Page 62 of Sunastara & the Venusian
Garran’s shoulders deflated.
Freddie said.
Garran grumbled.
Freddie said.
I couldn’t have torn my eyes from Freddie’s even if berserkers chose that exact moment to raid the ship. “That was fine advice,” I told him, my voice quiet, my heartbeat loud. “It was wonderful, really.”
His foot slid forward until his calf rested warmly against mine. And with a wry tilt to his lips and a sparkle in his eye, he said, “Sunastara, tell me about your day.”
If we’d been alone, if the restaurant had been empty, if we hadn’t been working, I might have joined him on his side of the booth. I might have taken his face between my hands. I might have kissed him, just a press of my lips against his. I might have wanted more, sliding into his lap, kissing his upper lip, his lower lip, slipping my tongue between them?—
“Sunny?” he asked. “Are you still with me?”
“Yes,” I said, my gaze locked on his lips, tracing the path of their upward curve. “One hundred percent.”
Dinner went off without a hitch.With Freddie’s expert guidance, the conversation between Garran and Kasa flowed like the Tranquisian auroras. As an unexpected but notunpleasant side effect, Freddie and I had time to talk. As coworkers, as friends, as something I couldn’t—or wouldn’t—define. Even if I didn’t know exactly what we were doing, I knew that it was nice.
Itwasnice, his warm laughter across the table while I recounted my stint as a kurot wrangler. Also nice, the way my cheeks got smile-sore when he told me about how he’d publicly berated a Mercurian teenager after catching him terrorizing some poor Ulaperians by shining flashlights into their highly sensitive eyes. It was all so comfortable, so sweet, so nice. And a small, hesitant voice inside me wondered if I could have him like this, to tell stories to and laugh with and feel nice with, and not only in secret. It wondered, while I inched my hand across the table, maybe to intertwine my fingers with his, if I was ready for something real.
Garran commed, and I pulled my hand back into my lap.
I replied while Freddie stared at the spot on the table where my hand had been.
I slidmy mask into place, following behind Freddie into the rave. After passing through a cloud of generated mist at the door, we were suddenly surrounded by swirling lights and swallowed by a sea of bodies covered in phosphorescent glow paint as, wall to wall, beings danced with their heads thrown back, tails tilted up, frizzy hair bouncing and long arms swaying to the driving beats of the trance music.
Ravers scattered while Garran growled his way onto thedance floor. When Kasa yanked him close, taking his ass in both hands and squeezing, I commed, and laughed when he replied,
Clicking off the comm, I staked a claim to a table along the wall and scanned the crowd for Freddie. He’d split off to the bar to stand in an absurdly long line. Spotting him walking back toward me twenty minutes later, I frowned at his crooked black mask, the uncharacteristic stumble in his step.
“Here you go,” he shouted, passing me some sparkling martini-type beverage, red bubbles rising from its stem. He raised his into the air, half-empty. “They are delicious!”
I focused on his mussed hair, his lopsided grin, his tree-like sway. Then I looked down at my drink, at the tiny red pill dissolving rapidly at the bottom. “Oh no.”
“Notoh no,” he said with a wobbly shake of his head. “Ohyes.”
When he tried to take another sip, I stood, taking his drink from his hand and looking inside. If there had been a tiny red pill in the bottom of his glass, it wasn’t there anymore. “Do you remember what this drink was called?”
“Hmm.” His lips twisted. “I think it was called follow your…something.”
“Bliss?” I guessed.
Freddie snapped his fingers. “That’s it.”
I groaned. That little red pill in my glass, the one thathadbeen in his, was a party drug called Bliss. Apparently, they were serving fast-acting and extremely potent designer euphoria enhancers at the bar tonight. “I think you just took drugs.”
“Drugs?” His smile was practically incandescent. “I’ve never taken drugs before.”
I had to bite back my own smile when he tried tostraighten his mask, leaving it even more crooked. “Oh, darling. You’ll be face-first in the punchbowl in half an hour.”
“I will?” He stepped toward me, brushing his fingertips down my arm. “But everything feels so good.”
“I’m sure it does,” I said, trying my hardest not to laugh. I failed when he dropped his head back, swaying in time with the kaleidoscopic fractal lights swirling into one another above us.
“I canfeelthe music,” he said to the ceiling. “It’s moving through me. It’s part of me.”
I was going to murder catering services in the morning.
