On the Heights (Part 3)

The third time I tried to confess, I really thought I’d set up the perfect scenario.

Like a good EAC “clubbie,” I considered the situational conditions: a popular exhibit on the history of spaceflight vessels from the original 1960s craft to contemporary FTL ships.

I accounted for the variables: the unpredictable movements of our companions, the need for sufficient privacy to at least somewhat meet the moment’s significance, the exact level of persuasiveness I would need to pull Nelle’s attention away from the scientific delights.

I even estimated the time needed to pronounce three short words: two seconds if I said them quickly; two minutes if I allowed for some build up.

What I foolishly didn’t account for was the fact that life itself seemed to hate me and my romantic designs.

Halfway through the exhibit, things finally started moving. I stood with Elliso as Nelle read the detailed development log of a pre-FTL era cruiser. Long paragraphs of white text on black scrolled by under her finger. I was pretty sure that particular finger had been one of the ones on my lips last night.

A little further down the passage, Mav, Deji, and Pera toyed with a interplanetary logistic simulator. At least, the first two were toying with it. Pera, on the other hand, focused on the sim’s starmap as if she intended optimize the routes to death.

I glanced at Nelle, trying to judging her progress through the devlog, when a too-loud-for-the-space whoop sounded over the rumble of conversation.

“Oh,” Elliso said. “She did it.”

When I turned back, he was trotting away from me. Above the sim, a projection of the words NEW HI SCORE circled as Deji wound up to clap Pera on the back. He swiped only air, a Pera who looked almost pleased ducking efficiently under his arm.

I watched Elliso arrive, one hand going to the small of Mav’s back while the other lifted to invite a high five from the still crouched Pera. She rose, placed a dignified hand against Elliso’s, and then turned to continue through the exhibit.

Just as Deji turned to follow her, a large group of people swept past me, blocking them from view.

At last, the situational conditions had turned in my favor. The heavens were on my side.

I let Nelle finish reading, trying to wrestle the sudden spike of my heartbeat back to even. While the variable of my friends’ movements remained unpredictable, the longer we waited, the more people would come between us and them, reducing their potential impact on my plan. Now I just needed to pry Nelle away from the exhibits for a minimum of two seconds to two minutes. Then, I could run my experiment, or whatever I was calling it.

Maybe I really was starting to think like an EAC clubbie.

A minute later, Nelle finally looked away from the screen, looking as satisfied as someone who had just eaten a full meal. She pushed up on her crutches. Behind her, someone walked up, took a single look at the first dense paragraph, and walked away.

“You missed out,” she said. “That was such a cool read.”

“I’m not sure I could read an entire novel standing up like you did.”

“It’s sad what the modern world has done to kids’ attention spans. Where’d everyone go?”

“While you were flexing your attention span, Pera got the high score at the logistics sim. They went on after that.”

“You waited for me?”

The inflection of the words would have been enough on its own. But the way Nelle leaned forward on her crutches, cocking her head so that her bangs slid over an eye was just unfair. The sly half-smile she gave me smashed a force roughly equivalent to that of a meteor impacting the surface of a planet into my chest.

For a second, I was more lightheaded than I’d been then time I’d let Deji persuade me to go bungee jumping. I’d made it up the tower, shaking and sick, before a late-arriving Nelle announced a fake urgent phone call from my non-existent cousin.

Right now, I felt like Nelle herself had pushed me off that same tower.

“C-couldn’t let you get recognized alone,” I said weakly. “Not while you’re injured.”

“Very thoughtful. Should we catch up?”

She moved forward as if she hadn’t just given me a look that could have killed me, and I felt another unaccounted-for variable—the Nelle effect—escaping my grasp.

“Actually,” I said, harnessing as much composure I could. Nelle stopped, looking over her shoulder. “I was thinking we could go at your pace.”

“Very thoughtful,” was all she said in return, green eyes dark and smile shadowed in the exhibit’s dim lighting, before redirecting herself toward the next station.

This is definitely payback for making her wait.

Still, my plan was intact.

I accompanied Nelle through rest of the exhibit, letting her set the pace and waiting patiently as she threw herself into the records of humanity’s progression toward galactic space exploration. We exchanged few words, the calm, familiar comfort of proximity to each other smoothing out the waves of my anticipation-fueled anxiousness. 

By the time we reached the place where the final stage of the plan was set to be executed, I felt almost normal.

We walked out of passageway into a sprawling oval room lit by shifting blue lights underneath a transparent floor and soft spotlights from the high ceiling’s compressed carbon girders. The floor lights gave the impression of an aurora trapped beneath ice, lapping across the metallic surfaces of roped-off spacecraft replicas. I searched the room as I trailed Nelle to the nearest model, but the others were nowhere to be seen.

Perfect.

“By the way,” I said casually, as if I hadn’t been waiting hours for this moment. “Apparently there’s a limited-time display of an original FTL drive on right now.”

“Oh?” Nelle said, not looking away from the plaque she was reading.

“There’s no one in line right now. Might be the best time to jump in.”

“I don’t know…” she murmured. “We could go later.”

Time to tune the persuasiveness variable.

“Think about it this way,” I said, leaning over so my head was on the same level as hers. “If we wait and the line gets long, we’ll be wasting time you could have spent looking at other things.”

“True…”

Despite her agreement, she didn’t move.

“As a fellow EAC clubbie, I’m recommending we go now.”

“Clubbie?”

At last, Nelle turned, her mouth open as if preparing to ask a follow-up question. Then, she huffed half-laugh and straightened.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing.”

“You looked like you were going to ask me something.”

“I realized the answer. Let’s go before someone beats us there.”

We made our way to the line. The sign above the attendant noted that groups were admitted one at a time for a period of ten minutes each. I, of course, had known these details since I read it in the exhibit brochure after lunch. After all, they accounted for both the privacy and time variables. Below the sign, a timer showed a minute and a half left for the current group.

“What was the answer?” I asked, the need for distraction from my increasing heart rate bringing me back to the topic from which Nelle had deflected.

“The reason you called yourself a clubbie,” she said lightly.

“You forgot you told me that’s what you call yourselves in the EAC?”

“To be precise, as Pera would say, I said it was a term of endearment.”

“For club members.”

“Did I say it was for club members?”

Part of me scrambled to recall the specifics of that conversation, but seeing the smirk on Nelle’s face, I already knew the answer. I groaned.

“You didn’t.”

“I can’t be held responsible for your assumptions.”

“You set me up.”

“I was only expressing affection for our honorary member.”

“That won’t hold up in a court of law.”

“So sue me,” she grinned, leaning against the wall and crossing her arms over her chest.

In the next few moments, many things happened.

First and most dramatically, Nelle’s taunt uncorked a geyser of emotion in me, a mix of playful annoyance and overwhelming attraction that burst out in the form of my hand thumping against the wall next to her head. At the end of my arm, her green eyes glittered, wide but not surprised.

“Sir–!?” the surprised attendant exclaimed, just as the second event, the expiration of the timer and its corresponding ding, occurred.

“Inappropriate behavior for a court of law,” Nelle said.

Before I could answer, I saw the door to the special display slide open out of the corner of my eye. Above it, I abruptly noticed, was a glowing downwards arrow next to an unlit upwards one. And, inside, four familiar faces.

Other than my pivoting head, the rest of me froze.

Elliso stepped out of the elevator, Mav laughing at something he’d said. Pera and Deji followed them out. For a single second, I thought—prayed—they’d pass by without noticing us, but then Elliso’s eyes flicked away from Mav and locked with mine.

It had never been so over for me.

I watched Elliso’s gaze bump past me to Nelle then back, his teeth starting to show in a huge grin. Resigned to my fate, I waited for him to say something. But he only looked away, angling Mav and the other two after him and away from us.

Relief and gratitude flooded through me. Then, to my horror, the attendant cleared his throat.

“You may now enter.”

Three heads began to turn, attention captured by the voice pitched to carry clearly over the noise of a room filled with people. I turned my back—pointless with my white hair gleaming like a beacon—and tried to rush for the elevator.

I got one step before a hand clawed on top of my shoulder.

“Wait, Annin!” Deji’s friendly voice rang out. “It’s an elevator! It’ll make you sick.”

It was at this moment that I realized it wasn’t just Nelle paying me back for chickening out of the confession.

It was the whole damn universe.