Page 16 of Stars
It scared Sergey sometimes. Kept him up at night, led his thoughts down dark and twisted paths. What if Sasha never wanted to come back to Russia? What if he decided to stay in Texas? What if being with old, boring, Russian Sergey turned out not to be as exciting and wonderful as being with a real—young—Texas cowboy?
What if he lost Sasha?
He couldn’t think about that. He tried to push those thoughts away, burying his face in Sasha’s left-behind T-shirt whenever they reared up. If Sasha left, he left. He would take Sergey’s heart with him, but Sergey would let him go. He only wanted Sasha to be happy. If a ridiculous pickup truck and a Texan cowboy did that for Sasha, well—
They’d had two good years so far. He held on to every minute, greedy for more.
His gaze lingered on the clock, watching the seconds tick by. Any minute, Sasha would call. Their eight-hour time difference meant they talked every morning and night, as the other was waking up or winding down in the evening. It was the best part of Sergey’s morning by far.
Finally. His phone chimed, an incoming video call. Beaming, he swiped to answer.
Sasha appeared on his phone, hair ruffled, day-old blond scruff darkening his face, leaning back in his bed. Sasha, ever practical apart from that truck—and the air conditioning—had initially bought a single mattress, dumped it on the floor, and thrown a pillow and a sheet over it. Sergey had teased him, “But where will I sleep when I visit you?”
Sasha had fumbled, his words like car crashes in his mouth, and Sergey laughed and changed the subject. A week later, an actual bed frame and double mattress appeared, and a second pillow. His heart had melted.
Of course, he hadn’t actually made it out to Houston to visit Sasha yet.
“Lyubov moya, kak dela?” He blew Sasha a kiss over his coffee cup.
Sasha smiled. “Tired. Another long day. You?”
“Busy. Trying to formalize the economic agreement with Beijing, the trade deals with Europe and the African Union, review domestic fiscal policyagain, and it’s time for another global lecture about the environmental situation in the Arctic, as if what Madigan did up there is somehow Russia’s fault.” Sergey snorted. “If only Moroshkin had lived. I could make him endure these beatings. I would add a decade to his sentence for each of these lectures if I could. Death was too easy for him, that traitor.”
Sasha snorted, chuckling. “Not much going on for you, then?”
Sergey launched into a meandering diatribe against the domestic fiscal policy review, the tediousness mixed with the criticality of the issues, the vigilance required to ensure corruption and graft didn’t take root once again. “Oleg has been helping expose every corrupt official we’ve uncovered,” he said. “Airing their business on Russian One. The public seems gleeful about it. Hungry for blood, for the mighty to fall.”
“For too long, it seemed like everyone up top was untouchable. Accountability is a good thing,da?” Sasha shrugged.
“It is, and I pushed for this. I just worry the country might get topsy-turvy. What happens when all the corruption is gone? Who will they go after?”
“This is Russia,lyubov moya. Corruption will never be gone.Ne poyman, ne vor.”
Unless you’re caught, you’re not a thief.An old Russian saying. It was Sergey’s turn to snort. “So very true.”And unless you’re caught, Sergey, you’re not having an affair with Russia’s star cosmonaut, voted number eighty-nine for most eligible Russian bachelor. Sasha had been knocked down the list only because he didn’t live in Russia most of the time. But for Russian expats willing to make the trip to Texas, the article had said, Astronaut Andreyev was a “feast for the senses.”
He’d wanted to write to the trash magazine and tell them Sasha wasn’t a bachelor and he wasn’t eligible. He wanted to put fingerprints on Sasha, hickeys above his collar, make it known Sasha was loved, cherished.
Sasha had pointed out, unhelpfully, that Sergey had ranked number five. In an adorable display of jealousy, Sasha had spent the next hourremindingSergey that he was spoken for.
Sergey took the phone and Sasha with him to the bathroom to dump his coffee and brush his teeth, chattering about his schedule and his meetings ahead. He used to think he spoke too much, didn’t let Sasha talk enough. Sasha, exhausted and almost delirious one night, begged for Sergey to talk to him about anything and everything, just keep chatting.I love hearing your voice. Tell me what you did, what you are going to do. I can imagine I’m with you, Sasha had mumbled in his half sleep.Just talk to me, Seryozha.
Too bad he couldn’t do the same with Sasha’s days. NASA and Johnson Space Center were concepts without pictures in Sergey’s mind. Even Sasha’s snapped photos only filled in tiny gaps, like Sasha’s life in Texas was a jigsaw puzzle scattered on a bare floor.
Sasha took over while he brushed his teeth. “Mark organized a birthday prank for me today.” He described the fake Russian module activation sequence, Joey and Mission Control and all the astronauts and engineers crowding into the room to shout happy birthday in Russian and English to him. Sergey stared, trying to smile with his eyes as he brushed. They didn’t celebrate their birthdays. Two years, and they’d avoided both days each time. He didn’t know why Sasha kept quiet, but for him, it was an agonizing reminder of the two decades between them.
Sergey blew a toothpaste kiss at the screen and bent to spit.
“And I came out.”
Sergey froze.
Sasha had the brain-splittingly annoying habit of blurting out gigantic news at the most inopportune time, with no preparation and no forewarning. Sergey had once spent forty minutes babbling about the weather and hockey scores and a boring fishing trip he and Oleg had gone on before Sasha revealed he was in the hospital at that very moment after a bad ejection from his T-38 when the engines caught fire. “I’m in a neck brace and being evaluated for brain injury,” he’d said. “But I am okay.”
Sergey had nearly flown to Houston and strangled Sasha that night, finished off what the aircraft hadn’t managed to do.
Now, with Sergey facedown in the sink, toothpaste dripping from his lips, Sasha let fly that he’d come out of the closet? He blinked, stared at the drain. Silence filled the bathroom, echoed over the line. The stillness belied Sergey’s thundering thoughts. Maybe Sasha meant out of the bathroom, or out of the simulator. Or maybe it was quirky NASA phrasing for out of training. No, if Sasha had meant something innocuous, he would have stammered and corrected himself by now.
He turned on the tap, washed away his toothpaste, rinsed his mouth. Stood, and stared at Sasha.
