On the Heights (Part 2)

With half the table already in the know, I hadn’t exactly expected an uproar after the revelation of my fear of heights.

Still, I couldn’t help feel just a bit miffed by the muted reaction.

“That’s rough,” Mav had said while Elliso grinned. “I bet being tall makes it worse.”

“Ohhhhh!” Deji had said. “So that’s why you looked like that when I suggested rock climbing. My bad, bro.”

“I’m sorry,” Pera had said, not looking remotely apologetic. “You two were so obvious that I didn’t realize you were trying to hide it.”

At least Nelle had taken some damage from that one along with me.

“I thought we were being subtle…” she complained as we followed the other four toward the solar observation sector.

Now that we were up on the GPSS, she’d forgone her traveling disguise for dark jeans, black boots, a loose-fitting pink sweater, and her usual low twintails. Unlike planetside, getting recognized on the GPSS usually didn’t meant getting mobbed. Most people were too busy being awed by their first time in space to notice, and those that weren’t could be warded off with a quick wave to a security attendant.

We’d already seen a few celebrity mecha pilots—aces of the united space exploration corps—walking around unbothered, and compared to them we were old news.

“I did, too,” I answered Nelle, although my mind was elsewhere.

Specifically, it was splitting its attention between cheerful swing of Elliso and Mav’s linked hands and the proximity of my own left hand to Nelle’s right. But Nelle’s words from the previous night still rang in my ears: You have to say it directly.

Confess! As soon as possible!

My eyes darted around over the heads of the people nearby, looking for anywhere I could pull Nelle aside to say the three words that would enable me to intertwine my fingers with hers. I didn’t know how to hold hands with someone who was on crutches, but that was a minor point I’d deal with later.

There!

Off to our right, I spotted an out-of-the way fountain surrounded by luminous long-leafed plants imported from some foreign planet. Even amidst the crowd, I could faintly hear the water pouring from the colorful twisted glass pipes into the pool. If it made that much noise, surely it would be enough to give us enough privacy for me to say what I needed to say.

“Nelle–”

“Oi!”

With my focus on the fountain, I’d completely missed that Deji had come to a full stop in front of me. I reeled back from the collision, but didn’t look at him. The fountain… the confession… they were right there.

“Sorry, Dej,” I said. “Nelle–”

“Don’t worry about it!” Deji said. “We’ll find another way.”

“Huh?”

His unexpected reassurance finally lassoed my thoughts. I turned to see that our group had halted in front of the escalator that led up to the floor where the solar observation sector was located.

“I said, don’t worry, man! I’m looking out for ya!” Deji threw an arm over my shoulder, pulling me down toward him. “I’ll make it up to you for the rock climbing. And for that time I made you go bungee jumping with me.”

Couldn’t you have picked any other time for this!?

“I’ve identified an alternate route,” Pera said. She pointed in the opposite direction from the fountain. “To ascend to the correct floor, we can take a ramp with a gradual incline, which should avoid triggering your acrophobia.”

“Off we go!” Deji cheered, pulling me with him. “We got your back, Annin!”

I looked helplessly at Nelle as Deji dragged me past her. I didn’t know if she’d heard my dual attempts to get her attention, but even if she had, there was no way I was escaping from Deji. Nelle watched us go, one crutch held under her arm as she held a hand over her mouth, cheeks slightly puffed out as she tried to restrain her laughter.

I won’t lie. She looked so cute doing it that I almost forgot to be annoyed at Deji for interrupting my confession plan.

If I’d known how the rest of our time on the space station was going to go, though, I might have fought free and done it then and there.

The second time I tried to confess to Nelle was later that day. We’d finished lunch after leaving the solar observatory, and Elliso and Mav had just left us alone to run to the restroom before continuing our afternoon activities.

Nelle looked out the window, tracking the giant robots moving back and forth against the background of space.

“I wonder what kind of testing they do when they’re developing new models,” she said, one hand rubbing the fluffy fabric of her sweater’s other sleeve. “Pressure tests, temp tests, mechanical stress tests… I bet their data people work with all kinds of cool stuff.”

“How would you even test that kind of thing?” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’d have to do the tests in space to really know if the mechs were safe, right? But if you do the tests in space and they fail, you’ve got a safety crisis. It’s a catch-22.”

“Isolated testing, probably. Do the pressure testing in a simulated vacuum, then the temp testing, and so on.”

“Is that how you do it in the EAC?”

“It depends,” she answered, still watching the mecha. “Some things you have to test all at once. Like our egg drop container. The only way to know if it worked was to drop the whole thing.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“You’re only an honorary member and you’re already starting to think like a real EAC clubbie. I’m so proud.”

“Am I?” Somehow, I felt she didn’t quite mean it. “Also, you call yourselves clubbies?”

“It’s a term of endearment,” Nelle said, looking at me with a sidelong smirk, bringing up a hand to rest her chin in it.

There was no way that wasn’t a provocation, right? Not that I hadn’t been thinking about confessing since the second Elliso and Mav had disappeared from sight.

“I know it might not be the best time,” I said. “But–”

“Annin.”

I startled so badly at the sound of my name from behind me that I sent a fork spinning off the table.

“Hi, Pera,” Nelle said, as calm as if she’d known Pera was behind me the whole time. Which, considering our positions, she most definitely had.

“Did I scare you?” Pera asked, crouching to pick up the fork and return it to the table.

What do you think!?

“Not really,” I said with a laugh I hoped seemed cool and casual. “Welcome back.”

“Yes, thank you. I brought you something.”

She placed a small white bottle on the table in front of me.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Dimenhydrinate, a medication used to treat nausea. Please accept it as an apology for my lack of sensitivity regarding your fear of heights. You may find it helpful should you find yourself feeling unwell due to an acrophobic episode.” 

I stared at the friendly bottle, the crisp green and yellow label beaming up at me as if it hadn’t interrupted me in the middle of an attempted confession of love.

“Thanks,” I said, wondering why it was starting to feel like my fear of heights had suddenly become an obstacle to my romantic designs.

Across the table, Nelle had turned her head away from me, one hand hiding her face from view.

It didn’t take an experiment to know that her shaking shoulders were evidence of silent laughter.

In retrospect, I probably should have recognized this second inconveniently timed interruption as a sign that the stars were not aligned in my favor. But in the midst of my fevered need to confess, my brain had no space for such suspicions to sprout.

And so, my futile campaign continued.