Page 33 of Stars
Sasha’s gaze slid sidelong to Sergey. Was he having regrets? Lindsey was being a gracious host, and as the commander’s wife, she was responsible for leading the spouses and partners of the astronauts back on Earth and taking care of them during training and missions. If the worst were to happen, she was the one who’d take charge after, when it was bureaucracy and press releases and choking agony.
She was an old hand at missions and launches and being away from her husband for weeks and months at a time. Would Sergey be as lighthearted about Sasha going into space? Would he joke and laugh with the other astronaut spouses? Would he want to endure the separation, the sacrifice?
Lindsey leaned back against the railing. Wind slipped through her brunette hair. “Watching those boys ride that contrail into the sky and disappear? I have never been prouder of my husband than his first launch. I was an absolute wreck, sobbing, mascara running all down my face, hair pulled out of my perfect lil’ updo—do not dress up, Sergey, you’re just going to ruin your outfit when you bawl like a baby—and there was nothing in the universe that could make that moment more perfect. I knew how hard he had worked for that launch. I felt like I could feel every emotion he felt riding down and breathing into me. I couldn’t imagine he was happier or more proud of himself than I was.” She squeezed Sergey’s arm again and let go. “That’s how you’ll feel, too. I know it.”
Sergey’s gaze found his. Sasha’s breath stuttered. Pure adoration, the full force of the love Sergey usually kept restrained, burst from him and hit Sasha in the center of his chest. “I can’t wait to see it,” Sergey said softly. “I’m alreadysoproudof you.”
Lindsey smiled as Sergey kissed him. She excused herself to help Mark with the grill, and her plaid shirt flapped behind her on the burning Texas breeze, her long legs burnished by the sun. They watched her wrap her arms around Mark’s waist from behind, rest her chin on Mark’s shoulders and smile. Mark held her arms, twisted, and kissed her cheek.
They ate burgers and put on sunscreen too late, after Sergey’s shoulders turned pink and the freckles on Sasha’s cheeks flared. Grayson and Petra started a game of doubles volleyball, and he and Sergey got their asses kicked when Sasha revealed he was no better than an uncoordinated baboon on the sand court. Mark made a beeline for the lake an hour later, a shrieking Lindsey thrown over his shoulder, their twin daughters trailing behind them and giggling at the top of their lungs. All four hit the water with a splash, Lindsey leaping on Mark in revenge and setting off a splash war that their daughters joined in on until Mark ceded defeat.
Some of the guys had to start the cannonball contest. Sergey and Sasha begged off that uniquely American fascination, instead floating on rings and drinking beer and letting the gentle current drift them across the lake hand in hand. A shady inlet and a sandy beach hid them for half an hour, and they kissed in the wet sand, the water lapping up their legs to their knees. When Grayson hollered Sasha’s name across the lake, they reappeared, kicking their way back as dinner went on the grill and the younger astronauts set up a munitions locker worth of fireworks on the dock.
After the sun set, fireworks painted the sky, ribbons of glitter stretching down to the lake, reflecting picture-perfect trails of fire in an infinite loop. Whistles and pops sounded, bangs and clatters and heavy thumps alongside streaks of red, white, and blue lights, trails like falling stars and rockets blasting into space where galaxies swallowed them whole. Sasha sat behind Sergey on a lounge chair, Sergey between his legs. He wrapped his arms around Sergey’s waist and kissed his lake-damp shoulder. Sergey held his hand and kissed his palm.
They made love silently that night, capturing each other’s gasps and moans in deep kisses, moving slowly so as not to make the bed or the hardwood floor creak. Sasha held Sergey’s hips as he rolled up into him, pressed kisses to his chest, buried his face in Sergey’s neck and breathed in as Sergey held him close. After, covered in sweat and lake and the remnants of sunscreen, Sasha traced stars on Sergey’s skin and Sergey stared at him as if he were trying to commit Sasha to memory.
“Do you ever worry this is all a dream?” Sasha whispered. “Are you ever afraid to go to sleep? Do you ever worry that maybe you’ll wake up and none of this was ever real?”
“Usually I can’t wait to wake up, because it means I get to talk to you or I get to see you again. Kiss your lips again. Feel your arms around me.” Sergey slid his leg between Sasha’s. “Sleeping is the annoying time I’m not with you.”
Sasha flushed. He buried his face in the pillow, one eye peeking out to stare at Sergey. “Days like this… I always am afraid for them to end. What if I’m just dreaming? Or what if I’m in a coma? What if I died in the Arctic and I’m living an eternity in a single moment, a delusion of all my dreams come true? What if Madigan won? What if the sky is actually burning and this is all in my head? What if any moment everything ends? Nothing has a happy ending in real life. Nothing.”
“We do.” Sergey cradled his face and pulled him close until their foreheads were digging into each other. “Every day with you is happiness. This, our life. It’s perfect.” He kissed Sasha, and Sasha felt his toes curl, his spine shiver. He tasted stardust and moonlight.
Kissing Sergey was touching the stars, losing gravity’s hold on his soul. If he had to pick—space or Sergey—he could never, ever choose. The choice would rip him apart, shred his atoms and scatter his soul. He wanted everything.
“It will be even more perfect when you don’t have to leave,” Sasha breathed. “Maybe in the future... When your term is up…” Desperation howled inside him, so much naked hope rising he was breathless.
“You’re not going to bully me into running for a second term?” Sergey’s eyes twinkled.
“You should. Russia needs you so much—”
Sergey kissed him again, cutting him off. “The future of Russia belongs to the next generation,” he said, pulling back. “And my future belongs to you. So, one day, we will have that perfection,zvezda moya. Every morning and every night. And I will watch your launches and your orbits and count the minutes until you’re safely back on Earth and in my arms.”
“I don’t believe this is real. I don’t, I don’t—”
Sergey’s lips closed over his again. “Zvezda moya, you are in my arms. Feel me, yes? Feel us? This is our life.”
You knew him once inside a star. You know him again now, on Earth. You will know him again in the future, in another form. Your love is imprinted on this universe, in all its intricacies, all its perfections, its imperfections, all the ways it twists and turns.Kilaqqi’s words, again, echoing in his heart. He was filled, simultaneously, with perfect certainty and perfect doubt, filled to the brim with each as if he existed in two realities at the same time. Everything was exactly as it should be. His soul lay twined with Sergey’s. And how on earth was any of this possible? He didn’t trust his happiness.
But he trusted Sergey, and as long as Sergey kept holding on to him, as long as Sergey kept kissing him, kept gazing at him like that…
He kissed Sergey and tasted starlight. Rolled him onto his back and felt the rush of liftoff, of fighting against gravity, of g-forces trying to strip his bones from his body. Sergey opened himself to Sasha, spread his arms and legs and drew him close, and as Sasha sank into him, he saw galaxies form and burst in his mind, planets coalesce in orbits around baby stars, and the waves of time lap against comets and moons.
And when you reach the end of time, your love will still be there with you. Because he is of you, and you are of him.
“I love you,” he breathed. “Forever.”
* * *
Fog drifted lazilyover the lake before sunrise when the sky was still violet and peony, the darkness refusing to yield to the rising dawn. Mark rose and jogged around the lake, the same three miles he ran every morning. After, he brewed coffee for himself and Lindsey, and she joined him on the deck, holding hands as they watched the sun rise.
Roxanne Villanueva joined them, wearing an oversized NASA hoodie over jeans and flip-flops, her hair up in a ponytail. Dan wandered out to the deck next, looking like he hadn’t slept a wink.
“Long night?” Mark asked. “How’s Jerry?”
“He snored all night long.”
