Falling Like Stars

by Eve Kasey

  She looked him up and down, frowning. Chen was used to her unhappy scrutiny. But he’d napped, showered, and changed after his daylong flight. His gray jeans and black polo were as good as it was going to get today.

  She handed him a wad of cash that he wouldn’t use. He grabbed a shopping bag from a hook near the door and left. Outside, seventeen stories down, heat rose from the pavement in visible waves. Luckily, he didn’t sweat much. He unfolded the paper and saw that his mother only needed dry noodles and a bottle of oyster sauce. He grabbed those from a loud, open-air street market and changed course to Summer Palace, marveling at the strangeness of being back, fully immersed in his old life like OrbitAll had never happened. Like his heart hadn’t been broken open and remade by a brown-eyed beauty who represented the life he wanted.

  Inside the blissfully air-conditioned restaurant, he snagged one of the good booths and jumped on his phone to see what he’d missed since he’d left California. A thank you email from Vadim; he’d been offered the job. Chen smiled despite the lance in his gut. No updates from Elle on social channels, though she was more of a lurker than an active contributor. He was connected with her brothers on Instagram and they’d both added some lacrosse pics. Elle didn’t know it, but he’d emailed Betti thanking her and Max for their warm welcome. He couldn’t just cut and run from Elle’s family, not when they’d made him feel so included. Not when he still loved her.

  Her family was so different from his own, though he had no real reason to complain. They all got along. He’d always been provided for. Warm touches and lots of laughs, no, but warmth wasn’t a requirement of childhood. He’d turned out fine. But they habitually ran late, he thought, shifting in his seat. His stomach had been growling for the past five minutes.

  A woman approached his table, a delicately pretty one, with a shy smile on her face. Blue summer dress, gold sandals. She didn’t work there. Chen returned her smile out of politeness, but knew she couldn’t be there for him. She wasn’t related to him or an employee of the restaurant. But then she was at his side.

  “Chen? Hi. I’m Ai. It’s nice to meet you finally.” All this was said in Cantonese and with a pinkening of her cheeks.

  Chen stared at her, blinking in confusion. She stood next to the table, hands clutched in front of her, as if awaiting an invitation to sit down. Maybe it was jet lag or pure shock, but seconds passed before Chen realized what was happening. The shopping list had been a ruse. His family wasn’t joining him for lunch. Not even forty-eight hours in China and his mother had set him up.

  Irritation rolled in his stomach. A secret date was some shady shit, and for what? Jiuquan was thirteen hundred kilometers away. Even if by some miracle he and this woman were perfectly suited, he’d soon be living on the other side of the country and then in space. What the hell had his mother been thinking?

  But none of that was Ai’s fault.

  “Please sit,” he replied in Cantonese, waving his hand toward the bench opposite him.

  Because of his meddling mother, light-years before he was ready, Chen was on a fucking date.

  40

  Ai was lovely.

  She knew a lot about space and American films and music. She asked probing questions about his travels since she’d never left China. She had a good job. Chen admired curiosity and craved good conversation. Ai offered both.

  She had perfect posture. Flawless skin. She seemed imperturbable. She said all the right words and made all the right moves during lunch. She was assertive without being pushy. She embodied the daughter-in-law he knew his mother wanted. He couldn’t even imagine her glee upon meeting Ai, wherever and whenever that had happened. But the whole lunch was all a bit too scripted.

  He was positive Ai would make him happy enough. But even after one date, he could tell there would be no banter. No scowls. No sex under the stars. And Chen? He’d be missing a partner who knew the real him. That was his fate. Having met Elle, settling for “happy enough” would be part of his duty. He knew his fate could be worse. He also knew it could be better. The knowledge filled Chen with grief.

  “Lunch was very nice.” She smiled prettily and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Her hair was long and glossy, likely silky to the touch. The opposite of Elle’s wild mane.

  “It was,” he agreed. He’d had a nicer time than expected. He flagged down their server to pay for lunch and order lo bak go, ngao yuk, and broccoli to go. He considered ordering only for Xiaoming, not his parents, but he knew he’d regret that move. Besides, his initial anger had fizzled thanks to Ai and some food in his belly. His parents wanted what was best for him, and he for them. Sadly, shamefully, their wishes didn’t align.

  When the bag of food came, he walked Ai outside into the sweltering heat. They paused on the sidewalk, where his annoyance returned. Ai was wonderful, but Chen was nowhere near ready to consider another woman. Because of his mother, he’d now have to be rude or vague. He chose the latter.

  “It was nice to meet you, Ai.”

  She nodded. “Good luck in Jiuquan. Maybe I’ll see you again before your mission.”

  Chen offered his most winning smile. “Thank you for the conversation. Take care of yourself.”

  The smile dropped off his face as soon as he turned away. His stomach clenched with how much he missed Elle and tacos, and Elle spouting about the virtues of tacos. He loved her so fucking much. She’d thrown him the sweetest damn party, with his favorite food and people, while her pale face had conveyed how much pain she was in. He ached for her strong, giving heart.

  He didn’t want to like Ai. He wanted to be left alone to love Elle.

  And of course, at that low moment she finally answered the text he’d sent of Xiaoming and the unicorn. She’s beautiful, Chen. Looks like they’re already fast friends. That comprised the whole message. The knots in his stomach threatened to jettison his lunch. Was she already pulling away? How could he possibly live without her? He fucking hated it.

  At home, his mother was beaming, and her glee was not due to the bag of fragrant food.

  “You’re back already? Ai is a nice girl. A lawyer.”

  “I know. She told me.”

  His mother continued like she didn’t hear his sharp tone. “Her parents have a very nice home in Luogang. You liked her, jai?”

  Chen frowned. “You could have told me about this date. You didn’t have to trick me.”

  She waved her hand dismissively. “I hope you’ll see her again.”

  “And when exactly do you imagine I’ll have time for that? In the next few days? While I’m living in the desert? Definitely not when I’m on the space station for months at a time. Mama, I won’t be ready for anything close to what you’re thinking until this mission is over. That’s years in the future.”

  “But you’re thirty-three.” Ancient when it came to the marriage market. She started wringing her hands. Typically, he was sympathetic about the anxious cloud she lived under. Not today. And what could he do? Where could he go? His “bedroom” was the damn couch where his dad was currently watching TV.

  Chen scrubbed at his cheeks and tried to breathe through his annoyance.

  “You need to think about your future,” she harped.

  “I think about nothing else,” he snapped back.

  She gasped. Chen had never snapped at her before.

  “Sorry, mama.” He stepped closer to put a placating hand on her shoulder. He felt awful. But he also felt cornered. “I do think about our future and how I can best take care of us all. That’s why I took this mission. Steady money in China.”

  She averted her eyes before he could interpret what emotion he saw there. Disappointment? Guilt?

  “You’re a good boy.”

  With a sigh, he joined his dad on the couch while his mother went to coax Xiaoming to the kitchen to eat the dim sum Chen had brought. Food and forced family time. Chen’s first week away from Victory looked exactly like that.

  He breathed a little easier in Jiuquan. An is
olated city of one million in the Gobi Desert, Jiuquan was surrounded by rippling sand dunes and Han Dynasty history. Chen’s living quarters were tiny and utilitarian. The apartment didn’t come furnished, or with a sexy downstairs neighbor who occasionally answered the door naked. Nothing had changed since the last time he’d lived in those same apartments, which felt like a lifetime ago. In reality, it was less than a year since Chen had been unceremoniously informed his time with the agency had ended.

  He unpacked his wardrobe and the very few personal items he’d brought, which included an OrbitAll mug and a beanie baby he’d stolen from Elle.

  His new old life started in T-minus five, four, three, two, now.

  41

  Chen texted three times that first week.

  The first, of his sister, melted Elle’s heart. She had his nose and the sweetest smile. She went back to the photo dozens of times, guilt pricking at her insides at the sight of Xiaoming clutching Mystic with a closed-eye smile. Should she have at least shared with Chen that she wanted to marry him? Could knowing possibly have made a difference for him and his sister?

  Elle had figured forcing him to choose between marriage and his dream job would only lead to further heartache. Now she’d never know what might have been for any of them.

  He also sent a selfie with a rocket in the background and, later, a picture of a brilliant starry sky. Easy to fall in love with starlight in the desert, he’d written.

  She’d only responded to the first one. The other two hurt too much.

  Sometime over the weekend, she realized she hadn’t asked him what the xing-whatever word meant. The nickname he bestowed in their most tender moments. Add that missed opportunity to the growing pile, she told herself.

  Her stomach and heart still ached over the next few days, both at work and at home. Chen had left his mark everywhere. The only escape was busyness, but Elle was still struggling with experiential planning. Who knew creative block was a side effect of a breakup?

  The Friday lunch meeting loomed and, for the first time, Elle dreaded it. Everyone was going to know she was floundering. She had no updates to give the team. Hopefully Rosie had some hotel-related news.

  Her friend arrived early and went straight to Elle for a hug. “I still can’t believe it. I expected a wedding announcement, not a request to bring bao to a going-away party. The space station mission is incredible, but…” She shook her head, forehead creased as she studied Elle’s face. “How are you holding up?”

  “Everything hurts.”

  Rosie hugged her tighter. “I know. The pain will start to fade. Not forever, of course. It’ll come back in surprising moments. But that’s when you call me.”

  Rosie had been through so much worse and was standing tall, literally, in a sunny yellow dress with gray pumps. Elle smiled at her best friend and wiped a few tears from her cheeks. “You’re a gorgeous sunflower and I love you. Thank you.”

  Quinn joined them then, taking a seat at the table while tapping away on her phone. She set it down and greeted them, hazel eyes full of concern. “Hey, Rosie. Are you surviving, Elle?”

  Elle nodded. Surviving, yes. Loving life, no. But that wouldn’t last forever. Nothing did, right?

  “Bien.” Quinn leaned forward. Her expression transformed. “Have you met the new pilot? Hot as hell, but just as annoying. And he has tattoos on his face.”

  Because her back was to the door, she hadn’t seen Vadim saunter in behind her. Elle pulled her lips into her mouth to hide a snicker.

  “They’re not on my face,” he boomed. Quinn jumped in her chair and turned to glare at him. Elle didn’t miss the pink blotches creeping up her neck.

  “What do you call that?” She tipped her chin at his head as he took a seat next to Rosie.

  “Jaw. Temples.”

  Quinn’s eyes tracked the movements of his fingers with way too much interest while he pointed to said anatomy. When he sat near her, she squirmed and turned colors. Elle had never seen her so affected. Not that she blamed the woman. Objectively, Vadim was shockingly attractive.

  Tattoos covered his hands and peeked out near his ankles. Like he’d pointed out, constellations graced the sides of his head where his hair was shortest. Since his hair was long on top, Elle couldn’t tell if the permanent astronomy lesson kept going. Tendrils of ink crawled up his neck from his chest but barely reached the collar of his button-down shirt. A shirt that was busting at the seams, she noted. The man was truly gigantic. It was plausible that his reason for not becoming a cosmonaut came down to not being able to squeeze his bulk in prescriptively sized spacesuits.

  He turned to introduce himself to Rosie. “Vadim Baranov,” he stated simply. His lingering Russian accent flattened his words. “Chief Test Pilot.”

  “Rosie Flynn. Architect. My team is designing a hotel for all your space-bound guests.”

  Tate strolled in, looking especially dapper in a three-piece gray suit, and bestowed his dazzling smile on the group. His brother, Mattias, trailed behind him. Elle gave him a wave, which he returned. “The landscape has changed, but we keep driving.” He unbuttoned his suit jacket before sitting. Matt joined them as well. To observe, he told them. “Rosie, why don’t you update the group on where we’re at before Elle starts tapping the creative sides of our brains?”

  The meeting went better than expected. It helped that it was cut short since Tate and Rosie had an appointment with the city about permits for the hotel.

  Rosie had called it. Adapting an existing design shaved months off the process. The drawings were already approved by the OrbitAll C-suite, including Matt as CEO, and ready to move into construction if the city had no comments. All within a few months. Elle couldn’t be prouder of Rosie’s team or more excited for their own—unless Chen were there to be excited with them. It pained her to move forward without him.

  Vadim had poked holes in some of their ideas, which Elle would have appreciated more if she were feeling less raw. Still, she valued his opinion and wanted to hear more, and not just because he was Chen’s closest friend.

  “Vadim, do you have time for me to ask you a few more questions?”

  The rest of the group had risen to leave—Tate and Rosie to their appointment with the city’s planning department, Matt who knows where, and Quinn off to save the Geier empire in some way, Elle was sure.

  “Sure.”

  He sat in the chair at her conference table in the same posture as Chen had, sprawled and confident. Cocky. He wasn’t as still as Tate, but his eyes were just as startling. Vadim’s gaze felt like it knocked her backward a few inches.

  Elle cleared her throat and flicked her eyes up at the whiteboard. “What would you want as a first-timer in space? What do you want from that experience?” she amended. “You’re the perfect person to ask.” She had forgotten their next crewed test flight would be his first time in space.

  “This is all very nice, but these ideas aren’t for someone like me.” He waved his hand at the whiteboard full of hospitality ideas. “To me, only the location matters. I just want to be up there. The experience, as you are calling it, is for people like Tate and Quinn. Do you know why people like them want to go to space?”

  “Because they can?”

  Vadim’s full, sensual mouth quirked. “Right. But for me, and I expect for the lottery winners OrbitAll will be hosting, we want to go because we can’t. For us, the quality of the welcome basket or the smell of Stratos’ cabin will have little bearing on an experience we’ve always been afraid to want too badly.”

  Elle’s face crumpled with sympathy.

  “Not to minimize what you’re doing, Elle. Your level of detail shows how much you care.”

  She blinked away tears that had formed during Vadim’s heartfelt monologue, given at full volume.

  “No, you’re right,” she sniffed. “I think I needed to be reminded that being in space is the main event. Everything else is just—”

  “Think about it like this. I care about the desti
nation. You care about the journey. For anything that matters, you need to pay attention to both.”

  Elle nodded slowly. The most potent part of the experience would live in people’s minds, in what they felt, but what could they produce and provide for guests to treasure afterward? She was imagining items of such quality that they’d be handed down through generations, along with the accompanying story of actually going to space. Archival-quality star charts custom-made to the sky they witnessed from space itself? What about pieces of Stratos once it was decommissioned to make way for the newer model?

  Elle smiled at the man across from her who had fought so hard to get to the position he was in. The man who represented her new target demographic. Without knowing he’d done so, Vadim had provided the perfect place to sink her mind and heart as she healed from loving and losing Chen Lew. “Vadim, I think we’re going to make a great team.”

  42

  Elle hiked her black slacks up her hips for what felt like the hundredth time. She really needed to get them to the dry cleaner. She hadn’t been able to keep them up the last two times she wore them, and they used to be her tightest pair.

  She erased her latest idea from the now-full whiteboard and popped a cap off a purple marker, keeping it between her teeth as she scribbled on the board.

  Every major milestone of the OrbitAll experience, from ticket purchase on a star-sprinkled website through checkout at the hotel, now aptly named Hotel Astra by Rosie’s team, had been addressed. Amazing how productive she’d been without a handsome distraction, she thought wryly. More than two months had passed since her stirring conversation with Vadim. Since Chen had left.

  Elle had used the time wisely. She’d worked her ass off for OrbitAll’s future clients. She’d ignored the messages that kept coming from Chen. That stung, to cut him off, but she had to protect herself. She didn’t want to be his friend after being his everything.