“Do you want to order first?” Kit said, careful to keep his voice neutral.
“Yes,” Rohi said. It didn’t take more than a moment to key their preferences into the table and have the system confirm them. They sat in silence for the three minutes before old Jandol came out with their bowls—lemongrass and egg roll for him, com chiên cá for her. That she’d ordered one of her comfort foods meant something to him. Jandol nodded to them both, missing the tension or else ignoring it, and went back to the kitchen. Rohi leaned in over her bowl.
“Well,” Kit said. “What’s on your mind?”
“Hear me out, all right?”
He nodded her on.
“I think we should look at postponing the contract again.”
“Rohi—”
“No, hear me out.” She waited until she was sure he’d be quiet. “I know Mars is only a third of a g, but it’s a consistent third. Always-on gravity is really important in the first few months of development. His inner ear is still forming. His bone growth is starting. He’ll be going through a lot of fundamental changes in the next year, and even if we’re on one of the fast ships, we’ll still be on the float for months. I don’t want him to grow up with any of the low-gravity syndromes. I don’t want to start his life by changing his body in ways that give him fewer options later on. Not if I don’t have to.”
“I hear what you’re saying.”
“I’ve looked at the schedule. There’s three other parts of the team who could take our berth on the Preiss. We’d still be in the date range if we switched to going out on the Nag Hammadi.”
“Assuming we got on it,” Kit said.
“I’m not saying don’t ever do it,” Rohi said. “I’m not saying cancel the contract. That’s not what I meant.”
A fat, slow tear drifted down her cheek, and she wiped it away like it had betrayed her.
Kit took a deep breath, and let it out. When he spoke, he spoke carefully. “You’re crying.”
“Yeah. Well, I’m scared.”
“What are you scared of ?”
She looked at him, incredulous. Like the answer was obvious.
It was, but he thought it was important for her to say it out loud anyway.
“I’m suggesting that you compromise your career,” she said. That she’d said your career, not our careers, was everything. Kit thought he’d understood the dynamic between them, and now he knew he was right. The corners of her mouth tugged down, and he could see for a moment what she’d looked like as a child, long before he met her.
“Okay,” he said. “My turn?”
She nodded.
“Here’s the first thing,” he said. “I’m not my father. And I’m not your mothers. I’m not going to make the decisions they made. You and Bakari are my first choice, every time. I’m not going to leave, even if it means cutting off a career path.”
“I just—”
He took her hand. “Hear me out?”
She nodded. The next tear, she ignored.
“I know this isn’t the perfect time,” he said. “But there’s never going to be a perfect time. There will always be something. Bakari’s development or my mother’s health or a conference we won’t be able to come back for or something. There’s always something.”
“Until Laconia decides to start another war to prove a point. Or the aliens kill us all.”
“I can’t control any of that,” Kit said. “All I can do is keep acting like the universe is going to keep existing and planning for a future in it. Nieuwestad is one-point-two g. It’s going to be hard on him, and us too. Jacobin-Black Combined Capital is a good company doing the kind of work we want to do, but that doesn’t mean we have to do it. We can break the contract and find something else. Or we can go and do the best we can. If we go, there are a lot of good programs for helping kids and babies with gravity transitions. And I’ll get up to go to the gym with you every day if you want. If we stay here, there are other jobs. We can do anything. But we’re going to be doing it together.”
Rohi’s eyes were red now, and she wicked the tears away with her napkin. “This is stupid.”
Kit took her hand. “You get scared when we talk about balancing the family and work, and it’s okay that you do. I get it, and I love you, and a good cry is just part of the way we talk about this stuff. And you never judge me when it’s my turn to be the weepy one.”