Eight
Before we can leave for Houston, we spend one night in a hotel in Longyearbyen, Svalbard’s main settlement. It offers a bottomless breakfast buffet and keeps the rooms’ temperature about ten degrees higher than needed for comfortable inside dwelling—truly the stuff of post-crevasse-Hannah’s dreams. I’m not sure whether Ian shares my bliss, as he disappears as soon as I’m settled in. It’s fine, though, because I have stuff to do. Mostly writing a detailed report updating NASA on what happened, which doesn’t mention Ian （at his request） but ends in a formal complaint against Merel. After that, I stumble upon a rare moment of grace: I manage to connect to the mini-rover out in the field. I let out a squeal of delight when I realize that it’s collecting the precise type of data I needed. I stare at the incoming feed, remember what Ian said on the boat about how valuable my project would be for future missions, and nearly tear up.
I don’t know. I must still be shaken up.
We leave the following day. I’ve done what I came to AMASE for （surprisingly successfully）， and Ian needs to be at JPL in three days. The first plane ride is from Svalbard to Oslo, on one of those minuscule aircraft that take off from minuscule airports with their minuscule seats and minuscule complimentary snacks. Ian and I don’t get to sit next to each other, nor do we from Oslo to Frankfurt. I pass the time staring out the window and watching JAG reruns with Norwegian subtitles. By the end of the third episode, I strongly suspect skyldig means “guilty.”
“I guess ikke means ‘not,’ then,” Ian tells me as he wheels my still-injured self through the Frankfurt airport. I turn back to look up at him, puzzled. “What? I was watching JAG, too. It’s a good show. Reminds me of my childhood.”
“Really? You used to watch a show about military lawyers with your weird smuggler dad?”
He gives me a sheepish look, and I burst into laughter.
“Do Harm and Mac end up together in the end?” I ask him.
He half smiles. “No spoilers.”
“Oh, come on.”
“You’ll have to watch to find out.”
“Or I could look it up on Wikipedia.”
He keeps on smiling, like he thinks that I won’t. He’s right.
We are together for the last leg of the trip. Ian lets me have the window seat without me having to ask, and settles by my side after putting away our bags and wedging a pillow under my brace. He is broad and solid, his legs cramped and too long for the little space he has, and once we’re both buckled in, it feels like he’s blocking away the rest of the world. A wall, keeping me safe from the noise and the action. I’ve been restless ever since the boat and haven’t managed more than very brief naps, but a few minutes after we take off, I feel myself starting to doze, exhausted. The last thing I do before falling asleep is lean my head against Ian’s shoulder. The last thing I remember him doing is shifting a little lower, to make sure that I’m as comfortable as I can be.
I wake up somewhere over the Atlantic and stay exactly where I am for several minutes, my temple against his arm, the clean smell of his clothes and his skin in my nostrils. He’s looking at his tablet, reading an article on plasma propulsion. I skim a few lines in the methods section before saying: “I’m usually not like this.”
He doesn’t seem surprised that I’m awake. “Like how?”
I think about it. “Needy.” I think some more. “Clingy.”
“I know.” I can’t see his face, but his voice is low and kind.
“How do you know?”
“I know you.”
My first instinct is to bristle and push back. Something within me rejects being known, because being known means being rejected. Doesn’t it? “You don’t, though. Really know me. I mean, we never even fucked.”
“True.” He nods, and his jaw brushes against my hair. “Would you have let me get to know you if we had fucked?”
“Nah.” I yawn and straighten, arching to stretch my sore back. “Do you ever think about it?”
“About what?”
“Five years ago. That afternoon.”
“I think about it a lot,” he says immediately, without hesitating. His expression is undecipherable to me. Utterly unreadable.
“Is that why you came to rescue me?” I tease. “Because you were thinking about it? Because you have been secretly pining for years?”
He meets my eyes squarely. “I don’t know that there was anything secret about that.”
He goes back to his tablet, still calm, still relaxed. Then, after several minutes and a couple of yawns, he closes his eyes and tips his head back against the seat. This time he’s the one to fall asleep, and I’m left awake, staring at the strong line of his throat, unable to stop my head from spinning in a million different directions.
* * *
When we step out of the TSA area of the Houston airport, there is a sign in the crowd, similar to the ones limo drivers hold up in movies when they’re picking up important clients they’re afraid they won’t recognize.
hannah arroyo, it says. And underneath: who almost died and didn’t even tell us. also, she always forgets to replace the toilet paper roll. what a little shit.
It’s a pretty big sign. All the more because it’s held by two not-very-tall girls, a redhead and a brunette, who are very obviously glaring at me.
I turn around to Ian. He slept on and off for the past four hours and still looks groggy, his face soft and relaxed. Cute, I think. And immediately after: Delicious. Handsome. Want. I say none of it and instead ask, “What are my idiot friends doing here?”
He shrugs. “I figured you might want to talk through your near-death experience with someone, so I decided to tell Mara what happened. I did not expect her to come in person.”
“Bold of you to assume I didn’t tell her myself.”
His eyebrow lifts. “Did you?”
“I was going to. Once I felt less whiny. And—whatever.” I roll my eyes. Wow, I’m mature. “How did you go from not remembering Mara’s name to having her number?”
“I had to do unspeakable things.”
I gasp. “Not Great-Aunt Delphina.”
He presses his lips together and nods, slowly, wretchedly.
“Ian, I am so sor—”
I cannot finish the sentence, because I’m being tackled by two small but surprisingly strong goblins. I wobble on my one functioning ankle, nearly choking when their arms squeeze tight around my neck.
“Why are you guys here?”
“Because,” Mara says against my shoulder. They are both full-on crying—so weak, so tenderhearted. God, I love them.
“Guys. Get it together. I didn’t even die.”
“What about frostbite?” Sadie murmurs into my armpit. I’d forgotten how fantastically short she is.
“Not much.”
“How many toes amputated?”
“Three.”
“That’s not bad,” Mara says with a sniffle. “Cheaper pedis.”
I laugh and inhale deeply. They smell wonderful, a mix of mundane and familiar, like airport terminals and their favorite shampoos I used to steal and our cramped Pasadena apartment. “Seriously, guys, what are you doing here? Don’t you have, like, work to do?”