High Reward

by Brenna Aubrey

  “I know, bud. I’m so sorry.”

  “Why? Why did it have to happen?”

  I took a quick step back from the doorway. Shit. I couldn’t listen to this. My movement, however, caught AJ’s eye, and he looked over at me.

  “Ty!” AJ said, pushing away from his mother and holding both his arms toward me.

  I hesitantly came forward. “Yeah, champ. What do you need?”

  “I need you,” he whimpered. As I came closer, he stood on his bed, and then jumped into my arms, molding his head to my shoulder. I held his small body to my chest and my heart melted, my throat closing. Karen stood, and our gazes met over his shoulder.

  She stroked his hair. “It’ll be all right, buddy.”

  “Ty was there. Ty was with him…when he died,” the distraught kid mumbled into my shirt. I stiffened, still like a statue. Determined to bear these moments as my own part of purgatory. Maybe after all was said and done, I’d be cleansed of it, this ever-present guilt. This shame. It burned.

  “AJ,” his mom said.

  But I tilted my head toward Karen. “I got this. Go relax.”

  With a grateful smile, she nodded, then lifted on tiptoes to kiss AJ who barely seemed to notice. Then she quietly left the room.

  I held him for a long time without moving or saying anything, hoping maybe he’d fall asleep like this. But finally, after a big sniff, he sleepily asked, “Will you stay with me? Until I fall asleep?”

  I gently laid him down on the bed. “I’ll sit right here. But we can’t talk, okay? Or else you won’t fall asleep.”

  AJ gave a wide yawn and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. “Okay, but I don’t need the light on. Can you switch it off? I’m a big boy.” Another spear of shame stabbed me then. The six-year-old boy was fine in the dark while the thirty-five-year-old man was terrified of it.

  I hadn’t consumed any vodka to fortify me, but I was determined to do what he asked, even if it meant just gritting my teeth and pushing through.

  I went shakily to the doorway and opened the door to allow some residual dimness to leak in from down the hall. Then I flicked the light off and moved back to the kid’s bedside. AJ promptly grabbed my hand with his little one, and I held it, focusing on being there, being strong for him. Doing the things I should have been doing all along.

  Fortunately, he was asleep in minutes while I sweated it out in the dimness.

  But there was no numbing this pain, this realization that the child was suffering without his father, while I existed when I shouldn’t. How could I look either of them in the face again, knowing what I knew?

  I’d been a full decade older than AJ when I’d lost my dad, and it was pain I would never forget. I couldn’t even imagine what this little champ was suffering, but I could empathize. I could remember the day we’d gotten the news. Mom and Dad had been divorced for a few years, so I was his next of kin, his sole surviving heir.

  We’d received the news in person from his SEAL team members. One had answered Mom’s questions while I tried to breathe, the news not quite sinking in that Dad was never coming home again. Never going to call me on the phone again and wish me luck at my next water polo match. A chaplain that had accompanied them had sidled up to me and put his hand on my back. “Are you okay, son? There’s no shame in letting it out.”

  But I’d shaken my head and held it inside.

  And every night I missed him. We’d never been able to do that summer-long National Parks camping trip together, the one he’d promised me we’d do when his latest deployment was over. I stuffed down that old sorrow, the realization that it had been almost twenty years since I’d seen him, talked to him, heard his voice.

  My eyes roamed AJ’s innocent face. I had no idea what memory he clung to—the color of the tie on the man who told him his dad wouldn’t be coming back? The sound of his mother’s sobs? The first bouquet of flowers to arrive or the taste of one of the many casseroles that had no doubt started appearing at their doorstep before the first twenty-four hours had passed?

  I took in the shape of his young cheeks, still round with baby fat. Still so innocent. Too innocent to be dashed into the harsh waters of this cruel, cruel world.

  Was he already forgetting Xander now? Could he remember the sound of his voice? The way the stubble on his dad’s chin felt when he rubbed it against AJ’s babyish cheek?

  Soon the child’s breathing was even, but I waited fifteen minutes more, glancing from my watch to the shaft of light on the floor and trying to ignore my own racing heart until I was out in the hallway once more.

  I left the door open, just in case I was summoned back by the next bad dream. But God, how I hoped there wouldn’t be another. This one had shredded me, and that poor kid needed some reprieve.

  Casting one last glance at his sleeping form, I realized how much in common we had. Poor AJ. I should have been there for him all these months, like I’d promised Xander I would be. I was a horrible friend for having neglected his little boy and his wife.

  Swallowing that heavy lump, I made my way back to Karen. We spent another hour or so on the couch, alternately talking and sitting in silence, until she was so exhausted she had to go off to bed.

  Again, I had my three shots quickly in a row. The alcohol and my Gray-scented pillow aided me in drifting off to sleep with the light off. When I woke a few hours later, I had to turn it on, but at least it was something. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless.

  On Tuesday, Karen arrived at XVenture with AJ late in the morning, bringing him directly back to the astronaut office to see his dad’s old friends and colleagues.

  AJ beamed when he saw Noah, who greeted Karen with a kiss on her cheek. For that last mission, Noah had been scheduled to go up instead of me. A last-minute health issue had grounded him, but he’d spent years and months training with Xander and me and Xander’s backup for that mission.

  Noah and I were cordial but hardly speaking these days. We communicated enough to keep things civil when we were socializing and perfectly professional when we were at work. But nothing more than that. The same old tension was always there, that weird dynamic dividing us, like a thick wall between us since Xander died.

  I honestly believed he thought that if he’d gone to the station instead of me, Xander would have survived. That somehow the accident was my fault.

  Likely because it was. And I felt his judgment every time we were together. And now, here, with Xander’s family, that tension thickened. I hoisted the boy onto my shoulders. Karen, after hugging Noah and Hammer in turn, shook Kirill’s hand when they were introduced. She stood closely beside me, and Noah’s dark eyes flicked between her and me several times, his features blank.

  I remembered hearing from him that he’d spent a lot of time with the family right after the accident. He’d been the one to break the news to her when she’d been summoned into Mission Control for that last conversation with her doomed husband. Apparently, he’d grown fairly attached to them in the ensuing days.

  All the XVenture astronauts had pushed aside our normal schedule for the next few hours in order to accompany AJ and Karen on their VIP tour. We retraced our steps and met Tolan at the entrance to the entire complex—a wide room with high glass bays that let in the light from outside. The inlaid mosaic logo of XVenture gleamed in the glossy stone floor, and twenty-foot scale rocket models were suspended overhead. It was an impressive sight and an appropriate place to start the tour.

  Tolan waited for us alongside two other people. My pace faltered only slightly when I recognized one of them as Gray, standing beside a man I’d never met before. They were talking. She was smiling and laughing.

  I zeroed in on her, noting immediately how different Gray looked. She wore dressy gray pants, a pink and gray silk shirt and low pumps on her feet. And makeup. And jewelry. And her hair—she’d cut her hair. Short. It was layered around her ears and wasn’t unbecoming. It was actually rather cute and suited her.

  But this much change at once. I
blinked. What the hell had transformed her so dramatically in just over a week? My gut sank as I realized the answer might be the man standing beside her.

  Her smile did not falter in the least when we approached. She met my gaze but pulled her eyes away just as quickly to smile at the kid riding on my shoulders. She even had new glasses with darker frames that gave her more of a sexy librarian look.

  My heart raced, and suddenly I grew angry over the demise of my Gray to make room for this make-over counterfeit.

  My eyes flicked to the man as he was introduced to us. I guessed his first name before Tolan even spoke. This had to be the mysterious Aaron.

  Aaron Thiessen, as he was introduced to us, seemed pleasant enough as we shook hands all around. I remembered the brief fantasy I’d had about inventing some way to inflict pain or even death on this man. Whenever I thought about him with Gray, I didn’t regret that feeling one bit.

  Tolan was explaining the different rocket models, each representing a different phase in XVenture’s aerospace development, including the crowning glory, the Rubicon III rocket which would take me into space in six weeks’ time inside the Phoenix capsule, designed to carry up to five astronauts into low and medium earth orbit.

  Once testing was complete, XVenture would be contracting with NASA, Roscosmos, the European Space Agency and JAXA, the Japanese space agency, along with others, to take astronauts to the International Space Station in the near future.

  I wouldn’t be one of them. I would not be going to station again. Though at this time, I was the only person who knew that. I’d fly again to keep my promise, but I couldn’t go there again.

  Thiessen seemed interested in the company, though painfully lacking in knowledge of the space program. He questioned Gray often, tilting his head toward her and pointing out different displays as we passed them. The kiddo on my shoulders was quiet, observant, and his mother seemed more interested in catching up with Hammer and, especially, Noah.

  And I had to admit that I tailed Gray and her escort—perhaps a bit uncomfortably close. She cast me a pointed glance once or twice, but that was it. I refused to back off.

  Which made me a complete asshole.

  I was fine with that. Me and my inner asshole got along just great.

  And both me and my inner asshole did not like the idea of Gray getting chummy with this Aaron character—or anyone else for that matter.

  Which made things…complicated.

  Chapter 10

  Gray

  In the nine days since I’d returned to my house, I’d managed to find a task to fill every spare moment of the day. My condo had been completely decluttered. I ended up taking three garbage bags down to the dumpster and five to charity donations—old clothes, worthless souvenirs, way too many blank notebooks and stationery products I’d been collecting but never used.

  I’d decided a new look for myself was in order, too. I got that pixie cut I’d been contemplating and bought a few new nice outfits for work. Normally I hated shopping, but browsing store windows sure beat going home and sitting in my empty condo. I even bought makeup, too.

  Maybe I owed it to myself after all this time to spend more time on my looks. Maybe if I hadn’t been so invisible, so forgettable…

  I paused, staring at myself in the mirror halfway through watching and systematically pausing a YouTube eye makeup tutorial on my phone so as to better pick up on the instructor’s tips.

  Was that what I was doing? Making myself less forgettable? Less invisible, in hopes that by fixing that, I might get back what I’d lost?

  I sank to sit on the closed toilet seat, the realization weighing heavily.

  Was this it? The next step in the progression of grief processing?

  Third Stage: Bargaining

  Every day at work it got a little easier. I’d gone pretty much an entire week without seeing him at all. But when we took the tour together, it was at once thrilling and awkward.

  I could tell that he was overly interested in Aaron, to the point of almost seeming jealous. Though whenever that hope rose up, I told myself that he definitely wasn’t.

  On the other hand, watching him so close and happy with Karen and AJ at once warmed my heart and also made me a little sad that I wasn’t in on their happy reunion. I had to watch it from a distance, like an outsider.

  Because as it was, I had been relegated to the position of outsider once again. As each day passed, those days with Ryan on the inside felt more and more like a dream that had only existed in my head.

  I opened up my message app at least once a day to start a long message to him before hastily deleting it. I’d never hit send on a message like that. But it felt strangely cathartic to type it out, anyway. My own version of therapeutic writing.

  Perhaps some primal screaming was in order for further expressive therapy.

  It had to get better soon, right?

  Even if just in increments. I imagined that each new day would be slightly easier than the one before. Or at least that’s what I hoped for.

  The answer to that question came just the next day when I realized, no, things likely weren’t going to get better anytime soon.

  Marjorie, my soon-to-be boss on the health team, asked me to distribute the monthly mental health questionnaires amongst the astronaut and chief engineering teams. It was the astronauts’ turn to get the full interview treatment this month, while the engineers would sit it out until next.

  But everyone had to do a questionnaire, and I suspected the astronauts would be as annoyed by this as the engineers had been.

  I asked her why she didn’t just email them to everyone, and she replied with a smirk. “Simple psychology, Gray. If these personalized forms aren’t delivered with a human attached to them who can hold them accountable, the guys will blow them off and let them get buried in their email.”

  So the task had fallen on me. How lucky.

  I drew a long breath and blew it out before pushing into the astronaut office with my papers in hand. The office was more like a medium-sized workshop, in truth. There were square tables set up with tablets and laptops and, a drafting table for sketches and blueprints. Each astronaut had their own corner for a desk discreetly set back by cubicle partitions. There were mockups and models of vehicles and control boards, samples and rolls of plans held in cylinders, and poster-sized checklists pinned to every wall that wasn’t covered in a whiteboard. The place was a picture of organized chaos.

  And I’d just walked into the middle of a war zone.

  Okay maybe war zone was a bit of an exaggeration. But for a medium-height, slenderly built woman among a cluster of hulking, athletically-built men yelling at each other, it felt like a warzone.

  Noah was bent, insistently tapping a clipboard on the table with his index finger. “It needs to fucking get done before we go to Florida. How hard is that to understand? I’m sick of arguing about this with you.”

  I opened my mouth to say something then snapped it shut again immediately in response to the drama I’d just been drop-shipped into.

  Ryan stood across the table from him, fists clenched and staring at Noah like a bulldog about to pick a fight with a pug.

  “It’ll get done. Get the stick out of your ass,” came Ryan’s salty reply. I was actually shocked speechless to hear him speak to a colleague like that.

  Noah now had a hand on his hip. “If being precise and methodical about our approach to testing is having a stick up my ass, then fine, I’ll live with that. Gladly.”

  “If you want the test done so badly, why don’t you do it then?” Ryan ground back.

  Noah threw his hands in the air, looking toward the other guys as if for support. As if they’d discussed this very subject before when Ryan wasn’t around. “For fuck’s sake, Ty. It’s a lights-out board test. It takes less than half a day to run the sims and their variations.”

  Shit. I immediately thought about fleeing in the opposite direction, though my feet felt like they’d grown roots into the flo
or. The old Gray would have done that. Would have disappeared into the woodwork until the big boys stopped hollering at each other.

  But I was a new Gray. A very new Gray. And New Gray was not afraid to be seen and noticed.

  I cleared my throat loudly to let them know I was there. Four heads turned my way, and four pairs of eyes settled on me.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt. I just had your monthly questionnaires for the health office.” I brandished the fistful of papers in front of me as if to prove I was legit.

  Utter silence. I may as well have walked in there and asked them all to tap dance on the worktables for me.

  Ryan glanced at Noah, and in a much quieter voice, he said, “I’ll get it on the calendar.” Noah nodded, the flush of anger in his features fading. It seemed no matter how much they argued amongst themselves, they were always a unified front versus the outside—most especially against the health team members who had the power to ground them.

  I stepped forward and distributed the personalized questionnaire to each one, and, as it happened, delivered Ryan’s last. He practically snatched the paper out of my hand, and without looking at me, made an abrupt about face and retreated behind his cubical wall.

  I stood there, stunned for a moment by his overt rudeness. However, I found myself taking note of the rigidity of his carriage and the stain of anger, or maybe even embarrassment, on his lower neck just above the collar of his knitted shirt.

  Frowning, I wondered about the significance of their argument. What was a lights-out board test, and why was it important? I made a note to dig into that when I could.

  For right now, I was awkwardly aware that the other three astronauts were watching me closely as Ryan’s back receded. When I glanced up at Hammer, there was some open concern on his face. That sentiment seemed mirrored in varying degree in the expressions of the other two. How much did they know about Ryan and me, if anything at all?

  The open pity on their faces said a lot. They knew enough.

  I swallowed a lump and squared my shoulders. Was it too late to leave with my dignity intact?