So she didn’t have to think. Not about her parents, at least.
Not about the loneliness.
Not about her grief or pain or if they died thinking about her.
Not about not being able to say good-bye and tell them she loved them.
Emi realized the men were watching her, and she forced another smile. “I’m okay, really.”
“You never talk about your family,” Ford observed.
Damn him. For someone who wasn’t the slightest bit empathic, he was eerily clued into her thoughts. Maybe the chips gave him the extra insight.
“It’s not something I want to talk about.” She smirked. “Family story. When Aaron wants to tell, we can swap tales of woe.”
Apparently sensing she was at the end of her endurance for the conversation, Ford and Caph focused on their lunch and diverted the topic elsewhere.
Emi still slept like a rock, and at the four-month mark her training schedule, as well as the crew sessions, were escalated. Emi focused and relaxed when Aaron praised her progress. He made no thought or mention of refusing her assignment or reconsidering their decision to add her to their crew.
All three men constantly encouraged her, telling her how great she was doing, and it didn’t fully hit her until one day when she walked from sick bay to the cargo hold to see if a scanner machine she’d ordered had arrived. The entire ten minute walk, she’d had her head bent over her hand-held, looking through messages, checking reports.
When she found herself in the cargo hold she looked up, startled.
Usually she got lost going to cargo. Not every day, but twice a week on average. Her navigation skills within the ship were better, but not perfect. She’d learned to focus on the men and use them as a type of homing beacon, knowing where they were helped her orient herself.
Ford walked in a moment later and noted her proud smile.
“What’d you do?”
“I didn’t get lost! And I was reading my console at the same time!”
He laughed and picked her up, swinging her around. “See, we told you it just takes time. You deserve to be proud of yourself.” Maybe she did.
Would her parents be proud of her taking this assignment? It wasn’t particularly scandalous in the grand scheme of things. Intra-crew relationship agreements had been standard for over a hundred years in the various space corps, and polyamorous marriages had been legal for over four hundred years on Earth, even if they were an extremely small minority.
She’d like to think they would, that she went on despite the odds and not only did well in school, but excelled. And that she was part of a group, not just a crew, but a make-shift family. She was, overall, happy.
Now if she could get that one niggling fear to crawl out of her brain and quit distracting her, life would be perfect. No matter how many times Ford and Caph assured her that Aaron loved her, it was increasingly obvious that every time they said it to her, Aaron didn’t.
The few times she’d said it to him, he’d smiled that sad smile of his and said, “I know,” or something similar, usually kissing her to distract her. It had reached the point where she conspicuously noticed that unless she said it to Caph and Ford around Aaron, the twins only said, “I love you,” when Aaron wasn’t around. As if trying to keep his lack of saying it from being noticed.
As training intensified, she barely had time to focus on it. While their lovemaking was intense, mind-blowing passion she loved to think about during her few spare moments, there were plenty of nights they were so exhausted at the end of the day that they all fell into bed together and immediately went to sleep, snuggled into one of many familiar configurations.
She was in one of the emergency pods with Caph one afternoon, learning the systems, when he broadsided her with an unexpected comment.
“You know you can talk to me, or Ford, about your parents, if you want. If you ever need an ear.”
She froze, her hands nearly crushing the hand-held console she’d been consulting. Forcing a harsh laugh, she shook her head. “Talk about a left-field statement.”
“I’m not an empath, but you’re getting tense. It’s building in you.
I feel it, so does Ford. If it’s about your parents, you can talk to us.” Relieved at his misinterpretation of her stress, she smiled. “That’s not it, but thank you.”
“Then what is it?”
Fear. Five years was a long time, but then what? What happened after?
She looked at him. “You guys have been together a long time.” He nodded. “We’re like family.”
“I’m going to miss this when it’s over. I try not to think about that, but I know I will.”
Alarm and desperate fear washed through him. “Who says anything about you leaving? You can’t leave!”
“Caph, you don’t know if Aaron’s going to request the DSMC
renew my assignment¯”
“Damn straight he will! Goddamn, girl, where’s your head?” This was the first time she’d ever felt genuine anger from him. “Do you really think he’s gonna let you go? That any of us would?” He grabbed her arms, gently shaking her. “You try to leave us, that’s pretty hard to do with me hanging onto one leg and Ford on the other, and Aaron blocking the exit.”
She swallowed. “But what if he’s holding the door open for me to go?” she whispered. “Or what if he decides to refuse my assignment altogether? I’m not ‘official,’ you know.” He pulled her to him across the seat, holding her. “Sweetie,” he pleaded, desperate, “you’re one of us. No, there’s no way he’d do that. We’re used to him, trust me, he doesn’t tell us either, but we know he loves us. He doesn’t have to tell us. Just let him be Aaron and love him the way he is.”
“Is it so hard for him to say it?”
Then she felt a hint of the same sadness she felt in Aaron, and a touch of grief shadowed Caph’s playful eyes.
“Yeah. It is,” he said, his voice soft as he sat back and released her. “It is hard for him to say.”
It’s not a big deal. It was her silent mantra, and it was a lie. It was a bigger deal every day. Emi was well aware of the irony, that if she’d picked the geeks or the grunts, she wouldn’t expect a declaration of love from them because she wouldn’t have fallen in love with them.
The first time she awoke in the middle of the night since moving in, she realized Aaron wasn’t there. She looked at the clock and saw he should have returned hours earlier from a captain’s meeting.
Ford and Caph had gravitated toward each other in sleep, making it easier for her to slip out of bed without waking them. Her foot brushed against a shirt. She pulled it on, not caring whose it was.
Caph’s T-shirt fell nearly to her knees.
In the corridor she closed her eyes and focused. Aaron was back, on the bridge. Barefoot and silent, she made her way upstairs in the dim light and silently watched him from the open doorway.
He sat in his chair. At first she thought he was staring at a console.
Then she realized he was staring out the large front view ports. In flight they’d be safely closed behind armored plates, large superimposed vid screens providing them a simulated view.
She watched him for several minutes, his gaze never diverting from the mostly dark dry dock view. There were a few retrofit crews still working, but most of the ships’ crews were either sleeping or the ships were vacant.