by Tasha Black
Time to focus, Georgia. No time to get stuck in the past. Help Rima and her mom. Help Rocky.
Suddenly everything clicked.
It wasn’t actually cheerleader mode that was setting her heart beating hard and fast. It was the knowledge that Rocky was flying in the ship.
A ship that had crash landed the last time it had been airborne.
And in the back of her head another fear, a fear that once they lifted off they might leave for good…
Her heart squeezed painfully.
Rocky.
The crowd screamed over some play Georgia missed as she searched the sky. The harsh lights from the game made it hard to see anything.
Posey tugged on her hand, and Georgia allowed herself to be pulled to the bleachers.
They squeezed into a section at the end of a row and sat on the cold metal seats.
“Are you okay?” Posey asked.
Georgia nodded.
Posey smiled uncertainly.
Beside her, Rima was already pulling out a pair of binoculars.
It wasn’t subtle, but Georgia was grateful. She badly wanted reassurance that the boys were in the sky overhead.
“Anything?”
“Not yet,” Rima said, still searching the sky.
“I’ll text Bond,” Posey said. “Maybe they need to come a little closer. It’s hard to see with these lights.”
“Isn’t he driving?” Georgia asked.
“Of course! I didn’t think about that. Why don’t you text Rocky instead?”
The crowd roared again.
Georgia did not want to text Rocky when she was feeling so emotional. But she nodded and slipped her phone out of her pocket.
Georgia:
Hi
She waited, unable to continue until she saw something to indicate that they hadn’t crash-landed or hightailed it out of the solar system.
At last she saw the little moving ellipse that told her he was texting back.
Rocky:
Hello, beautiful. Did you miss me?
Georgia grinned and resisted the urge to hug the phone to her chest.
Georgia:
We can’t see you
Rocky:
Oh, I thought you wanted to sext
Georgia:
How do you even know what that is?
Rocky:
Georgia, you’re in the bath tub. I’m sliding my hands up your sweet thighs again, and this time you’re telling me you belong to me…
Georgia:
Stop
Rocky:
You’re telling me to stop, but what you really want is for me to get in there with you and make you beg
Georgia:
Rocky
Rocky:
Yes, Rocky is what you want, what you need
Georgia:
Seriously, my friends are right here
Rocky:
Okay, that’s a little kinky, but I can work with it. Your friends are here and they are all very impressed, but all you care about is getting my tongue all over your body
Georgia:
Rocky, please just bring the space craft closer to the game. No one can see you guys. I’m putting my phone away now.
Georgia:
And be careful!!!
“What are you smiling at?” Posey asked.
“Oh, er, nothing,” Georgia said, shoving the phone in her pocket. “I told him to fly down closer.”
“Is that a euphemism for something?” Posey winked.
Georgia rolled her eyes.
“Give me the binoculars,” she said to Rima.
Rima handed them over.
Georgia lifted them to her face and searched the sky.
At first there was nothing, just the blue black of the universe, turned lavender around each of the huge lights.
And then, just at the horizon, there was a flash of silver, lit as if from within.
She had been searching for something that looked like an airplane, she realized.
But the ship, though a sensuously shining mercury when it was parked, now throbbed with soft light, like the belly of the glowworm toy she’d slept with as a toddler.
It drifted toward them slowly, more blimp-like than its aerodynamic shape would have implied.
“Hey do you see anything?” Posey asked.
Georgia moved as if to hand over the binoculars, but suddenly the thing was closer, as if it had skipped through space and time.
“Whoa,” Posey said.
“It’s just like James and the Giant Peach,” Rima murmured.
Georgia realized it was kind of like that, the pinky glow from the thing similar to the giant piece of fruit in the kids’ movie.
Then there was a murmur in the crowd.
They had seen it.
But the ship skipped closer still, until it was directly over the field.
Some of the players were still playing, while others had stopped to stare up at the craft. A free safety slammed into an unsuspecting referee. Both tumbled to the ground, but got up staring at the sky.
Shit. Too close, they were too close. Some idiot was sure to get out a rifle.
The crowd began to shout and scream. Cell phone screens lit up all over as people recorded the footage.
Georgia got out her cell phone too.
Georgia:
That’s enough. Get out of here NOW
She didn’t wait around to see if the boys would obey, instead she began climbing down the bleachers as fast as she could.
“Georgia,” Rima called after her.
But Georgia kept right on walking. She needed to get away from the crowd, to get back to Rocky and know he was with her.
How could he be her Rocky and be inside something that glowed like a deep sea creature while glitching in and out of existence? How could she be falling in love with someone who wasn’t really a person? Was she losing her mind?
She made it out to the car in the gravel parking lot before someone grabbed her arm.
She turned, assuming it was Posey.
Instead she found herself looking into the eyes of a tall, thin guy in a flannel shirt, who looked familiar somehow.
“Hey, you’re that girl,” he accused her in a nasally voice. “I knew it was you. We saw you.”
Georgia had no idea what he was talking about, but she knew she didn’t like his hand on her arm, so she grabbed his index finger and bent it back until she heard tendons pop.
“Ow,” he yelped, going down on one knee to relieve the pressure.
She released her grip and slipped her phone out as he pulled himself to his feet.
“You freaky bitch, you won’t get away with this.”
“One more step and I’ll either kick your ass or call the police,” she said. “Possibly both.”
“Georgia,” Rima called across the parking lot worriedly.
“Over here,” Georgia yelled to her friend.
The creep took the opportunity to scramble away into the night.
“Who was that?” Posey asked.
“Nobody,” Georgia told her. “Let’s get out of here.”
They were silent almost all the way home.
By the time the boxwood hedge appeared in the moonlight, Georgia was completely desperate to see Rocky.
Rima parked the car and the three women launched themselves out the doors, dashing around the old observatory and out into the tall grass of the field.
The rosy glow of the returning ship reflected in the pond below. Georgia held her breath as the craft dipped down, down, to nearly kiss the pond, then skipped once to land perfectly just a few feet from where it had been before.
At once the pulsing light was extinguished and the tall grass and cattails masked the silvery ship again.
A hiss announced the opening of the cabin.
Georgia sighed in relief and waited under the moon for her man.
19
Rocky
Rocky stepped through the doors of the ship’s cabin to find the
three women standing by the pond.
His eyes went straight to Georgia, and something about the scene made him think of Aerie. It might have been her dawn colored hair lifting weightlessly from her shoulders in the breeze, or the glow of the moonlight casting a soft haze on her pale skin.
As he approached her though, he realized it was more likely the way she held herself, so still, as if her body were no longer her own.
Yet her whole soul was visible to him in her eyes.
They had only been apart an hour, but it was clear something had changed between them.
He moved to her slowly, almost afraid he would rouse her from the depth of the unconscious emotion evidenced on her lovely face.
Until now, Georgia had veiled her feelings with him as best she could. He deduced that masking her vulnerability was part of what Georgia herself perceived as her strength.
And as much as Rocky loved her actual strength, he hated this cowardice in her. At times he had even wished for Bond’s powers, so that her thoughts and emotions could be clear to him, whether she wished it or not.
So now, seeing her soul through her eyes, calling to him, he was overcome.
“Rocky,” she breathed when he was close enough to touch.
He lifted her into his arms and she clung to his neck like the ballerinas in the Baryshnikov films. Rocky strode through the deep grass, taking in the light scent that was uniquely hers, feeling her warmth against his chest, her breath on his neck.
He would bring her inside, bring her into his bed, nestle her in the blankets and they would whisper their secrets, hand in hand. He would never allow her pride to come between them again.
Her fingers tangled in his hair, and he felt a ripple of agony in his chest as if his heart were expanding through his rib cage.
The journey through the observatory and down all the stairs seemed to take a thousand years.
At last he placed her on his bed and locked the door behind them.
She gazed up at him, her eyes luminous.
Rocky crawled into the bed with her.
She moved as if to wrap her arms around his neck.
Time seemed to slow down for an instant as Rocky assessed his choices, and even briefly considered succumbing to the lust that wracked his human body and frayed his nerves.
Oh, how honey sweet her soft body would feel, her limbs entwined with his like the flowering vines that grew along the trellis at the observatory, petals unfurling to accept him.
Rocky had understood the pleasure of sexuality only in the most rudimentary way until meeting this woman. His physical self-exploration had taught him that a certain combination of friction and movement created a satisfying if messy moment of release. It was thrilling but fleeting, and seemed to be unworthy of the wildly irrational acts perpetrated by the heroes of movies and books in pursuit of sex. After all, a man could simply take care of it himself.
But after finding Georgia, oh, he understood it all.
It had nothing to do with his own pleasure, and everything to do with hers.
Seeing her naked, wet and wanting in the bathtub had nearly undone him. He wanted to lick and bite and knead every inch of her. He wanted to make her scream with ecstasy.
It was his destiny to pleasure her, his reason for having been put in a body in the first place. But more than that, Rocky had begun to feel like his life had been built, all of it, simply to lead him to her bed. He wanted to write sonnets, refract starlight, chart new constellations to express the agony of his desire to please her.
The idea of obliterating her with bliss and then further, taking his own pleasure with her was an idea so incredible he could not think of it, would not, or he would be unable to do the thing they needed most.
And that was the reason he was here. His mission. He needed to connect with her more than physically in order for it to be successful.
In order to save her - to save all of them.
So, as he watched her open her warm arms to him, he took her hands instead and smiled, through the pain of his longing.
“Let’s talk,” he said softly.
She gaped at him a moment and he couldn’t help but smile. It pleased him that she longed for his touch, and knew instinctively that he longed for hers.
“Are you laughing at me?” she asked suspiciously.
“What do you mean?”
“Your eyes are twinkling,” she said. But she was smiling back now.
“It is because I’m happy,” he told her.
She squeezed his hands back.
“What happened tonight?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Something is different with us,” he said. “Something is… better.”
She paused and he stayed quiet, hoping that she would open up instead of shutting down.
“I missed you,” she said.
Gratitude filled his chest. She had missed him.
“I missed you too,” he told her, and waited, hoping there was more.
“I was worried about you,” she said.
“Oh, but Bond is a fantastic pilot,” Rocky assured her. “You must never worry.”
“You crashed the last time,” she said.
“There was only a slight impact, and that was after a very complicated flight and entering your stratosphere. The calculations we’d been given turned out to be incorrect. It was only Bond’s skill that saved us. There is no need for you to worry when we fly here, my love.”
Instead of arguing, she bit her lip.
So there was something more.
He waited.
Georgia let go of one of his hands and played with the frayed ends of the quilt on the bed.
Instinctively, Rocky swept the quilt up over their heads, and wrapped an arm around her.
“What are you doing?” Georgia giggled.
“We’re going to share our secrets,” he told her. “We should be somewhere dark and safe.”
“Children do this,” she said. “It’s called a blanket fort.”
Interesting…
Rocky expected he would like children. They seemed to have sensible ideas about many things, including sandwich ingredients and blanket forts.
“Is it better to talk under here?” he asked her.
She nodded against his shoulder.
“What else frightened you today?” he asked, relishing the scent of her hair so close to his nose.
There was a moment of silence.
“I thought you might not come back,” she said, her voice expressionless.
Rocky was shocked, then he replayed her words in his head again. Perhaps he had interpreted them wrongly.
It could mean that she had been afraid the ship would crash. But they had already spoken about that fear.
Which could only mean…
“Georgia, do you mean you were afraid I would leave you?”
She nodded.
“You mean, go away and not come back?” he asked.
She nodded again.
“Why would I do that?” he asked in complete bewilderment.
“I don’t know, it’s silly, it was nothing.”
But Rocky was very sure that it was not nothing. It was the thing that stood between them now, pressing at the crevices between them no matter how closely he held her to his side.
“I will never leave you,” he told her.
She leaned against his shoulder, her head hung low.
“Why are you sad?” he asked.
“It’s easy for people to say these things,” she said. “It’s fun to talk that way in the beginning: I’ll always love you. I’ll never leave you. But at the end of the day, most people don’t love forever, and most people do leave.”
“That’s horrible,” he replied, truly shocked.
“You’ve learned about people from watching movies and television, and from reading books. They’re all just stories. Make believe. You don’t know how real people are, the things that happen. Real life doesn’t automatically get a happi
ly ever after.”
He thought about it, certain he could make her understand.
But she was right, of course, he had learned of the world through television and movies and books. Maybe these things were not truly representative of Earth culture. He had certainly learned much he had not expected in his brief time here.
“These… stories,” he ventured. “If they are not told because they are true, then they must be told because the tellers wish them to be? Because these happy endings are worth striving for?”
Georgia’s eyes flashed for a moment, as if he had hit on some truth, then she cast them down and sighed, resting her head against his shoulder.
“A lifetime is a long time, Rocky. Most couples don’t stick it out. I’m young. If I try to commit to you or you to me, we won’t make it. We’re so different. I mean, my god, my parents are a mess and they’re both from Earth.”
Rocky wasn’t sure they were so very different, but he didn’t press the issue.
“What happened to your parents?” he asked her instead.
“They got married when my mom was really young. She had me and I think she felt trapped. She didn’t have a career, or a life of her own. And so she grew to resent my dad. And he felt used, like he was providing for us and she was ungrateful. They never divorced, because neither wanted to give up the fancy lifestyle they had created, but it was awful. There was no love, no warmth… By the time I left that house, there were no feelings at all, not even anger. And now that there’s no money, I’m sure they’ll finally split up.”
Rocky considered this very sad story, not at all like the ones they had been exposed to.
“Money is very important in your culture,” he observed.
Georgia laughed bitterly.
“But in my experience so far,” he added. “People are more important.”
She nodded slowly.
“You are not your parents,” he told her.
She lifted her chin from his shoulder, listening.
“From what you shared,” he said, “it seems that your parents care mostly about money, and about what each of them wants from the other one.”