the damn fish. He went back to the kitchen to grab a spoon from the dishwasher before they made their way down the stairs to the parking lot. He knew they presented a strange picture: Elle stricken and Chen wielding a spoon and dead fish. Luckily, they didn’t run into anyone else from OrbitAll. Only Chen, Elle, and the fish formerly known as Melvin gathered as a group in the garden at the center of the complex for Chen’s first—and hopefully only—fish funeral.

  9

  Chen chose a spot between two flowering bushes to start digging.

  Elle knew it was ridiculous to feel gutted about a fish. But she’d liked coming home each night to see him swimming around. She could swear he got excited about new tank accessories. And Melvin was hers, the only item in that borrowed villa on the island that she could claim as her own. Two tears slid down her cheeks.

  Chen came to stand next to her. They faced the grave side by side. She took that as her cue to untie the bag and dump it, water and Melvin and all, into the hole Chen had dug. She kicked the pile of dirt over the hole with a sigh.

  “Can I say something?”

  Elle looked to the man at her side, surprised. Maybe he was a deeper, less obnoxious person than she originally gave him credit for.

  “This has been the weirdest fucking day of my life. I started the day inside a spaceplane and now I’m burying a stranger’s fish.”

  Maybe not. “I thought you were going to say something about Melvin,” she said, glaring glaciers.

  “What would I say about a fish?”

  She scowled.

  Amusement flashed on his face, but he hid it quickly. “Fine. What is it you Americans say? Here lies Melvin, beloved companion—”

  “Never mind.” She said a silent goodbye as she patted the dirt down with her foot.

  “And symbol of love and friendship. It’s clear he will be missed.”

  She needed a moment after that simple declaration. “Thank you,” she whispered. When her gaze finally found his, all teasing had disappeared. His strong, handsome features showed seriousness for the first time all day. He inched closer, his hand dangling against his thigh, near hers.

  Her heart and body reacted simultaneously. She wanted him closer, wanted those long fingers on her skin. With his eyes attuned to hers, he made a move like he was going to touch her, but then he fisted his hand and shoved it in his pocket instead.

  Elle shook the hair out of her face. What was wrong with her? Chen might be interesting and surprisingly helpful, but he was also irreverent and irritating. God, he’d made himself at home in her brand-new office then followed her home. She shouldn’t want anything from him other than space. She sighed and turned away from the garden.

  “Elle?”

  She didn’t turn but didn’t keep walking either.

  “I’m sorry about your fish.”

  She turned toward him then. There was dirt on the knees of his light-gray jeans from digging. Maybe he wasn’t so maddening after all. “Thanks for helping, Chen.”

  He shrugged and held up the spoon. “Been a while since I did any manual labor. Felt kind of good.”

  Elle didn’t know why his statement struck her as funny. But once she started laughing, she couldn’t stop. She had to wrap her arms around her stomach against the cramps that formed. He laughed with her, of course. Joy, or snark, she hadn’t decided which, seemed to be his baseline.

  “Admit it,” he said. “You agree with me.”

  They’d started making their way back upstairs. “About?”

  “It’s been a weird fucking day.”

  At her door, she took the dirty spoon out of his hand. Mere hours before she had been eating tacos with Rosie in San Diego. Now she was hundreds of miles away, fishless, and face to face outside her front door with a man who made her wonder.

  “Fine. We agree.”

  Her stomach crashed like a wave as his fingers crept toward her face. With his black eyes on hers, he tugged on an errant curl. The hint of a smirk pulled at her like the tide. “Don’t worry, Elle. I won’t get used to it.”

  10

  Elle arrived at the hangar early Monday, laden with brainstorming meeting essentials: mini espresso maker and paper cups, stacks of colored sticky notes, Sharpies, and multiple packs of whiteboard markers. Making color-coded plans was one of her favorite tasks in life. She recognized how pathetic that sounded for someone in their twenties. She should spend more time drawing, in clubs, at a yoga studio. But all she knew these days was work.

  She hadn’t seen Chen around the apartment complex after Melvin’s funeral, but she’d heard him. She was hyperaware of his movements above her now that she knew he was upstairs. Aside from silent mornings, he seemed to have been as much of a fixture at home as she’d been. She’d only ventured out to get groceries.

  In her office, she placed a pad of sticky notes and a black Sharpie at each spot around the oval table. The first few meetings would require full participation from people more in the know than she was. She still knew next to nothing about space tourism.

  Elle brewed herself the large-sized espresso and started pacing. She was too amped up to even sit at her desk. For the tenth time, she smoothed her black slacks and fiddled with the buttons on her blue blouse. Maybe I didn’t need the espresso after all.

  Chen arrived before eight, surprising her. She hadn’t expected the man, who so far had been more flippant than not, to be punctual. Or look so transformed.

  Gone was the beanie and open-necked Henley. Instead, he sported beautiful, glossy black hair styled to perfection. He’d shaved the stubble. The casual jeans-and-sneakers look was replaced by dark pants, dressier shoes, and a sleeves-rolled-up button-down shirt that revealed creamy, thick forearms.

  “Good morning.” He greeted her with a disarming smile. Elle mumbled a reply, unsettled by his groomed appearance, and tried to coax her face into neutrality. She would never hear the end of it if Chen caught her ogling. The knowledge that she found him attractive would become a weapon of mass destruction in his hands.

  “You’re early. Did you have a nice weekend?” she asked as he chose a seat at the table. “I hope you weren’t sore from all that manual labor.”

  “I’ll live.” His smirk faded. “How are you? Really?”

  Elle did a double take at his serious expression. His body was still, his gaze direct. Maybe there was more to him than snark and sexy smiles. “I’m all right,” she replied. “In a weird way, los
ing Melvin made the move to Victory feel like starting with a totally clean slate. A whole new life, you know? No ties to the past.”

  Chen’s dark eyebrows pinched. “I don’t know, actually.” What looked suspiciously like regret surfaced in the set of his mouth. But then his smile reappeared and Elle realized she’d never had a harder time reading someone. “So, you’re starting over. No ties at all?”

  She didn’t get to ask him about the cryptic comment or question because Tate and a petite, curvy blonde appeared in the hallway outside her office. Through the open door, Elle could hear quiet but frantic French. The woman’s hands were flying everywhere and Tate had a pacifying look on his face. Something was up.

  “One hour,” she heard Tate say as they entered. “We’re here.” He smiled at the two of them. “Sorry we’re late. A warehouse issue within the liquor branch. My cousin Quinn here is in charge of public relations. Every problem is her problem.”

  “Oh, are you sure you’re okay to stay for our meeting?” Elle asked. “That sounds important.”

  Quinn shook her head. “That fire will still be burning after our meeting. Metaphorically,” she added quickly, likely in response to Elle’s startle. “We haven’t had a real fire in a while. Je suis désolé.”

  The pretty blonde had a lovely French accent, much more noticeable than Tate’s. The cousins flanked Chen at the table. Elle took a seat next to Quinn, who was gazing at her phone with longing. Her fingers kept inching closer, but a glance from Tate was all it took for her to retreat.

  Elle couldn’t help but grin at her small assembled team. Together they’d begin to create an experience informed by their unique perspectives: operations, the flight, adherence to the message. She moved to open her first pack of markers. “Help yourself to coffee. This process is going to be fluid and messy and informal.”

  Chen heeded the call to coffee. “Anyone else?” he asked.

  Quinn shook her head. Probably wise, Elle thought. The woman was already vibrating in her seat.

  “Just a small one,” Tate answered. “Thanks, buddy.”

  Elle suppressed a smile. She couldn’t imagine a word that suited Chen less than buddy. Today, anyway.

  She stepped up to the whiteboard and scrawled “The OrbitAll Experience” as close to the top of the board as her five-feet-eight-inches allowed. In black, the most serious color. “Do you guys know what a journey map is?”

  “A map for a journey,” Chen exclaimed. He was leaning casually against the file cabinet where she’d placed the espresso maker. He grinned hugely as if to say, Where’s my prize?

  “Gold star for Chen,” she replied sarcastically.

  “I don’t know what that means, but if it’s from you, Elle, I want it.”

  Ignoring him, she turned back to the board. “Journey mapping is a diagram that tracks every possible path of a user’s experience with a company. For us, we’ll explore how they find us, contact us, buy their trip, get here, and what happens before, during, and after the trip to space. We’ll define key milestones first, then add steps between each to create the whole picture.”

  Chen’s face crinkled in confusion. “That’s your job?”

  “It’s our job,” Elle corrected, annoyed. “Unfortunately, the most impactful part of the experience is the trip to space, and that’s your area of expertise.”

  “Actually, we want the whole experience to be impactful,” Tate interjected. “Do you know why we named the company OrbitAll?”

  Tate’s earnestness was obvious. Elle navigated back to her seat so she could hear what her new boss had to say in that quiet, steady voice that was impossible to ignore.

  “We are a country of dreamers, yet very few can afford this trip we’re selling. Of the six seats on Stratos, we’re giving away two on each trip.”

  Elle had been surrounded by massive wealth for the better part of a decade, but this was the first time she’d heard a mission so altruistic. The Geier family was willingly giving up half-a-million dollars per trip to get people, normal people, into space. To deliver dreams.

  “As Chen has pointed out, very few activities bring us together as a nation, or even as a species, but space travel does. What I want to see is Warren Buffet and a server from Chili’s having the same experience, and having it together. We already have three hundred people on our wait list from forty different countries. I want these people to arrive together, eat together, relax together, then leave the confines of this earth together. I want them to stay friends afterward, forever connected by their experience.” He directed his guileless smile at Elle.

  Her mouth had trembled during his monologue. A tear or two may have escaped. The knowledge of their mission changed everything. One experience for all, an experience built on community.

  “What’s Chili’s?”

  Even Chen’s poor timing didn’t break the spell Elle had fallen under. The hotel she knew they needed suddenly became the fulcrum of planning. It was imperative they get the design started right away. The hotel, if done right, would be the foundation for the experience Tate wanted. And Elle knew just who to call.

  11

  The ground, fifty thousand feet below, looked further away by the second. Chen adjusted his headset with one hand while the other stayed glued to the controls. That morning he had told his direct superior, the Director of Safety and Testing, an old grizzled Navy commander named Thomas, that he was ready to try out Stratos. Better be, Chen thought to himself as a female voice from Mission Control chirped in his ear.

  “Disconnection from Mothership in five, four, three, two, one.”

  “Disconnection complete,” Chen replied. A useless statement, as the plane carrying Stratos aloft was already falling behind him. “Firing,” he said, fingers flying over the panel in front of him while nudging up the nose. If he hadn’t been in a simulation, a flattening against the back of his seat as gravity increased two-fold from Mach speed would be the next sensation he experienced. His suit would kick in, regulating pressure and oxygen flow for his safety. He’d be in control, minutes from space.

  But this wasn’t real and Control had other plans.

  The scene in front of Chen started to spiral, literally. His plane was screaming away from the earth in an erratic spin. Control sounded in his ear. “Transonic pitch-up detected. Counteraction required.”

  Adrenaline flooded his system, though the danger was artificial. Steadying a spinning plane moving at Mach speeds would be nearly impossible. But Chen was a skilled pilot who had flown not only some of the world’s fastest bombers, but also a fucking rocket. He needed to destabilize the plane in order to stabilize it again, to remove the rigidity that was pitching him all over the sky.

  He gripped the control column, gently nudging the craft into compliance. He disengaged the horizontal stabilizers. The scene looked terrifying, with land and sea and sky tumbling about on the screen. The trick, Chen knew, was ignoring the speed and pretending a fiery death wasn’t imminent. Sharp, panicked movements would only make the situation worse.

  “Come on. We’ve got this.” He realized he was muttering in Cantonese. Control was silent. He knew a ton of people were back there watching his first attempt to solve the urgent problems Thomas threw at him. Chen was today’s entertainment at OrbitAll, he was sure.

  The release of the stabilizers coupled with his small, careful movements seemed to be helping him gain control. The picture in front of him started to steady. As his gentle movements helped the spin subside, he re-engaged the horizontal stabilizers. “Stabilizers on. We’re vertical. Report issue of transonic pitch-up at Mach Two.”

  “Issue logged,” the disembodied voice answered.

  They let him climb higher unimpeded, the landscape changing in a way most humans would never see, with the ground at his back and nothing but blue in front. “Reaching sixty thousand feet.” He continued to announce altitude as he climbed. Out of crushing danger, he could appreciate the quality of the simulation. The action was just as thrilling but i
n a smoother, quieter ride with a hell of a lot less gear than real flight would require.

  The sky started to change from blue to black as he left the atmosphere behind. “Eighty thousand feet. Mach Three.” OrbitAll, as a low-Earth orbit destination company, considered space to be fifty miles from the ground at Victory. Minutes later at Mach speeds, Chen arrived in space. In real life, he would be weightless. Even strapped in, he’d be able to feel the lack of gravity, the unique off-world sensation. But even in the simulation, he couldn’t stop smiling. He couldn’t wait to get back up. A couple of certifications, a few months of further testing of Stratos, and his test campaigns would begin. Chen flipped the plane over so he could see the earth, the simulation responding beautifully. The West Coast of the country stretched out beneath him.

  His grin widened. If the testing went well and he could extend his temporary visa, he’d get to dazzle passengers with this same view. But playtime was over. He had more policies and programs to read and revise.

  “Preparing for reentry.”

  “Roger.”

  Chen moved through the automatic motions that came from the dozens, maybe hundreds, of times he’d practiced with the space agency, and the one time he’d reentered for real. Many minutes later, he landed the spacecraft safely on the runway. He took off his headset and heard the sounds from Mission Control fill the simulation room. They were clapping. Chen climbed out of the faux cockpit grinning and bowing to the crowd he knew could see him through the privacy glass.

  Though he’d given Elle crap about hers, Chen did in fact have an office—way up on the third floor, nowhere near Stratos. He sat at his desk exactly two times that first week. His team was scattered all over the hangar, but mostly near the spacecraft. Chen found it easier to bring his laptop down to the main bay and work from any of the empty tables. Well, empty except for tools and coffee cups and stacks of reports from the endless series of tests every team was running on Stratos.