Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Attention, passengers – we will begin our descent to DFW International in the next few minutes. Please return your seats to the upright position…

The pain in Cindy’s neck hadn’t been there when she first curled toward the wall in her sleep. It was definitely there now, though, and she winced as she stretched out as much as coach seating would allow. So much for the complimentary pillow the flight attendant had given her somewhere over Arizona: it had slipped out of place and down onto to the floor next to her carry-on.    

“It’s the thought that counts,” Cindy muttered to herself, picking up the pillow and rummaging through her carry-on for lip balm. She was trying this new line of thinking – well, new to her, anyway. Fewer snap judgments and more calm observations. Quieting the internal critic she’d had since she was a kid – thank you, mother – and accepting things as they came. It’d be going a lot better if the world didn’t keep testing her. For example, did the air in the cabin really need to be this dry? Her lips were as cracked as an abandoned parking lot.

Next came the descent, then the slow shuffle into the aisle while other passengers reached for their overhead bags. Cindy thanked the lined-up flight staff before heading down the claustrophobic tunnel out of the plane and spilling out into the utter chaos of DFW International.

If there was an upside to being a semi-broke graduate student who threaded together a living with stipends, classes at the nearby karate studio, and the occasional undergrad tutoring session, it was that Cindy didn’t have many personal possessions to pack. Everything she owned fit in a roll-around and a duffle bag, plus the well-worn messenger bag slung over her shoulder. All her build-it-yourself furniture had been left behind to her grateful former roommate; any unneeded books were sold back to the university bookstore or dumped into the donation bin. A clean break, as it were.

Cindy stepped away from the luggage carousel and powered up her phone. She idly watched her cell network come back online, followed up by a series of tiny icons dotting the top of her screen. A text from her dad asking if she landed safely (obviously). Her Sudoku app reminding her to play the new daily puzzle (eh, not today). An email from her alma mater (answer later – they probably wanted to confirm where to mail her diploma).

Just as she was about to tuck her phone away and splurge on overpriced coffee, the missed call notifications came in. One, two, three, four. A voicemail. Then, an incoming call. The name LIBBY, complete with music note emojis, splashed across the screen with a swirling rainbow background.

“Girl, I will leave you at that airport if you don’t learn how to pick up the phone!” Libby said as soon as Cindy answered.

“Wha—you’re here?” 

“Almost! I would be if the person in front of me learned how to use their turn signal—” Libby turned away from her phone, and Cindy could hear her shouting out her open car window. “Sorry. Anyway, what gate are you by?”

Cindy pinched the bridge of her nose. “Libby, you don’t—DFW is a nightmare!”

“Tell me about it! But no best friend of mine is gonna be stuck in some smelly Uber on the way to my house. And don’t tell me they don’t smell, neither. You haven’t been in one of them in Dallas before.” More shouting out the window. “Anyway, figure out what gate you’ll be at, and text me. I’m getting there one way or another. If I have to pick my car up and carry it over this traffic, I will.”

The call disconnected. Cindy stared at her phone in disbelief for a moment before shoving it in her back pocket. She’d been fully prepared to take a taxi, not a rideshare—one piece of wisdom her mother had imparted from years of business trips was always trust taxis in a city you don’t know—and here Libby was, white-knuckling it on the way to one of the world’s busiest airports for her. A mark of true friendship.

Cindy did splurge on that overpriced coffee. And she added hazelnut syrup on top of the whipped cream, just because.  

About forty-five minutes later (not a judgment, just an observation), Libby’s magenta hatchback screeched into the lone empty curb space outside of Cindy’s chosen gate. Before the car fully settled into park, Libby leapt out and crushed Cindy in a giant hug.

“It has been too. Damn. Long,” Libby said, giving Cindy an extra squeeze.

Cindy squeezed back. “It really has. I missed you.”

“Video calls just aren’t the same.” Libby grabbed Cindy’s shoulders and stepped back to give her best friend a once-over at arm’s length. “You’re lookin’ good.”  

“I’ve been cooped up in an apartment writing a thesis for three years, Libby. I look like a forgotten houseplant.”

“Accept the compliment, girl. In my house, we practice radical self-love.” Libby paused and lowered her sunglasses with a finger. “Is that really all your stuff?”

“It’s everything I have.”

“Did you go to grad school or a monastery?”

“They’re kind of the same thing, if you think about it.”

Libby rolled her eyes and sighed. “And here I was, worried whether my car was big enough. C’mon, I’ll help you load.”

The two women made quick work of Cindy’s luggage, and then they were merging back into the near-endless flow of traffic circling the airport. Cindy had to admire Libby’s patience, limited as it was, with at least some of her fellow drivers. She knew she definitely would have had a shorter fuse. Soon, the city lights of Dallas were behind them, and they were driving into a vivid sunset. Cindy didn’t have sunglasses—little need for them in the Pacific Northwest—so she settled for closing her eyes and watching the colors shift behind her eyelids.

“So you’re really moving back here for good?” Libby asked.

“Maybe. At least until I figure out what to do next.”

“What do you mean?”

Cindy shrugged. “Doctor Cindy Vortex has a nice ring to it.”

“Yeah, it does. But I’m having a hard time picturing you standing in front of a lecture hall and teaching college freshmen how to balance chemical equations or whatever without,” Libby rolled her hand, “losing your cool.”

“Hey, I’ve mellowed out! Besides, a freshman should know how to balance chemical equations before they even set foot in my classroom, anyway. Otherwise, they should seriously reconsider their college enrollment.”

“Sure, you’ve definitely mellowed out,” Libby nodded with a smirk.

Cindy huffed and leaned back harder against her seat.

“Seriously,” Libby said, flicking on her turn signal and moving into the next lane, “have you considered that maybe you’ve done enough school? I mean, no offense to your mom—”

“No, please, direct all the offense to my mother. She deserves it.”

“—but you gotta kill that nagging voice of hers in your head.”

Cindy glanced over at her best friend, face awash in the orange glow of the sunset in front of them. Libby’s parents had imbued her with unshakable confidence, taught her that doing her best might mean something different every day. Mistakes were just extra chances to learn. At the end of the day, there was no question whether the Folfaxes still loved their daughter. The Vortex household, on the other hand, offered no such safety net under the tightrope—not when it came to Sasha, anyway.

“Believe me, I’ve tried,” Cindy whispered hoarsely.

Libby reached over and patted Cindy’s thigh twice before reaching over and turning the volume up on the radio, a clear end to their conversation. Jet lag started to creep up on Cindy, and she let her eyes drift shut again.

A short while later, the tires of Libby’s hatchback crunched onto the driveway of a pale-yellow single-story house with dark brown trim.

“We’re home, girl,” Libby announced. “Rise and shine!”

“I wasn’t asleep,” Cindy insisted, stretching her left leg. A cramp was coming on in her calf. “Just resting my eyes.”

“Sure you weren’t.” Libby scooped up her phone from its spot in the cup holder and grinned at something on the screen. “C’mon, I’ll show you the spare room. Dinner is on the way.”

Libby led Cindy into the house, through a comfortable living room stuffed with a rainbow of throw pillows and down a narrow hallway before stopping at a closed door.

“I told Sheen to bring his stuff downstairs before you got here. Let’s see if he actually did it,” Libby said before throwing the door open.

The spare room was painted a light purple, with heavy blackout curtains and a potted plant perched on the dresser. A small wooden table and chair sat in one corner, and an empty glass display case sat in another. The bed was made up with white sheets and a crocheted blanket in shades of purple, turquoise, and pink. On the blanket sat an Ultra Lord action figure, holding a slip of paper that read WELCOME!!!! in crude handwriting.      

“Oh my God,” Libby sighed. “I told him—”

“Libs, it’s fine,” Cindy said. A giggle bubbled up in her throat. “It’s cute, in a weird way.”

“Did I just hear you call something Sheen did cute?”

“Don’t you dare tell him.”

“Oh, you know I’ll tell him.” Libby flashed a wicked smile. “And you’ll never hear the end of it.”

Cindy scowled. It only lasted a few seconds before both women burst out laughing.

After going back to unload the car, followed by several assurances that she was more than capable of unpacking by herself, Cindy was alone in the room. It was a bit depressing to realize how many of her belongings were related to school – she had a poster of the periodic table as her one wall decoration, for crying out loud. The photo she had of her and Libby from her twenty-first birthday ended up on the nightstand. She slid her books into the display case, along with the Ultra Lord figurine. Finally, from a nest of sweaters, Cindy pulled out a pickle jar with holes jabbed in the lid. A carnivorous plant no taller than her hand lay inside, flecks of dirt dusted over its leaves.

“Looks like you made it in one piece,” Cindy said with a smile. “Let’s get you out of this jar.”

Cindy found the plant’s terracotta pot and saucer in the bottom of her roll-around, then gingerly lifted the plant out of its jar before dumping the dirt into the pot. Once done, she set the plant on the little wooden table and dusted off its leaves.

“There. That’s much better, isn’t it?” After years of talking out loud through undergrad papers and her thesis, often with a decent helping of swearing tossed in, she thought it might be nice for the plant to hear some more encouraging words. As if in response, the plant turned its yellow and pink mouth toward the window, lips parting ever so slightly.

“¡Mamacita! ¡Tengo pizza!”

The familiar voice drilled through Cindy’s skull, and she felt a surge of long-dormant annoyance well up inside her until she reminded herself that she was, in fact, staying in Sheen’s house. Libby and Sheen’s house, more accurately. Good God.

“CINDY!” Libby yelled.

“I HEARD!” Cindy yelled back. She took one look in the mirror hung on the back of the door, decided her stirrup leggings and ratty sweatshirt were decent for present company, and headed to the kitchen.

“I didn’t know what she liked, so I basically got one of everything,” Sheen was explaining when Cindy rounded the corner. “Pepperoni, veggie garden, pineapple and anchovy—HEY! She’s here!” He bounded up to Cindy like an excited puppy, smile wide enough to swallow the sun.

Cindy fixed him with a hard look and held up a finger. “You get one hug. Got it?”

“Yup!”

Before Cindy could say anything else, she was getting crushed in Sheen’s arms and lifted slightly off the floor every time he bounced on the balls of his feet. After counting to five in her head, she relented and hugged Sheen back.

“God, I forgot how stupidly tall you are,” she said once he let go. At some point in their junior year of high school, Sheen shot up to six-foot-four, towering over most everyone else. Cindy had never quite adjusted to the change – dorks should always be shorter than her, dammit.

“And I forgot that you have sensational legs.”

“Sheen,” Libby warned.

“Relax, Libs, I’m not gonna kick him. I’m tired, and your kitchen is too nice to destroy.”

Libby produced a stack of paper plates from on top of the refrigerator, and the three of them picked out their pizza before settling into the living room. Cindy curled up on one couch cushion while Sheen and Libby settled onto the other. Sheen turned on the TV and immediately changed over to the public access channel, where two men in singlets were circling each other in a wrestling ring.

“Gotta scope out the competition, you know?” Sheen said cryptically before jamming nearly an entire slice of pepperoni pizza in his mouth.

Cindy raised an eyebrow, baffled.

“Sheen’s an amateur wrestler,” Libby explained.

“El Brillo,” Sheen added around a mouthful of cheese and crust.

“He came in second place in the regional tournament last year, didn’t you, sweetie?”

“Hell yeah, I did! Would’ve gotten first if that guy hadn’t put me in a half Nelson for a frickin’ eternity. I swear he was double-jointed.”

Cindy blinked at the pair of them. “Sorry, I’m still processing…you’re athletic now?”

Sheen shrugged and picked up another slice of pizza. “Kinda.”

“Don’t be so modest, Sheen. Of course you are.” Libby shot Cindy a look from behind her boyfriend’s back. “Things have changed since high school.”

Cindy winced and looked down at the slice of pineapple and anchovy pizza on her plate. Message received, loud and clear. Obviously, she knew people usually didn’t stay the way they were as teenagers; anyone who did had a serious case of arrested development. It was wrong of her to make assumptions, but what else could she do when she’d been away so long?

“Is the pharmacy still downtown?” she asked after a minute. “I gotta check and make sure my old GP sent something over.”

“Yeah. I can drop you off down there tomorrow if you want,” Libby answered.

“No, that’s fine, I can walk. I just wanted to know…if that was still the same.”

Libby and Sheen exchanged glances. It was clear to them that Cindy had fallen into some kind of mood, but neither of them wanted to say anything. Instead, they fell into silently watching TV, only saying anything when one of the wrestlers pulled a truly spectacular move.

After another hour and partway into a second match, Sheen got up and announced he needed to go moderate on his Ultra Lord forums (the fact that Sheen could moderate anything was another shock to Cindy’s system). He leaned over and kissed Libby’s cheek, then grabbed both of their plates and headed to the kitchen.

Libby yawned, stretching an arm overhead. “And that’s my cue to get ready for work.”  

“Work?”

“Mmhm. I’m the late-night DJ on KRTV. Bringing you the best of classic hits!” Libby announced in a bright radio announcer’s voice, then rolled her eyes. “That’s code for ‘don’t play anything made after 1989 or the station owner will chew your ass out’.”

“Well, I guess we are in Retroville,” Cindy pointed out.

“That doesn’t mean I gotta spin the same dusty songs over and over.” Libby stretched her other arm. “You wanna come with me? You could be my guest co-host.”

“Honestly, I think I’d just fall asleep.”

“Fair enough.”

Libby showed Cindy where the extra towels and soap were in the hall closet, then went off to her own bedroom to freshen up. Cindy settled back onto the bed in the spare room (her room, she supposed, for now) and texted her dad: sorry I’m so late. touched down around 6. call me if you want. Her thumb hovered over the Instagram app icon and was about to tap it just as there was a knock on the door.

“Hey,” Libby poked her head in. She’d changed into a striped sweater and a clean pair of jeans. “Wanted to stop in and say good night.”

“Okay. Good night.”

“Girl.”

Cindy looked up from her phone to see Libby looking at her expectantly, arms held out from her sides. Cindy took the hint, swung her legs over the side of her bed, and hugged Libby for the second time today.

“I’m not really used to hugging so much in one day,” she murmured in Libby’s ear.

“I know. That’s why I’m offering so much.” Libby hugged her tighter. “I’m really glad you’re back, Cin.”

“Me too.”

“See ya.” And with that, Libby stepped out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Cindy sat around and stared at her dark phone screen for a minute longer before opening Instagram and searching for a KRTV Radio account. She hit the follow button and scrolled through their posts. They were all promotional material for the station, some for long-expired contests and others for events in Retroville and the surrounding area. It bothered her that she couldn’t remember if Libby ever mentioned being a radio DJ before. Was this a new job? She should have asked. Some best friend she was.

She found the most recent post for Libby’s show, Midnight Run, and hit the heart button. Just then, a little bubble with DAD popped up at the top of her screen.

“How’s my girl?” Phil Vortex asked once Cindy picked up.

“Fine. Tired. They should find a way to make air travel less exhausting.”

“Couldn’t agree more. God knows I’ve been on enough planes in my lifetime. I hear neck pillows help a lot.”

Cindy sucked air in through her teeth. “I didn’t really have the space to pack one.” A small but livable lie.

“You can always make space for comfort,” Phil said. “How’s Libby?”

“Fantastic as ever.”

“She still got that hyperactive oddball hangin’ around her? Can’t remember his name.”

“Sheen?” Cindy couldn’t help but smirk. “Yeah. Get this: they’re living together now.”

“No kiddin’.”

They fell into easy conversation from there. Talking to her dad had always been effortless for Cindy. Where Sasha would interrogate, always with an end goal in mind, Phil would prod the talking along but ultimately let the topics meander. He let people come forth with their troubles in their own time rather than digging for them himself. Never one to get to the point, Sasha would derisively tell to anyone listening post-divorce. Too soft. How two people so diametrically opposed ever crossed paths long enough to think marriage was a good idea was a mystery Cindy had never solved.

“If I may,” Phil said after a long while, “I’d like to offer some advice.”

“Go ahead, Dad.”

“I know what it’s like to come back to the place you grew up after a long time away. You get whiplash from some things not being how you once knew ‘em. And the things you were sure would change haven’t moved an inch.” There was the quiet clink of a glass being set on a table – he must be having his customary shot of whiskey before bed. “I guess what I’m sayin’ is, it’ll take a while to adjust.”

“Okay…” Cindy said hesitantly.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself. Feel what you feel.” Don’t take after your mother was the unspoken sentiment. “And don’t hold people you used to know up to old expectations. Got it?”

“I think so.”

“I can tell the sandman is beatin’ you to death with his pillowcase, ‘cause you aren’t chatting as much.” Phil rumbled out a low laugh. “I’ll let you get some shut-eye. Love you.”

“Love you, too, Dad. G’night.”  

Cindy hung up, tossed her phone next to her on the bed, and got up to draw the blinds. Just as she reached over for the cord, a bright bluish-white streak raced across the night sky. Instead of fading out overhead after a short distance, like a shooting star should ordinarily do, the streak pressed on to the south and out of Cindy’s line of sight. Far too fast to be a jet, or a military aircraft. Could it be…?

No. Not a chance. If anyone had gotten out of Retroville and made something of themselves, it’d be him. No way he’d have stuck around.

“It’s just a shooting star,” she told herself. Part of her—the foolish part that dared to hope—wasn’t convinced.

Chapter Text

The next morning, Cindy woke up to a quiet house. Unsettling, considering Sheen of all people lived here. If she was going to shower, she wanted to be sure there was no chance of a boisterous interruption.

She crept out to the darkened living room and peered out into the driveway. Libby’s hatchback was parked there, but whatever Sheen drove back home last night wasn’t around. When Cindy checked the kitchen, she spotted two mugs next to the sink, along with a half-full pot in the coffeemaker that was still warm when she touched the side. Even though they had totally different work schedules, it seemed Libby and Sheen still made a point of sharing a sliver of their mornings, no matter how early.

Years of cleaning up for school after early karate practices and putting herself through eight A.M. college classes—yes, she was that kind of student—meant Cindy had her morning routine down to a science. Within an hour, she’d showered, blow-dried her hair, and dressed for the day. Then came the small matter of breakfast. She supposed she could root around in the kitchen for something to eat, but figured it would be better not to impose. Besides, surely some café would be open downtown.

Cindy was just about to head out when the bedroom door opposite hers creaked open. Libby stood there, less than half awake, in an oversized a T-shirt and sleep shorts. Her braids were tucked up into a bonnet.

“Damn, you’re still an early riser, aren’t you?” she asked, rubbing the heel of her hand into one eye.

“Good morning to you, too,” Cindy quipped.

“Hey. What does my shirt say?” Libby gestured across her chest for emphasis.

“‘I Hate Mornings’?”

“Then there ain’t no such thing as a good morning.”

“I didn’t mean to wake you up. I was just heading out.”

“Mm, hang on.” Libby retreated into her room for a moment and reappeared with a cluster of keys in her hand. “I may not be awake when you get back, and I do not wanna be woken up with you banging on the door.”

“But that’s your—”

Libby mustered up her best attempt at a hard stare. “I’m currently running on less than an hour of sleep. Don’t test me.”

Cindy accepted the house key with the swinging pink pom-pom keychain without another word.

It was a bit longer walk to downtown Retroville than Cindy had anticipated. The morning air was pleasantly cool, though, and she kept her hands tucked in the kangaroo pocket of her hoodie and went along at an easy pace. A few people said hello as she passed, and she waved back. How many of them recognized her from a distance, Cindy couldn’t say. It wasn’t like she had a horrible reputation as a kid, but she hadn’t been the most polite or easygoing, either. Abrasive was a word that got tossed around a lot. Bitch was another, though that one was usually said more quietly. Oh, and weird, especially the more time she spent hanging around him. She’d worn that last word as a private badge of honor for some time.

Once downtown, a neon sign of a chicken throwing its head back and forth in laughter in a café window grabbed her attention. Cindy glanced up at the yellow awning, where the words El Pollo Riendo were printed in bright red letters. Well. Couldn’t accuse them of false advertising. She ducked inside, and her nose was immediately greeted by the smell of fajitas and fried eggs. Her stomach growled its approval.

Cindy hadn’t realized just how badly she was craving decent Mexican food until the first taste of chilaquiles hit her tongue. Nobody in Washington even came close to making stuff like this. Also, they brewed respectable coffee with a kick here – no agonizing over smooth taste or berry undertones or other nonsense. She was grateful no one else was seated close enough to hear the frankly obscene sounds she made while eating.

She lingered in the café for quite a while, ordering far too much coffee and exercising her long-dormant Spanish skills by flicking through the newspapers lying on the windowsill next to her table. By the time she’d finished the crossword puzzle in one issue, her phone told her it was well past nine. Time to move along.

Retroville Drug crouched in the same corner building with painted white bricks it had occupied since at least the 1950s, when a trip to the drugstore often included penny candy and ice cream sodas. Miraculously well-stocked given its rather small size, the store had seen multiple generations come through its doors seeking relief from all manner of maladies, needing to pick up toiletries on their way home, or looking for small amusements on a rainy day. Oh, and the family who owned Retroville Drug were notoriously picky when it came to staffing the place. They wouldn’t hire just anybody off the street.

Cindy roamed the aisles for a bit, scooping up deodorant here, a fresh toothbrush there. The pharmacy counter was vacant when she walked up with her basket, and she was just about to hit the service bell when she heard shuffling from behind the counter.

“Retroville Drug, how can we make you well today?” A bespectacled and freckled face popped around the window frame. “Oh! Hi, Cindy!”

No. Please let this be a joke. No way in hell anyone actually let Carl Wheezer of all people work here.

“Hi, Carl,” Cindy managed to say, her throat feeling oddly fuzzy.

“Picking up or dropping off?”

“Picking up.”

“Last name?”

“Seriously? You don’t know?”

“Gotta make it look good for the camera.” Carl jerked his head up to the ceiling, where a little black dome hung with a sign that said Smile! You’re On TV! next to it.

“Fine. Vortex.”

Carl typed into his computer and squinted at the screen. “Looks like you have two waiting. One is cholecalciferol, 50 micrograms, and the other is levonorgestrel/ethinyl estradiol—”

“Can I please just get my stuff and be on my way?”

“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. I fill this prescription all the time.”

“I’m sure you do—”

“It’s only weird because we knew each other when we were kids, and now I’m dispensing your birth control.”

Cindy cringed hard enough that she was sure her face would implode. “Yeah. That pretty much sums it up.”

In her opinion, Carl took far too long to slide two orange prescription bottles into a white paper bag and ring up the rest of her items. When all was said and done, he offered her a kind smile. “I can have your scrips delivered to your home in the future if that works better for you.”

Seeing as how you can’t suck it up and act like an adult about this, Cindy mentally supplied. “No, that’s fine, Carl, really. It’s just…” She rubbed her forehead. “I got back here last night, and this morning is my first time actually out in town, so it’s all been…”

“An adjustment?”

Cindy nodded. The headache forming behind her eyes was either a nasty caffeine rebound or stress – hard to tell which. “Where do you keep your painkillers? I think I could use some.”

“Aisle 4 on the left.”

“Thanks.”

That afternoon, Cindy reclined on the living room sofa, laptop balanced on her folded-up thighs while she scowled at the screen.

“Uh-oh,” Libby murmured, wandering in with two glasses of lemonade and setting a glass on the floor by Cindy. “Something wrong?”

“Not really. This is just my default face when I read emails.”

Libby nodded in sympathy and plopped down on the sofa next to Cindy’s feet. “Sheen gets that same look when he’s gotta go into Ultra Mod mode on his forums.”

“According to the university archives, there have been fourteen hits on my thesis this past week. Why, I have no clue.”

“Isn’t that kinda the point of writing one of those things? So people can read it for research and quote it in their stuff?”

“Yeah, but like…” Cindy shut her laptop, stashed it between the sofa cushions, and grabbed her lemonade. “First of all, it’s summer. Go jump in a lake or something instead of reading frickin’ theses in the air conditioning like some kind of nerd. Second of all, my thesis isn’t that good.”

“Cindy, they wouldn’t have given you your Master’s degree if it wasn’t any good! Right?”

“Technically, they haven’t given it to me yet. They conferred the degree on me at the ceremony, but until I have the diploma in my hands—”

“Okay, Miss Pedantic. My point is, maybe you’re too close to the picture to see the whole thing. I mean, you worked on your thesis for years, right? You know all the details, down to every period and comma. Of course you’re gonna be more critical after you just got done with it.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“I know I am. So, chill.”

“Don’t know the meaning of the word,” Cindy mumbled into her lemonade, then took a sip. “Hey, why didn’t you warn me Carl works at the pharmacy?”  

Libby paused, glass halfway to her mouth, sheepish.

“Do you know how awkward that was? I’m waiting at the service counter and suddenly King Dweebus himself appears in a lab coat.” Cindy scoffed. “How can he be trusted, anyway? Carl can’t keep a secret to save his life!”

“Pretty sure if he goes around blabbing about people’s private medical info, that’s a violation of HIPAA or something.”

“Also, since when has he been smart enough to be a pharmacist?”

“Carl wasn’t that bad in school. Nowhere near you and Jimmy, obviously, but he wasn’t stupid.”

At the mention of that particular name, something squeezed deep in Cindy’s gut. “Do you know what Neutron’s been up to lately?” she asked, trying to keep her voice as light and casual as possible.

Libby shook her head. “You haven’t kept in touch?”

“Oh yeah, I’ve got a shoebox jammed full of postcards from whatever Ivy League had enough square footage available to admit both his brain and gigantic ego.” When Libby fixed her with a knowing look, Cindy rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine. We haven’t spoken in years.”

“That’s sad.”

“Why? People grow apart.”

“Yeah, but that’s normal people.”

“Implying Neutron and I aren’t normal.”

“Pretty much!” Libby took a sip of her lemonade. “Look, I know you two did your fair share of bickering—”

“Excuse me. Some of that was intellectual sparring.”

“Nerdy foreplay. Whatever.” Libby flipped her hand, ignoring Cindy bristling like an annoyed cat. “Point is, underneath all that…I mean, all five of us were friends, but the connection between you and Jimmy felt deeper.”

“That was just a childhood crush.” It was a lie as soon as it left Cindy’s mouth, and both women knew the truth.

“Who knows? He might surprise you. Come back around and find you here.”

“I doubt it.”

Libby had been in enough conversations on this topic to know when to drop it. Her best friend was getting that pained, wistful look that made her cheeks pinch and her eyes stare off into the past. Instead, Libby reached for the remote and clicked on the TV, hoping the distraction might bring Cindy back to earth.

After a few nights of scrolling her way through utter boredom in her bedroom, and one memorable evening spent listening to Sheen ramble on about drama on his forums, Cindy asked Libby if the offer to follow her to work was still open. It wasn’t as though she had classes to get up for or papers to write; her sleep schedule could handle a little mangling.

Cindy’s memories of KRTV were relegated to the tiny studio where they’d recorded their public-access kids’ news show and the back alley where a certain genius made good on his flirtations. She certainly didn’t remember the tall radio transmission tower mounted on top of the building, glowing red and white through the night. Strangely enough, it seemed the janitorial staff still used the same carpet shampoo as they had years before – the scent of oversweet bubble gum lingered in the air and permeated the tan soundproofing panels mounted on every wall. Cindy leaned against one such panel and pondered the snack selection in the bank of vending machines while Libby filled her enormous water bottle at the nearby drinking fountain.

“Don’t tell me people who work here actually drink those,” she said to Libby, gesturing at the unsettlingly large variety of energy drinks in one machine.  

“Oh, they do. One of the morning DJs lives on ‘em. Shakes like an angry Chihuahua the whole show.” Libby peered through the narrow glass pane in the radio studio door, where the ON AIR sign still glowed. “You’d think Tara would know she doesn’t have to sit through the last ad roll of the hour before getting her butt out of that chair and letting me in.”

“Is she new here?”

Libby wavered her hand back and forth. “The station managers stick you on from seven to eleven at night to prove yourself. It’s the worst time slot: only four hours and the smallest number of listeners tuning in. If you can’t handle it, they just replace you with one of those nationally syndicated shows. That was my slot the first six months I was here.”

Once again, Cindy was reminded of how little she knew about her best friend’s career. “How long have you been here, anyway?”

“Mm. I started a little after you graduated the first time, so…four years? Almost five.”

“God, we’re getting old.”

“Don’t remind me. Ah, Tara’s coming.”

The two women slipped inside the studio as Tara held the door open for them. Libby sat down behind the control panel and began punching buttons, while Cindy settled into an extra high-back leather office chair and sighed at the comfort.

“If I’d had one of these in grad school, I would’ve written my thesis in half the time,” she commented, running her hand over an armrest.

“Or you would’ve fallen asleep at your desk.”

Cindy shrugged. “Eh, pros and cons.”

“Make sure you get those headphones on,” Libby nodded to the pair sitting in front of Cindy. “Assuming you wanna hear more than just me yammering on all night, that is.”

Cindy slipped on the headphones, wincing at the sound of classic rock blasting in her ears before finding the volume dial on the left side and turning it down.

“Yeah, might wanna readjust those. Frogman is half-deaf, but nobody can tell him that.”

“Frogman?”

“Sal and Frogman on the Afternoon Hop. Do you not know them?”

“A, I’ve been back in Retroville less than a week, and B, I don’t know anyone under the age of 50 who listens to the radio.”

Libby stuck her tongue out and pressed a button on the control panel.

“No matter where you are, KRTV is right there with you! In the DFW area and its suburbs, tune in to 90.3 FM, 92.7 HD-2, and AM 1950. And we’re always broadcasting worldwide at krtv-radio.com!” went the station ID bumper.

“Yeah, yeah. You’re hip with the times or whatever,” Cindy grumbled. But Libby was already pulling the mic down to the right level, shushing Cindy with a finger to her lips.

“How y’all doing tonight? Ready for another Midnight Run?” Libby smiled into the mic as a train whistle effect played. “This is KRTV, this is your girl, Libby, and let’s kick off our journey together with a little Journey. How about that?” She pressed a few more buttons, and the opening vamp of “Don’t Stop Believin’” began to play.

“That was so smooth,” Cindy commented.

“You say the same thing five nights a week for five years, and it kinda just falls out.” Libby nudged the mic off to the side and pulled her headphones off one ear. “Just so you know, I start taking callers after the first hour.”

“Who calls a radio station this late?”

“A lot of truckers. Nurses. Other third-shifters. Drunks who treat this like a missed connection line and start rambling about someone they met at the bar. Sometimes they get annoying and I have to cut them off, but most of the time it’s cute. And then there are the ones who call in because they’re lonely and they know someone’s listening.”

Could’ve used that pretty much the entirety of grad school, Cindy thought. Or you could’ve just called your friends like other, normal people do.

A string of rock and pop hits played, older than Cindy’s typical music taste but still enjoyable. She found herself mouthing along to a few songs, much to her surprise. As promised, Libby announced a few minutes after midnight that the lines were open for callers, and the phone lit up almost immediately.

The first two callers were drunk, with one wanting to ramble about her ex-husband in a way Cindy found horribly reminiscent of her teenage years, and the other waxing poetic about a fellow barfly with iridescent hair.

“Did he know comparing someone’s hair to an oil slick isn’t flattering?” Cindy muttered after the guy hung up.

“Probably not,” Libby answered before pressing another lit-up button on her phone.

Some of the calls were song requests, which Libby obliged with a smile. One woman told a story about her sister being in the hospital, recovering from emergency surgery, and Cindy watched Libby thumb a tear out of her eye before honoring her request for an Elton John track. Something warmed in Cindy seeing her best friend act as a listening ear for so many people.

Growing capacity for empathy aside, Cindy felt her eyelids droop bit by bit, and soon, one of those energy drinks didn’t sound half bad. She grabbed her wallet, wandered out to the vending machine, bought the least offensive flavor she could find, and came back into the studio to find Libby in the middle of another call, laughing behind her hand.

“Seriously, you are so out there it ain’t even funny. Except it kinda is,” Libby giggled.

Curious, Cindy sat back down and slipped her headphones on.

“—clouds in the Venusian atmosphere are far superior to those on Earth.”

She only needed a few syllables to recognize his voice. It had deepened over the years, and there was a subtle rasp that she knew only manifested when he was tired. Turned out Cindy had wasted three dollars on a can of caffeinated battery acid, because now she was well and truly wide awake.

“How can you even see the clouds, anyway? I thought everything they try to land on Venus gets cooked or eaten by the rain or something,” Libby said.

“The USSR successfully landed Venera 8 on the surface in 1972, but I’m not on the surface. I’m safe, far away in my ship, watching through my trusty telescope…”

“Riiiiiiiiiiight.” Libby cut her eyes over to Cindy and noticed the questioning look on her face. “Hey, I don’t wanna cut you off, but I think my boss might like it if I actually played some music for a change.”

“Of course, of course. Have a good night, Libby.”

“G’night. And with that, folks, we’re gonna kick off another long set of tracks. Here’s some Queen for ya.” Libby shoved the mic aside, queued up the music, and pulled off her headphones with a long sigh.

“So.” Cindy snapped her own headphones down around her neck. “Thought you said you hadn’t heard from Neutron.”

Chapter Text

Without turning away from Cindy’s heated stare, Libby picked up one side of her headphones and held it up to her ear while reaching back for the microphone boom with her other arm.

“Slight programming change, everybody,” she announced into the mic. “We’re gonna hear a word from our sponsors, then take it back to the music. KRTV apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause.”

“You lied to me,” Cindy said once the ad read kicked in.

Libby shoved the boom away again and dropped her headphones to their resting place at her collar. “If you remember,” she said, putting up a finger, “I said I didn’t know what Jimmy was up to. Not that I hadn’t heard from him.”

“That’s splitting hairs!”

“It really isn’t.”

Cindy rocked back in her chair and crossed her arms, nostrils flared.

“Look, I didn’t lie to you. He calls into the station every once in a while—”

“How often? And how long has this been happening?”

Libby shrugged. “I dunno. A year, maybe? I hear from him more often than I’ve heard from you.”

There was an edge to Libby’s voice that cut into Cindy’s ears. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

“It means the only time you’ve bothered to call me since we graduated is whenever you’ve had a crisis.”

“I—that’s because I needed you!”

“And I need you!” Libby shouted. “I need you to talk to me when you’re having good days, too!” 

“Sorry I didn’t give you a play-by-play of grad school,” Cindy scoffed. “Trust me, it wasn’t that interesting.”

“You don’t get to decide what is and isn’t interesting for me! I…” Libby rubbed her forehead with her fingertips. “Cindy, I have been there for you since we’ve been five years old, but I gotta be more than someone you call with the bad news, you know? I thought I was a bigger part of your life than that.”

“You are.”

“Yeah, well, you may think that, but you ain’t showing me.”

Cindy ran her finger around the ridge of her energy drink can. The insecurity that had plagued her since taking off from Seattle, about being less than a best friend to Libby, had cranked up to full blast and set her stomach roiling.

“Jimmy calls in here, and I don’t know if he’s actually out there floatin’ around in space, or if he’s high as hell and just rambling about the pretty supernovas he sees behind his eyelids, but at least I know something. You, I…” Libby flipped a hand uselessly in Cindy’s direction. “I wanna know what dumb thoughts you’re having at two in the morning when you can’t sleep, or the funky drink you saw on the menu at the café down the block that you’re not sure about but you kinda wanna try. I wanna hear about the weird shirt you saw someone wearing on the bus so we can judge a stranger together. I just…I need it to be like when we were kids.”

Cindy licked her bottom lip in a vain attempt to stop it from quivering. “We’re adults now, Libs,” she said, using the nickname she hadn’t uttered in years. “We can’t go back.”

“No, we can’t,” Libby acknowledged with a sigh. “All I’m asking for is a little balance. Please?”

Before Cindy could answer, Libby slipped her headphones back on and turned back to the control panel. Cindy clutched her energy drink, willing the rapidly fading coolness of the aluminum into her palms so she’d feel something other than burning humiliation.

The apartment was nice, in every sense of the word. Two bedrooms, spacious closets with bi-fold doors, a bathroom bigger than a postage stamp, and a kitchen actually worth cooking a meal in rather than eating exclusively out of the microwave. Cindy had lived in far crappier places while in school, confined to what she could get with half her monthly budget. Part of her had expected more of the same coming back to Retroville; what she’d forgotten was Retroville didn’t really have any place one could call dingy or run-down. Old-school, yes, but always in a charming way.

“Did you want a brochure?” the property manager asked with a wide smile.

Cindy, still a bit taken aback by the overall pleasantness of the place, nodded. “I really like it here.”

“Most folks do. We don’t have the biggest turnover rate, and when we do, spots get snatched up like that.” The manager snapped her lime-green manicured fingers. “So it’s best to stay on your toes.”

“I’m pretty good at staying on my toes.” Cindy held her hands up in a mock karate stance. “Over twenty years of martial arts training.”

The manager let out a professional giggle – not too loud or long – and guided Cindy back downstairs toward the front office. On the way, they passed a utility room with its gray door opened up against the wall.

“How’s everything looking in there?” the manager called into the room.

“Pretty good, Angie!” Heavy booted footsteps approached the door, and Sheen stepped out in orange coveralls, carrying an electronic handheld with two alligator clip probes. “Two of your AC units just need recharging, and there’s one coil that’s a little iffy, so I gotta—hey! Cindy!”

“Hey,” Cindy greeted, trying to hide her shock.

“I didn’t know you were touring here!”

“Oh, you two know each other?” Angie asked.

“Yeah, she’s crashing at my place,” Sheen explained. “Or…was, I guess?”

The three of them exchanged awkward glances before Angie graciously ducked away into the front office, leaving Cindy and Sheen to face each other in the hallway.

“Hold on.” Cindy gestured at the embroidered patch on the right side of Sheen’s chest that read Estevez Heating & Cooling. “I thought you were a wrestler. Since when do you do this?”

“Pfft, the wrestling’s only on weekends! During the day, I’m helping Retroville and the surrounding area warm up, chill down, and breathe easy. At least that’s what it says in our radio ad.”

“Wait. Didn’t your dad do something like this for a job?”  

Sheen nodded. “Dad’s back started getting bad a couple years after I graduated, so I’d follow him around to job sites where he knew there’d be a lot of bending and crouching. After a while, I realized I liked doing this HVAC stuff, and Dad said I should try and get my license since being stuck inside an ivy-covered college seemed like torture to me. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“Nowadays Dad mostly stays at the office and does the easier jobs while I do everything else. He’s much better at all the paperwork and business junk than I am.”

“I can imagine.”

Sheen shifted from foot to foot. “Hey, so, not to totally change the subject, but are you and Libby fighting?”

Cindy crossed her arms, fingers tensed over her biceps. “Why? Did she tell you we were?”

“She said you two had an argument at the radio station the other night. But I didn’t know if the fight was, like,” Sheen shrugged, “ongoing or whatever.”

“It’s not. It’s just…” Cindy sighed. “Libby pointed out that I haven’t been the greatest friend to her lately.”

“So you thought you’d be a better friend by avoiding her at the house?”

“I’m not avoiding her!”

“Dude, I’ve been a professional at sneaking into kitchens in pursuit of illegal sugary snacks past my bedtime since I was four years old. I know what avoiding people looks like.”

Cindy huffed and shoved some hair behind her ear.

“Also, you’re out looking at apartments when I’m pretty sure Libby said you could stay with us as long as you want.”

“I can’t mooch off you two forever.”

“It’s not mooching!” Sheen pried open a cargo pocket on his coveralls with a distinct Velcro shnkt! and dropped his handheld meter inside. “Do you have any idea how excited Libby was when you told her you were coming back to Retroville?”

Cindy shook her head.

“I thought something bad happened because she was crying so hard when she called me at work. Then I finally found out she was crying because she was happy, and she was happy because of you.”

“I…” Cindy fiddled with her purse strap, unsure of what to say.

“Cindy, you’ve always been really independent. Honestly, it’s something I kinda admire about you.” Sheen idly scratched his cheek. “But Libby wants to take care of you by letting you stay with us, and I dunno. I think you should let her. Maybe that won’t fix everything you were arguing about, but it’s a start.”

“When did you get to be so wise, Estevez?”

“Hanging out with my abuela helps a lot. Oh hey, while you’re here, maybe you can give me your opinion on something.”

“I’m always ready to give my opinion, but no guarantee you’re gonna like it.”

Sheen fished around in an inner pocket of his coveralls and pulled out a small velvet box. He popped it open, and inside sat a thin-banded gold ring, a yellow and a blue stone nestled together in the setting.

“The jeweler said topaz is the birthstone for both November and December, just in different colors, but I dunno how much I believe the guy. I thought since it’s an engagement ring, it’d be kinda cool putting our stones together, but if you think that’s too much—”

“Sheen, you are the epitome of ‘too much’,” Cindy interjected. “Besides, everybody and their mother gets diamond engagement rings. This? This is beautiful and unique.”

“You mean it?”

“Yes!”  

A shriek cut through the air. Cindy and Sheen snapped away from each other to see Angie clutching a brochure for the apartment complex, bouncing as much as she could manage in her high heels. Her giddy lipsticked grin told them both that she’d clearly misread the situation she walked into.

“No, no, no, it’s not what you think—”

Saturday night arrived, and Cindy found herself alone. Sheen had told her earlier in the day with a huge knowing wink that he was taking Libby for a fancy dinner out of town and to not expect them back until sometime the next day. Then he’d pressed a newly cut key with a rubber cactus keychain in her palm before walking away while whistling loudly. Subtle as a brick through a windshield.

For the sake of Libby’s sanity, and for her own, Cindy hoped that Sheen had broached the subject of marriage at least once before this. Libby could handle surprises well enough, but there was always the outside possibility that she could say no. Cindy did not care to be around for the fallout of that particular outcome.

After ignoring her ever more insistent hunger pangs to flip through the TV stations for the third time, just to be sure absolutely nothing worth watching was on, Cindy decided to head out. Being alone in her own apartment was one thing; being alone in a house that wasn’t hers felt more than a bit eerie.

Somewhere along the way to downtown, old habits kicked in, and soon Cindy found herself beating a path to the Candy Bar. The red-and-white striped columns out front and the oversized sundae, lollipop, and swirl candies on the roof had all received a fresh coat of paint, but otherwise, the place looked remarkably the same. When Cindy pushed her way inside, the left door still squeaked on its top hinge like it had all those years before.

Remarkably, Sam was still puttering around the place. And he somehow was as gray as he was the summer Cindy left town.

“Hey, I know you,” he barked as Cindy approached the bar. “You and two of your little friends did a quick musical number in here, yeah.”

Cindy frowned, unsure what Sam could possibly be referencing until the memory of a certain Valentine’s Day came rushing forward. Of all the things he could have remembered about her first. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was me.”

“All right, well don’t be doing any of those in here tonight. Chip just got done waxing the floors. Pick a spot, make yourself comfortable. I’m comin’ around, yeah.”

Even though it was entirely selfish since she was by herself, Cindy slid into the corner booth where she’d spent so many hours of her youth. The Candy Bar was decently busy, but not so much that she felt she’d be asked to move. She set her purse down beside her when Sam reappeared, pencil and pad in hand.

“What do you want, yeah?” he asked.

“Cheeseburger with grilled onions, and a side of French fries.”

“You want a shake with that?”

“Malt, actually. Uh…” Cindy drummed her fingers. “Mint chocolate chip?”

“You askin’ me or you tellin’ me?”

Cindy blinked. “Mint chocolate chip,” she repeated more firmly, then added. “Please.”

“Comin’ right up, yeah.”

“I’ve never ordered that flavor in my life,” she muttered to herself after Sam walked away. She scratched idly at her arm, perplexed, until a memory rose up from the deep…

“You can’t knock it ‘til you try it.”

“Oh, please, I’ve knocked many things without trying them.”

Jimmy glanced at her sideways, a spoonful of mint chocolate chip ice cream hovering over his dish. “I believe that constitutes drawing conclusions without experimentation. That’s bad science.”

“And you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?” There was no acid behind the insult. Couldn’t even call it a dig, really. She really was losing her edge the more time she spent around him.  

The grin he flashed her could have melted both their desserts instantly.

“All right.” She tapped the side of her dish with the tip of her spoon. “I’ll try yours if you try mine.”

“Simultaneous testing?” Jimmy raised an eyebrow. “You know that might lead to muddied variables incapable of being isolated for further analysis.”

“I don’t care,” she whispered. For good measure, she made a point of staring at his lips while biting her own.

He really was getting better at picking up hints the more time he spent around her. Their lips met, and raspberry mixed with mint in a tingling, sweetened swirl.

The smell of freshly grilled onions brought Cindy back to reality as Sam set the basket in front of her, along with the malt and frosty can of extra ice cream. She thanked him and plucked up a French fry, savoring the crush of piping hot potato and salt against the roof of her mouth. A wide spectrum of memories had been made here at the Candy Bar, to be sure. Somehow this place always managed to factor into their adventures, big and small. The argument over the equator. Her attempt to negotiate friendship via contract. That extremely awkward Valentine’s Day that Sam happened to bring up. And so many others.

Cindy slipped back into a reverie while she chewed her way through her meal. When she checked her phone after finishing off her cheeseburger, she was surprised to find that only an hour had passed. There was a text from her dad letting her know he’d touched down in Sacramento and wanting to know how she was settling in. Still nothing from Sasha, thankfully. Her silence was truly golden.

Mint chocolate chip proved to be too nostalgic to eat, so Cindy left the majority of her malt behind at the table, paid her bill, and pushed back out of the Candy Bar’s double doors. Downtown was busier now, people roaming up and down the streets in search of small-town fun. Cindy fell in with the crowd, tapping out a reply text to her dad.

As she was about to drop her phone back in her purse, something caught the reflection in its screen: a bluish-white streak blazing through the dark sky. Exactly like the one she saw her first night back in town, only much lower in altitude.  

Well. Her Saturday night just got more interesting.

Nobody other than Cindy seemed to take notice of what was happening overhead, wrapped up in their own personal quests as they were. A couple people bumped into her as she stood in the middle of the sidewalk, but she didn’t bother to glare at them. Her eyes were trained overhead, watching as the streak veered to the west. Shooting stars definitely didn’t veer like that, and any military aircraft would be more circumspect.

Her feet moved of their own accord down the street, then into an alley and down another street. Eventually, she found herself outside of downtown proper and back in a residential neighborhood. Still, the streak pressed on with no signs of arcing toward earth.

“Where are you going, Neutron?” Cindy muttered. Retroville only extended so far west before giving over to farms and patches of prairie. In theory, touching down out in some farmer’s sorghum field was a lot less dangerous than crashing into someone’s roof, though that hadn’t stopped him when they were kids, had it? She remembered more than a few incidents where she’d woken up to yelling as a result of Jimmy’s careless choice of a landing strip.

As she headed further and further west, the suburban asphalt ended and became packed gravel. Clouds of dust puffed around Cindy’s ankles as she kept up a half-jog. A sodium-orange lamp hung from a thick timber post alongside the road; otherwise, the world around her had significantly darkened, and stars popped out in ever-greater numbers as she went.

Off to her right, about a hundred yards ahead, something caught her attention. A pair of yellow lights, seemingly hovering a few feet over a mown-down patch of grass, moved back and forth in a beckoning motion. The beckoning wasn’t directed her way, though. Cindy glanced up, and the streak was finally beginning its descent.

Traipsing through knee-high grass at any time was a fairly stupid idea, and doubly so at night. At least there weren’t any rattlers in this part of the state. Cindy tromped her way toward the beckoning lights, keeping a low stance. As she drew closer, she could make out a vaguely canid shape in the patch, a pair of mechanical arms holding up the flashing yellow signal cones. Of course he’d make Goddard work as his unofficial ground crew.

The roar of thrusters grew louder. Cindy stopped and went to a full crouch about fifty feet away from the patch, not willing to get much closer to anything that could set her on fire. Soon, the noise was deafening, and she stuffed her fingers in her ears as the rocket landed with several bumps in the grass, like a rock skipping over a lake’s surface. The blinding bluish-white jet trailing from the rear died down to a small flame before snuffing out.

There was a moment’s pause before a pair of white sneakers appeared over the side of the rocket, crisp against the metallic blue paint. Goddard clicked on the lights in his eyes as Jimmy hauled himself out of the pilot’s seat.

“Great job as always, boy,” Jimmy said. “Who’s the best ground control ever, huh?”

The mechanical arms projecting from Goddard’s back collapsed into his central compartment along with the signal cones, and he bounded across the grass to greet Jimmy with joyful barks. Jimmy knelt down and gathered his beloved hound in his arms, laughing. It was then that Cindy got her first good look at him in years, and—

She let out a strangled combination of a giggle and a snort. Instead of his trademark swooping upright curl, or the shorter spikes he sported during high school, Jimmy’s hair now flowed back over his scalp and down his neck, the total length of it just brushing his shoulders. A few stubborn locks curled and hung over his forehead. Stubble lined his jaw and circled his mouth, committed to growing its way to a full beard.

Blood surged into Cindy’s cheeks the longer she watched him. Was she into the overgrown look, or was it just because it was Neutron? He’d always been so clean-shaven, so put together in his nerdy way, but this…

Jimmy snapped his head her direction, and she flattened out on her stomach in the grass. His eyes, deep blue as ever, gazed out over the field, and for one thrilling second, she was sure he’d found her.

“Goddard? Scan for any humanoid life forms within a hundred-foot radius.”

Oh, no. Oh hell no. Cindy couldn’t get up or run without being seen. Her best bet was for Goddard’s search to fail, but knowing Jimmy, Goddard pretty much never malfunctioned.

What would be so bad if he discovered you, anyway? You’ve been dying to see him, even if you’re too proud to say it.

Yeah, but I want this to be on my own terms, a separate voice chimed in. Besides…I don’t know if he wants to see me.

And there it was: doubt, Cindy’s constant, gnawing companion. Always waiting to trip up her confidence at the least convenient time.

She curled her fingernails into the dirt, listening for Goddard’s footsteps. Suddenly, there was a snuffling in her left ear, and she bit her tongue to keep from crying out. Instead, Cindy slowly turned her head and met Goddard’s gaze. Damn, those LEDs were bright even when they were dimmed. She held a shaking finger to her lips, hoping that he understood that much nonverbal communication.

Goddard flicked his eyes off and on, an imitation of a blink, and let out a growl that pitched up at the end as if to ask: Are you sure?

Cindy was definitely not sure, but she nodded all the same. Goddard stood stock-still in the same way a flesh-and-blood dog would when staring hard at something; not for the first time since meeting the mechanical canine, Cindy felt a chill race down her back. He could really be uncanny sometimes.

After far too long, Goddard wandered back over to Jimmy and whined.

“Really? Nobody out there, huh?”

Goddard whined again in a more affirmative tone.

“Curious. I could have sworn—” Jimmy’s nose wrinkled as he sniffed the air. “Must have been my imagination. C’mon, boy.”

He reached inside the rocket and jerked up on a hidden lever. Two sets of landing gear, one fore and one aft, sprung out of the rocket’s belly. He pressed a button tucked under the main instrument cluster, and the rocket slowly began to taxi under its own power. Goddard led the way through the grass, while Jimmy took up the rear. Before he completely turned away, he surveyed the field one last time, and Cindy briefly considered showing herself. But before she could pluck up the courage, he was little more than a silhouette merging with the dark.

Chapter Text

Brick brushed against Cindy’s knuckles as she climbed up the rust-coated utility ladder, drawstring bag thumping on her back. Since she didn’t have a job to occupy her days, she’d taken to engaging in some minor misdemeanors to pass the time, mainly trespassing. All in service of solving a mystery, not that any officer of the law would care to hear that excuse. 

According to the copy of Telecommunications for Reasonably Smart Folks in her bag, along with a few other related books courtesy of the Retroville Public Library, space-to-earth communication required a transmitter and a receiver, just like any terrestrial telecom system. A spacecraft and its ground control would need both kinds of devices, and depending on how far out in space the craft was, a bigger antenna would be needed to receive the craft’s transmissions. While Cindy wouldn’t put it past Neutron to launch his own relay satellites to reduce latency, those only worked for low-orbit craft, and he would have had NASA and a few other entities to answer to if anyone found some unidentifiable space junk floating around.

Cindy heaved herself up on the roof, swiped her forearm over her brow, and stood, gazing out through the midday haze over the other rooftops in downtown Retroville. She had, at least, figured out how Neutron was calling KRTV. A trip down memory lane reminded her that Goddard was able to make and receive phone calls, so he probably received Neutron’s transmissions through a direct link to his rocket and then forwarded any calls to the station. But even the world’s most advanced mechanical canine couldn’t store a giant terrestrial antenna in his back, so that was still a question she couldn’t answer.

What Cindy would do if she did find some component of Neutron’s system, she didn’t quite know. Hack into it somehow, she supposed. Otherwise she was stuck waiting for him to reappear like he had in that field a few nights ago, and then what would she do? Freeze like a frightened rabbit in the grass again? For someone who desperately wanted to talk to Neutron, Cindy sure was making it difficult for herself. 

Her dad’s words replayed in her mind: don’t hold people you used to know up to old expectations. Cindy wanted Neutron to be, well, at least surprised to see her again. Delighted would be even better, obviously; she liked to think that their most recent history had been positive enough that he wouldn’t bolt at the sight of her. But that was the old Jimmy from years ago – who knew how he would react now?

Finding nothing to satisfy her inquisitive mind, Cindy went back to the ladder. An investigation like this wasn’t suited for the noonday sun, anyway.

“Eat lasers, you titanium-coated bastard!”

Cindy looked up from her phone to see Sheen holding his video game controller off to the right above his head and frantically working the joystick with his left thumb. On the massive TV screen in front of them, Ultra Lord valiantly squared off against the nefarious Robo-Fiend, even as the Violet Crusader’s health bar dropped to a dangerously red level. After another thirty seconds of furious button mashing, Ultra Lord succumbed to his ultra-injuries in ultra-dramatic fashion by slumping into the tan planetary dust at his feet. Sheen mimicked the move, splaying out over the basement carpet and flinging away his controller.

“Didn’t you tell me you’ve played this game before?” Cindy asked.

“Oh yeah, loads of times,” Sheen answered, voice muffled by the carpet. “I’ve had this one since I was fourteen.”

“Then shouldn’t you know how to beat it?”

“I do! But if I beat it, then I have to choose which of my save files to overwrite!” Sheen sat up and crossed his legs before reaching out to retrieve his controller. “Save files are precious things to us gamers, Cindy. I don’t expect you to understand.”

“I’m sure it’s far beyond my mental capacity.” Cindy let the sarcasm hang in the air to see if Sheen grasped it, but he was too consumed with navigating through his session stats. Once he’d gotten back to the game’s home screen, she spoke up again, this time with a lowered voice. “Hey.”

Sheen turned his head at the change in Cindy’s tone. “Yeah?”

“Did you ever, you know…?” Cindy tapped the space above her knuckle on her left ring finger. Sheen and Libby had come home from their supposed big night out with little fanfare: no gleeful squeals, no flashing of a ring, nothing. It’d been three days, and it was starting to drive Cindy nuts.

“Nah.”

“Why not?”

“Timing wasn’t right.” Sheen turned back to the TV.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m thinking about adding gaming streamer to my résumé, and it feels like being married would majorly interfere with that.”

Cindy’s face and neck pinked with irritation. “You can’t be serious.”

“Hey, streaming is a big deal! In fact, I’m actually thinking about stepping out of the HVAC business for a while to try it. Sure, the revenue isn’t consistent unless you score some endorsement deals, but as the founder of ultralordultraforums.com, I think I’d have some cl—ACK!”

Cindy pounced on Sheen and pinned him flat against the carpet. “Get your chipmunk brain in order, Estevez. Libby is the best thing that’s ever happened to you in your geeky little life, and if you don’t put a ring on her finger—”

“You will?” Sheen waggled his eyebrows. “I always kinda wondered whether there was something between you two.”

“Shut up!” 

“Wow, such a violent reaction. You know, Cindy, homophobia is supremely uncool these days.”

“I said shut up!”

They tussled, Cindy’s martial arts against Sheen’s wrestling skills. By the time Libby walked into the room, the coffee table had been shoved back against the couch, and Sheen had Cindy in a half-Nelson while Cindy had a leg wrapped and locked over one of Sheen’s, ready to flip him in a blink.

“Do I even wanna know?” Libby asked.

“I was pitching my new career move, and she attacked me!” Sheen cried.

“Bullshit!” Cindy tossed her hair out of her face. “He was being even more of a moron than usual.”

Libby rolled her eyes and held up a brown envelope. “Your diploma came express.”

“Oh wow, already? That was quick.” Cindy threw Sheen off her back, making him shout and roll off before hitting the wall, and walked over to Libby. As she took the envelope, she noticed something sparkling on Libby’s left hand. “Um, what’s that?”

“What’s what?”

Cindy shoved the envelope under one arm, grabbed Libby’s hand, and took in the blue and yellow topaz ring glittering there. “This,” she said, pointing at the ring.

Libby grinned, and Sheen started cracking up behind Cindy’s back.

“I had you hooked, dude!” he crowed. “You totally believed me!”

Cindy growled. “Your ass is mine, Ultra Geek!”

“Mm, sorry, my ass belongs to my wife, along with everything else in this dreamboat package.” Sheen gestured along his body, and Cindy gagged.

“If it helps recover your ego at all, Cin, I was in on it, too,” Libby said under her breath. “And we technically ain’t husband and wife for another two months,” she added over Cindy’s shoulder.

“Two months?” Cindy echoed. “You’re getting married in August?”

Libby nodded. “No major holidays, and we’re doing it before anybody can claim they gotta be home to put their kids back to school or whatever.”

“Yeah, but Libby, it’s August. We live in Texas.”

“Hey, if they can’t stand the heat, they can get outta the wedding.” Libby flapped her hand for emphasis. “Seriously, though, you think I’d make people go without AC for any part of this party, you’ve lost your mind. Plus,” she got a sappy grin on her face as she watched Sheen restart his game, “I kinda don’t wanna wait much longer.” 

Cindy followed Libby’s gaze and shuddered.

“C’mon.” Libby clapped Cindy on the shoulder. “Let’s get you upstairs so you don’t go off and maim the future Mr. Folfax.”

Cindy acquiesced, shooting Sheen a dark look as she followed Libby upstairs into the kitchen. Once there, Libby pulled two glasses of chilled fruit punch from the fridge and handed one to Cindy.

“I’d give you champagne if we had any,” she said, “but I also drank enough of that stuff over the weekend to last me to the wedding. C’mon, open your envelope, I wanna see.”

“It’s not that exciting.” Cindy slit open the envelope and pulled out the sheet of heavy textured cardstock. “Wow. To think three years of hard work and sleepless nights earned me a fancy placemat.”

Libby snorted. “You gotta get that thing framed."

“Why? I still have my Bachelor’s degree in an envelope.”

“Seriously? You gotta learn how to celebrate your accomplishments. Hell, I’ll pay to have both of those things framed and stick ‘em on my living room wall.” Libby closed one eye pointed at a blank space by the door. “Think they’d look really nice right there.”

“Don’t even think about it! You have a wedding to pay for.” Cindy paused, chewing over her next words. “So since it’s coming up so soon, do you need any help planning?”

“Let’s see.” Libby leaned on the counter and sipped her fruit punch. “Sheen’s dad is scouting a venue, because with his family, my family, and all our friends, we’ve probably got close to a hundred people on the guest list. Pretty sure his abuela started making tamales as soon as she got the news, and Auntie Dionne said she’d work out something as far as catering barbecue. Sheen’s tías want to make tres leches cake, but I have no clue how they think they’re gonna make enough for everyone. Oh, and my little brother’s got the photography on lock.”

“What about the bridal party? What about your dress?”

“Hmm. Think those are things I gotta work out with my maid of honor.” Libby gave Cindy a significant look.

“I…” Cindy pointed at her own chest. “You mean me?”

“I mean, I got like a dozen cousins jockeying for the position, but I was kinda hoping I’d get to share this day with my best friend.”

Cindy’s eyes misted over. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Say yes.” Libby smiled gently. “Look, I know I said the other night you only ever call me with the bad stuff, and I stand by that, ‘cause it’s the truth. But I also know if we’ve got the chance to share good stuff with each other in the here and now instead of only thinking back on the old good times…” she held out her hand for Cindy to take, “maybe it can be the start of a better habit, you know?”

Cindy took Libby’s hand, and the two women hugged one another tightly.

“I’ll be the best damn maid of honor ever,” Cindy said over Libby’s shoulder.

“All right, no need to make it into a competition with yourself. Now, just to satisfy my own curiosity: why have you been hauling home library books like we’re back in high school?”

Cindy stepped back and summarized what she’d been studying, leaving out the part about climbing up on rooftops. Not that it would’ve been the most insane thing she’d ever done as far as following Neutron around. While she talked, Libby sipped at her fruit punch, nodding thoughtfully.

“Okay.” Libby cut Cindy off with a raised hand. “I think I understand everything you’ve been saying. But I think you’re making this whole thing harder than it has to be.”

“Why?”

“I got no way of proving this, but I think it’s safe to assume that Jimmy listens to my show even on nights when he doesn’t call. Dunno how he’s doing it, and I don’t care. My point is, he’s listening. Why don’t you call the station with some missed connection story and see if he responds?”

“But how would we meet up? We can’t just take up your airtime talking.”  

“Hasn’t stopped y’all from taking all the oxygen in the room before.” Libby rolled her eyes. “Anyway, he might still have Goddard around, or some other little robot thingy that can meet you. Work it out from there.”

I know for sure Goddard’s still around. “Libby, that’s genius.”

“Hey, I spent enough time hangin’ around you and Jimmy,” Libby said with a shrug. “Some of it was bound to rub off on me.”

For the first time in years, Cindy sat on the swing set on the Lindbergh Elementary School playground, pointedly ignoring how the seat hugged her hips much tighter than it once did. She swung idly back and forth, scuffing the toe of her shoe into the sand, and gazed into the dark.

Just about an hour ago, she called into KRTV, introduced herself as Cee, and told a story about an old friend named James with whom she’d lost touch. Better to be honest and vague than detailed and lying. Less than fifteen minutes later, Jimmy called into the station, giving “Cee” instructions to meet a mutual friend “where it all began.” Of course, he could have meant their old neighborhood, but really, their rivalry, their connection, began here at Lindbergh. She still remembered that day in fourth grade when Ms. Fowl shepherded him to the front of the class…

Before Cindy could fall back into her memories, there was the distinct sound of chopping helicopter rotors. She looked up, and Goddard was descending from the sky, ears whirling at top speed. He gave her a joyful bark and landed with a thump in front of her, kicking up a cloud of sand.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Cindy quipped. “You kept our little secret, right?”

Goddard nodded seriously, or as serious as his fixed metal expression would allow.

“Good. So…what are we supposed to do now?”

Goddard swung his chest panel open, and the message CALL JIMMY displayed on the green screen.

“You’re the one with his number. Also, I kinda need a phone.”

“Grr-bark-bark!” Goddard put his paws up on Cindy’s knees and flicked one of his ears hard enough that it fell off his head and dangled from a silver curlicue cord. Before his ear could hit the sand, Cindy snatched it out of midair.

“You are so weird.” Cindy held the metal piece up to her ear. “C’mon, dial him up.”

Goddard complied, his panting mouth springing open to play the dial tone. On the fifth ring, Jimmy answered. “Hello?”

“Hey, Neutron.”

“Hey.” Him uttering one syllable in a low voice shouldn’t have been enough to make her stomach swoop, and yet. “So. Old friends, huh?”

“I was trying to be discreet.”

“It’s as apt a description as any for us, I suppose. When did you get back to Retroville?”

Cindy counted on her fingers – odd how she’d lost track of time so quickly. “About two weeks, little less.”

“Is this a permanent move, or are you just visiting?”

“Is anything in the universe truly permanent?”

“Answering a question with a question.” Jimmy clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “Such a basic rhetorical defense, Vortex.”

“Hey, I’m off my game! We haven’t had a decent argument in a long time.”

“Fair enough. You still haven’t answered me.”

“I’m staying at Libby and Sheen’s place until I can find an apartment, or they let me out of their hospitable clutches. My Master’s degree is done, and now…” Cindy glanced up at the starry sky. “I guess I figure out what’s next.”

“Please accept my belated congratulations.”

“Thank you.” Cindy wrapped and unwrapped the cord around one finger. “I miss you.”

There was a long pause, and for a brief, horrible moment, she wondered whether he’d hung up or they’d been disconnected. Then Jimmy replied. “I miss you, too.”

“Are you coming back from wherever you are?”

“Actually, yes. At the present moment, I am…bear with me.” Rapid beeps came across the line as Jimmy presumably typed into a keypad. “Approximately 150,000 miles from Earth.”

Cindy furrowed her brow. “Isn’t the Moon, like, 230,000 miles away from Earth?”

“On average. If I had rear-view mirrors on this thing, I could wave to the Moon for you if you wanted.”

“Kind regards are perfectly acceptable. So, that means you’ll be back tonight.”

“Assuming my trajectory isn’t altered by space debris, I should be back in about three hours.”

“I’ll wait for you.”

“Cindy…” It was like he knew the exact timing of when to drop his voice so her insides would dance. “You need to sleep.”

“You clearly aren’t familiar with my sleep schedule from grad school, which is to say: I had none.”

“Not something to brag about. Besides, I can’t land this rocket on the playground.”

“Then I’ll meet you wherever you are.”

“Hmm…” Jimmy mused. “Goddard can take you back to my place. It’s no more than a quarter mile from my designated landing area, and that way I’ll know you’re safe.”

He wants me to be safe. “Sounds good,” Cindy said, hoping her voice didn’t betray how hard her heart was pounding.

“Now unfortunately, I do have to disconnect, because the closer I get to the Earth’s atmosphere, the more communication interference I’ll encounter. But I promise I’ll be there soon. Goddard, activate flight-cycle mode!”

The phone snapped out of Cindy’s hand, retracted to Goddard’s head, and converted into a tall handlebar to match his other ear. A queen seat rose out of his back compartment, plush and purple, while his license plate sprung and hung under his tail. When his conversion was complete, he tilted his head and lolled his tongue out, looking at Cindy expectantly.

“Would’ve been nice to say a proper goodbye first,” Cindy grumbled before swinging her leg over Goddard’s back and settling onto the seat. She curled her fingers over the handlebars and mimicked revving the throttle. “C’mon, let’s get this show on the road.”

Goddard launched, and Cindy braced herself against the seatback as he climbed higher and higher over Retroville, eventually leveling off when they were brushing the underside of low-hanging clouds. It’d been a long time since she’d seen the town from this vantage point, probably whenever she was last in that spaceship they’d won on Intergalactic Showdown. Usually their return flights home were chaotic and not given over to much sight-seeing, but now, Cindy fully took in how small Retroville really was. The switchover to farmland was starker up here than it appeared on foot, almost as though someone stitched two quilt squares of different patterns adjacent to each other.

They followed the same road Cindy had walked down almost a week before, veering north ever so slightly and flying over the mowed-down patch she’d seen before. Then, unexpectedly, a set of three domes seemed rise from the dark green field. The middle dome was larger than the other two, and all three were positioned in the bent configuration of a water molecule. By the way the thrusters in Goddard’s back legs seemed to taper off, this must be their destination.

“Great. He went and built himself a mad scientist complex.”

Goddard had no commentary to add, as he was busy braking them both into a gentle descent. They landed with a soft thump, the corrugated hose of his legs softening contact further. Cindy dismounted and gazed up at the triangular panels forming the center dome, their smoked glass glinting in the moonlight.

“It’s a pretty mad scientist complex, I’ll give him that.”

Goddard rearranged himself back to his normal state, then bounded up to the front door to interface with the lock. The pair of front doors slid apart with a whoosh, and both of them walked into a narrow hallway that eventually opened up to a wider circular space. To the left was a living room replete with squishy-looking furniture, including a positively monstrous couch. To the right was a kitchen fronted by a wooden breakfast bar and barstools. Directly ahead was a smooth, square column in which an elevator sat, stainless steel doors gleaming.

“Guessing I don’t get a house tour,” Cindy said.

Goddard shook his head. Once they stepped inside the elevator, he pressed the button for Level 3. As they jerked upward, Cindy noted there were options to go down as far as Level -3. If she were in a more persuasive mood, she’d talk Goddard into letting her at least poke around on the lower floors, but tiredness was creeping into her body. She fought back a yawn as the elevator thunked to a stop and the doors parted to reveal a short catwalk. From here, Cindy could see a bed framed in the open doorway ahead of them.

“Taking me to his inner sanctum is a bit forward, don’t you think?”

If Goddard could shrug, he would have. As it was, he twitched his head in a reasonable facsimile of the gesture and led the way into what Cindy presumed was Jimmy’s bedroom. Jimmy’s taste in interior décor evidently hadn’t changed much. If the bed hadn’t been noticeably larger, she could have sworn the navy blue comforter with gold stars was the same one he’d had when they were kids. A low wooden bookcase flanked one side of the bed, shelves bowed down under the weight of encyclopedia volumes – of course he still bought encyclopedia sets, the nerd. On his nightstand sat the U-V volume, along with another book that caught her by surprise.

“Quick Physics for Busy People? Lowering ourselves to reading pop science these days, Neutron?” She ran her fingers over the cover, showing a person in silhouette observing a giant swinging pendulum. Come to think of it, she’d seen this on display in one of those airport bookshops back in Seattle and had almost bought a copy in the event she ever crossed paths with him in Retroville. I know how much you loathe quippy sci-comm that sacrifices accuracy for the sake of accessibility to the rest of us plebeians, and I just couldn’t resist. Then curiosity had overwhelmed her, and she’d bought a copy for herself and stashed it in the bottom of her carry-on, where it remained to this day.

Goddard hopped up on the bed and circled around, tamping down a spot for himself on the comforter. Cindy kicked off her shoes, put her legs up, and rested back against the pillows, grabbing the copy of Quick Physics off the nightstand. Might as well do something to pass the time.

“You don’t need me to read aloud out of this, do you?”

“Mrr-mrrrr.”

“…would you care if I did it anyway?” This place was far too quiet for Cindy’s liking; she needed some noise to avoid going crazy.  

Goddard shook his head and thumped his tail eagerly in response.

“All right.” Cindy cracked the cover and flipped through to the dedication page. “‘To all those who with curious eyes and hungry minds.’ Cute. Definitely sounds like Neutron. Okay: Chapter 1: What Keeps Us Grounded…”

At some point during Chapter 3 – Simple Machines Meet a Complex World – Cindy fell asleep, book splayed open on her chest. Goddard had walked up the bed, curled up at her side, and put himself in standby, chin on his front paws. They might have stayed there like that until well past sunrise had an alert not come blaring through Goddard’s system, reactivating him and making his eyes flash red in emergency mode.

“Huh?!” Cindy jerked up, the book falling to the floor. “What’s happening? Goddard?”

Goddard had already bolted through the bedroom door, and it was all Cindy could do in her half-awake state to stumble after him. Not until she’d ran out the front doors did she realize she had no shoes on, but she didn’t let that deter her from her pursuit.

Soon enough, she reached the grass patch, where the Strato XL Mark V lay and Jimmy was attempting to clamber out one side of the cockpit. Something was off, though. He didn’t look nearly as composed as he had the other night – if anything, he seemed woozy. When he slid down from the rocket and his feet touched the ground, Jimmy’s knees gave out, and Cindy jumped forward to catch him under one arm.

“Whoa, that was…” Jimmy snickered to himself, “quite the head rush.”

“Are you okay?” Cindy asked.

“Oh yeah, yeah, yeah! Just a touch of the old orthostatic hypotension. ‘S totally happened before. I’ll be fiiiiine.”

The groan Goddard let out seemed to suggest he was unconvinced; so was Cindy, for that matter.

“Goddard, we have to get him home. Do you think you could, I dunno, turn into a gurney or something?”

“We can’t leave the Strato XL!” Jimmy whined. “C’mon, lemme just…” he flailed behind himself uselessly.

Cindy reached down, knocked his knees out, and hoisted him in both arms onto Goddard’s newly-opened back platform in one graceful motion. “Your tin toy rocket can wait until there’s daylight,” she snapped.

Jimmy stared up at her with half-lidded eyes. “You are a strong woman,” he said with wonder. “Can you pick me up like that again?”

Cindy bit her lip, failing to will the blush out of her cheeks. “Goddard, are you ready to go?”

The procession back to the complex was slow, mostly due to Jimmy continually trying to slide off the gurney and Cindy having to pin him down with her palm. After the third time, she concluded he was doing it on purpose, if only to goad her into putting her hands on him. They reached a compromise of Jimmy deliriously playing with her fingers while Cindy walked alongside Goddard and tried to keep herself from bursting.

After far too long, they were back in Jimmy’s bedroom. Between the two of them, Cindy and Goddard were able to hoist Jimmy up onto his bed, and Goddard pulled his shoes off. Cindy slid a pillow under his head, not willing to fight him on getting under the covers for warmth. Satisfied that he at least wouldn’t run off now that he was home, she eyed up the armchair in the corner, only to feel a tug on the hem of her tank top.

“Where are you going?” Jimmy mumbled.

“Gonna see if I can catch a few Zs in that chair while you sleep off whatever the hell is wrong with you.”

“Stay.” He patted his other hand on the bed. “There’s enough room.”  

Cindy eyed him warily.

“We don’t have to do anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“That’s not what I – we wouldn’t – I wouldn’t even think—”

Jimmy smiled softly up at her, the most lucid expression he’d had on his face all night. Once she got a hold on her spluttering, Cindy cautiously laid down, mentally measuring the distance between them and demarcating the lines not to be crossed.

“’M glad you’re here.” Jimmy took Cindy’s hand one last time before his eyes drifted closed. Within a minute, he was snoring into his pillow, mouth agape.

“I’m glad I was here, too,” Cindy replied, though the uneasiness swirling in her gut suggested otherwise.

Chapter Text

Sunlight filtered in gradually through the shaded ceiling panels and bathed the bedroom in a soft golden glow, stirring Cindy from her slumber. Her left hand curled into the sheets where her arm stretched across the bed. Then her brain caught up with her body, and realizing the space next to her was vacant, she shot upright. Shit. Jimmy had woken up before her, and now she had no clue where he was.

A folded piece of yellow paper sitting on the empty pillow caught her eye, and she snatched it up to read it.

Cindy,

Sleep as much as you want. I’ll bring up some breakfast later. Don’t worry about me – I’m fine, and I’m around.

Jimmy

Even in her sleep-fuzzed brain, something about the note seemed off. Why did he make a point of assuring her he was fine, yet say nothing about his whereabouts? She’d gotten a general read of the complex last night: six floors in this main dome, and who knows how many other floors in the other two. And telling her not to worry when she’d seen the state he was in last night only added to her mounting suspicions. There was something here Jimmy didn’t want her to see, which of course meant she had to investigate.

Cindy tugged her shoes on, stowed her phone in her back pocket, and wandered out into the circular hallway. To her immediate right was a steel door marked STAIRS, as well as two other doors equidistant from the bedroom. On further inspection, one door opened into a capacious bathroom, complete with a walk-in shower, extended vanity, and a bathtub large enough to hold two people. The other room appeared to be storage, with cardboard boxes stacked around the wedge-shaped perimeter.

With nothing left to explore on this floor, Cindy hopped into the elevator. If Jimmy was in fact hiding anything – and he may not be, she reminded herself, but he certainly was acting like it – it wouldn’t be aboveground. She tapped the -1 button and bounced on her toes as the elevator descended.

The elevator doors opened into a nondescript white hallway with can lighting and a glossy gray tile floor. There was a recess in the wall about twenty feet to the left, and Cindy walked over to it. A pair of steel doors, painted dark brown, greeted her; she pushed them open without hesitation.

The overhead lights detected Cindy’s presence and flicked on, revealing a room that was very familiar to her in layout. On the far wall hung a large computer monitor, in front of which was a cushioned swivel chair mounted on a pedestal. Workbenches lined the walls, scattered with electronic components and metal bits, none of which looked like a complete device of any kind. Empty gaps on the pegboards showed where tools ought to hang, but those were flung about carelessly on the workbenches as well. She lightly kicked an open-end wrench and sent it pinwheeling across the floor, where it collided with another wrench that spun off and clunked into a workbench leg.  

Cindy stepped further into the lab and noticed something else. For all his other oversights in experimentation over the years, Jimmy was always, always cognizant of proper ventilation in his lab, ever since the love potion incident. Here, instead of a constant cool breeze brushing over her skin, indicating that overhead fans were working, there was nothing but dead air. No operational ventilation system certainly explained the fine coat of dust that clung to everything, but it only prompted more questions in Cindy’s mind. Questions like—

“What are you doing?”

She whirled around. Jimmy stood in the open doorway, wearing a striped bathrobe and sliders. His hair was wet, some strands curling over and around his ears. The whole effect would have been comical except for the resigned look on his face.

“What the hell is wrong with your lab?” Cindy countered. “When was the last time you were in here?”

Jimmy pinched the bridge of his nose. “I said in my note you could stay upstairs.”

“Yeah, and you also said not to worry, which is a wild thing to say given the state I found you in last night!”

“And I also said I’m fine.”  

“Were you that delirious? Do you seriously not remember—?”

“Get out.”

Cindy stared hard at him. If this were the old days, she’d be pitching a fit right about now, calling out the unfairness of it all, but the acid wasn’t coming to her tongue.

“I’m not in the mood to play interrogation, Cindy. If that’s what you want to do…” Jimmy sighed. “Goddard can take you back home.”

Cindy pressed her lips together and walked stiffly toward him. The harsh overhead lighting washed Jimmy’s color out, but up close, she could see the depth of shadows below his eyes, the exhaustion in the set of his mouth. It was an expression she’d seen reflected back to her many times in the mirror, back in college. She felt her sight narrowing the longer she looked at him, memories of darker times yawning wide in her mind.

“Always good to see old friends, isn’t it?” she spat as she walked past.

Goddard was waiting for her by the elevator, his stance tense. As the doors slid shut behind her, Cindy could have sworn she heard rapid footsteps and a shout for her not to go, but she put it down to wishful thinking.

She said nothing as the elevator took them to the main floor and Goddard led her outside through the front door. She said nothing while Goddard transformed himself into flight-cycle mode outside and she climbed onto his back. It wasn’t until they were flying high above Retroville that she screamed her frustration out into the sky.

The trip to Libby and Sheen’s house took only a few minutes; Cindy wished it had taken longer. According to her phone, it was just after 11:00, meaning Sheen was at work and Libby was asleep, though there was always the chance Libby was up using the bathroom or having a snack. Anxiety churned in Cindy’s stomach at the prospect of having to explain what just happened if Libby was in fact awake.

She dismounted from Goddard’s back and stood in front of him. “At least it was nice to see you again.”

Goddard whined and pushed his warming metal muzzle into Cindy’s palm.

“Hey, take it up with Neutron, not me.” She scratched at the spongy tactile sensor under his chin. “No different from the old days when he used to boot me from his lab. At least there were no pneumatic tubes this time.”

Another pitiful whine came from Goddard’s throat, and he turned his ears out to either side of his head.

“I’ll be okay.” The modicum of conviction in Cindy’s voice wouldn’t have convinced anyone. “You can go.”

With great reluctance, Goddard turned away. He gave Cindy one final backward glance before he blasted off. She watched him go, shading her eyes, until he was little more than a winking metallic speck in the bright blue late-morning sky. Then she stood there and willed the scorching sun to prevent the tears from slipping down her face.

The kitchen was dark, save for the single pendant light above the small wooden table where Cindy sat, nursing a now-flat can of Purple Flurp and staring at nothing. She ran her finger around the can’s raised edge, ignoring her hunger pangs. That jackass hadn’t even given her breakfast as promised. What the hell.

It was this morose scene that Sheen barged into, whistling. He set his tool bag on the counter, flicked on the other kitchen lights, and was about to head for the refrigerator when he stopped in his tracks, boots squeaking on the floor.

“Whoa! Cindy, what…” Sheen tilted his head. “¿Estás bien?” 

Cindy looked up, eyes rimmed with half-dried tears, and asked, “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“Well, yeah, until three. It’s almost 3:30 now.”

Cindy whirled around to check the stove clock, which read 3:28. Had she really been sitting here moping for that long?

“Seriously, are you okay?”

“Do I look like it?”

Sheen pulled out the chair opposite Cindy with a screech and flopped down. “Háblame, amiga.”

The softness in Sheen’s tone broke something open in Cindy, and she found herself spilling every detail. As she did, Sheen sat as still as she’d ever seen him; only the corner of his mouth twitched in amusement when she mentioned she’d spent the night at Jimmy’s place. When Cindy was done, he sat up straighter.

“Do you want me to talk to him? I dunno where he lives, but you do, and if you tell me the address, I’ll—”

“No, no, no! I mean, that’s sweet of you, Ultra Dork.” Here Cindy was calling something Sheen said sweet. What was the world coming to? “But I don’t think Neutron would let you in, let alone listen to you. I should be the one who talks to him, if I even want to see him again.”

Sheen nodded slowly, then slapped his hands on the table and stood up, making the chair screech again. “You know what you need? A quesadilla!”

“Huh?”

“When I’m sad, I make quesadillas. When I’m hungry, I make quesadillas. When Libby is at work and I’m so lonely in the night—”

“I get your point!” Cindy held up her hands in surrender. “I’ll have one.”

“Dos.”

“Whatever!”

A man on a mission, Sheen began banging his way through the kitchen, setting an enormous cast-iron frying pan on the stovetop with a clang before tearing through the refrigerator. After a few minutes, the smell of frying tortillas and melted cheese filled the air, and a plate of two quesadillas slid in front of Cindy, followed by a small bowl of pico de gallo and a bottle of Cholula.

“Pico is a couple days old, so the tomatoes might be a little eh,” Sheen wavered his hand.

“I’m sure it’s fine.” Cindy bit off a corner of one quesadilla, and her mouth and stomach rejoiced in unison. “Oh my God, this is so good.”

Sheen grinned and turned back to the stove. When he finished his own quesadillas, he sat down again and dumped an inadvisably large puddle of Cholula on his plate.

“So like, the old Cindy I knew would have chewed Jimmy out for hours for kicking her out of his lab. Why didn’t you do that today?” he asked.

Cindy deliberated on how best to answer before settling on honesty. “He’s not…right in the head,” she said cautiously.

“He’s gone loco?”

“No.” Cindy sighed. “I mean, I’m no shrink, but I’ve looked in the mirror and seen that same mess staring back at me. Hell, I’ve lived that mess.” When Sheen raised his eyebrows, she clarified, “Depression.”

“Ah.”

“So I guess I went easy on him by not fighting it because I’ve been there. And it’s what I would’ve wanted someone to do for me. Give me space and all that.”

“Yeah, but,” Sheen chomped into his Cholula-soaked quesadilla, “is it what he needs?”

“What?”

“I dunno, man. If I was living alone in some weird dome thingy out in the country, and I had a thunderstorm going on in my head 24/7, I’d need someone to come help me clear out the clouds, you know? Whether I actually wanted them there or not.”

Cindy considered this, rolling a ripped-off piece of tortilla between her fingers. She had to admit Sheen had a point. If her junior-year roommate hadn’t left those brochures from the student health center all over their apartment, allegedly by accident, she might not have realized she had a problem for years. And Jimmy had never responded well to subtlety, not when it came to social matters. She’d been his wrecking ball before – what was stopping her now?

“I need to go back,” she said, mostly to herself.

Sheen nodded.

“I just…need to work up the courage to do it.”

“If I were you, I’d do it sooner rather than later. As soon as Libby wakes up and realizes you’re not at Casa del Ciencia swapping spit with a certain genius, she’s probably gonna go there and kill him.”

“Sheen, it is only out of newfound and probably misplaced respect for you that I’m not flying across this table and kicking your ass right now.”

He gave her a shit-eating grin, and she couldn’t help but give him one back.

A few hours later, after a fish taco dinner, the three of them sat together on the couch, much as they had Cindy’s first night in town. There was a knock at the front door, and before either Sheen or Libby could move, Cindy got up to answer. When she opened the door, Goddard was seated on the welcome mat, tongue lolling out as he panted.

“What—” Cindy glanced to check that the two lovebirds were still on the couch, stepped out onto the front steps, and pulled the door shut quietly. “If Neutron sent you here, I’m sending you back.”

“Aroo?”

“You came here yourself?”

“Rr-rr.” Goddard swung open his chest panel, and across the green screen, he typed out, THAT INCIDENT LAST NIGHT WASN’T THE FIRST. JIMMY IS BECOMING MORE RECKLESS.

“Yeah, I kinda figured as much.” Cindy pinched the bridge of her nose. Sheen’s words of sooner rather than later echoed through her mind – really, what else was she planning on doing tonight other than soaking in reality TV and self-loathing? “Okay, can you, like, wait out here and not be seen? I gotta get myself ready.”

Goddard nodded and, in an instant, sucked his legs into his torso and curled his head inside his back compartment. Some unseen switch snapped on, and a hologram surrounded Goddard, disguising his body as a nondescript cardboard box. Cindy bent down and examined the delivery label on the box’s top flap.

“Wow. You even got the address right.” She shook her head in amazement. “I’ll be back in fifteen. I promise.”

Thirty-five minutes later, Cindy scooted back out the front door, freshly showered and smelling of the remnants she’d managed to squirt out of her ancient bottle of jasmine perfume. And maybe she’d taken a little longer looking for this skirt, but the payoff could be worth it. Sheen had winked at her behind Libby’s back, and she’d thrown him a thumbs-up as she pulled the door shut behind her. 

Goddard shed his hologram and offered a pair of large, round sunglasses to Cindy with one of his mechanical hands.

“Ooh, nice.” Cindy slipped them on. “Do all your passengers get complimentary shades?”

Goddard shook his head.

“Let’s go.”

The flight to the complex seemed to take more time than it had the previous night, though possibly that was due to the anticipation mounting in Cindy’s mind. She could do this. Laying into Neutron was practically second nature after all these years. No matter how pathetic he might look, she wouldn’t be deterred.

After Goddard unlocked the front door, Cindy handed her sunglasses back to him and allowed him to go in ahead of her by a few steps. She tiptoed to the end of the hallway, surveying the main floor until she spotted Jimmy. He was sitting in one of those oversized armchairs in the living room, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, earbuds in, engrossed in whatever he was reading on his tablet. Perfect. Ducking behind the monstrous couch, she slipped around behind the armchair, reached over the back, and, with deft fingers, plucked out one of his earbuds.

“Hey, Neutron.”

Before Jimmy could fully get a scream out, Cindy swung around the armchair, planted her knees on either side of his legs, and shoved him into the cushioned back by the shoulders.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think today, and I’ve realized something. Whenever I hit a nerve or find out something you don’t want me to know, you kick me out. Ever noticed that?”

Jimmy’s chest was heaving, and his face flushed a deeper and deeper red by the second. She watched carefully as he reached up and yanked out his other earbud by the cord, not breaking eye contact. “How did you get in here?” he gasped out.

“Your dog came to get me. Pretty impressive demonstration of free will for a robot, assuming he didn’t lie about you sending him.”

“He…” Jimmy’s eyes flicked over to where Goddard sat on the couch, the picture of canine innocence.

“That’s how I know there’s a problem, Neutron. So you better start talking, because I’m not moving until you do.” 

They locked eyes again. Cindy noted how bloodshot his sclerae were, which only sharpened the blue of his irises. So she hadn’t imagined it – he had shouted after her right before the elevator doors shut. Failing to stop her, he’d spent the whole day moping. Good. He deserved to feel some guilt.

“Before I begin,” Jimmy said, his voice even rougher than it had been last night, “can you please sit up so I can readjust myself?”

Cindy released his shoulder and crossed her arms. “Why?”

“Because,” Jimmy bit out, “my body is exhibiting a physiological response that, given the emotional tenor of our present situation, isn’t the most appropriate. But seeing as how my amygdalae are relying on memories of when we’ve previously been in such a physical position, such a response is,” he winced, “understandable.” 

They glanced down between Jimmy’s legs and back up in sync. Cindy smirked and went up on her knees a few inches; Jimmy scowled and shifted around a bit before gesturing for her to sit back down.

“So,” Cindy said lightly, still smirking. “How’s it going?”

“How’s it going?”

“I know this place is big, but I didn’t think there was an echo in here.”

Jimmy ran a hand through his hair, drawing Cindy’s attention as to how long it’d grown. “Not well. It’s not going well at all.”

“Say more.”

“Are you going full Socratic on me, Vortex?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

He sighed and leaned back further into the armchair. “I sleep, but somehow it never feels like it’s enough. I eat, but only out of obligation. I genuinely couldn’t tell you the last time I finished an invention, or what it even was. There are these submission deadlines for grants and prizes I’d be a shoo-in to get, and when they pass me by, I…I don’t care. I used to care.”

“You’ve been going on trips that seemingly have no purpose, to the point where you get sick, but you don’t care about that. You also have nights where you can’t sleep at all, and whenever you try to think, it feels like your brain is fogged. Am I right?”

A mixture of realization and mild horror crossed Jimmy’s face. “You speak from experience.”

The wry smile Cindy offered him didn’t reach her eyes.

“When did you—”

“No, no. You’re not deflecting from your problems by focusing on mine.”

“Was it when you were at college?”

“Yes, and that’s the only answer you’re getting out of me today. Focus is on you.” She leaned forward and, ever so gently, laid a hand on his arm. He looked down at her touch, and when he looked up again, tears were forming in the corners of his eyes.

“I’m so sorry, Cindy,” Jimmy said. “You’re right – I shouldn’t have made you leave. You’re the first person I’ve let in here since I built the place, and when I saw you standing in the remnants of my old lab, I…it reminded me of how much I’ve failed. So I panicked.”

“Looking at me makes you think of failure?”

“No! I—” Jimmy tipped his head up, chin to the ceiling, and took a deep breath. “I think of how I’ve disappointed you. You’ve pushed me in so many ways over the years, and somewhere along the line, I lost the momentum you gave me.”

Cindy trailed her hand up his arm, making the fine hairs there rise to attention, and over the soft cotton of his T-shirt. When she cupped his jaw, thumb rubbing over his stubble, he closed his eyes and let out the smallest of sighs. 

“Then all you need is another push,” she whispered. Before Jimmy could open his eyes again, or question her meaning, she dipped her head down to kiss him. A surprised moan rose from his throat, followed by a more contented sound as she took his bottom lip in between hers. Slowly, hesitantly, he laid a hand between her shoulder blades, fingertips toying with the ends of her hair; his other arm wrapped loosely around her waist. That was Cindy’s cue to raise her other hand and hold his face completely.

“I don’t deserve you,” he mumbled in the space between kisses.

“Yes, you do.” Cindy pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth. “That’s the depression lying to you.”

“Well, you certainly deserve better than me in this state.”

“Mm, turns out I’m kind of into the whole scruffy and overgrown look.” She tucked a strand of long brown hair behind his rapidly reddening ear, then tapped on the bow of his glasses. “These are new.”

“A natural result of spending hundreds of hours staring at computer screens and my familial history of nearsightedness coming to fruition.”

“They don’t make you any less of an idiot, but they do make you look distinguished.”

Jimmy snorted and, for the first time since Cindy had seen him greet Goddard that night in the field, smiled. The hand on her back slid up to the nape of her neck, and he pulled her in close for another kiss, and another.

“Thank you for taking care of me last night,” he said softly, nuzzling her cheek. “Let me return the favor.”

Cindy wound a section of his hair around her finger. “How do you plan on doing that?”

Jimmy moved to whisper in her ear, and Cindy’s eyes widened with intense interest as he spoke. “Consider it a full expression of my contrition,” he finished, pulling back to look at her.

“Like you wouldn’t get something out of it, too.”

“I’ll confess, the thought of getting back to Earth and doing this particular activity with you nearly made me collide with a piece of space junk on atmospheric re-entry yesterday, but—”

“It did not.”

“I’ve got the black box recordings to prove it.” He pulled back so they could look each other in the face. “Please?”

Cindy unwound his hair from her finger and pressed her palm to his throat, where his pulse raced under her touch. She stayed quiet for a moment, only to make him squirm, then leaned in close. “Make it good.”

They moved to the couch, and Goddard made a discreet exit before they hit the cushions. At first, Jimmy hovered over Cindy on his elbows, but then she hitched a leg high and pulled him down so their hips met. She ground up against him, eliciting a muffled moan from where he was kissing down her neck. Finally, after far too long for Cindy’s taste, Jimmy slid a hand under her skirt.

“Cindy,” he gasped as he stroked the wetness between her thighs.

“You’re not the only one with a physiological response to straddling someone’s lap,” she quipped.

Jimmy sat up enough to look at her, pupils wide and dark, and dragged his fingertips along the soaked fabric of her underwear. When he reached her clit, he traced an achingly slow circle around it, pressing in slightly as he did so.

“I will go down on you,” he promised, “but I wish you could see how you looked right now. So precipitously close to the edge.”

Cindy tried to move against his fingers, but he pulled them away before she could get the friction she sought. “James,” she whined. “Please.”

“On almost any other occasion, I’d work until you screamed from manual stimulation alone. But given the circumstances…” Jimmy rucked up the hem of her tank top to press a kiss to her belly and shuffled down the couch to settle between her legs. Carefully, he slipped her underwear down and off, then kissed along the inside of both her thighs. Just as Cindy thought she’d come from just his heated breath against her skin, he stopped.

“What’s wrong?”

“Minor condensation issue,” Jimmy answered. He pulled his glasses off, the lenses definitely fogged over.

Cindy burst out laughing. “Oh my God.”

“Easily remedied.” Jimmy chuckled, leaned down, and set his glasses on the floor. “I don’t need them for up-close work, anyway.”

He readjusted Cindy’s leg over his shoulder and licked a single wide stripe in between her folds. The laughter instantly cut off in Cindy’s throat, giving over to moans as Jimmy’s mouth worked and he hummed seemingly into her core. When his lips locked around her clit and sucked in hard, she thumped her head back into the couch pillow and dug her fingernails into the cushions, gasping. Then he started making deliberate motions with his tongue against her clit, to the point where she sat up and tugged on a hunk of his hair.

“Are you writing pi down there or something?” she asked.

Jimmy fixed her with an amused look. “Fibonacci sequence, actually.”

“Impressive.”  

“Although now that you mention it, I have memorized up to one thousand digits of pi, so…” He raised an eyebrow, snaked an arm around her leg, and laid his hand flat on her hip. “How far do you think I’ll get before you’re calling me James again?”

Cindy let go of his hair and twined his fingers with hers. “Better hope you can go past a thousand.”

“You won’t make it past fifty.”

“Now there’s the ego I’ve been missing.”  

Jimmy winked at her before slipping back between her thighs. Cindy gripped his hand tighter, laid back, and braced herself for what was to come.

Chapter Text

“You’d be able to make French toast faster if you weren’t so preoccupied with reading at the same time.”

“I’m more than capable of multi-tasking.” Jimmy shot Cindy a look over the top of his glasses before setting his tablet face-down on the counter. “Notice how you have your breakfast already.”

“And I thank you for that.” Cindy cut off another piece of syrup-laden French toast and popped it in her mouth. Her only wish was that she’d waken up to this kind of feast yesterday, but if the price to pay was waiting an extra day, it was worth it. Especially since it meant getting a ringside seat to watching Jimmy cook.

One of the things Cindy found most attractive about him – had always found attractive, really – was how he looked while at work. The sharpness in his eyes, the deftness of his hands, the easy, steady rhythm of his breaths. He’d bunch up tight when starting on something, excitement apparent in the line of his shoulders, and relax as he went along. On occasion, he’d speak, mostly talking his way through an equation or scientific theory before going quiet again. If Jimmy was keeping a running commentary under his breath, something either had gone wrong or was about to go wrong in short order.

When Cindy, replete with insecurity, had insisted on their first trip to Mars that Jimmy acted like she didn’t exist, what she lacked the means to articulate was this: I don’t just want you to notice me. I want you to focus on me, like you do on your inventions. In hindsight, that’s why she’d picked so many fights with him in elementary school. For the length of their arguments, no matter how stupid they were, his attention was directed only at her, and that gave her a private little thrill every time. Then they grew up, and they still argued, but they gave each other attention in other ways, too.

“So,” Jimmy said lightly, setting a piece of freshly dipped French toast into the frying pan, “do you have any plans for today?”

“I do need to go back to Libby and Sheen’s place for some fresh clothes.”

“I can drive you.”

“What, no dispatching me on Goddard’s back this time?”

Jimmy snorted. “Not unless that’s your preference.”

“Definitely not.” Goddard whined from his spot on the floor, and Cindy looked down at him. “Oh, please. I’m not registering a customer service complaint or anything, but your seat isn’t the most comfortable.”

“He doesn’t take offense. Do you, boy?”

Goddard grumbled and reverted to sleep mode.

“Anything else on your schedule?”

Cindy toyed with a piece of bacon on her plate. “You seem like you’re fishing.”

“No fishing! I was merely going to suggest that if you had nothing in particular to do, we could…hang out.” Jimmy added another piece of toast to the pan and flipped the first one.

“Hang out?”

“In fact, if you wanted to pack a bag while you were freshening up and bring it with you, I wouldn’t—”

“Hold on,” Cindy interrupted. “Are you asking me to move in with you?”

“Well, not in so many words! I mean, I know you accepted Libby and Sheen’s hospitality first, but I thought maybe if you still wanted to see me after last night and didn’t want the hassle of traveling back and forth between houses, then maybe having some of your belongings here…” Jimmy ducked his head and went to scratch the back of his neck with the spatula he was holding, then realized what he was doing and switched hands sheepishly.

It took a large amount of self-restraint for Cindy to not burst out laughing; the speed at Jimmy could work himself into a bluster had always been funny.

“Before I say anything else,” she started, “I’d like to point out the whiplash going on here. Less than twenty-four hours ago, you wanted me to leave.”

Jimmy nodded slowly.

“Do you want me to stay?”

“Only if you want to.”

“That’s not an answer, Neutron. It’s either yes or no.”

“Yes,” Jimmy blurted. “Please.”

“Do you get why I might be hesitant to take you up on your offer?”

“I do.” Jimmy nodded again, a bit jerkier this time. “And I want you to know you can reject it, and although it wouldn’t be what I’d want to hear, I would understand.”

Cindy took several deep breaths. She could tell he was being sincere: much like last night, when he was finally honest about what was going on in his head, Jimmy didn’t look away from her. It wasn’t a forceful stare, but a hopeful one. He was holding the proverbial door open and letting her choose the direction.

“Let me think about it,” she said, because she literally needed time to chew this over.

“Okay.”

The kitchen was quiet for another minute or so, save for the sizzling of French toast and the coffeemaker peeping its way into standby mode. Cindy poured more syrup on her plate, and the sound of the bottle when she set it down on the counter seemed far too loud. Then, as Jimmy pried under a slice of toast to check the color, he spoke again.

“Not that I’m trying to sway you in your decision one way or another, but I thought you should know I have a pool.”

Cindy blinked at him. “Where?”

“Second basement level. That’s where I was yesterday when I heard the alarm trip in the lab. And yes, before you ask, it was a silent alarm on your end.”

“That’s not—” Cindy waved her hand. “Why do you have a pool?”

“Swimming is one of the few forms of exercise I can remotely tolerate. Plus, I have to confess to a certain degree of leftover envy regarding the pool at your childhood home. So when I was building this place, I suppose you could say I dove at the opportunity to add one.”

“For both of our sakes, I’m ignoring that pun,” Cindy said, biting back a groan. “Suppose I better look for my swimsuit when you take me back to Libby and Sheen’s place.”

Jimmy, satisfied with his French toast, slid the first slice out onto a plate.

“Hope it’s not too small these days. Might have to go without it.”

The second piece of French toast flipped dramatically onto the floor, though whether by its own volition or due to a sudden bout of absentmindedness from its maker, who could really say. Jimmy, swearing and bright pink around the ears, jumped after his breakfast, and Cindy giggled behind her hand.

Having spent years in apartments with squeaky doors and shuddering pipes in the walls, Cindy prided herself on her skill in moving about quietly while others were asleep. What she failed to account for was being in the same house as someone who had a nose for gossip, and also possibly supersonic hearing. Jury was still out on that second part, though who could say what the lingering effects of those N-Men abilities were all these years later.

“You must have had one long talk.”

Toothbrush hanging out of her mouth, Cindy turned her head toward the bathroom doorway. Libby, still in her bonnet and pajamas, leaned up against the doorframe.

“Wha yoo—” Cindy spit out her toothpaste. “What are you talking about?”

“Sheen filled me in on where you took off to last night. So again,” Libby crossed her arms and smirked, “you and Jimmy must have been yakking ‘til the sun came up.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.”

“Don’t play with me! Tell me everything.”

Cindy made a show of rinsing out her toothbrush, snapping it back into its plastic holder, and wringing out the ends of her shower-damp hair in the sink. By the time she was done, Libby was nearly hopping from foot to foot in anticipation. “I went to Neutron’s place, called him out on his bullshit—”

“As you should, as you should.”

“—and then we had a very nice time.”

Libby deflated. “Girl. Details!”

“Can I get dressed first?”

Libby stepped aside, and Cindy brushed past into her bedroom and made a beeline for the dresser. While she rummaged through her drawers, Libby sat on the bed, arms still crossed.

“Look, just tell me whether you made the geek with two backs or not.”

Cindy paused, then raised a knowing eyebrow so Libby could see it.

“What does that mean?”

“It means Jimmy is good at running his mouth in more than one way.”

“Gotcha.” Libby grinned. “Anything else?”

“He made me breakfast and asked me to move in. Kind of.”

“What?!”

“He said I could keep some stuff at his place if I wanted to, you know,” Cindy gestured with a well-worn Greystar T-shirt in one hand, “stay over again.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said I’d think about it.”

“Oh my – girl.” Libby flopped back on Cindy’s bed, exasperated. “What is there to think about?”

“I literally spent one night with him, Libs. Don’t you think that’s a little fast?”

“You and I both know there’s more than just one night between you two. I’m not just talking about sex, neither.”

“I know that. I just.” Cindy threw the T-shirt over her shoulder, shut one drawer, and opened another. “I don’t want him to get any ideas about me fixing him or whatever.”

“Yeah, Sheen mentioned something about Jimmy not being all right upstairs.” Libby rolled onto her side and held her head up with one hand. “Honestly, Jimmy doesn’t strike me as one of those dudes who thinks having a woman will solve every problem in his life. Also, the only way you’d be into playing nurse for him is in some kind of roleplay thing that I really don’t wanna think about too hard right now.”

Cindy blushed and pretended to study the contents of the open drawer at her knees, despite there only being three pairs of shorts lying inside.

“Look, it’ll be a bit before we’re talkin’ dress fittings and stuff for the wedding, so if you think you gotta hang around here for that, you’re wrong. I’ve got your number, and I can call if I need you. And if you feel like you need a break, this room is always waiting.”

“So you think I should pack a bag.”

“I think you’ve been doing things out of obligation and routine for way too long, and not asking yourself whether the things you do actually make you happy. Do you know what I saw when I stepped outta my bedroom this morning?”

Cindy shook her head.

“I saw you standing in front of the bathroom mirror, brushing your teeth, and you were smiling to yourself. It was the first time I’ve seen you smile since you came back to town.”

“No way.”

“I’m serious! Since Jimmy’s the only real change in your situation, it’s safe to say he’s the reason why.” Libby sat back up. “I’m not telling you what to do, but spending your days hanging out with a depressed genius has gotta be better than being unemployed the normal way, that’s all I’m sayin’. Wish I could do that.”

“Hey!” Cindy balled up the T-shirt laying on her shoulder and threw it at Libby, grinning.

“And that’s my cue to go back to bed.” Libby hopped to her feet. “Gimme a hug before you go.”

“Who said—”

“Girl, just do it.”

The two women hugged. Before she let go, Libby tugged Cindy in close and whispered, “Go for happiness.” Then, Cindy was left standing alone in her room, the weight of decision on her shoulders feeling a lot lighter than when she walked into the house.

A few minutes later, Cindy went out the front door, duffle bag in hand, maybe not entirely ready, but definitely willing.

“And of course, you remember the Neutron Submersible.”

“Of course,” Cindy replied. “Did you ever use it for anything other than that one school project?”

“Eh, I did a couple more times afterwards.” Jimmy shrugged. “Underwater exploration isn’t really my thing.”

“Only because you can’t bring yourself to read a paper map.” 

“Couldn’t bring myself to read a paper map,” Jimmy corrected. “Ah, childhood hubris. C’mon, there’s more to see.”

When Jimmy had taken Cindy back to Libby and Sheen’s house, he’d pulled the hovercar around to the front entry of the main dome. On their return, though, Jimmy had flown toward one of the smaller domes comprising his complex, which turned out to be a hangar. Storing his ever-increasing fleet of specialty vehicles in the mechanical bay of his original lab had become a logistical nightmare, and hypercube storage of such large objects was only feasible for short periods of time. Thus, space for his current vehicles and prospective new projects was a priority for any new place Jimmy moved.

“Did you ever hack into the computer on this thing like you wanted?” Cindy asked, gesturing to the ship they’d won on Intergalactic Showdown. 

“Mmhm. Turned out the alien coding language shares remarkable linguistic similarities to Hungarian, so it was a slow but fruitful effort. The shielding and security measures on this thing are astonishing. To that end,” Jimmy said, noting that Cindy had her hand raised toward the ship’s nose, “maybe don’t touch it.”

Cindy lowered her hand and gazed around the hangar, her eyes landing on a tiny sedan that was more rust than metal. “Wow. You actually have a car?”

“Sort of. A couple years ago, I was upgrading the turbines in the hovercar, and I needed a compact engine with which to test different blade shapes for maximum efficiency. Someone in town was selling their old Kanmuri Sunshine, and the engine inside was the perfect size. Hmm.” Jimmy put a finger to his chin. “Building a road-safe automobile could be an interesting challenge, now that you mention it.”

“You’ve built practically everything else at this point.” A pristine white dropcloth caught Cindy’s attention next. “What’s that?”

“Oh. Um.” Jimmy colored slightly. “Just something I’ve been tinkering with.”

“I’ve seen a bunch of other half-assembled stuff in here, Neutron, and none of those were covered up. What is it?”

“It’s…” Jimmy sighed and scratched the back of his neck. “Go look.”

Intrigued, Cindy walked over and examined the undulating lumps underneath the cloth. The vehicle was longer than the Kanmuri parked twenty feet away, though that wasn’t a difficult feat to achieve. The cloth rested on a peak about waist-high before stretching out for some distance and rising again to about eye level. She bent down, lifted the cloth, and threw it back.

In front of her was what appeared to be a typical chopper motorcycle, except for the pair of imposing jets mounted on either side of the rear wheel. Metallic chips in the deep violet paint winked in the overhead lights, as did the pearlescent burst on top of the fuel cell holder below the handlebars. The word Corposant was painted in thin silver script on the frame leading back to the king-and-queen seats.

“This is the space bike,” Cindy said quietly. “The one you built at the end of eighth grade.”

“Modified to comfortably fit adult riders, yes,” Jimmy confirmed, coming to stand alongside Cindy. “And with more balanced jet propulsion technology.”

“You kept it.”

“Of course! The only time anything I make gets taken out of commission is if I come up with a dramatically improved design, like the Strato XL, or if the vehicle undergoes rapid unscheduled disassembly. Besides, you were the inspiration for this.”

“All because I said a villain had a cool ride one time.” The laugh died in Cindy’s throat as soon as it came, and she looked over at Jimmy. “But I don’t understand. The bike worked fine before – why modify it?”

“Because…” Jimmy said. “There was always a part of me that hoped you might come back to Retroville. If you did, I wanted you to be able to ride the Corposant and not have it be some nostalgic paperweight in your garage. I considered it to be yours when we were kids; all I did was hold onto it for you. And,” he sighed, “if you left again, I wanted you to have something to remember me by.” 

Cindy blinked, stunned. In a flash, her arms were around Jimmy in a tight hug. “Like I could ever, ever forget you,” she whispered in his ear.

Jimmy was frozen for a moment before he returned the embrace, sliding a foot in between Cindy’s feet to get closer. “I still have to make some necessary adjustments, but we could maybe take a ride in a week or so. Anywhere you want.”

“Those Venusian cloud formations you talked about on the radio sounded pretty cool.”

Jimmy chuckled. “Sounds like a date.” 

They relaxed into each other’s arms, and would have stayed like that for quite some time if not for a sudden growling. Both of them turned their heads toward the hangar’s service door, where Goddard crouched next to Cindy’s duffle bag, ears pinned back.

“Boy, it’s just a bag!” Jimmy called over his shoulder.

“Gr-RRR-rrr.”

“What do you have in there?”

“Just the usual stuff: clothes, shoes, bathroom stuff, my laptop,” Cindy rattled off. “Oh. There’s a plant, too.”

“Goddard doesn’t usually have a problem with vegetation. What kind of plant is it?”

“Not the normal kind.”

Jimmy gave Cindy an odd look. She unwound herself from his arms, swiftly crossed the hangar, and unzipped her duffle bag. Goddard snarled the whole time until she lifted the old pickle jar up out of its nest in her clothes, at which point he plunked down on his haunches and threw a front leg over his eyes, trembling.

“Don’t tell me you’re actually scared of this thing,” Cindy scoffed.

“Is that…” Jimmy tilted his head as he drew closer. “That’s the Girl-Eating Plant!”

“Wait, that’s what you called it?”

“Technically, I think it’s in my specimen files as Aurora II, but you can never go wrong with straightforward naming conventions.” Jimmy squinted into the jar. “How did you shrink it?”

“By sating its bloodlust early and often.” Seeing how bewildered Jimmy looked, Cindy went on, “I spent pretty much all my allowance on ground hamburger and hot dogs for three months straight. And I hid it in the dark corner of my closet. Don’t know how many times I’d go in to get a sweater and this thing would lick my hand, like it wanted to know how I tasted.”

“I—”

“Don’t worry. Now it’s just a mellow yellow carnivorous plant with an affinity for show tunes.”

“Huh?”

“Every time I put on the Winnetka soundtrack, it shimmies its leaves. Same with Wretched, Vast Emporium of Delights, and Checkers. Doesn’t seem to like Burr much, though.” 

Jimmy’s eyes flicked between the jar and Cindy’s face. “You kept it,” he said, wonder in his voice.

“Trust me, my first instinct was to get a shovel from the shed and beat this thing to a pulp right on the doorstep. But as soon as I realized it was from you and definitely not from Nick, I…” Cindy shrugged. “We weren’t friends back then, and secretly I wanted to be, but we had this rivalry that wasn’t gonna go away anytime soon. I guess my ten-year-old mind rationalized keeping the plant as being close to you, so I’ve had it ever since. It’s come with me everywhere I’ve moved.”

“Cindy…” Jimmy stepped forward, narrowing the gap between them. “That’s extremely endearing of you.”

“Only you would call keeping a once-homicidal pitcher plant all these years endearing.”

“What can I say? I have singular taste.” Jimmy laid a hand on Cindy’s shoulder, and his thumb rubbed down the seam of her T-shirt. His other hand came up and around the jar, fingertips brushing over her knuckles as he leaned in and pressed his lips to her cheek softly. Compared to the heated kisses he’d given her all over last night, this one was almost unbearably sweet. “We can bring your stuff upstairs to the bedroom before we continue our tour.”

“You mean to tell me you only have one bedroom in a place this big?”

Jimmy’s fluster was immediate. “Well, uh, I can put up the partitions on the second floor, though you might have to share space with an air hockey table if I do that. There’s the couch, obviously, where we fell asleep last night, and—”

Cindy put a finger to Jimmy’s lips. “Relax, genius. I’ll share a bed with you.” Then her eyes sharpened with the glint of competition. “Now what’s this about air hockey?”

Jimmy ran a hand over his face, pointedly ignoring the digital scoreboard in front of him. “I should’ve never mentioned I had this thing.”

“Oh, admit it: you were dying for a good ass-kicking.” Cindy flipped her orange air hockey paddle and caught it in the same hand. “Best three out of five?”

Jimmy hummed uncertainly into his palm.

“Come on. I still might have the advantage of physical reach, but you own the table. For all I know, you come up here and practice every day.” She dropped her paddle back on the table, letting it drift in front of her, and leaned over the table on both hands. “Play with me, Neutron.”

His hand dropped from his chin. A cocksure grin crawled up one side of his face, the kind he used to get whenever she’d successfully challenged him. Slowly, he reached down to the pocket where the puck lay after her final goal, tossed it on the table, and punched the button to reset the scoreboard. “Game on, Vortex.”

Air hockey wasn’t their competition of choice, but it was the one that drew the most attention whenever they played in public. Probably because both of them had been responsible for sending the puck sailing in odd directions and, on one occasion, almost getting them banned for life from Groovy Gary’s Roller Rink for taking out a skater. Cindy enjoyed it because she could see the gears in Jimmy’s head go in overdrive as he calculated optimal strike angles on the fly, and because he fought so hard for every shot. Admirable, even in the face of near-certain defeat.

In the end, Cindy was victorious, getting lucky off a bank shot in the fifth game. She could tell he hadn’t thrown the game either – Jimmy looked genuinely perplexed at the puck rattling down into his table pocket and the scoreboard dazzling them both. Still, he stepped out toward the center of the table and offered a conciliatory hand.

“Well played.”

“Thank you.” Cindy shook his hand, then gazed past the pinball machines and billiard table to where several large beanbags squatted on the floor. “What’s up with those? Just for lounging?”

“Ah.” Jimmy’s eyes lit up much as the scoreboard had. “VOX! Engage cinema mode.”

All the overhead lights began to dim, and heavy black curtains descended from the ceiling, dividing the large room in two. Jimmy motioned for Cindy to follow him, and they walked together through one curtain. A thin line of lime-green rope lights defined the semicircular space, and from an unseen projector, a message beamed onto the curved wall: Welcome to the Neutron Cinematic Experience.

“You made your own movie theater, huh?” Cindy chose one of the largest beanbags and flopped down on her back, crossing her arms. “Seems like you just thought of everything you ever wanted in your house when you were eleven years old and stuffed it in this place.”

“Like you wouldn’t do the same if given the opportunity.” Jimmy settled into the same beanbag as Cindy, and she wiggled over to give him more room.

“Fair point. I’d have a movie theater, too.”

“Anything else?”

“Hmm. A dedicated dojo space for sure. Maybe some kind of spa so I could unwind after a long day, but that’s something adult me would want. And, um…”

“And?”

“A lab,” Cindy confessed. “When I was eleven, I wanted a lab so badly that I told the Yolkians how to get into yours when they came back to Earth.”

Even without turning her head, Cindy could tell Jimmy’s eyes were boring into her. Blood surged into her face, and she was grateful the relative darkness was hiding her blush.

“Huh,” Jimmy said after a moment. “That’s a mystery I never thought I’d solve. I knew from Carl and Sheen you’d blabbed about the DNA scanner, but I’d assumed you’d done it out of sheer malice.”

“I didn’t hate you that much.”

“No, I know. But even you have to admit we were at our most antagonistic back then.” Jimmy let out a quiet, amused huff. “So the Yolkians promised you a lab. I always wondered what they’d given you, especially since you didn’t come around to rub my face in your gift like everyone else did.”

“Ultimately they gave me nothing,” Cindy rolled onto her side and sunk further into the beanbag. “Just had to hope someday you’d let me into your lab on your own.”

“Why’d you want to get in so badly?”

“You already know the answer.”

“I do, but I still want to hear it.”

Cindy rolled her eyes. “Like I told you about the plant, genius: I wanted to be close to you.”

Jimmy mirrored her position, pushing his glasses back up on his nose when he settled down on his side. His smile was bashful as he rested a hand in the dip of her waist and tugged her toward him. Cindy bit back a giggle – he knew she was ticklish there.

“Do you still want to be close to me?” he asked. It was a serious question, with only a little playfulness in his tone.

“Yes,” Cindy answered. Then, as extra assurance, she added, “Please.”

They’d shared a sleepy kiss in the early morning when they’d woken up on the couch together, right before Jimmy abruptly pushed himself up, muttering about owing her breakfast. This kiss was just as slow, but far more electric; Cindy could have sworn there were actual sparks jumping between their tongues.

“I’ll show you my lab tomorrow,” Jimmy breathed. “The real one, not the one you saw yesterday. I keep that around for the days when going down the breezeway feels like too much.”

“One step at a time.” Cindy trailed her fingers over the fine reddish-brown hair lining his jaw, feeling Jimmy shudder under her touch. “Now, were you actually gonna show me the Neutron Cinematic Experience?”

“Mm, forgive me, but I think I’m more interested in a different feature presentation at the moment.” Jimmy dug his fingers into Cindy’s side and swallowed her laughter with another kiss.

Chapter Text

“And again, why can’t you un-invite her?” Cindy pressed her phone to her ear harder, frowning, and sat back down in front of the chessboard. “Okay, then make her your flower girl or something.” She set her hand on top of the black bishop that was menacing the white queen and drew it back two squares. “What do you mean, she’s forty-two?!”

Jimmy, his attention divided between the lines of code rolling by on the giant monitor in front of them and the tablet in his lap, snickered to himself.

“Then tell her she needs to get an attitude adjustment. I’ll happily provide one for a crisp twenty.” Cindy pivoted the phone away from her mouth and stage-whispered, “It’s your move.” 

Jimmy nodded, tucked his tablet in alongside the cushion of his computer chair, and spun so he could more fully contemplate the board.

“We’re playing chess.” All at once, Cindy’s face went bright pink. “No, that’s not a euphemism!”

“Although it could be,” Jimmy remarked, chin on his hand. Cindy glared at him, and he shot her a wink.

“Both of you are impossible. Anyway, if you need more help wrangling wayward cousins—are you fucking serious,” Cindy snarled as Jimmy captured her bishop with one of his knights.

“You might have noticed that if you weren’t distracted.”

“I’ll show you a distraction – not you! Ugh! Just call me later!” Cindy slid the pawn in front of her king’s rook two spaces ahead. “Make sure I don’t let him do what?” Her face pinked even more. “You’re evil. Bye!”

“What was that all about?” Jimmy asked, copying Cindy’s last move.

Cindy threw her phone down alongside her in the chair and studied the board. “Oh, one of Libby’s cousins is throwing a hissy fit because she wasn’t picked for maid of honor, and now she found out she won’t be a bridesmaid, either.”

“Libby’s getting married?”

Cindy blinked. “Have I not mentioned that?”

“You told your dad over the phone last night. Not me.”

“You were sitting right there when I…” Cindy pinched the bridge of her nose and moved another pawn. “All right, here’s your formal announcement: Libby and Sheen are getting married on August sixteenth. There ya go.”

“She’s marrying Sheen?”

“Yes, it’s a wonder and minor tragedy for us all.” Noticing how Jimmy had slumped back in his chair, Cindy tilted her head. “What’s your problem?”

“I owe Sheen five hundred dollars.” 

“For…?”

“A bet. He made me swear on his mint-condition copy of Ultra-Lord Meets the Ultra-Verse #1 to honor it, so I know he hasn’t forgotten.” Jimmy scrubbed a hand over his face. “Suppose I can’t pass it off as a wedding gift, either.”

“So this is a bet you made when we were kids?”

“Yup.”

“Can you tell me what it’s about?”

Jimmy regarded Cindy with an unreadable expression and, very slowly, shook his head.

“Fine, keep your little boys’ club secrets. It’s your move, by the way.” Cindy’s phone buzzed on the chair cushion; she picked it up and rolled her eyes at the screen. “Do you have any liquid nitrogen?”

“Might have a dewar or two back in storage. Why?”

“I need to obliterate my phone.”

Jimmy paused, finger on top of his queen. “I feel a pressing need to reiterate my previous interrogatory.”

“My mother’s calling. Even though I’ve blocked her previous four numbers. She’s like a cockroach.”

“At the risk of sounding stupid—”

“Oh, but you do it so well.”

“—why don’t you change your phone number?”

“Because then I have to tell everyone who I actually want to talk to that I have a new number, and I’ve got too much associated with this one. You know, all that multi-factor authentication crap that supposedly makes everything more secure but that I’m pretty sure is still hackable.”

“Everything’s hackable. All you need is time and dedication.” Jimmy slid his queen across the board and stopped two squares in front of Cindy’s king. “Check.” 

Cindy raised an eyebrow – she could easily take his queen with hers, or with a pawn. “Are you sure that’s what you want to do?”

“My hand’s already off the piece.” Jimmy spread his fingers to prove the point. “Besides, I’ll get her back soon enough.”

Cindy scanned the board and noticed the white pawn that was one square away from promotion, with no way for her to take it out. “Damn. I forgot you can do that.”

“Most people do. Your move.”

They went on, going tit-for-tat as their games often did toward the end. Jimmy lost his re-won queen swiftly, but still managed to corner Cindy’s king with his remaining knight and two pawns. With a sigh of defeat, Cindy tipped her king and offered her hand across the board. “Good game.”

“Likewise.” Jimmy shook her hand.

“Wanna go again?”

Jimmy gazed up at the monitor, where code continued to scroll inch by inch. “May as well.”

This had become their routine, such as one could form in a handful of days: they’d wake, eat breakfast, clean up, and come down the breezeway to the other small dome of the complex where Jimmy’s true laboratory was housed. He had a contracted software project, a debugger that was close to being overdue, but was mostly complete; all Jimmy had to do was test the utility for rigor against intentionally faulty programs he built. Most of the testing was hands-off once it started, so they indulged in their old favorite pastime of chess while he monitored the computer’s progress. This went on until they broke for lunch, usually around 1:00, at which point Jimmy would call it a day’s work and they’d look for the afternoon’s entertainment. Cindy hadn’t been any farther into the lab than the main floor, but she wasn’t about to complain. Not yet, anyway.

As they reset their pieces on the chessboard, Cindy thought about how Jimmy had made the perfect working situation for himself. He never would have been content in a nine-to-five, reporting to bosses and rubbing coworkers the wrong way. Contract work came with some precarity, of course, but Jimmy could choose his clients and make his own schedule within limits. Plus, given the size of this complex, he was doing pretty well for himself money-wise. Not that she had dollar signs in her eyes or anything.

“Before we start, let me finish this section,” Jimmy said, holding up a finger and scanning over his tablet.

“What are you reading that’s so engrossing, anyway?”

“Hang on, hang on…okay, done.” Jimmy clicked off the tablet and stashed it in the cushion of his computer chair. “Change colors?”

“It’s only fair.” Cindy rotated the chessboard so the white pieces were in front of her and the black pieces were in front of Jimmy. “So again, I ask: what are you reading?”

“Eh, I like to trawl university archives to see what the newest published theses and dissertations are. It’s a nice break from my scientific journal subscriptions.”

“Find anything good?”

“Yes. This paper from the University of Washington has some promising findings about the use of algae blooms for local plastics manufacturing.”

Cindy froze, her hand hovering over her king’s pawn for the first move. “You…you’re reading my thesis?”

“Is it yours? Huh. Can’t seem to remember the author’s name at the moment.” Jimmy smirked, which quickly turned to confusion when Cindy buried her face in her hands and let out a muffled scream.

“Why are you reading that overwritten, repetitive pile of utter shit?!”

“…I think I’m gonna need more context.”

“Do you know how many times I typed the phrase polymer chain when writing that? The word ‘polymer’ doesn’t even look like a word to me anymore! And no matter how many times I revised for clarity, all the sentences are like a mile long, and then the verbiage is so dense you could build an impenetrable seawall with it!” Cindy dropped her hands from her face and ran one through her hair with a drawn-out huff. “The research is solid, but a drunken rhesus monkey could have written something more coherent.”

“Is your Master’s degree in science communications?”

The question caught Cindy off guard. “No. It’s in chemistry with a concentration in materials science.”

“Did you write your thesis with an intended audience of people educated in the field, or for the general public?”

“Definitely not the general public.”

“Then your thesis is very good,” Jimmy assured. “You remember how the writing changed through previous drafts, and all your memories are stacked on the final project, coloring how you see it. I promise, it’s coherent and highly readable.”

“Geez. Where were you when I was in grad school?”

“On the other side of the phone.”

Their eyes met over the chessboard. For a moment, the same queasiness that’d filled Cindy’s guts the night Libby called her out at KRTV lurched into her throat. Instead of the raw disappointment Libby had on her face, though, Jimmy’s face was awash with sadness.

“I’m sorry,” Cindy said, swallowing hard. “I should’ve called you.”

“You were busy.”

“Yeah, but at some point, ‘I’m busy’ becomes less of a reason and more of an excuse. I mean, if I could make time to teach karate and tutor and study, I could’ve taken five minutes to say hello.”

Jimmy shrugged. “I could’ve done the same. I was in a similar educational situation, and the phone rings both ways.”

“Can’t you let me wallow in my own guilt like I deserve?”

“Eh, wallowing is more fun as a group activity.”

Cindy snorted and moved her king’s pawn out like she’d planned.

“So, what was your inspiration?”

“My inspiration?”

“For your thesis,” Jimmy clarified, then mirrored her opening move. “There had to be something that made you think in that direction.”

Cindy set her fingers on top of her queen’s knight, lips twitched to one side. “You know how the lake in town gets that milfoil bloom on it every July?”   

Jimmy stuck his tongue out and gagged. Anyone with a passing familiarity of the manmade lake in Retroville, and those unfortunate enough to live by it, knew the mid- to late-summer stench of blooming milfoil well.

“They usually send a trawler out to collect it, and then they burn it for biomass fuel. All well and good, but then I thought: what if you could use it for something else? I mean, with climate change, Puget Sound is seeing more algal blooms, as is anywhere else with an ocean coast, and spending the time and money just to burn what’s collected seems wasteful, even though the carbon dioxide released is nowhere near the amount…”

As Cindy explained more and more, Jimmy leaned forward and rested his chin on his hands, face softening into utter admiration. She always had been skilled at oral presentations, but to hear her talk about a subject she’d studied intensely for years and to see how animated it made her – perched on the edge of her seat, eyes alight, hands working like windmills – was an entirely different experience. Plus, even with going to college in the company of the supposed best and brightest, Jimmy hadn’t encountered many people with quite the same passion for science he had. One notable exception was sitting across the chessboard from him.

“Like, yeah, you could sit and play with genetic modification to increase polymeric production, but why not work with what the algae already gives you? It’s all right there!” Cindy paused for a breath, then noticed how Jimmy was looking at her. “What?”

“I’ve seen you bathed in the light of several moons and countless stars, yet I’ve never seen you glow like you are right now.”

As if to illustrate Jimmy’s point, the excited flush on Cindy’s face and chest deepened. “You can’t just say things like that,” she mumbled.

“Why not? I’m just making an observation.” There was more than a hint of mischief in Jimmy’s smile. “Now, I saw toward the end of your paper that you’d succeeded in making continuous fiber spools out of your algal samples. How much did you make?”

“Not very much,” Cindy admitted with a sigh. “I was competing with the biotech and engineering grad students for lab time, so I had to work fast. But I did manage to make a few small objects on the 3D printer with my fibers. Here.” She leaned to one side, pulled a bluish-green compact mirror from the pocket of her shorts, and held it over the chessboard. “Careful – the plastic is kinda brittle.”

Jimmy took the compact, handling it as though he’d been given a hummingbird egg. He carefully tapped the outside before opening it up. “Extremely reflective mirrors,” he commented.

“I might have gotten those through a slightly dubious backchannel courtesy of the Caltech aerospace engineering department. Don’t tell anyone.”

“My lips are sealed.” Jimmy turned the compact over in his hand. “This is impressive.”

“Oh, please! You supervising the building of a fleet of flight-worthy spacecraft jury-rigged out of amusement park rides when we were ten is impressive. This is just,” Cindy shrugged, “kinda cool.”

“Cindy, the implications of your work on a materials science level alone are incredible! If we could transition from petroleum-based plastics to those derived from terrestrial sources that don’t require large-scale drilling and attendant environmental destruction…” Jimmy shook his head. “This is more than just ‘kinda cool’.”

“I’m hardly the only person studying this, you know. And there are other people who’ve had bigger successes. Higher proportion of biopolymers to petroleum resin, because you still need some of that for stabilization depending on your algal source. Others have achieved higher tensile strengths with the fibers—”

There was the quiet bumping sound of casters rolling on low-pile carpet as Jimmy slid the portable table holding the chessboard off to one side and stood. He crossed the space between them in a few steps, gripped one armrest of Cindy’s chair, and leaned in close to her face.

“Listen to me, Cindy,” he said firmly. “Science is collaborative. It might look like I work alone, but I wouldn’t be able to do any part of what I do without the efforts of hundreds, if not thousands, of scientists who came before me. Every experiment, every discovery, every success and failure, no matter how small it seems – it all contributes to this vast pool of knowledge, and we all draw from it. So please, don’t minimize your thesis. It matters. I promise it does.”

Jimmy pressed the compact back into Cindy’s hands and kissed her forehead. When he pulled back, he saw with a shock that her eyes were more than a bit watery.

“I…I didn’t start out with chemistry right away,” Cindy said shakily. “I was studying something completely different, something I hated down to my core, and changing my major…I mean, it sounds stupid when I’ve literally faced down asteroids hurtling toward Earth and hostile space aliens and all that, but that was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. My mother…did not support my decision. She was convinced she knew exactly what I was gonna do with my life.”

“And your dad?”

“Pfft. He’s been thrilled with everything I’ve ever done. In fact, he might have started dancing when I told him. Hard to tell through the phone.” Cindy sighed and reached her arms around Jimmy’s waist, and pulled in. “Oh, just sit down already!”

Jimmy tumbled and landed in an awkward heap into Cindy’s lap; she looped her arm under his knees and draped his legs over one side of the chair for a better position.

“You don’t have to go into details per se, but is that situation the reason why you knew what was going on with me? You know, the…” Jimmy tapped his temple with a finger.

Cindy nodded. “Also, I’m convinced university administration pumps something into the air vents while you’re sitting in practicum that keeps you from getting excited about anything other than your thesis. Can’t have you feeling zest for life and engaging in academia.”

“Pfft.” Jimmy rolled his eyes to the ceiling in thought. “Hmm. I may not have exactly the same equipment as your alma mater, but if you wanted, we could try making those fibers out of the milfoil bloom here once it manifests. Repeatability is a hallmark of scientific rigor, after all.”

“Jimmy,” Cindy gasped. “Are you saying you want to do an experiment with me?”

“Why not? I have other contract work that needs attention, but you’ve seen how many hours a day I spend on that. Besides, it could be fun.”

“It could also be a complete disaster.”

“Hey, I’ll have you know that I’ve gone 278 days without an explosive event in my lab.”

“I was talking more about personality clashes.”

Jimmy reached up and tucked a lock of hair behind Cindy’s ear, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. “I think we’ve got plenty of ways to deal with that.”

“The whole aquatic exercise thing works better if you’re actually in the water, genius!”

“Hey, I’ve worked all day! I deserve a break.” Jimmy called out from his inflatable chaise lounge.  

“Yeah, it’s real tough staring at a computer monitor!”

“You wouldn’t be talking like that if you weren’t hiding behind a w—”

Cindy picked that second to stroll out of the changing area, and she was pleased to hear Jimmy choke on his tongue. So maybe she’d misrepresented having only one swimsuit and kept this lower-cut black one-piece for a special occasion, like Wednesday afternoon. No harm in that. She took her sweet time walking to the pool steps, shaking out her ponytail and letting it fluff down past her shoulders before stepping down to waist-deep water and diving under the surface.

When she came back up and folded her arms on the side of the chaise, Jimmy was slurping hard from his smoothie. Why he didn’t deign to make one for her was a question he’d have to answer for later.  

“Come on. The sight of me can’t make you that thirsty.”

He shot her a sideways glance, mouth still wrapped around the straw, and slurped loudly once.

“Whatever. I’m gonna actually use a swimming pool for its intended purpose and do some laps. Novel idea, I know.” Cindy kicked off harder than strictly necessary and swam under the first set of lane markers.

She got through four and a half laps before needing a break. Cindy clung by her fingertips to the rounded tiles on the pool’s edge, feet against the textured side, and breathed heavily. A quick look behind and to her right revealed the floating chaise was now empty save for his plastic drink cup. Where did he—

“Don’t tell me you’re giving up already.”

Cindy whipped her head to the left, where Jimmy was drawing level with her in the next lane using the backstroke. With a deft twist, he flipped on his stomach, stretched his arms out to grab the tiles at the pool’s edge, and hauled himself the rest of the way through the water.  

“Wow, Jimmy, that was…graceful.”

“I told you, this is the only exercise I do.”

And it shows, Cindy thought. His chest had broadened, his arms had toned up, and from what she could see through the rippling water, he no longer had chicken legs. Still had a bit of a potbelly, which she found alarmingly cute. Nobody would ever accuse Jimmy of being a bodybuilder, but he’d filled out well.

“Cindy?”

“Huh?” She snapped to attention, realizing with minor horror that she’d been fixated on the droplets glistening on his shoulder.  

“I asked if you wanted to race.”

“Um.” Cindy bit her lip. “How many laps do you usually swim a day?”

“I start with twenty, and then I keep going until I get tired. I believe my average is somewhere in the low thirties.”

“Okay.” Her voice came out as more of a squeak. “Yeah. Let’s – let’s race. Three laps, down and back. That’s good.”

Jimmy raised a concerned eyebrow and positioned himself to kick off; Cindy copied him, focusing on the wall in front of her. On a joint count of three, they launched, Cindy flipping into a front crawl and Jimmy staying on his back. She had to give it to him: what he lacked in speed on land, he more than made up for in water. And when exactly did he get so graceful? Unfair.

He ended up beating her by a couple seconds, according to the continuous sweeping arm of the large clock sitting next to the pool. When she finished, she ignored him, clambered out of the water like a drunken spider, and snatched up her towel, padding off to the showers to rinse off.

“Can’t stand losing twice in one day, huh?” Jimmy called after her.

Cindy paused temporarily when she noted there were two shower heads in the tiled stall, but the stall itself was not much longer and about twice as wide as a typical bathtub. No curtain, either. Made sense – Jimmy had built these facilities thinking he’d be the only one to use them at any given time. She wrenched one handle on and stepped under the spray. Unlike the tepid water in the showers at Retroville’s public pool, this shower was properly hot.

Jimmy followed her in a moment later. Mercifully, he stayed quiet and faced the other shower head, making it easier for her to keep ignoring him. For a short while, the only sound was the gentle hiss of spray and the steady trickle into the central drain. Then something slapped heavy and wet against the tile.

Curiosity seized her by the throat, and Cindy turned to look out of the corner of her eye. Red swim trunks puddled on the floor. Which meant if she brought her gaze up, she’d find…

Get a grip! He’s rinsing off, that’s all. She herself had tugged the straps of her swimsuit down and was bare-chested at the moment. But her undressing wasn’t giving Jimmy an eyeful of naked ass, now was it? Cindy could still claim to have a tiny bit of modesty in that department, thank you very much.

There was the slightest twitch of muscles in his upper back, like he was about to turn his head, so Cindy spun and faced the shower again. One foot slipped, and she caught herself on the wall, her hand squeaking against the tiles.

“Careful,” Jimmy chided.

Okay, fuck modesty. When she could no longer feel her pulse pounding in her temple, Cindy shot another glance behind her – not to ogle, she lied to herself – and pulled her swimsuit down over her hips, letting it drop to the floor and stepping out of it. The sound wasn’t quite as loud as the one his swim trunks had made, but it was enough to make him twist around. She heard him take a small, sharp inhale, and she smirked.

“Look, if you’re gonna stare, you might as well get the full picture.” Cindy turned, leaned against the tile, and crossed her arms low under her breasts.

He stayed in profile for a moment, watching her with one eye. Then he turned fully around as well, and it was Cindy who gasped. Forget happy trails – Jimmy had a veritable logging road leading into the forest between his legs. Now that was unexpected.   

“You’ve…grown,” Cindy observed vaguely.

“So have you. More in the,” Jimmy tilted his head, “parabolic sense.”

“It’s been a while since my algebra classes.” Cindy’s arms fell to her sides. “Maybe a hands-on tutoring session will jog my memory.”

Rolling his eyes playfully, Jimmy paced across the stall and met Cindy under her shower. Steam billowed in the narrow gap between them. With another half-step, they were nose-to-nose, and Cindy pressed in for a kiss until Jimmy stopped her with a finger to her lips.

“Finish the lesson first.” Not taking his eyes from hers, Jimmy roved his hands over Cindy’s breasts, thumbing her nipples until they stood erect under his touch. His fingers fluttered over her waist and caressed the curves of her hips, achingly slow. She raised her right leg slightly, and his left hand slipped over her ass and kneaded the underside of her thigh.

“Mm, I remember now.” Cindy smiled and ran a hand over Jimmy’s chest. The hair here wasn’t as thick as down below, but it was still new to her: reddish brown and as fine as what ringed his mouth and lined his jaw. When they’d last been this naked with each other, they were eighteen, and apparently he’d had a bit more development in store. Jimmy stifled a laugh when she rubbed over his ribs, drew in a breath when her fingers spread over his stomach and traced the line of his hip.

“Do you want me to…?” She let the question hang, two fingers hovering just below his bellybutton.

“Yes.” His eyes were so soft, his pupils so dark. “Please.”

When their lips met, Cindy reached down and curled her hand around his cock. The pad of her index finger found the vein running up the underside, and slowly, she worked up. Jimmy braced himself against the shower wall and shuddered as she circled the ridge under the head before thumbing over his slit. He slid his tongue into her mouth, and she repeated the cycle, a bit faster this time. They kept going, trading kisses for touches, until Jimmy was panting against her cheek, trembling.

“Your heart’s racing,” she whispered, other palm over the left side of his chest. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No.”

“Oh, I know. You want me on my knees.”

Jimmy whined and twitched in her grasp.

“You never ask for it, yet whenever I suggest it, you always say yes.” Cindy let him go, turned them both so his back was to the wall, and carefully lowered herself to the floor. Doing this in the shower was less than advisable, but they could at least clean up easily afterward.

“You won’t get what you want unless you ask,” she said before taking his head in her mouth. He bent at the waist with a groan as her tongue licked around him, then down to the base.

“Cindy.” Jimmy’s voice broke over the two syllables of her name. His hand brushed over her cheek and the shell of her ear before he threaded his fingers through her hair, not to guide or force her, but to hold on. When Cindy took him further into her mouth, almost to her throat, his knees buckled.

“Thee, that’s what happenth when you lock your—”

Jimmy gazed down at her with a lopsided grin. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s – ahh – rude to talk with your mouth full?”

Cindy pulled off with a wet pop, scandalized.

“Sorry, did that go too far? I didn’t mean—”

“No, no, it’s—” She snorted. “You used to be a lot nerdier about this! Like, I remember you practically reciting encyclopedia entries aloud so you wouldn’t come too fast.”

“Is that what you want?”

“I want you,” Cindy said simply. Her hand was on Jimmy’s thigh, fingers stretched up toward his hip. “As you are right now.”

They stared at each other for a beat. Jimmy’s hand reached down to lace fingers with hers, eyes hooded and soft. “You can have me,” he whispered. “As I am right now, and as I will be.”

There was a weight to Jimmy’s words that suggested he was talking about far more than their current congress. Not wanting to dwell too much on it, Cindy kissed down his shaft in short, sweet pecks before pulling him back into her mouth.

“Quarks are the – mmm – elementary particles that compose various composite subatomic particles such as bosons, hadrons, and fermions, the best known of which are – oh for the love of—”

Cindy grinned around him and cupped his balls again, gently squeezing with her palm. He twitched hard in her mouth, and his words became more fragmented as she worked. Another minute, and all he could utter was her name as he fell to pieces above her.

Chapter Text

Bzz-bzzt! Bzz-bzzt! Bzz-bzzt!

The heartbeat buzzing rhythm of her phone told Cindy her dad was calling. The headache that dully throbbed behind her eyes as soon as she cracked them open told her she hadn’t had nearly enough sleep. Still, she reached over to the nightstand, fumbled for her phone, and swiped across the screen.

“Hello?” she croaked out.

“Cinnamon!” Phil cried, far too loud for Cindy’s freshly awakened hearing. “Sounds like you gargled ten miles worth of gravel road last night! Didn’t hit the bottle too hard, did ya?”

“No, I just didn’t get to bed until late. Or early.” Cindy squinted up at the ceiling. “Guess it depends on how you tell time.”

“But you had fun, right?”

Cindy shifted and felt Jimmy press his chest into her back more firmly, his stubble tickling the curve between her shoulder and neck. “Yeah, I did,” she answered with a smile. “A lot of fun.”

“That’s good! And it’s good to know you’re having a lie-in for a change. Suppose Libby is having an influence – you said she works nights at the radio station, right?”

“She does, but…” Cindy paused. Her dad could handle the truth without blowing up. “I’m not actually at Libby’s much these days.”

“Oh? Where’d ya land?”

“You remember Jimmy, don’t you?”

“Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy…” Phil mumbled. “Well, y’know, I wasn’t familiar with everyone in town, being on the road so much and all, so you might have to refresh my memory.”

“Da-ad,” Cindy dragged the word out. “I know you remember. Boy genius who lived across from us? My academic rival since fourth grade? Saved us from the freaky egg aliens not once but twice?”

“Oh, my future son-in-law! Right!”

“Dad!”

Jimmy stirred behind her again, his palm pressing more firmly on her stomach. He mumbled something that might have been her name, and his voice was so rough and deep that it made her want to fling her phone away and curl into him.

Meanwhile, Phil was laughing himself into hysterics. “I’m just yanking your chain, sweetheart! Of course I remember Jimmy. You two have been sweet on each other since the day he moved in across the street.”

“Wha – that’s not true!”

“Oh yes, it is! You sat on our front stoop for hours, pretending to read while you were really watching him play around in the grass with his robot dog. I think you were hoping above all else that he’d come over and say hi, but he never did. Then school started, and you found out he was in your class, and well, you know how the rest goes.”

Cindy chuckled. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

“All right, well, I’ll let you go. You’re talkin’ awful low, which tells me you aren’t exactly alone right now. Tell Jimmy I said hi.”

“I – Dad—!”

“Love you.”

“Love you, too.” Cindy hung up, burning with mortification. She tossed her phone back on the nightstand, then rolled over in Jimmy’s embrace to face him. Picking out a particularly prominent freckle on his cheek, she pressed a kiss to it. “Morning,” she whispered.

Jimmy fluttered his lashes – she swore they were longer than hers, how unfair – and grinned at her sleepily. “Morning, Cinnamon.”

“…you were awake?”

“Right after you said hello.”

“You jerk!” In a flash, Cindy was on top of Jimmy, pinning his wrists on either side of his head. She wasn’t restraining him, not really: he could wiggle out of her grasp easily, and both were on the verge of laughing. “I can’t believe you!”

“And here I thought my dad was the grand champion of endearing pet names,” Jimmy mused. “If you’ll pardon the expression, Cinnamon really takes the cake.”

“I will not pardon it, and I’ll add on that it’s a family name only.”

Jimmy twisted his lips off to one side in mock disappointment. “That’s a shame.”

Cindy let go of his wrists and lowered her mouth to his, relaxing into him as his arms came up to circle her back. They laid there, trading lazy kisses and playing with each other’s hair. After years of grating phone alarms, Cindy found this to be a far superior way to wake up.

“Do you really have to go anywhere today?”

“Libby’s gotta get a move on picking out a dress, and she needs my input. Plus, we have to work around her schedule. You’ll survive without me for a couple hours.”

“Mm, debatable. You know how prone I can be to lab accidents,” Jimmy joked, unwinding a piece of blond hair from around his finger. “I suppose I could go over to the lake and see how the milfoil is blooming. Collect a sample or two.”

“That’ll take all of five minutes.”

“I’m given to understand that gazing out on bodies of water is a highly thought-provoking experience. Maybe I’ll sit on the shore and compose a list of potential terms of endearment for you.” Cindy scoffed, and Jimmy raised an eyebrow. “Should I take that as a challenge?”

“Take it any way you want, genius.”

“You know, sometimes you call me that and it’s meant to be sarcastic, but other times I detect a certain degree of fondness in your inflection.”

“You’re imagining things.”

Jimmy rolled them both so he was hovering over her, eyes half-lidded and smirking. “I have a highly active imagination, my little proton.”

The absurd name caught Cindy off guard, so much so that she threw her head back on the pillows laughing. Jimmy seized the chance to pepper her neck and collarbone with kisses.

“Girl, what do you think of this one?”

Cindy settled back into the pink velour of the bridal boutique’s couch, arm draped over the back cushion, and took in Libby standing on top of the fitting podium in a mermaid-cut dress stitched with a near-obscene number of pearls. No question that the dress fit her best friend beautifully – Libby could make any bundle of rags drape over her figure – but there was something in the styling that wasn’t clicking.

“It’s giving more Under the Sea prom theme than wedding,” Cindy assessed.

The sales associate that had been buzzing around them for the last two hours and change visibly deflated. “I think it looks beautiful,” she chimed in. Never mind that this was the same opinion she’d offered for every single dress Libby had tried on so far.

Libby took one more turn in front of the three-way mirror, frowning. “Maybe something with a fuller skirt,” she said. “I don’t mind the sleeve length on this one, but I’d like to be able to bend my knees and walk down the aisle, not shuffle down it. Nothing too crazy puffy, though. I’m not auditioning to be a theme park princess here.”

The associate nodded and darted off into a sea of white satin and tulle.

“You know she’s gonna bring back like half the store’s stock, right?” Cindy pointed out.

“That’s kinda what I’m hoping for.” Libby stepped off the platform, tottered over to the couch, and sank down awkwardly next to Cindy on the couch. “Damn, this dress really does not flex over my thighs.”

“You make a great mermaid, though.”

“I’ll keep that in mind for a Halloween costume.” Libby sighed. “This woman is just so eager to sell me something today, and all I want to do is try on. But then I don’t know if trying on more dresses is gonna help, or if it’ll just confuse me. Maybe I should skip all this nonsense and take up Ysabel on her offer.”

“Ysabel?”

“Sheen’s abuela. She wants to make me a dress with the traditional Mexican embroidery and everything.”

Cindy blinked. “Wouldn’t that take a while? The wedding’s not that far away.”

“She insists it wouldn’t, but she was talking about making a full charro suit for Sheen, too, so who knows.”

“Charro suit?”

“You’ve seen a mariachi band, right? That kind of suit, but it’d be white instead of black.”

“With the sombrero and everything?”

Libby nodded. Noticing the amused quirk of Cindy’s mouth, she added, “Sheen showed me his parents’ wedding photos, and they’re done up all traditional like that. Hand me my purse, I’ve got a couple of them saved on my phone.”

While Libby flicked through her gallery, Cindy took the opportunity to check her own phone and found Jimmy had texted her: It’s starting :-D, followed by a photo of lake water with the faintest green film floating on the surface. One of his blue eyes appeared down in the corner of the photo. Cindy grinned; he had never mastered the art of taking a decent selfie.

“See, it’s like this.” Libby tapped Cindy’s shoulder and held out her phone. Cindy tilted her head and took in a photo of a young Mexican couple standing together outside a church. Sheen’s dad was clad in a sparkling white and gold suit and sombrero, while Sheen’s mom was resplendent in her white dress embroidered with a rainbow of flowers on the bodice and at the lower hem. They gazed at each other with such pure adoration that Cindy almost felt she was encroaching on a private moment.

“That’s lovely,” she murmured.

“It really is,” Libby agreed. “But then I start wondering if I really want this kind of dress for me, or if I want it because it saves me from making a decision. Maybe I should go with Sheen’s original suggestion of the Ultra Lady costume.”

Cindy’s lower eyelid twitched. “You’re not serious, are you?”

“Hell no! I already let him have his wrestling ring at the reception – he ain’t deciding what I wear going down the aisle.”

“Wrestling r – you know what, I’m not touching that.” Cindy shook her head and glanced at the new message notification on her phone. “‘Which shade of turquoise gives off the most threatening aura?’ What—” Her phone vibrated as several more messages came through. “Libs, why is Sheen sending me a multitude of sequin photos?”

“Sequins?” Libby’s eyes widened in alarm. “Ask him where he is right now.”

Cindy texted the question; she only had to wait a few seconds for an answer. “Push My Buttons Fabric and Notions Emporium.”

“Oh, thank God.” Libby slumped back against the couch in relief. “The one craft store in town that hasn’t trespassed him yet.”

“I hesitate to even ask, but how do you get trespassed from a craft store?”

“By unfurling no less than fifteen rolls of Lycra on the story floor to determine which has the best combination of stretchiness, vibrant color, and ‘inherent awesomeness’,” Libby explained, complete with air quotes. “He wanted to make his own custom El Brillo singlet instead of decorating a pre-made one.”

“…and you’re sure you wanna marry this guy.”

“With all my heart and soul.”

“No accounting for taste,” Cindy muttered, tapping her way back to Jimmy’s texts.

“Hey, speaking of which, how’s Jimmy doing?”

“He’s…” Cindy pondered this, thumbs hovering over her phone screen. “Good. He’s good.”

“I wanna see him before the wedding. He can’t stay a stranger forever, and calling into my radio show ain’t the same as seeing him in person. Hey,” Libby said, “why don’t you invite him for lunch at the Candy Bar? I’ll see if Sheen can join us on his break.”

“Um.” Would he even be interested in joining them? “Okay. I’ll ask.”

At that moment, the sales associate came back, nearly invisible behind the voluminous load of bridal dresses in her arms. Cindy and Libby exchanged a look of shared panic before putting on smiles they hoped conveyed eagerness over pain.

Pecan ripple washed blissfully over Cindy’s tongue as she drank from her malt.

“You’re gonna polish that off before the boys get here,” Libby pointed out.

“Amazing thing, Libs: Sam knows how to make more of these. Plus, I need it. It’s been that kind of morning.”

Libby nodded wearily, stirring the spoon around in her own strawberry malt. After another hour in the boutique, she’d hit her limit for playing dress-up, but the sales associate hadn’t been willing to let them leave without a commissioned sale on her hands. It’d taken Cindy’s particular brand of verbal persuasion to get them out of there without at least taking home a pair of overpriced white satin ballet flats Libby would have no occasion to wear.

“You probably shouldn’t’ve threatened to mess up her mannequins, though.”

“Oh please, like I would’ve actually put a single thread out of place. I’ve practiced feinting and air-kicking around dummies since I was five. I know what I’m doing.”

The Candy Bar’s doors swung open, and the distinctive odor of jet fuel wafted in. Cindy grinned around her straw as Jimmy strolled in, fiddling with the strap on his olive-green jetpack, and asked Sam where he might find the girls. Sam jerked a thumb toward their booth, then patted Jimmy on the shoulder and gave him a rare smile. She wasn’t much for reading lips, but Cindy could’ve sworn she saw Sam say “It’s good to see ya again, yeah.”

As he approached their booth, Cindy noted Jimmy had his hair pulled back into a stubby ponytail at the base of his neck, a few strands falling over his forehead that’d come loose while he’d been flying. She’d teased him so much about that ponytail when he’d first done his hair like that on a lab day, but she had to admit he wore it well. Then he pulled his glasses out of a pouch on his jetpack strap and slid them on, and the look was elevated. Yeah, she really was a sucker for nerds.

“Hey, stranger!” Libby called. Before Cindy could caution against it, Libby scooted out from her spot in the booth and wrapped her arms around Jimmy. He was initially shocked, arms held out like an uncertain scarecrow, but in a few seconds, he relaxed and returned the hug. A small pang of jealousy went off in Cindy’s gut as she watched them step apart and size each other up.

“Nice to finally put a face to the voice I’ve been hearing all this time,” Libby said. “Did you get taller?”

“Remember when you accidentally got hit with my new-and-improved shrink ray back in seventh grade? I didn’t tell you back then, but one of the long-term side effects is apparently losing height at approximately one sixteenth of an inch a year.” Jimmy made a show of scratching the back of his neck while crossing his fingers where Cindy could see. “Sorry about that.”

Libby squinted at the barely-concealed amusement on his face. “You’ve definitely been hangin’ out with Cindy too much – she’s turned you into a smartass.”

“I’m just bringing out what was always there,” Cindy interjected.

Jimmy winked at Cindy, sat down, and slid in close to her. He rested a hand on top of her knee and squeezed; she laid her hand on top of his and idly stroked the dip between two of his knuckles. The touch made the muscle in his jaw jump – the telltale sign that he enjoyed what she was doing and was making a game of hiding it – so she continued. Clearly he was shy about being more publicly affectionate, even in front of an old friend.

“So tell me,” Libby said, sitting down across from them. “You been workin’ on any mad science experiments?”

“Mostly I’ve been finishing up some delinquent contract work,” Jimmy answered. “Cindy’s proven to be an excellent motivator.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet.” Libby raised a knowing eyebrow in Cindy’s direction.

“In fact, I’m hoping to get started on a joint experiment replicating Cindy’s thesis work soon.”

“We’re gonna need more milfoil than what you showed me in that photo, though,” Cindy pointed out.

“You’ve seen how quickly it proliferates. We’ll have sufficient material by the end of the week.”

“Hold up,” Libby said, “are you talking about that gross algae down in the lake?”

Jimmy and Cindy nodded in unison.

“And you’re…making something with it?”

“Plastic,” Cindy explained. “Well, technically, continuous fiber spools intended for use in 3D printers which can then be fabricated into objects.”

“As a promising eventual replacement for petroleum-based plastics,” Jimmy added, beaming with pride.

“By the way, did those Plexiglas sheets for the processing tanks show up yet?”

“Expected delivery date is Tuesday. I can weld the tank frames together in a matter of hours, and we’ll be operational by next weekend.”

“Allowing time for at least three full cycling periods to optimize tank performance?”

“Precisely.”

“Perfect.” Cindy offered her free hand above the table in a fist, and Jimmy bumped it.

Across the booth, Libby was watching them curiously. “I always knew you two were on your own wavelength, but watchin’ you be this in sync is a little freaky, I’m not gonna lie.”

Sam came by and set a mint chocolate chip malt on the table in front of Jimmy. Even though he’d been capable of describing the physical principle of viscosity at the tender age of three, Jimmy still slid the chilled glass closer to himself and attempted in vain to sip the malt through the straw. Cindy leaned on her fist and watched him, incredulity and adoration mixed on her face.

“Mamacita!” Sheen’s voice shrilled through the Candy Bar. His heavy work boots clomped on the floor as he ran over and planted a loud, smacking kiss on Libby’s cheek.

“Hey, baby.” Libby kissed Sheen’s cheek in return and jutted her chin across the booth. “Look who’s here.”

Sheen’s eyes flew open as though taking in sunlight for the first time. “JIMMY!” he cried.

Jimmy, sensing what was coming, braced himself against the vinyl back of the booth as Sheen all but crushed his friend in a hug.

“I thought you’d died! Well, not like, literally, but you know. I haven’t seen you in ages!”

“Likewise,” Jimmy mumbled, half his face mashed against Sheen’s chest and glasses askew. He mouthed help me to Cindy, who most definitely did not help and instead cracked up over his pouty fish lips.

“Oh my God, you have a ponytail, too, dude. You kinda match Cindy now!” Sheen let Jimmy go and dropped down next to Libby. “Crazy.”

“Y-yeah, it is,” Jimmy adjusted his glasses and smiled tentatively. “Judging by your coveralls, I take it you’re in the trades now?”

Sheen launched into his Estevez Heating & Cooling spiel, which led into Jimmy detailing his contract work. After a few minutes, Skeet appeared at their table and took their food orders, which proved to be the only real break in the conversation. Without much work experience out in the real world aside from teaching kids karate, Cindy felt at a loss for contributing much. Surprisingly, though, she found she didn’t mind. Ever the motormouth, it was nice to sit back and watch other people talk every so often.

“So like, what’s the deal with you two?” Sheen asked, gesturing with a French fry between Jimmy and Cindy.

Jimmy blinked. “I don’t follow.”

“Cindy gets back to town, finds you after you’ve disappeared for ages, you have an argument or whatever, and then suddenly you two are living together. What’s up with that?” Sheen tilted his head. “Do we need to be planning a double wedding?”

Both Jimmy and Cindy went red in the face, unable to look at each other fully yet still cutting their eyes in the other’s direction.

“Sheen!” Libby hissed.

“What? Our venue can seat like 500 people, and we don’t even have it half full. All we’d have to do is order extra food—”

“That’s an inappropriate question, babe, and you know it.”

“Hey, you always say if you never ask the answer’s always no! Which is why I finally worked up the courage to ask you for—”

“We’re not – we aren’t—” Jimmy struggled to formulate an answer.

“We’re working things out as we go,” Cindy supplied.

“Y-yeah, yeah, exactly,” Jimmy nodded. “A bit of…social improvisation, I suppose you could say.”

“Something like that.”

Libby deftly steered the conversation away from treacherous waters, but the damage had already been done. For the rest of their lunch, Cindy noted the taut line of Jimmy’s shoulders, the rigidity of his back. Under the table, his hand slid into hers and clung on as though she was his life raft. 

As soon as they walked through the complex’s front doors later that afternoon, Jimmy peeled off toward the hangar, muttering something about making further adjustments to the Corposant. Cindy debated whether she should reach out to stop him, but the breezeway had already sealed itself off.

“Just once I’d like to be on a jet pack ride that wasn’t so tense,” she said to herself, heading over to the elevator and punching the button to go up.

Once she was up on the second floor, Cindy retrieved the universal remote from its hidden compartment in the wall and plopped down in one of the beanbags facing the big projection screen. Aside from the massive DVD collection she’d discovered in the walk-in closet over on the game room side of this floor – she suspected the closet was actually a hyperspace pocket given its size – Jimmy also shelled out for several streaming services, including her personal favorite, Summit Superlative. When she was a grad student, Summit had been her one entertainment indulgence. She’d spent many hours watching shows like Leave the Bastard and skirting revision deadlines.

She flicked over to the movie section, moving right past all the Penny Arcade entries – some of those were fun for a laugh, but they were mostly aimed at kids – and down to the Spooky and Supernatural section. In Cindy’s opinion, Muffy the Vampire Annihilator hardly counted as spooky, but at least it was an upgrade from when Summit organized it into the Horror category. Then again, maybe she was desensitized from watching it so many times. She hunkered down in her beanbag and selected the Play Now button on screen. 

“‘My name is Muffy Winters. Track and field captain, incumbent homecoming queen of Windvale High, and a Libra. And my sixteenth birthday was officially the worst day of my life’,” Cindy recited in time with the opening narration. The camera cut to Muffy touching up her mascara in the school bathroom, only to scream when she caught a glimpse of a man in an olive green raincoat standing behind her. Muffy’s sustained scream shattered the mirror, the jagged pieces falling and spelling out the title on a black screen while the movie’s theme, “High School Bites”, kicked in. 

Obviously, Cindy preferred the Muffy show over the movie. The characters had time to bloom out of their stereotypes, the supernatural elements expanded beyond the scope of vampires, and the plot was more intricate. But she had to admit the movie had its campy charm. It’d been billed as more of a comedy when it came out, leading to protests from some idiotic parents who’d taken their far-too-young kids to see it and had been appalled by the gratuitous blood and gore that began at the thirty-minute mark and hardly let up throughout. But it wasn’t like it was called Muffy the Vampire Tickler.

An hour and change into the movie, during the knife-throwing scene – one of Cindy’s personal favorites – Goddard shuffled in and pressed his metal muzzle against her arm. Cindy yelped at the cold, causing Goddard to jump back and nearly spill the open can of Purple Flurp he was holding in a mechanical hand from his back compartment.

Cindy pressed a hand to her chest. “Next time you want my attention, just bark, would ya?”

“Grr.” Goddard extended the Purple Flurp toward Cindy again.

“Thank you.” Cindy accepted the can and scratched under Goddard’s chin. At that same moment, Jimmy came in, bearing his own can of Flurp and a giant bowl of freshly popped popcorn. The scent of hot butter made Cindy’s stomach growl. 

“Thought I might find you up here.” He watched as Muffy sent the Annihilator’s Dagger, a bright, lethal blade with a ruby-set hilt, sailing into the throat of a burlap dummy target. “What are you watching?”

“Muffy the Vampire Annihilator. Movie, not the show.”

“Didn’t know there was a movie.”

“Yeah, the backing studio wanted both, and Muffy’s creator said he was cool with it as long as they did the movie first so he could test out story ideas with a higher budget.”

“Huh,” Jimmy said thoughtfully, sitting down in the beanbag next to Cindy and balancing the popcorn bowl in his lap. “Sort of like an extended pilot. Maybe more shows should start out this way.”

“It’d reduce the amount of slop that gets put out there, that’s for sure.”

“Definitely.” Jimmy winced as Muffy strutted over to the dummy, yanked the Dagger out of its throat, and decapitated it with a clean swipe and a sharp smile.

“I get the sense you didn’t just come up here to learn movie production trivia.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Cindy reached for the remote, hit the pause button, and rolled her head in Jimmy’s direction. Jimmy set the popcorn bowl and his Flurp can off to one side, then turned to face her fully.

“I was thinking over something Sheen said back at the Candy Bar.”

“Oh, God,” Cindy groaned. “Sheen just says shit recreationally, you know that? It’s like his brain is full of those word magnets people use to make bad refrigerator poetry.”

“Actually, I think he made an apt observation,” Jimmy countered. “About us.”

Sensing the seriousness in his tone, Cindy sat up straighter and scooted herself around so their knees touched.

“By outward appearances, we did go about all this backwards. We reconnected, albeit under unusual circumstances, we had our initial disagreement,” an embarrassed flush crawled over Jimmy’s cheeks at that, “and then we’re living together.”

“On your suggestion,” Cindy pointed out.

“Right. But we haven’t really…” Jimmy revolved his hands around each other, “defined what our relationship is. I mean, we are exes.”

“Only due to geographic inconvenience.” This was the reason they’d devised when they’d sat down on that long night the summer before they departed for college. At any rate, it sounded more formal than long-distance sucks and I don’t want to do it. “Which has since resolved mostly due to my efforts, by the way.”

“I’ll acknowledge that,” Jimmy chuckled. “Not like I made myself easy to find. But Cindy…where do you want to go with this?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…” Jimmy reached over and took Cindy’s hand. “Did you come looking for me because you were seeking familiarity in temporary uncertainty, or because you wanted to rekindle what we had?”

Cindy stared at him in the cool glow from the projection screen. In this light, every angle in his face was sharpened, and his blue eyes seared into hers. “Both,” she answered.

“Both?”

“Jimmy, breaking up with you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Harder than moving cross-country, harder than working out financial aid and budgeting, harder than the GRE and countless grant applications. All of that was a cake walk compared to the night we agreed to end it. In hindsight, it was the right call, but…” Cindy took a shaky breath, “in the days and weeks after? I thought it would kill me.”

Jimmy recoiled at her harsh words but didn’t look away.

“When I decided to come back to Retroville, I didn’t do it because I thought you’d be here, waiting around for me. Yeah, I wanted to be someplace familiar while I figured out my shit, but I was sure you’d done something really out there like, I dunno, join the intergalactic UN.”  

“Technically, the intergalactic UN would be the UG. United Galaxies.”

“Oh, you know what the fuck I meant,” Cindy snapped. “Anyway. I’ve done the math. We’ve spent as many years away from each other as we did in each other’s lives as kids, but I think if the last few weeks have proved anything,” her voice was gentle as she took his other hand, rolling her thumb over his knuckles, “we found the spark again.”

“It was never lost,” Jimmy said, smiling warmly. “There is one other thing I want to hash out.”

“Yeah?”

“We’re a bit old to be using boyfriend and girlfriend, aren’t we? There has to be something more mature we can use for each other.”

It didn’t take long for Cindy to come up with something, her smirk growing inch by inch. “I’ve got one.”

“Oh?”

“Partner. Confers a level of commitment without being specific about the exact nature of commitment, which frankly isn’t anyone’s business anyway, but whatever. Applicable in a romantic and professional sense – I mean, we are gonna be working together in the lab. Gender-neutral.”

Jimmy took a moment to consider. “That’s…elegant. Mathematically and semantically.”

“Well, I am the wordsmith between the two of us.” Cindy tugged on his hands. “Now come on, partner. Your popcorn’s getting cold.”

They cuddled together on one beanbag, much as they had the first time Jimmy had shown her the home theater space, the popcorn bowl sitting on their laps and Flurp cans on either side of them. Goddard settled down at their feet, engrossed in Muffy working through her Annihilator training.

“Where’s Ian?” Jimmy asked as they watched Muffy and her Steward, Daniel, have one of several in-depth conversations about her new responsibilities.

“What?”

“Ian,” Jimmy repeated. “I’m pretty sure Daniel,” he gestured to the bespectacled mentor on screen, “has an assistant in the Steward Council archives.”

“He does,” Cindy confirmed, “but only in the show. Hang on.” She squinted at Jimmy. “Have you watched Muffy?”

“I may have gotten curious about your obsession and attempted to watch while Muffy was still airing. But jumping in the middle of the sixth season proved highly confusing, so I decided to catch up on the previous episodes through, shall we say, dubiously legal means on the Internet. And then I may have a collector’s edition DVD box set because I wanted to re-watch the series last year.”

“Wha – I wasn’t obsessed!”

“I seem to recall you dressing up as the eponymous character for five consecutive Halloweens. In fact, I suspect she’s the reason you have a predilection for halter tops.”

Cindy gaped at Jimmy, gobsmacked. “You know what, I changed my mind about the partner thing. I’m just gonna call you jackass.”

“Whatever you want, dear.”

The sudden drop of a pet name made Cindy send the popcorn bowl flying.

Chapter Text

“I’m telling you, everybody looks good in a square neckline!”

“Yeah, maybe if you got shoulders like an overpass!”

“Oh, I know I didn’t just hear you say that!”

Cindy pushed the end of her pen down on the notepad in front of her, then let the pen spring up with a tiny ­ch-chik. The meeting had devolved into chaos almost as soon as it’d started. Every one of Libby’s cousins had their own ideas of how the bridesmaid dresses should look; so far, the only thing Cindy had written down was sweetheart neckline with a faint blue line crossed through that as soon as an objection was raised.

To her left, at the head of the fold-up banquet table they’d set up in the living room, Libby was drumming her fingers on her temple with ever-increasing speed, frown deepening. The fourth time Cindy let her pen go ch-chik, Libby stood abruptly from her folding chair, planted her hands on the plastic tabletop, and let out such a loud “HEY!” that Cindy, the queen of raising her voice, flinched.

Eight pairs of eyes trailed their way up the table in Libby’s direction. Even baby Dion stopped suckling his pacifier momentarily and leaned over his high chair tray to gaze at his older cousin.

“I’m about three seconds away from kickin’ y’all outta my house and making Granny my only bridesmaid,” Libby warned. “So if y’all don’t want that to happen, you better zip it now!”

“All we’re doing is generating suggestions!” one of the cousins piped up.

“Yeah, it’s called collaboration,” said another.

“No, what it’s called is chaos, and I don’t want any more of it. I’m the one getting married here, Althea,” Libby said sharply, and the cousin who said collaboration squirmed in her seat. “I get the final say in what goes on.”

“Then why did you even invite us here?”

“Because I thought everyone could act like adults about this! But it’s clear you wanna turn this into a fashion show where every one of you looks good. God.” Libby rubbed her forehead, a vain attempt at soothing a burgeoning headache. “Maybe I’ll go for equal misery and put y’all in screamin’ bright yellow.”

The squabbling fired up again, this time with even more finger-pointing. Libby waved her hands over the table as though willing away an unsightly mess and tapped Cindy on the arm. “C’mon, let’s go.”

“Where are we g—?”

“Out,” Libby snapped. “I’ll drive.”

They ducked out of the house and into the garage unnoticed, Libby tearing open the driver’s door of her hatchback and slamming it shut behind her with such ferocity the whole car quaked. Cindy slid into the passenger seat cautiously.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to—?”

“Yes, I’m sure. God, please just…” Libby tilted her face up to the car’s roof and pushed back against the headrest with a heavy sigh. “Just let me do something for myself, all right?”

Cindy nodded, watching as the rise and fall of Libby’s chest gradually slowed and her breathing quieted.

“It’s all comin’ up so fast,” she said, box braids swaying as she shook her head. “I always thought it was crazy when people would announce their weddings and it was like a year out or more, but now I see the point. It’s so you don’t have to make so many decisions all at once and feel like you’re getting crushed under some huge boulder.”

Having been in a position of almost being crushed under a boulder quite literally once upon a time, Cindy could empathize. “Libs, those are the people who get all caught up in making it a big pageant. It’s more about having a big party where everyone’s dressed fancy and paying attention to you than actually celebrating anything, you know?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“I mean, you and Sheen kinda do everything a married couple does already anyway. You just don’t have the piece of paper that makes you legitimate.”

“Is that what you told yourself to get through grad school? It’s all for the paper?”

Cindy gawked while her best friend snickered. “I forgot how snarky you can be.”

“What was it you said back at the Candy Bar? You bring out what was always there?”

“Something like that.”

Libby slipped her key in the ignition and hit the garage door opener button clipped to the sun visor, still snickering. “C’mon, we’ll get coffee. My treat.”

“Haven’t your cousins got you wired enough as it is?”

“Maybe the caffeine will have the opposite effect and calm me down.” Libby shrugged. “Or maybe I’ll go into cardiac arrest and Sheen will have to get married to me in the hospital. Whatever.”

“Okay, now you’re starting to sound way too much like me.”

They ended up on the eastern edge of downtown, where most of the chain restaurants were clustered together. Libby pulled into the lot of a brown brick cube of a building with a massive coffee cup perched on the roof, the words Dean’s Beans spelled out in red bold letters below.

“I don’t remember this place,” Cindy muttered.

“It’s pretty new. Only been here a few years. Plus the guy who runs it actually bothers to keep soy milk in stock unlike a lot of other places in town.” Libby swung into the drive-through lane and dropped her window as she rolled up to the menu board.

“Dean’s Beans. What can I brew for you?”

“Oh, just my usual. Medium caramel soy frappe with non-dairy whip. And uh, put the drizzle on top today, I need it.” Libby turned to Cindy. “What do you want?”

“I know that voice.” Cindy pointed at the speaker. “Why do I know that voice?”

“You’ll see,” Libby grinned. “Now c’mon, spit it out.”

“Medium iced coffee, black.”

“Seriously? That’s it?”

“It’s all I drink when it’s hot outside!” At Libby’s disappointed look, Cindy rolled her eyes. “Fine. Throw in two shots of hazelnut syrup.”

“That’s much better.” Libby turned back to the speaker. “You got that?”

“Loud and clear.”

At the service window, while Libby dug through the cavern of her purse for her wallet, Cindy peered through the glass, trying to make out who was measuring and loading the blender with such practiced ease. Clearly they were better than the average barista, someone who actually cared about what they were doing. And that voice…it was wrinkling some part of her brain, but she still couldn’t place it.

The window popped open. “Your total is $12.84, cash or – oh, hey.” The barista ducked down to look into the car. “Didn’t know you were back in town.”

Cindy’s jaw dropped. “Nick?”

Nick tossed his head, sweeping a wayward black hair off his forehead. All at once, that familiar gesture launched Cindy back to fourth grade, when he’d rolled into town and the very sight of him rendered her incapable of saying more than two words without sounding like an idiot. He still carried that same sense of self-assurance that’d drawn everyone to him back then. And if anything, he’d only gotten more handsome since they’d graduated.

Then Cindy snapped back to reality. She was with Jimmy now. He was a schoolyard crush, too, one she’d actually done something about. “W-what are you doing here?” she managed to say.

“Well, you know. Professional skateboarding went out as soon as I shredded my knee, so I had to do something. You remember that guy that used to wander around the streets – think we used to call him Crazy Louie?”

Cindy nodded.

“Turned out he owned Lou’s Brews downtown, but hadn’t worked there in years. Sold the business to me for nothing. Been here ever since.” Nick grinned. “Good to see you.” 

“Y-yeah, same. Good to see you too.”

Nick winked and pulled back inside the service window to process Libby’s card and finish their drinks. The whole time, Libby stared at Cindy out of the corner of her eye, smirking.

“Keep your mouth shut,” Cindy hissed.

“I didn’t say anything!”

Nick reappeared with their drinks and passed them to Libby, keeping steady eye contact with Cindy. “Don’t be a stranger, all right?”

“We won’t!” Libby said far too cheerfully. She had the decency to wait until she’d pulled out of the parking lot before cackling.

“You’re evil,” Cindy mumbled around her straw.

“I can’t believe you’re still like that in front of him!”

“We hadn’t seen each other in years, and Nick somehow got even hotter! That’s a valid excuse.”

“Yeah, but you’re with Jimmy now.”

“I can still find other people attractive. That’s not a crime.” To emphasize that she was fully done with this line of conversation, Cindy took a loud, long slurp of her iced coffee.

“Fair point. Hey, you mind if we swing by the pharmacy? I’ve got Carl’s wedding invitation here in my purse.”

“Is there anything you don’t have in that purse?”

“The will to go home just yet. I’m looking for any excuse to kill time.”

Cindy shrugged. “I gotta check on a prescription anyway.”

They pulled up outside Retroville Drug a few minutes later. When they walked in, Carl was at the counter counseling an elderly woman with very thick glasses, patiently reading through the label of her medication.

“And if you have any questions later, you can always call the store, Ms. Severson.”

“Oh, I’ll be sure to give you a call!” Ms. Severson tottered toward the store’s front and, leaning in toward Cindy, whispered, “Maybe I’ll invite him to my Thursday night bingo. He’s a real cutie!”

Unsure of what exactly to say to that, Cindy simply nodded, bottom lip curled over her teeth so she wouldn’t burst out laughing. Ms. Severson went on her way, and Cindy went to join Libby at the counter.

“Sorry I’m so late in getting this to you, Carl,” Libby said as she slid the light purple envelope across the counter toward him. “I couldn’t mail it since I don’t have your current address, but I knew I’d find you here.”

Carl slit the envelope open raggedly with a ballpoint pen and pulled out the invitation. “Ooh, it glitters!”

“Believe it or not, the glitter was Sheen’s idea.”

“Can I fill out the RSVP card and give it to you now?”

Libby shrugged. “Don’t have anywhere else I gotta be.”

Biting back her contradiction to that statement, Cindy watched as Carl filled the card in line by painstaking line with tidy block letters. She thought back to their school days, wondering if his handwriting had always been that neat. If anything, it looked like he’d tried copying Jimmy’s drafting print when he drew up invention blueprints by hand.

“Hmm.” Carl paused, pen hovering over the question that read Plus One? Y/N “What if I want to bring someone, but I haven’t asked them yet and I don’t know if they’ll say yes?”

“Honestly, I’d just put ‘yes’ anyway. All it does is tell the caterers not to skimp on the food,” Libby explained.

“Okay.” Carl looked up. “Cindy, do you want to go with me to Sheen and Libby’s wedding?”

Bringing her iced coffee into the pharmacy with her was Cindy’s first mistake. Her second mistake was taking a long drink right before Carl had asked her that question. The acid from the coffee seared her windpipe as it went down the wrong way, which only made her suck in more air and sent her into a longer coughing fit. To make matters worse, Carl and Libby simply stood there, offering no help whatsoever. With friends like these…

Eventually Cindy recovered, tears stinging the corners of her eyes and spluttering out the last drops of coffee as she slammed her cup up on the counter.

“Carl, I…” Honesty was the best policy here. “I’m actually bringing someone else. So, uh, sorry. And thanks, but yeah. Already taken.”

“Ohhhh. Oh well,” Carl said with a shrug, “I thought I’d ask anyway.”

“Hey, since we’re already making this a delightfully awkward experience, can you tell me if I can pick up my prescription? I know it’s a couple days ahead, but still.”

“Oh, you mean the levonorgestrel/ethinyl estradiol—”

“Do you have to say the name out loud every time?!”

The lab doors parted with a hiss, and the putridity of simmering milfoil hit Cindy’s nose immediately. To anyone else, it’d be cause to light some incense or break out an armload of air fresheners, but for her, it smelled like home. She sighed, and the tension of the past few hours worked its way out of her shoulders with each step she took into the lab.

Jimmy wasn’t anywhere in her line of sight. He was most likely off monitoring the processing tanks, even though she’d told him it was equal to watching a pot of water come to a boil. She herself had gotten a lot of doodling done when she’d been sitting in the student labs back in Washington. Still, she could understand his excitement; the siren call of a novel experiment was irresistible to him.

Cindy made her way over to Jimmy’s oversized computer chair at the front of the lab and threw herself down in it. A different combination of smells greeted her: leather, cool mint, and syrupy-sweet grape soda. There was also a deeper scent, one that was unquestionably him and that made her curl up sideways in the chair, press her cheek into the cushions, close her eyes, and take a deep, satisfied inhale.

“I believe you’re sitting in my spot.”

She cracked an eye open. Jimmy was standing in front of her, grinning, a screwdriver and a cuboid device clutched in one hand.

“You’ve got other chairs around here.”

“Yeah, but none of them are quite as inviting as this one.”

Reluctantly, Cindy took her feet off the chair arm and pivoted to the front. Jimmy settled in beside her and, with one hand behind her knee, brought her legs back across his lap.

“Whatcha got here?” Cindy asked, picking up the cube and examining it.

“Variant on the Hypercube. Now with fifty-percent more storage and three USB charging ports.”

“Does it have a 3-mm headphone jack, too?”

Jimmy gazed off into the middle distance. “Knew I forgot something. At least I didn’t forget this.” He brushed his fingertips under Cindy’s chin and kissed her softly in greeting.

“If you follow that up with ‘hi honey, how was your day?’, I’m outta here.”

“Okay…what transpired today, my disaccharide?”

Cindy narrowed her eyes. “Which disaccharide?”

“C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁, obviously.”

“Good.” She rested her head against his shoulder and handed the cube back to him. “Bridesmaid meeting was a total disaster, like I predicted. I know Libby’s trying to be nice and let everyone voice their opinion, but she’s gotta take the bull by the horns! This is her wedding, not everyone else’s!”  

“Not everyone is as,” Jimmy hummed, searching for the right words, “singularly assertive as you.”

“Here I thought you were gonna say ‘aggressive’.”

“I considered it. Then I considered how much I enjoy living.”

Cindy scoffed. “Anyway, Libby finally did find some cojones, and we left the meeting for coffee. Found out Nick runs a drive-thru café now, which was kinda weird. We ended up at the pharmacy so Libby could drop off Carl’s invite to the wedding. Oh, and Carl asked me to be his plus-one.”

Jimmy paused his twiddling on the cube with his screwdriver. “Did you say yes?”

“Uh, no? Why on earth would I say yes?”

“You could certainly do worse. Carl’s courteous, he asks a lot of questions to move a conversation along, he dances decently if he imbibes the right amount of alcohol proportional to his body weight—”

“Neutron, I’m taking you as my plus-one!”

“Are you now?”

“Yes! I—” Cindy furrowed her brows and stared him down. As soon as he looked up, a small smile on his face, the realization struck her. “I’ve never actually asked you to go to the wedding with me.”

“Knew you’d get it eventually.”

“All right, all right!” Cindy sat up. “Jimmy,” she said in a lighter, sweeter voice than before, “as my partner, and if you’re so inclined, would you please accompany me to Libby and Sheen’s wedding?”

“Genuflection to personal preference, an acknowledgement of our relationship status, and you said please?” Jimmy tapped a finger on his chin in mock contemplation. “How can I possibly refuse?”

“A simple ‘yes’ would’ve worked.”

“Mm, not really my style.” He leaned in and kissed Cindy’s cheek. “Speaking of which, is there a dress code I should observe?”  

“Formal. Just wear a dark suit and you’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure that’s not just your personal dress code for me?”

Cindy blushed. During Carl’s bar mitzvah, the whole hunkmuffin incident from Jet Fusion’s wedding had come to light thanks to Libby, and she hadn’t been able to live it down since. “I promise. Now, were you keeping an eye on those algae tanks while I was gone?”

“Even better.” Jimmy tucked his screwdriver into an inner pocket and pulled out a spool about the size of a CD wound with shiny bluish-green filament. “Seventeen percent algal content and eighty-three percent polylactide. No petroleum resin whatsoever. And as you can see, it’s remained stable.”

Cindy took the spool and turned it over in her hands.

“I couldn’t make very much before you came back, but I thought it might be enough to print something small.”

“What about its heat resistance?”

“Given the high proportion of polylactide, it’ll probably liquefy at 150 degrees Celsius. So I wouldn’t make a piece of Tupperware and stick it in the oven.”

“Obviously not. And its tensile strength?”

“Hey, I can’t test every physical property! Gotta leave some science for you to do.”

Cindy grinned, then tossed the spool and caught it in midair. “How gentlemanly of you.”

Jimmy’s 3D printer wasn’t the biggest or best on the market. He’d bought it secondhand and on the cheap a few years back when the initial frenzy was dying down and many individual people who’d bought printers realized they had little use for them. The one Cindy had used back in Washington was far more advanced in its applications, so that made her more prepared to handle Jimmy’s machine. She sat on the rolling pedestal stool and began drawing on the printer’s CAD interface. Jimmy stood behind her, head tilted as he watched the screen.

“Are you…drawing a ring?” he asked.

“I’ve still got the specs memorized from my thesis work. Needed something basic to print to test the variety of material formulations I had going.” Cindy held out the spool of filament to Jimmy. “Mind threading it up for me?”

“I thought you’d want to do the honors.”

“You know this machine better than I do. Besides, if something goes awry, I can document it as a material installation error.”

“Very funny.” Yet Jimmy he went over to the spooling compartment and threaded up the filament anyway. The printer sprung to life as it read through the last of Cindy’s drawing specifications, fed the filament into the print nozzle, and shifted the nozzle into position. And so began the waiting game.

“This is usually the part where I sat and did Sudoku puzzles, but that seems a bit anti-social.”

“We could see who solves the most puzzles in the time it takes for this job to be done,” Jimmy suggested.

Cindy’s eyes lit up with the fire of competition. “You’re on. Only because I know you’ll lose.”

Half an hour and six puzzles later – Jimmy was still stuck on his fourth hard one – a string of beeps caught Cindy’s ear. She headed over to the printer, opened the door, and scooped out the still-warm plastic ring. Cradling it in her hand, she brought it back to where the two of them had been sitting.

“Need some help?” she asked.

“I would be fine if you hadn’t insisted we do these in pen,” Jimmy growled, scratching over another incorrect entry.

“Well, put the pen down before your brain overheats. Ring’s done.”

Jimmy glanced up and then down at Cindy’s open palm. “May I?”

“Mmhm.”

He picked the ring out of her hand, rubbing a thumb over the smooth outside surface. In a move that made her heart lurch, he slid the ring down onto one of his fingers – the left middle finger, she noted with some relief – and turned his hand over, watching the colors shift like the surface of a pond under the lab lights. It was a little loose now, but as the plastic continued to cool, it’d fit him perfectly.

“You can keep it,” Cindy blurted.

“Hmm?”

“I made so many of those in school, and I’ve got a couple stashed in my stuff – the ones that didn’t break, anyway. You made the filament, so you might as well. A memento of our first experiment together.” 

“Thank you,” Jimmy said, taken aback. He sat there, turning the ring around his finger bit by bit, until a grin crossed his face. “Not to undercut your sentimentality, but this is hardly our first experiment together.”

“Making out in your lab when we were fourteen doesn’t count.”

“I was thinking more of our trials with rocket fuel synthesized from various spent cooking oils.”

“The summer I never stopped smelling like a French fry,” Cindy recalled fondly.

“Though now that you mention it, my old computer chair has a fair number of memories associated with…other experimentations.”

The two of them blushed at their respective memories.

“My new chair has a lot more room, as you saw earlier,” Jimmy continued.

“Are you just pointing this out because we need something else to do while more filament gets made, and I just totally kicked your ass at Sudoku?”

“…Maybe. But I’d also point out my chair has a massage function with five different stimulating vibratory patterns.”

“You’re shameless, Neutron.”

A couple nights later, Cindy found herself in the Retrodome, quite literally on the edge of her seat.

“And it looks like Muttface has El Brillo in one helluva headlock! I have no idea how he’s gonna get out of this one, folks!”

Anyone over the age of seven knew that this kind of wrestling was staged. There was no way anyone could actually execute a flying clothesline unplanned unless they had no sense of self-preservation. Yet Cindy had gotten sucked in from the second Sheen walked out in that ridiculously over-sequined singlet and mask, and the announcer boomed out “Try as they might, no man can dim his shine! It’s the one, the only, El Brilloooooooooooooooooooooo!” The fact that Libby was the queen of dramatic gasps also helped with the immersion, letting one out every time Sheen pulled off some dazzling move or got trapped.

On Cindy’s other side, Jimmy hunched forward, elbows on his knees and hands clenched around a paper bag of pork rinds. She hadn’t expected him to be interested in going tonight. Lunch with friends after a long state of hermitage was one thing; attending a wrestling match surrounded by strangers was another thing entirely. Yet here he was, the most invested of the three of them.

Sheen sank to one knee, making a show of gagging with his tongue out as Muttface flexed his arm and tightened his hold.

“I really don’t think he’s gonna get out of this,” Jimmy muttered.

“He will,” Cindy replied, reaching over and plucking a couple of pork rind pieces from Jimmy’s bag. Years of martial arts had trained her to pick out a feint from a mile off, so she had a pretty good idea of what was coming next. In particular, she was watching how Sheen’s other foot kept sliding back to give him a wider base to maneuver.

A few seconds passed, and Muttface was flipped onto his back. Sheen clamped down on Muttface’s elbows, leaned in close to his face, and fired off some kind of rapid trash-talk that made Muttface thrash on the mat, his feet slipping as he looked for some kind of leverage.

“Called it,” Cindy said, popping a pork rind in her mouth.

“It looks like El Brillo’s got the upper hand! And that’s five…six…seven…” The announcer’s voice was drowned out by the crowd chanting along with the countdown, right up until the bell rang signaling the end of the round. Sheen stood up, a fist raised in victory, and the referee gestured him back to his corner while Muttface made an exaggerated effort to get to his feet.

“You’re doing great, baby!” Libby called out.

Sheen tapped his chest twice with his fist and flashed her a peace sign, then rested back against the ropes to catch his breath.

“We’re gonna take a few minutes to reset for the next round, folks. Get up, stretch your legs, maybe check out those concession stands!”

“Way to drive everyone in one direction.” Cindy rolled her eyes and tapped on Jimmy’s knee. “I’m gonna get something to wash down these pork rinds. You want anything?”

“Flurp. Can you get that special edition flavor if they’ve got it?”

“Sure. Hey, Libby? Want anything?”

Libby shook her head, watching Sheen towel off in his corner of the ring with a look that suggested, if it were possible, she’d have cartoon hearts floating around her head. Cindy shrugged, rose to her feet, and headed off in a quest for a drink.

Long strides and a lethal stare made it so she wasn’t too far from the front of the line. While stuck three spots behind some guy contemplating the obscene number of nacho toppings the Retrodome had on offer, Cindy felt her phone buzz in her back pocket. UNKNOWN NUMBER, the screen read, along with a 346 area code. She swiped the reject button and opened up another Sudoku game while she waited.

A few minutes later, as she walked away from the concession stand with a Purple Flurp Magenta Marvel in one hand and a root beer in the other, Cindy’s phone let off three short buzzes. Voicemail. Curiosity got the better of her, and she decided she could afford to miss the first few minutes of the next round. She set the drinks on top of a nearby wastebasket that wasn’t overflowing with discards, pulled out her phone, and dialed her inbox.

“Cyn-thee-ah. It’s me, your mother. In case you forgot you had one.”

Sasha had clearly been drinking – she always dragged out Cindy’s name too long and hit the second syllable harder than necessary.  

“I know we aren’t on speaking terms at the moment, in spite of my continued efforts to reinitiate contact.”

“It’s coming damn close to stalking, Mother,” Cindy muttered at the recording, crossing her other arm over her chest and tucking her hand into her armpit.

“Your father let it slip you’ve gone back to that fetid little suburb we raised you in. I suppose that’s the only place you know as home, so it’s natural you’d want to return. Hopefully you don’t find yourself stuck there,” Sasha spit out the word stuck like it was poison, “like I did for twenty-three years.”

“Can you just wrap this up?” Cindy groaned.

“Anyway, I hope whatever it is you’re doing that’s so engrossing you couldn’t bother with a trip to Houston to see your poor mother…I hope it makes you happy.”

If she’d been able to beam lasers from her eyes, Cindy would have glared twin holes in the concrete column opposite her. “You miserable sack of shit,” she snarled, even though the voicemail was over. “How fucking dare you—”

“Cindy?”

She cut her eyes to the right. Jimmy stood a few feet away in the emptying concourse, hands in his pockets, concerned.

“The next round’s already started. Who were you talking to?”

Slowly, Cindy lowered her phone from her ear. Just like she had countless times before, she let her anger slither down into the steel box shelved deep in her guts and slammed the lid shut. A calm smile slid over her face.

“No one important,” she answered, tucking her phone away and handing Jimmy his soda. “Want a drink?”

Chapter Text

“Could Cindy Vortex please report to the hangar at her earliest convenience?”

Cindy, in the midst of diving for another breaststroke, flopped forward and got a nose full of pool water for her efforts. Through her burning, bleary eyes, she glared up at the white speaker embedded in the ceiling and raised her middle finger at it.

“The obscene gesture was unnecessary.”

“So is calling for me on the PA system like a manager summoning some wayward store associate!” 

“I’m in the middle of something—”

“Oh, I didn’t mean to disturb you. Was I swimming too loud?”

Jimmy huffed into the microphone. “Can you please just get up and over here when you can? I have something to show you.”

“Yeah, yeah, all right.” When the PA system clicked off, Cindy muttered, “Cutting into my pool time? That’s an unforgivable offense, Neutron.”

A few minutes later, she was clothed, ponytail dripping water into the elevator carpet. Oh well – a little chlorine wouldn’t kill it. Goddard was waiting for her in the kitchen when the elevator opened onto the main floor, tail whisking against the floor.

“He could’ve just sent you down to the pool,” she said, bending down to scratch Goddard’s chin. “Would’ve been a much nicer messenger.”

Goddard grunted in a way that Cindy took to as him agreeing without really saying as much. He trotted off toward the breezeway leading to the hangar, and she followed him. They walked together, sliders slapping and metallic paws clicking on the tiles, until they reached the pair of doors opening into the hangar itself. As if heeding some inaudible command, Goddard parked himself in a firm sit and looked up at Cindy expectantly.

It took a moment for it to register with Cindy. “He can’t be serious.”

“Arr-wow.”

Cindy plucked a hair from her temple and held it up to the DNA scanner next to the doors. Yesterday morning, Jimmy had told her that he’d re-coded the locks and other security measures in the complex to respond to her biometrics as well as his. Maybe it didn’t have quite the same panache as placing a metal house key in her hand, but the connotation was the same: wherever I am, I want you there. “I suppose if you’ve been remotely hacked, he doesn’t want your presence to be capable of unlocking anything.”

“Grr-rr.”

The DNA scanner let out an affirmative beep, and the double doors slid open, warm air rushing over both of them. Cindy let Goddard lead her about fifty feet into the hangar, then off to the right through a few rows of vehicles. She spied a pair of white sneakers poking out from under what looked to be an old hippie’s extended-length camper van, complete with a riotous tie-dye paint job. However, Cindy was pretty sure most hippie vans didn’t have wings or a set of barrel-sized jet turbines attached to said wings.

“Vortex reporting to the hangar,” she said, crossing her arms and shifting her weight to one hip. “Now what did you want me to see?”

Jimmy dug his heels into the floor and edged himself out from under the van on a creeper. He had several grease smudges on his cheeks, and Cindy fought the urge to crouch down and swipe them off with her thumb. “This,” he said, grinning and spreading his arms wide.

“I don’t follow.” 

“Remember when a meteorite landed in your front yard, and you and Libby found some rather eye-catching gems inside?”

Cindy gasped. “The aster-rubies!”

“We didn’t have the Intergalactic Showdown ship yet, and the Strato XL can only carry two people, so we went on our mining expedition in a van-ship.”

“But then we crashed in the middle of the street on re-entry.” 

“Which is why this,” Jimmy pointed up at the bumper, “is the Flugvergnügen Mark II and not Mark I.”

“Okay, cool, so you rebuilt one of your old vehicles. I’m not understanding the significance.”

Jimmy wheeled himself out fully from under the van and sat up on the creeper. “I promised I’d take you to see Venus five weeks ago, and before you interrupt, yes, I’ve been counting. I was working on the Corposant to get us there, but then I thought: what if we went on a longer trip?”

Cindy tilted her head. “What’s your idea of longer?”

“A proper tour of the inner planets. With perhaps a slingshot around Jupiter for old time’s sake. In Earth time, we’d only be gone a few days; the Flugvergnügen Mark II is equipped with a hyperspace drive to ensure our travels remain scenic rather than tedious. And we can still take the Corposant along for shorter junkets on the planets themselves. So.” He spread his hands again. “What do you say?”

Cindy let her eyes rove over the van, chewing on the inside of her lip. Once she was satisfied at how much Jimmy was squirming on his creeper, she glanced down at him. “Are we going to get through the Van Patten belt unscathed?”

“There are no guarantees, but I’ve calculated our probability of safe passage at ninety-two-point-seven percent.”

“Mmhm.” A smirk crossed her face. “You still have that mini golf course?”

Jimmy groaned. “I was hoping you’d forget about that.”

“Oh come on, Mercury wouldn’t be the same without it! Besides, I’m the only person in the galaxy who can claim to have beat you in the same sport on two different planets. Last question: do you think we can find some aster-rubies to keep this time?”

“Again, no guarantees, but we can poke around the Kuiper belt to see what we find. And don’t worry: after we launch into space, the van’s solar-power system will take over. No risk of running out of fuel this time.”

“Good, good.” Cindy gave the van a final once-over from roof to tire. “Okay, Neutron. Let’s road-trip through the stars together.”

Jimmy parked the van – inasmuch as one can park in outer space – a few miles outside of Venus’ gravitational pull. He summoned the Corposant out of the Hypercube, threw open the van’s back doors, and settled into the front seat.

“Can’t forget this.” He offered Cindy what appeared to be a basic digital watch with O₂ level: 100% displayed on the face; he had a similar one strapped to his right wrist. “We’ll have about forty-five minutes before we have to head back.”

Cindy nodded and put on the watch; instantly, a cushion of oxygen surrounded her. She settled into the seat behind Jimmy, wrapped her arms around his waist, and rested against his upper back while he performed final checks. Her eyes had just drifted closed when the sound of revving made them pop open.

“What is it with you and adding unnecessary sound effects to things?”

Jimmy’s shoulder blade shifted under her cheek as he shrugged and twisted the false throttle again. “I think it’s funny.”

“Of course you do.”

Riding a motorcycle through space was quite a different experience from riding one on Earth. There wasn’t any wind stinging the eyes and ripping at clothing, only the rush of forward momentum provided by the Corposant’s jets. Instead of road rash, the main hazard in falling out here was pinwheeling out into the void. But there was still the sensation of being completely immersed in one’s surroundings – in this case, the stars. When Cindy kept her eyes closed, she could easily imagine them as a comet streaking along, even though Jimmy would correct her by saying the Oort cloud was well far away from here and the odds of an icy body making it this close to the Sun intact were incredibly low. Whatever. She could still imagine.

Jimmy slowed them down a few miles above the upper edge of Venus’ atmosphere and drifted off to one side. The main jets died off, and a smaller set of jets on the Corposant took over, firing every so often to maintain the bike’s position. Cindy swung her other leg over so she sat sideways, and Jimmy did the same. Below them, Venus glowed a bright white, dark bands shifting every so often through the atmosphere.

“The clouds don’t seem to be forming much of anything,” Cindy observed.

“That’s because you need these.” Jimmy handed her a pair of binoculars he’d pulled out of his Hypercube. “They’re capable of rendering images in ultraviolet.”

Cindy held the binoculars up to her eyes and gasped. Where once there had been a mostly milky atmosphere, there were now swirls of clouds rendered in shades of brown and blue, with glimpses of orange and bright pink below the top layer.

“The clouds are mostly composed of sulfuric acid, and are so dense that they reflect the majority of sunlight away from the planet,” Jimmy explained.

“That’s why we can see it so clearly at night back home.”

“Exactly. We don’t really know how or why the clouds absorb ultraviolet light, but it at least allows us to take some really cool photos.” He tilted his head when he saw Cindy chuckling. “What?”

“Nothing, nothing. It’s just…” Cindy lowered the binoculars. “When we were kids, you’d talk about how you were gonna shatter the bounds of known science and basically wipe everyone else’s work off the map. Now, you talk about ‘we’ and ‘us,’ like you’re part of a community. Clearly you meant it when you said science is a collaborative effort.”

“I did.”

“What changed?”  

Jimmy shrugged. “Guess I grew up.”

“Yeah, yeah, you have.” Cindy set her hand on top of his, leaned her head on his shoulder, and sighed. “I don’t know if I’ve grown up at all.”

“What makes you say that?”

The festering ball of secrets in Cindy’s chest, the one that threatened to steal her breath in the quiet moments, lurched. Enough with the allusions and ambiguity.  If there was any time to break open, wide open, it was now, with him.

“If I had any kind of maturity, I don’t think it would’ve taken three years to realize I was depressed.” She paused, waiting for some kind of interjection, or maybe a plea to stop right there. Instead, Jimmy sat beside her, steady as ever. “I just…kept going, you know? Gotta go to class, gotta go to work-study, gotta get to the dorm and at least be horizontal if I couldn’t actually sleep. I kept walking the same paths, eating the same food, getting the same order at the coffee shop…and then one day, I looked up and I realized how small my world was. How small I had made my world. And then I realized I’d done that because I was hiding from how much I hated what I was studying. It was like, to deal with the sandpaper on my brain, I forced everything else in my life to smooth out. Does that make sense?”

“An imperfect metaphor, yet still expressive.” Jimmy leaned his cheek against the top of Cindy’s head. “Were you studying pre-law?”

“Yes.” The word came out in a growl. Announcing that prior to high school graduation wasn’t the biggest mistake Cindy had ever made, but it was one of her most annoying. “My big epiphany happened while I was reading my torts textbook – thick, black thing, could’ve used it as a doorstop – and I came up to this section about trespassing. I was just scanning it, because I was exhausted and unable to sleep, and I realized that I’d trespassed a lot as a kid. Like, a lot. Mostly because of you. And I was like…oh my God, who fucking cares.”

Jimmy snorted.

“I mean, let people go places! I was like,” Cindy let loose a wild giggle, “genuinely, who cares where people walk? It’s all – the concept of property is so weird, Jimmy, and it’s all made up! It only matters if we think it matters, and we think it matters so much…”

The smile slipped away from her face as she retreated to her memories. When the silence stretched for too long between them, Jimmy took Cindy’s hand, lacing their fingers together, and squeezed. “What made you choose chemistry?” he asked.

Cindy twisted her lips in thought. “A couple days after I realized I hated my declared major, I had to go down to the bookstore to buy printer paper – they give you these giant textbooks for pre-law, and then they expect you to print more shit for class reading – and I saw this poster of the periodic table hanging up in the store. There was a line, so I was standing there, waiting with my paper, and my eyes kept going back to it. And I thought about how crazy it is that we know the ingredients of the universe. We know it so well that we can make this beautifully organized table that shows it all. I ended up buying a copy of the poster, too, and when I got back to my dorm…” Her smile returned. “This is gonna sound so nerdy, but I stood back and looked at it hanging there, and I felt happy. Like, the happiest I’d felt in a long time.”

“Actually, what sounded nerdy was you calling the periodic table ‘beautifully organized.’ Because that sounds like something I would say.”

Cindy wheezed out a laugh.

“Not to bring the mood back down, but…is this related to why you keep ignoring your mother’s phone calls?”

All trace of mirth left Cindy in an instant. She sat up, looked Jimmy in the eye, and nodded, one quick jerk of the head. 

“I remember you saying something about how she didn’t approve of your decision.”

“She didn’t.” To her surprise, Cindy found the words coming more easily if she kept steady eye contact with him. “I waited until after spring midterms, and I called her. In hindsight, that was a phenomenally stupid decision. It wasn’t like she was paying a dime for me to go to college, so it really shouldn’t have mattered to her what I studied. But I still felt…obligated to tell her first. I told her how depressed I’d been, how it took my roommate leaving pamphlets out for me to finally get the idea in my head that maybe there was actually something wrong. I didn’t even get to the part where I’d picked a new major – I just said I hated what I was doing. You wanna guess what she said to me about all that?”

Jimmy shook his head.

“You sure? Because I guarantee whatever you come up with won’t be nearly as bad.”

“I…” He shook his head again. “No. I’m not speculating.”

“Don’t take the coward’s way out, Cynthia,” she quoted in a shrill, snide voice.

It took a moment for the meaning to sink into Jimmy’s brain, but not a long moment. Horror flooded his face. “She didn’t mean—”

“Oh, but she did.” Cindy’s smile was razor-sharp, venomous. “The ol’ permanent solution to a temporary problem. And then…” She set the binoculars down in her lap, and with her thumb and pinky extended, she mimed hanging up a telephone.

All Jimmy could do was stare. Sasha Vortex had a reputation, to be sure – he’d learned that within a week of moving in across the street from Cindy. But he had no idea she’d sink to such a detestable level with her own daughter. 

“I wasn’t even thinking about suicide, Jimmy. I was just depressed. But like so many other people, she heard one word and immediately thought of the other by association. Didn’t even listen to anything else I had to say.” It was Cindy’s turn to shake her head. “I haven’t spoken to her in eight years.”

“I wouldn’t speak to her, either. She’s fucking awful.”

Cindy bit the inside of her lip, but even this measure failed to stop her from bursting out laughing. True, deep, from-the-gut laughing. Jimmy squinted, unsure of how to react.

“Is what I said inaccurate?” he asked.

“No, no! It’s accurate! It’s just—” Cindy giggled. “You don’t swear that much, so when you do, it’s – it’s like hearing a baby say fuck.”

“…You never did spend a lot of time around my cousin Eddie, did you?”

“Not if I could help it. Kid was evil.”

Jimmy snickered and turned his gaze down toward Venus. Cindy did as well, laughter quieting in her throat, and squeezed Jimmy’s hand.

“Now you know,” she whispered.

“Thank you for telling me.”

“I know you’ve been wondering why I seem to get what you’ve been going through.”

“I have been curious,” Jimmy admitted, “but I also know you’ll tell me things in your own time. Candor has always been one of your strongest points.”  

They watched the dark, shadowy clouds swirl over Venus in peaceable silence. Cindy raised the binoculars to her eyes once again, and in doing so, saw that her oxygen monitor had just ticked below fifty percent. 

“You know, I’ve got a real hankering for mini golf just about now,” she murmured.

“I’ve been waiting to hear you say that.”

“Tell me how, when you designed the course, you can still suck at it so badly.”

Jimmy rolled his eyes, readjusted his grip on the putter, and squared his shoulders. The ten-foot-tall dragon in front of him crouched, growled, and shot out a plume of holographic fire, orange pixels dying out in the black sky. With a hard swing, his bright yellow ball rocketed straight into the dragon’s open mouth. Jimmy exhaled in relief as he heard the internal mechanisms engage and drop the ball to where it rolled down the dragon’s back and tail.

“And that makes it…” Cindy twiddled the tiny pencil as she looked over the scorecard. “Seven for you on this hole?”

“Five,” Jimmy said through gritted teeth.

“Oh, so we won’t count those two clear and very obvious forward strokes you took.”

“Those were preparatory strokes! I was gauging the appropriate momentum of the—fine. Put down seven.”

“Just keeping ya honest.”

They moved on to the next hole, which was designed as a maze. Cindy walked along the edge of it, scoping out the correct path through and twirling her putter as she went.

“Ladies first?” Jimmy offered.

“Not how it works, and you know it. Player with the worst score goes first. And considering you’re down by…” Cindy pulled out the scorecard again, “…ten strokes, I’d say get swinging, mister.”

Jimmy sighed, nudged his ball toward the tee-off point, and began lining up his first shot. Meanwhile, Cindy cast her gaze over the Mercurian landscape. It was odd, almost eerie, to think that so much had changed on Earth while other planets remained untouched. Even the rocks seemed to have stayed in more or less the same place.

In the middle distance, a depression in the ground caught Cindy’s eye, and she wandered toward it. As she neared, the depression yawned into a pit nearly twenty feet deep. Something about it seemed familiar, as did the cracked-apart boulder nearby, but she couldn’t quite place it—

Jimmy! I luh – I luh—!

The love potion! Thanks, Cindy.

“Oh,” she breathed. Her putter dropped to the ground beside her.

“Cindy?”

She turned. Jimmy stood a few feet behind her, putter in hand, the glow of victory fading from his face.

“Not that you’ll believe me, but I managed to navigate greater than halfway through the maze on a single, expertly-played stroke,” he bragged. “What are you looking at?”

“I think we almost died in this pit.”

“What?”

“League of Villains. The Junkman was about to drop a huge boulder on our heads?” Cindy paused. “What is it with people wanting to crush me with huge rocks?”

“No idea.” Jimmy tilted his head and gazed into the pit. “Oh. This is where you were about to say you loved me.”

“Yeah, and then you realized the love potion would be a great distraction, and then you k—” Cindy cut herself off when she noticed Jimmy was grinning hugely at her. “Oh, what now?”

“You just admitted you loved me~”

“I—wha—how is that a revelation?!”

“Because you couldn’t admit it back then.”

“But I love you now! That’s what should matter!”

They both froze as the reality of Cindy’s words sunk in.

“You…love me?” Jimmy asked in a small voice.

Cindy stared hard at him, trying and failing to will her heart back down to a normal rhythm. He had to know. Everything that’d happened since she found him again – the conversations that ran the spectrum from serious to silly, the time together in the lab, the long afternoons and even longer nights spent in each other’s arms. Jimmy was exceptional at math, so how could he not see how it all added up?

But you still haven’t said it out loud. That had always been their biggest challenge: she and Jimmy could talk to each other for hours on end, but they couldn’t always articulate themselves. Cindy especially had a perennial issue of getting the words that mattered stuck in her throat. So there was the distinct, irritating possibility that he really didn’t know how she felt.  

“I love you, Jimmy Neutron.” The words came out of Cindy as easy as breathing. “I’ve never stopped.”

Jimmy went utterly still. If there had been any wind on Mercury, it would have been whipping around them, two statues in time. Then he dropped his putter behind him, kicking up a cloud of dust, and stepped ever so slowly toward her.

“Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it only ever takes a different form.” he recited, laying a hand on Cindy’s cheek. “Love operates under the same principle.”

“What are you saying?”

“I love you, Cindy Vortex. I’ve never stopped.”

He leaned forward, and she met him halfway.

They separated just long enough for Jimmy to retract the mini golf course into the Hypercube and for them to breathlessly stumble into the back of the Flugvergnügen.

“Where the hell did you find black shag carpet?” Cindy asked, crawling further into the cargo hold on her elbows.

“Cindy, we live in a town with the word retro in the name.”

“…Fair enough.”

Jimmy pulled the doors shut behind him, plunging them into near total darkness. For a few moments, he was little more than the pressure of his knees on either side of her thighs and his palm on her stomach. Then the ceiling above them erupted with pinpricks of white light.

“You gotta bring the stars with you everywhere, huh?”

“Pretty much.”

“I love you.” It was like Cindy had cracked open a tap that’d rusted shut from years of disuse. Now she’d probably find herself saying the words an embarrassing number of times a day. But really, the embarrassment was unnecessary, a vestige of their younger years when she cared far too much about what other people thought.

“I want…” Jimmy’s fingers slipped under the hem of Cindy’s shirt, his touch light. “I need to set the auto-pilot for our route to Mars, but I’m afraid if I move, I’ll…”

“Break the moment?”

Jimmy nodded fervently.

“You won’t.” Cindy wound her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck and pressed a tender kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Go set the auto-pilot – we can wait two minutes to ravish each other.”

He mumbled something about it only taking eighty seconds at the very most, and then he tore away from her, stumbling up to the pilot’s seat like a newborn foal. She stifled a giggle behind her hand as she watched him fumble over the controls. Years later, it was still funny how much simple kissing could practically set him on fire. Not like he didn’t have a similar effect on her, though.

After the Flugvergnügen lifted off Mercury’s surface and began its ascent into outer space once more, Jimmy wandered back to the cargo hold. “Would you mind getting up?”

“Actually, I would. I’ve grown quite attached to this ridiculous carpeting.”

“I promise this will be a lot more comfortable.”

Cindy acquiesced and got to her feet. Jimmy pressed a button in the van’s wall, and a bed materialized from a sliding trapdoor in the floor.

“I could hardly build this van and not have a space for us to engage in horizontal rest, after all,” he explained as the bed settled into place.

“No zebra-print sheets?”

“I retired that iteration of the HEF file when I upgraded VOX’s operating—mmph.” Jimmy was cut off by Cindy kissing him and pulling him in close by the waist. His hands fluttered helplessly in open space for a bit before settling on her upper arms.

“C’mon, genius. Put that big brain of yours to work,” she whispered before nipping at his bottom lip and running her tongue over the sore spot.

They divested themselves of their clothes quickly, Jimmy sending his glasses flying as he tugged off his T-shirt. Cindy caught them by the bridge with her pinky finger and set them on the far edge of the bed, undoing the clasp of her bra with her other hand.

“I’m convinced you’re performing sleight-of-hand when you do that,” Jimmy said when he was fully undressed.

“Hardly.” Cindy flung the bra off and shook out her ponytail. “It’s called practice.”

“It’s called…” Jimmy’s throat momentarily locked up as he watched her pull her underwear down her legs, “perfection.”

Cindy blushed and crawled into his lap. Jimmy slipped a hand between her thighs and stroked with two fingers, working little moans and sighs out of her mouth.

“You want me to take you apart just like this?”

“No.” Cindy regained composure enough to smirk at Jimmy with hooded eyes. “I want to get on your launch pad and ride your rocket.”  

Jimmy was only dumbstruck for a beat or two, and then he smirked right back. “Does that mean I get to say gotta blast when I’m close?”  

Cindy rolled her eyes to the ceiling, where the simulated electric stars glowed. “The only thing you’ll be saying at that point is my name.” She pushed him down gently and repositioned herself over him. “Remember – it’s a long way ‘til Mars.”

Their visit to Mars turned out to be a flyby. Cindy, blissed out and limp after several rounds of sex, blinked sleepily out the windshield as they neared the red planet, proclaimed herself to be the true queen of Mars, and yawned her intention to return to bed. On her way, she stopped to squeeze Jimmy’s shoulder.

“Don’t take too long,” she murmured.

“I won’t,” Jimmy assured her. “I just want to make sure the Flugvergnügen executes the slingshot properly since we’re not going on to Jupiter.”

Cindy nodded and ruffled Jimmy’s hair for good measure. He turned in his captain’s chair and watched her shuffle off to the cargo hold, appreciating just how nicely his T-shirt draped over her curves. Even if the shirt was a bit short to be worn alone and he was getting an eyeful of, well, everything.

Focus, Neutron. He too was worn out, as much as other parts of his anatomy might suggest otherwise. All he had to do was make sure the van circled Mars at the correct speed without dipping too far into orbit, and then he could retreat to bed as well. He turned back to the windshield and drummed his fingers on the armrest, impatient.

Jimmy checked the clock he had synchronized with the lab’s clocks and saw it was just about 1:00 AM. He twiddled a few dials, calibrating his long-distance radio receiver until he finally locked onto the right frequency. 

“No matter where you are, KRTV is right there with you! In the DFW area and its suburbs, tune in to 90.3 FM, 92.7 HD-2, and AM 1950. And we’re always broadcasting worldwide at krtv-radio.com!” The bumper’s jingle played out, and then Libby’s voice came through, quiet yet clear.

“Hey, everybody! This is your girl, Libby, and in case you’re just tuning in, I’m gonna be on a three-week vacation after tonight, because...” Libby paused for dramatic effect, “I’m getting married! So if you’re looking for solid advice or a listening ear from yours truly, this is the night to get it.”

With a few more button presses, Jimmy established a connection to Goddard and requested a telephonic patch into KRTV. Goddard obliged, and Jimmy picked up the phone receiver on the panel in front of him, listening as the call rang through.

Libby picked up after three rings. “You’re on a Midnight Run with me. What’s on your mind?”

“Hey, Libby.” Jimmy coughed and dropped his voice a bit lower. “It’s Isaac.”

“Isaac! It’s been forever since I’ve heard from you! How’s it going?”

“Great. Better than it’s been in a long time.” Jimmy cast a glance over his shoulder to where Cindy lay in bed, already back to sleep. “Uh, you remember Cee, right?”

“’Course I do. You guys are one of my favorite missed connections stories I’ve heard since I started here!” Libby laughed, clearly having fun at playing along with the ruse. “You’re still together, right?”

“Yes. Actually, that’s kind of why I’m calling. First of all, congratulations on your upcoming nuptials.”

“Thank you!”

“Second of all, how did you know you wanted to marry your future spouse?”

The stretch of quiet that followed was not all that quiet; Jimmy could picture Libby back on Earth, vibrating with excitement and resisting the urge to scream into her microphone.

“Well,” Libby said thoughtfully. “He and I have been together a long time. Depending on what you think counts as a relationship, we’ve been dating since we were thirteen. That’s over half my life that I’ve been with him. Some people out there might think I’m settling for the first guy who gave me attention, but the truth is, I just got lucky on the first try.” She chuckled. “God, Isaac, you’re gonna make me start gushing.”

“Gush away. I’ve got plenty of time.”

“He makes me laugh. He’s always been able to make me laugh, even when I really don’t feel like it. We don’t work the same hours, but we overlap a little in the mornings, and just by being there, waiting in our kitchen with my coffee mug, he makes the end of my day better. I can tell him anything, and he can tell me anything. When we argue – and believe me, we’ve argued – we always make a point to hear each other out. And uh.” There was a little squeak as Libby brought the microphone closer. “For the sake of not incurring the FCC’s wrath, I won’t get too graphic, but you can rest assured the physical aspect of things is real good.” 

Jimmy put a hand over his mouth to muffle his laughter.

“I guess what I’m getting at is…I could get by without Sheen in my life, but I really don’t want to. So when he first mentioned marriage – and we talked about it before he proposed – I knew I only ever had one answer.” The smile was obvious in Libby’s voice. “Did that answer your question?”

“You know, I think it did.” Jimmy looked behind him again. Cindy had shifted around in bed, one knee bent up toward the ceiling, and she was making a noise somewhere between a snore and a sigh. He smiled and turned back to the control panel.

“Lemme know when the wedding bells ring for you, all right?”

“You’ll get the first invitation. Night, Libby.”

“Night, Isaac.” 

Jimmy hung up, heart pounding hard. What he’d just done was premature and very likely stupid, but when he had a question, his brain wouldn’t rest until he had an answer. He glanced out the windshield and down at the control panel one more time to confirm the Flugvergnügen was in the best possible trajectory, then walked back to join Cindy. She cracked one eye open as soon as his back hit the mattress.

“You took too long,” she grumbled, throwing an arm over him like a possessive starfish and resting her cheek on his chest.

“I was supposed to follow you right back here in less than two minutes, wasn’t I?”

“Mmhm.”

“My apologies.” Jimmy kissed the top of Cindy’s hair. Jasmine filled his nose, and he relaxed both into the bed and into her. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

The sun was peeking over the horizon when the Flugvergnügen touched down in the field outside home. Goddard was waiting for them, his safety cones still held aloft as Jimmy and Cindy disembarked. Instead of leaping into Jimmy’s arms, though, he bounded toward Cindy.

“Guess we know who he likes better,” Cindy said with a tired smirk. She bent down to pet the top of his head, but he ducked away and whined. “Hey, what gives?”

“What’s the matter, boy?” Jimmy asked.

Though he had no pupils to speak of, Goddard turned his head between the two of them as though shifting his glance from side to side. His mouth popped open, and laying on top of his pink tongue, coated in synthetic slobber, was Cindy’s cell phone.

“Ugh, Goddard, why?” Cindy gingerly picked the phone out of his mouth and rubbed the screen off on her rumpled shirt.

“He only has the two arms to hold things,” Jimmy pointed out. Then, noticing the growing frown on Cindy’s face, he added. “What’s wrong?”

“My dad called while we were gone. And my Aunt Susie.”

“That’s not unusual.”

“It is when they do it twenty times.” The voicemails loaded up next, and Cindy tapped on the most recent one. Instead of holding it up to her ear, she tapped the speakerphone icon and waited.

“Cinnamon, please,” Phil’s voice was thick with tears. There was a snort and a squelch as he tried and failed to discreetly blow his nose. “I need you to call me back as soon as you get this. It’s…it’s about your mother.”

Chapter Text

To anyone passing by Room 412, Cindy appeared to be the perfect picture of a grieving daughter: head low, arms folded across her knees, generally somber. In truth, she was fighting the urge to snap at her dad for his incessant sobbing, and the only way to win that fight was to avoid looking at him. She instead chose to keep her sideways gaze on the hospital bed, where a white sheet was drawn halfway up the body that lay there.

Whatever it was that had animated Sasha Vortex over the years – adrenaline, caffeine, venom – had slipped away. What remained was a slack mouth and grayed skin, knuckles with their grip on life loosened. Calling Sasha peaceful would be an insult; she was spent, in the way all dead are.

Exhaustion gnawed at the base of Cindy’s skull and behind her eyes. As soon as her brain had caught up with what her dad had said in that voicemail, everything had dissolved into a blur. She remembered charging into the complex, through the hangar and down the breezeway, Jimmy hot on her heels. Arguing with him in the elevator about getting the next flight to Houston. Him gripping her firmly by the shoulders and saying the words that cut through the panic: I couldn’t be there for you before. Let me be there for you now. Her only being able to think enough to grab a change of clothes and stuff them into an ancient drawstring backpack before insisting they had to go. The only part of the past few hours that’d seemed real was the wind rushing by as they rode the Corposant, and Jimmy’s steady breathing under her palms as she clung to him.

Maybe she should be thinking more about her mother and less about her partner, considering whose hospital room she was currently sitting in. But really, what more was there to think? For years, Sasha had dominated Cindy’s train of thought. Every decision she’d ever made since the age of five, even the decisions specifically meant to aggravate, were made with Sasha in mind. Now she was free.

She tilted her head back against the wall, chin raised to the ceiling, and sighed. With all the sighing she’d done over the past hour, this room should have been filled with pure carbon dioxide, and she should be on the floor, asphyxiated. She’d technically get some sleep if she was unconscious.

“Say something.”

Cindy tipped her head back down and looked across the room to where Phil sat, blotchy-faced. “What do you want me to say?”

“Anything. It’s too quiet.”

“Hospitals are generally quiet, Dad. So are dead people.”

Phil flinched at her bluntness. That’d been the wrong thing to say, but Cindy was beyond the point of caring what the right thing to say might be. “What was it the doctor said again? The cause?”

“Cerebrovascular insult secondary to rupture of saccular intracranial aneurysm,” Cindy recited.

“Right, right. You always grasp the complicated stuff so quick. Even as a little kid, you’d hear something once and,” Phil snapped his fingers, “you had it locked in your mind. I remember one time we were eatin’ dinner, and right in the middle of puttin’ away your peas, you set your spoon down and asked your mother how her dispositive motion hearing went. You couldn’t’ve been much more than four.” He let out a wet laugh. “Your mother was so stunned I thought she was gonna—”

On realizing what he was about to say, Phil cut himself off. Cindy refrained from rolling her eyes. If her dad couldn’t even say the word die out loud, she was in for a truly interminable time.

“I can’t believe she was in that apartment alone for three whole days.”

“I can.”

Phil shot her a bewildered look.

“I really doubt she endeared herself to the neighbors, Dad. Not when she was head of the condo association.” Cindy scoffed. “She probably couldn’t’ve named any of them.”

“You have a point there,” Phil conceded. “Relating to people wasn’t her strong suit.”

It’s probably where I get it from. Thank you, mother.

“You know, it’s okay to talk to her. Say goodbye.”

Cindy stared hard at Phil. “She said goodbye to me eight years ago, whether she realized it or not. I don’t need to say it back.”

Phil stiffened at those words. Clearly, he was looking for some kind of huge emotional breakthrough, one where he could sweep in, catch his daughter’s tears, and offer assurance that they’d survive this sudden tragedy. But Cindy already knew she could survive without Sasha. Phil should know the same thing; their divorce was finalized over a decade ago. If anything, it seemed like he was the one who needed more comfort at the moment, and Cindy simply couldn’t summon the energy for that.

As silence fell in the room again, the chasm between father and daughter seemed far wider than a hospital bed.

Four floors down, in a wide-open waiting area, Jimmy sat with his elbows on his knees, chin resting on his folded hands. He didn’t have much experience in hospitals, aside from visiting Aunt Amanda once with his parents, and he’d decided during the course of his waiting that he was grateful he’d never felt much inclination to join the medical profession. Hospitals were anxious places for all involved. The handful of nurses he’d seen pass through here moved with jittery purpose, and he found himself unconsciously picking up on that feeling.

Since he wasn’t immediate family, Jimmy hadn’t been permitted to go upstairs with Cindy, which had initially been fine with him. Yet as the minutes ticked by, he felt more and more like an interloper. He wanted nothing more than to do something, even if it was just going outside and calling Goddard on his watch, or sneaking upstairs to make sure someone hadn’t reported the Corposant being parked on the edge of the helipad. Could he get a ticket if he was parked on the hospital?

“If you don’t want it, I’m drinkin’ it.”

Jimmy snapped out of his thoughts and realized there was a foam cup of coffee being held in front of his face. He looked up to see Cindy’s aunt frowning down at him with a raised eyebrow, and he shivered in spite of himself. Although her buff lady modeling days were behind her, she still cut a well-muscled, imposing figure in her faded Olympic tank and bike shorts.

“Uh, thanks,” he managed to say, and accepted the cup from her. “Susan, right?”

“It’s Sue nowadays.” She sat down heavily in the plastic chair next to Jimmy.

“Got it.”

“Had to walk a mile in this place to find a coffee vending machine, and I’m sure it’s disgusting, but it is hot.” Sue puckered her face instantly after taking a sip from her own cup. “God. I was right on all counts.”

“Tastes like it was made with brown crayon shavings.”

“That’s a generous description.”

“It’s still coffee, though.”

“Allegedly.”

They sat in silence, sipping from their cups and watching people pass by. After a few minutes, Jimmy cleared his throat. “My condolences.”

Sue turned in her seat and narrowed her eyes. “Do you mean that, or are you just looking for something to say?”

“Um.” Jimmy fidgeted. “I’m not sure how to answer your question.”

Sue stared at him a moment longer, then grinned at him sharply. “Cindy’s right – it is fun throwing you off guard.”

“You remember me?”

“Hmm. Do I remember the kid who ratted me out for impersonating my twin sister at an extremely low-stakes parent-child picnic for the sake of helping out my niece?” 

“You were cheating,” Jimmy said flatly. “Fairness matters regardless of stakes.”

Sue took a long pull from her coffee, not breaking eye contact. “You’re a lot more eagle-eyed than the IOC, I’ll give you that,” she said after she swallowed. “Anyway, you’re kind of hard to forget. When her parents were first on the rocks, and later when they were going through their clown show of a divorce, Cindy would call me to gripe. One way or another, you’d come up in the conversation.”

“I’ll bet she complained about me a lot.”

“Not as much as you might think. Sometimes we’d be on a phone call and her voice would go all soft, and that’s when I knew she was staring across the street at your house. That was usually when I made up something about my cat dancing on the stove so I could hang up and let her sigh wistfully in peace.”

Jimmy blushed and took a large gulp of coffee – it really was terrible coffee – so he wouldn’t have to respond.

“As for my sister…you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but Sasha was absolutely shit at taking care of herself. Worked sixty-plus hours a week, slept four hours a night at the most, and made up the rest with coffee and cigarettes. Oh, and we can’t forget the booze! A week ago, she called me, hungover and complaining about a headache that wouldn’t quit. I told her, hey, maybe lay off the wine and whiskey sours for a bit; she told me to—” Sue glanced around the waiting area. “Well, I can’t quote her verbatim since we’re in the presence of children, but rest assured, what she said wasn’t polite. That was the last time I ever spoke to Sasha.”  

“I-I’m sorry.”

“Eh, don’t be. Ever since the doctor finally told me what happened, I’ve been wondering whether I should’ve checked in after that to see if her headache had cleared up. Maybe she’d still be alive if I had. But,” Sue shrugged, “no point in wondering about what could’ve been. Gotta deal with what is.”

Jimmy nodded and picked idly at the foam rim of his cup with a fingernail. “I have to confess, I feel a bit out of my depth here.”

“How so?”

“The only person I’ve ever known who’s died is my grandma, and that was after prolonged terminal illness. We knew death was inevitable. When it finally happened, I was sad, of course, but I found it relatively easy to handle the aftermath. By contrast, Sasha died unexpectedly. There was no chance for Cindy to prepare.” Jimmy frowned. “I’m also not the most comforting person.”

Sue raised an eyebrow.

“When something goes wrong, I want to fix it immediately. I’m not very good at addressing the emotional reality of a situation, or so I’ve been told.”

“Ah.” Both of Sue’s eyebrows raised in understanding. “You’re afraid you won’t be able to support her.”

“Yes.”

Sue sipped from her cup. “We Vortex women are remarkably self-sufficient. Been that way for generations. Do everything yourself, and nobody else can disappoint you.” She took another sip. “Problem with that philosophy is it makes it you defensive. It took me until I was in my forties and in my first relationship that lasted more than three dates to realize my girlfriend wasn’t asking if she could dry and put away the dishes because she thought I couldn’t do it right. She was asking because she wanted to share the load. People like to help people. What a concept!”    

The corner of Jimmy’s mouth quirked up.

“Unfortunately, Cindy also picked up Sasha’s superb emotional management skills, so she might act like nothing’s wrong for the first couple days. You probably already know she and Sasha had a…how do you wanna call it…”

“Fraught relationship?”

“There ya go.” Sue ran a hand over her graying, freshly done buzzcut, musing. “I guess the best pointer I can give is to just be there. She might tell you oh, you can go home, I can handle this by myself – ignore it. Stand your ground. If what Cindy’s told me about you over the years is true, you’re stubborn as hell, which means you two are a match made in heaven.”

Jimmy held back a chuckle.

“And just let her feel whatever she feels, you know? Don’t expect her to cry or mope. That’s what Phil is gonna do, and it’s gonna drive her crazy. It’s gonna drive me crazy, come to think of it.” Sue shook her head. “On that note, you’re gonna want to find a hotel. The second bedroom in my apartment is basically a weight room, and because I apparently have some leftover allegiance to the idiot who is my former brother-in-law, I’ve put up Phil on my couch. If you need money to get a room, I’ll help out.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Are you sure? I can’t give you proper hospitality, so it’s the least I could do.”

“Yes, I’m sure.” Jimmy turned and looked at Sue with a shy smile. “Thanks for the advice.”

“You love Cindy.” It was more of an observation than an accusation. “I mean, you really love her.”

“I do.”

Sue smiled back, and Jimmy saw a far stronger resemblance between aunt and niece than he ever saw between mother and daughter. “Good. Now go get a love nest for the two of you.”

“But I was waiting for—”

“I’ll tell her you had sudden explosive diarrhea or something. Just go!”   

After so much time spent in the chilled, super-dry air inside the hospital, the oppressive outdoor humidity of Houston was almost welcome to Cindy’s lungs. That is, until she caught a whiff of the cigarette a nearby nurse was smoking and clocked it as the same brand her mother used to smoke. All at once, it was hard to breathe, and her throat seized up tight—

“Hey.” Sue came up behind her and patted her back. “Everything all right?”

Cindy nodded, the squeeze in her throat still cutting off her voice.

“Is anyone else hungry?” Phil sounded far too chipper for the occasion. “I could eat a horse right about now. Cinnamon, what about you? How’s barbecue sound?”

“For fuck’s sake, Phil,” Sue snapped.

“What? Are we or are we not Texans?”

“What you are is an asshole, and a giant, gaping one at that.”   

While Phil and Sue bickered, Cindy pulled her phone out of her back pocket. The screen was dim thanks to the sun’s glare and a low battery, but she could make out a new text message from Jimmy. Leisure Inn on Davis Drive. Room 605 – should be easy to remember. Transportation ETA 13:47. She squinted at the clock just as the sound of chopping helicopter rotors reached her ears.

“What the hell?” Phil muttered as Goddard dropped the last few feet out of the air and onto the sidewalk in front of them, ears still spinning.

“Grr-bark-bark!”

Cindy tucked her phone away and dropped to one knee. Goddard trotted over, pushed his way into her arms, and rested his head on her shoulder with a little canine sigh.

“It’s good to see you, too,” Cindy whispered. “Did Jimmy send you?”

Goddard nodded.

“Wait. He didn’t make you fly all the way here from Retroville on your own, did he?”

Goddard backed up and opened up his chest screen. IF YOU MEAN ‘DID I FLY UNDER MY OWN POWER,’ THEN NO. I FLEW THE HOVERCAR HERE.

“Good, because that distance would be way too hard on your rotors.” Cindy stood up. “Can you take me to Jimmy now?”

Without further prompting, Goddard sprung into flight-cycle mode. Cindy sat down and threw one leg over his back.

“Gonna have to take a rain check on that barbecue, Dad,” she said.

“But I thought we—”

“You think a lot of things, Phil,” Sue cut in. “Most of them need second thoughts. Maybe even thirds.”

Goddard and Cindy took off over the Houston streets, with Goddard snapping at a pesky delivery drone as they climbed into the air.

“If I had a slingshot, I could take care of those for you!” Cindy called over the wind.

“Rr-rr!”

They arrived at the Leisure Inn about fifteen minutes later, and Goddard disguised himself as a small suitcase for Cindy to carry. The front desk clerk made no comment about Cindy’s current state of dishevelment – clearly she’d seen worse – and handed over the key to Room 605 after a brief call upstairs. It wasn’t until the elevator doors opened on the sixth floor that Cindy fully understood Jimmy’s text.

“Should be easy to remember – it’s my frickin’ birthday.” She stuffed the key in the card slot and threw open the room door as soon as the lock light turned green. “You’re a dork, you know that?”

“Is this about something specific?”

“The room number!”

“Ah. Thought you’d appreciate that.”

Cindy followed Jimmy’s voice to the bathroom and froze in the doorway. He had his left hand on the vanity, leaning toward the mirror as he ran a clippers along the right side of his neck.

“You…you cut your hair.”

“It was getting too long for my tastes,” Jimmy explained, glancing at her reflection. Instead of hanging down to his shoulders, his hair now hung in a shag around his ears, and a cowlick swirled over his forehead. “Do you like it?”

“Gotta check something first before I give my verdict.” Cindy sauntered up behind him, slid a hand up the back of his head, and curled her fingers against his scalp, gathering the hair into her palm. “Yup. I like it.”

“That’s your only metric? Whether you can still manhandle me?”

“I could manhandle you with short hair, too. This just makes it easier.”

Jimmy turned and pressed his forehead to hers, and Cindy saw the dark pouches under his eyes for the first time. Space travel threw off one’s circadian rhythm like nothing else; she couldn’t even honestly say what time it was when she’d last slept. And aside from a short doze with her on their way back to Earth, Jimmy had been awake since the morning they took off.

“You need a nap,” she observed.

“So do you.”

“That bed in there looks comfortable.”

He grinned at her sleepily. “I’ll join you just as soon as I clean up in here.”

Cindy tugged his hair once and went back to the bedroom. Goddard sat next to her on the bed as she kicked off her shoes, peeled off her socks, and set her phone on the nightstand with a clunk. “Don’t suppose you’d happen to have a charger with you,” she muttered.

Goddard’s mouth hinged open, and her charging cable with wall plugin sat on his tongue.

“You’ve seriously gotta quit keeping my stuff in your mouth.” At least this wasn’t as sopping wet as her phone had been this morning. She plucked the charger up, gave it a quick shake, and got her phone connected. “Wait. What other stuff of mine did you bring?”

“Grr-rr-rr.” Goddard stepped aside, and Cindy saw her well-worn dark green duffle bag on the floor in front of the dresser. Another duffle, deep red and presumably Jimmy’s, sat next to hers.

“You…packed clothes for me?”

Goddard nodded. He held a paw out to Cindy, and the plates slid apart to let a little white circular pack of pills fall out on the bed.

“You even brought these.” Cindy picked up the pack and felt a prickle of tears at her eyes. “Goddard, thank you.”

He swung open his chest panel and typed out: IT’S THE LEAST I CAN DO FOR A FRIEND.

“It’s the most you could do—shit!” She scrambled for her phone before remembering it was all but dead. “What’s the date today?”

Goddard wiped away his first message. ACCESSING CALENDAR…TODAY IS AUGUST SIXTH.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!”

“What is it?” Jimmy burst in from the bathroom, rubbing a towel against his neck.

“The rehearsal dinner!” Cindy flopped back on the bed and pressed the heels of her hands against her face. “It’s tonight, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to make it back to town in time. Not when I’m this tired…shit!” Tears welled up and spilled out of the corners of her eyes. “And then there’s everything that needs to be finalized before the big day, and I can’t be there.”

“Cindy, it’s—”

“Do not tell me it’s fine!” She dropped her hands from her face and balled them into fists on the bed. “I’m officially the worst maid of honor in wedding history!”

“You are not—”

“And I’m the worst daughter in history, too, because I’m crying over the fact that I’m missing my best friend’s wedding preparations instead of the fact that my mother fucking died!”

It was the first time she’d strung those words together out loud, and the full weight of them barreled into Cindy like a semi-truck. She knew she should sit up to cry instead of lie down, but if she stayed down, maybe the tears would drown her and do everyone in the world a favor. The bed dipped down beside her, and Jimmy came into her field of vision, looking down at her with great concern.

“Do you want me to call Libby and tell her?” he asked gently.

She should be the one to call. It was her responsibility, after all, being the maid of honor. Yet she found herself sucking a truly revolting amount of snot back into her nose with a rattle and asking Jimmy in a choked-up voice if he could do it. He nodded and asked Goddard to dial up Libby’s number, then took one of Goddard’s ears as a handset. Apparently, the curlicue cord stretched far longer than Cindy remembered, allowing Jimmy to pace the hotel room while he brought Libby up to speed.

“She wants to talk to you,” he said after a few minutes.

Cindy took Goddard’s ear, held it up to hers, and croaked, “Hello.”

“Girl, I am so sorry.”

“If anyone should be sorry, it’s me.”

“Why? You didn’t take your mama out, did you?”

Cindy snorted, then coughed when mucus went down her windpipe. “No. You can thank her own self-destructive habits for that.”

“Then there’s nothing you can do. Shit happens, yet we move. I’ll survive the dinner without you.”

“I’ll be honest, Libs: I still don’t know what the fuck we were rehearsing.”

Libby laughed, and it was the clearest, prettiest sound Cindy had heard all day.

“I’ll try to get things sorted out down here as fast as I can—”

“Do not.” Libby warned. “You stay in Houston until what you gotta do is done. If that means I don’t see you again until my wedding day, so be it.”

“But—”

“I don’t need you as bad as your family needs you now. And whether you realize it now or not, you need your family, too. Don’t cut your time with them short on my account, or I’ll drag you into the wrestling ring at the reception and throw down with you like you’ve never seen before. Got it?”

Cindy rolled her eyes over to Jimmy, who was still standing awkwardly next to the bed. “Got it.”

“Now go grieve into your man’s chest. Doctor Libby’s orders.”

“Okay.” Cindy despised how weak and pathetic her voice sounded. “Love you, Libs.”

“Love you, too, Cin. Gimme back to Jimmy now.”

Cindy obliged, then crawled further up onto the bed and sprawled on the pillows. Meanwhile, Jimmy resumed his pacing, eyebrows furrowed and one hand shoved into his pocket.

“Yes, I know. I’m not ignorant, Libby. I—” He winced as Libby gave him an earful. “I don’t even—I’ll make it happen! I promise. Yes.” Another pause. “I will. Talk to you soon.”

“What was that all about?” Cindy asked as Jimmy returned Goddard’s ear to its rightful place.

“Libby wanted to ensure I’d be staying here with you.” Jimmy started removing his own shoes and socks, tossing them wherever on the floor. “Is there seriously going to be a wrestling ring at their reception?”

“I’m afraid so. Sheen’s idea.”

“Only Sheen.” Jimmy shook his head. “Hey, Goddard, finish tidying up the bathroom, please.”

“Yes, I was given strict orders to ‘grieve into my man’s chest’,” Cindy added, complete with air quotes. “So I need him here.”

Goddard nodded, hopped off the bed, and trotted into the bathroom. The light flicked on, followed by the hum of a small vacuum cleaner. Jimmy settled onto the pillows beside Cindy, glasses slightly askew. “Libby really said that, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Can’t really contradict her now, can we?” He held his one arm up, and she nuzzled her way into his embrace, feeling unbelievably small. There was that scent again, the one she’d whiffed in the leather of his lab chair that was unquestionably Jimmy, and calm bled into the edges of her mind.

“Part of me feels like I shouldn’t feel anything about this,” she murmured into his shirt. “I already cut her out of my life ages ago. The only difference is now she’s really gone.”

“It’s the finality of it all.”

“When I was a kid, I used to have other adults tell me how lucky I was to have a mother like her. Teachers at school, karate instructors, track coaches. All they saw was how much she pushed me to be the best, and to them, that was proof that she cared.” Cindy sighed, and every last bit of oxygen seemed to crush from her lungs. “They didn’t see how her caring was strangling me alive.”

Jimmy’s arm flexed around her as he pressed a kiss into her hair.

“When you challenge me, at least you let me breathe.” Cindy laid a hand over his heart, his beat against her palm. It was that sound and that sensation that coaxed her into something resembling sleep.

The next handful of days muddled past. There were appointments attended and arrangements made, a number of uncomfortable meals spent in watery silence both in Sue’s apartment and in hokey chain restaurants. Cindy had been unaware just how much had to be done in the wake of someone’s death, and how much of it was so utterly mundane. Very little of it seemed to truly matter in the face of grief. But at the end of it all was Jimmy, waiting. That made it all worth it.

One afternoon, Cindy found herself sitting in the too-bright offices of Grillo & Associates, watching Mr. Grillo himself rifle through a manila folder while seated behind a wildly messy desk. Phil sat on the far end of the three chairs, sniffling just often enough to be irritating. Sue sat between them, patient and relaxed.

“File clerks,” Mr. Grillo muttered with mild annoyance. “How hard is it to put the most recent copy of a document toward the front of a folder? Anyway.” He drew out a moderately thick stapled packet of papers and read from the top page. “Last Will and Testament of Sasha Stella Vortex, revised and executed six months ago. That’ll do it.”

He tossed the folder back on his desk. In doing so, he started a chain reaction of two paper stacks sliding and pushing into his nameplate, which teetered and fell from the edge of his desk. Sue lunged and caught the nameplate before it hit the floor.

“Much obliged,” Mr. Grillo said with a perfunctory smile as she set it back in its rightful place. “Now, I won’t bother reviewing every little comma and period with you in this unless you absolutely want to. Being an attorney herself, Ms. Vortex was quite thorough and precise in her language. Some might say to a fault.”

Cindy gave him a wry half-grin.

“As it stands, she defined three distinct heirs, whom I’m given to understand are the three of you. Makes things nice and simple.” Mr. Grillo flipped a few pages. “Mr. Vortex, you are to inherit a lump sum of $10,000.00 to do with as you see fit, with said sum to be paid out of the liquidation of Ms. Vortex’s estate.”

Phil was thunderstruck. “B-but we’re divorced.”

“I’ll admit it’s unconventional for ex-spouses to be included in wills, but not entirely unheard of. Susan,” Mr. Grillo turned to her. “It’s a bit more complicated for you. Ms. Vortex has designated that you inherit a sum equal to 25% of the estate after Phil’s allocation, but she also left you her condominium here in Houston. Whether she intended the condominium to be included in liquidation is a bit ambiguous…” He flipped forward a few more pages. “We can address that later.”

“Of course she left that thing to me,” Sue scoffed. “What the hell do I want with a condo?”

“And then it comes to Cynthia.”

“Cindy,” she corrected quickly. Something about hearing her full first name come out of someone else’s mouth grated on her ears and brain.

“Duly noted,” Mr. Grillo said. “Cindy, you effectively inherit the balance of your mother’s estate. We’ll have to pull final numbers from bank accounts, her IRA, any stocks, but the value as reported in here six months ago is approximately…” He glanced upward, calculating in his mind. “$200,000.00. That’s before inclusion of the condominium as an asset.”

Cindy gaped. “That has to be wrong.”

“Well, they were using abacuses back when I got my accounting minor, but I believe numbers still work the same way.”

“I don’t want it,” she blurted. “Any of it. It can go to charity, o-or to them,” she shoved a hand toward Sue and Phil, “but I don’t want it.”

“Cinnamon—”

“No, Dad! She doesn’t get to do this!” Cindy squeezed her eyes shut, willing the tears to go back down. “She doesn’t get to just pay me off after she’s dead like it somehow makes everything better!”

“It’s not a payoff, sweetheart!”

“Mr. Vortex, please.” Mr. Grillo held up a hand. “Would you mind stepping out for a moment? Susan, you too. I think I can offer Cindy some much-needed perspective, but it needs to be done without interruption.”

Phil and Sue exchanged glances, but left without further argument. The door swung shut behind them, and Cindy felt that odd, sinking sensation she used to get when she was called into the principal’s office in elementary school.  

“Mr. Grillo, I know you must think I’m crazy—”

“No, no, I don’t.” He came out from around his desk and sat in the seat Sue had just vacated. “And call me Gene.”

“Okay.”

“Listen.” Gene clasped his hands in front of him. “I knew your mother, all right? We attorneys, we’re a small club, even in as big an area as Houston. We know each other by name and reputation even if we don’t directly associate with one another. And let me tell you: there are litigators out there who’d rather soil themselves in public than go up against your mother in court.”

Cindy’s mouth twitched into a momentary resemblance of a smirk.

“Thing is, I know you don’t just turn off that kind of intensity when you leave the office. Being Sasha’s daughter…it had to be tough.”

“It was,” Cindy said quietly.

“I’ve practiced law long enough to know there are some things money doesn’t make right. Trust me, you’re not the first person who’s come in here and discovered they’re about to get a windfall from someone who didn’t treat them well as a kid. My advice to you is the same advice I give all those people: take everything you got coming to you and run. Crucially,” Gene held up a finger, “you need to do one thing with the money that would piss that person off, and something for your benefit only.”

Cindy mulled it over, drumming her fingers on the edge of her chair. There were, frankly, any number of things she could do with that money. But there was one thing at the top of that list, something that would make Sasha’s ashes roll over in that absurdly ornate urn her dad had insisted on buying.

“How does Doctor Cindy Vortex sound to you?” she asked.

“Oh, medical school?”

“Chemistry.”

Gene eyed her up and down, then grinned. “I think it sounds genius.”

Later that night, Cindy slumped against the door of Room 605 of the Leisure Inn, head still buzzing from the horrendous dinner she’d just endured.

“Please tell me you have something decent to eat in there,” she whined. “My dad insisted on barbecue again, and if I have to look at pulled pork at any point in the next forty years, I’ll barf.”

Cindy pushed inside and found Jimmy sitting cross-legged on his bed in front of his laptop, pizza slice on one knee. An episode of Muffy – the one where Gordon the foppish vampire made his first appearance – played on the TV.

“Half Hawaiian, half mushroom and sausage,” Jimmy said, pointing with his chin at the pizza box perched on the dresser. “Cheesy bites are in the other box.”

“Ugh, marry me,” Cindy groaned.

“Jimbo, is that who I think it is?”

Cindy froze at the familiar goofy voice coming from the laptop.

“Hello, Cindy dear!” Judy Neutron called. “Come toward the camera – we can’t see you!”

“Mom, don’t make her get on camera if she doesn’t want to.”

“Don’t take that tone with me, young man! It’ll just be quick.”

“Uh, hi, Mrs. Neutron.” Cindy settled on the bed next to Jimmy, slice of Hawaiian pizza in hand. “And Mr. Neutron.”

Hugh and Judy beamed back at her from Jimmy’s laptop screen. They looked much the same as she remembered them from high school graduation, albeit a bit grayer around the temples.

“We’re so sorry to hear to hear about your mother, Cindy,” Judy cooed.

“Ditto from me,” Hugh chimed in. “Losing a parent is never easy, and when you don’t have the best relationship with them, that makes it trickier when they do pass. I’m just glad Jimbo is there to help you out.”

“He has been helpful, hasn’t he?”

“Yes, he has,” Cindy said, nodding.

“If there is anything we can do for you, anything at all, just let us know, okay, honey?”

A lump the size of Texas was forming in Cindy’s throat. “Okay.”

“Oh, we should have you over to the new house sometime soon!” Hugh clapped his hands. “Do you have a favorite kind of pie, Cindy?”

“Pecan,” Jimmy and Cindy answered in unison, then looked at each other. On the other side of the video call, Hugh and Judy shared a knowing look.

“We’ll be in touch, Jimbo. And let me know if you need any more advice on that,” Hugh put one eye uncomfortably close to the camera, “thing we were talking about.”

“Yeah, okay, great, love you, bye!” Jimmy slapped his laptop shut, closed his eyes, and sighed. “Sorry about all that.”

“Neutron, it’s not like I’m allergic to parents because my mom died.” Cindy nibbled off the corner of her pizza slice. “Though I’m starting to kinda wonder if I’m developing one for my dad.”

Jimmy shoved his laptop aside and slid over to give Cindy more room. She curled her legs up on the bed and relaxed into his side.

“Turns out my mom was loaded, and not just, like, in an alcoholic sense. It’s like she only worked to save money.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“I guess. But I wish she would’ve enjoyed life a little more.” Cindy plucked a piece of pineapple off her pizza and popped it in her mouth. “Maybe she wouldn’t’ve taken it out on me so much.”

“Maybe.” Jimmy bit into the crust of his slice and chewed.

“Anyway, I’m thinking of taking her money and doing a doctoral program.”

Jimmy paused mid-chew and looked at Cindy in wonderment.

“I’m just thinking about it,” she emphasized. “Haven’t decided anything yet. Besides, I have to look at programs close to Retroville, or it’s not worth it.”

“Why is that?”

Cindy raised an eyebrow. “Because we’re living together and a long commute would suck?”

“I’ll go wherever you go.”

“Uh, hello, you have a giant tri-dome complex out in frickin’ farmland! You can’t just drop that in the middle of, like, downtown Boston!”

“Each of those domes is a tessellated structure that collapses into a triangle no bigger than that.” Jimmy gestured toward the dresser where the pizza box sat. “Plus, none of my possessions are so materially dense that Hypercube storage would be unviable for at least a short period. Granted, I’d lose the pool unless I chose to re-dig a concrete foundation somewhere—”

“Are you—” Cindy sat up to face him, wide-eyed. “Do you hear yourself, Jimmy? Do you hear how crazy that sounds?”

He blinked at her and swallowed down the remainder of pizza crust in his mouth. “No.”

“How?!”

Jimmy raised one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Because it’d be for you.”

Cindy stared hard at him as the words sunk in. She should have something more profound to say in response to such a revelation. This man would probably find some way to pull a star down to Earth and hang it from the ceiling for light if she said a room was too dark. But the longer she sat, there was only one response that came to mind. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” He brought his fingers under her chin and gave her a quick kiss. In Cindy’s opinion, pizza sauce had never tasted so good. “You wanna watch more Muffy?”

Grief, that tiring, heavy weight, had worked its way back to the forefront of Cindy’s mind during their conversation. She wished she could set it aside, like a bothersome cat, and come back to it later. But there it sat, pressing down on every thought. All at once, Cindy felt like she could sleep for days.

“Yeah,” she said, and nodding even felt like a chore now. “That sounds great.”

Chapter Text

Taking the Greyhound back to Dallas was not necessarily the fastest way to get home. Sue had balked at the idea, and Phil had insisted he could make better time driving her, mostly by taking the speed limit as a mere suggestion. But Cindy desperately needed to be alone. If nothing else, she needed to prove she could handle something by herself, and her tolerance for airport security nonsense was at its lowest. 

As the bus rolled on up Interstate 45, Cindy idly flicked through her playlists and gazed out the window. Music wasn’t really on her mind right now, but it did keep her from having to listen to any outside noise, like the kid fussing a few rows ahead. Instead, she was soaking in her memory of three mornings ago.

“Do you have to leave so early?”

The bed sheet twisted around Jimmy’s hips as he turned to look at her. “The Houston authorities aren’t familiar with my aircraft, so if I leave now, I might avoid too much trouble.”

“Like you’re such a stranger to getting into trouble.” She reached out and ran a finger along his spine, pleased at making him shiver with a simple touch. “Stay for a while.”

He hesitated at the edge of the bed before rolling over her, breath ghosting over her lips. “If you remember, you were the one who said I should go.”

“That’s because I’m sparing you from the inevitable disaster later today. And you have to check on the lab.” 

Somehow his laughter sounded deeper in the dark.

She hooked her calf over his thigh, her heel between his knees. “Make me regret asking you to go.”

Jimmy was quiet, and for a moment, she wondered if he’d understood her. Then came the kiss, searing and sweet, and two fingers walking over her ribs. The giggles he drew out of her quickly turned to moans once his hand reached its destination…

He’d more than delivered on her request, being so tender and thorough that when he finally did leave, she’d rolled over onto his side of the bed and shed a few tears like some bereft heroine in a paperback romance. Humiliating. Less so than watching her father blubber into the Gulf of Mexico when they went to scatter Sasha’s ashes, though. Sue had to snap him out of it by hollering Jesus Christ, Phil, you’re the one who divorced her and drawing the attention of other beachgoers.

A phone call interrupted her music. SHEEN, followed by an emoji sticking its tongue out, splashed up on her screen. Not bothering to tug out her earbuds, Cindy swiped to answer. “What.”

“Bad news, amiga.”

“Let me guess: you got lashed to railroad tracks by Robo-Fiend and he’s standing a few feet away, twirling his mustache and laughing maniacally. Which is the only bad news you better be giving me on today of all days.”

“Don’t be ridiculous – Robo-Fiend doesn’t have a mustache! That’s his identical cousin, Robo-Foe.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“I can’t pick you up from the bus station.”

Cindy smirked. “Libby won’t let you drive, will she?”

“She’s convinced I’m gonna get in an accident and miss the wedding! I thought she had more faith in me than that.” Sheen fake-sniffled into the phone.

“Obviously not. So am I schlepping home from the station or what?”

“No, no! I’ve got backup. I mean, he drives as fast as tortoises making sweet love on a log floating down a lazy river, but—”

The color drained from Cindy’s face. “No.”

“I don’t have any other choices! Unless you want to practice your Spanish with my cousin Emilio. He’s the only one who hasn’t had a beer yet.”

“Please tell me Carl isn’t still driving that dinky piece of shit he had in high school.”

“You mean the Kanmuri with the booger-green paint?” Sheen paused. “Okay, so I have more bad news.”

Cindy pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m doomed.”

“No, it’s all good! I promise, I checked all the lug nuts on his wheels this morning so we won’t have a repeat of the junior Snowball dance.”

“God, do not remind me.” Cindy had a flashback to squatting on the side of the highway in her dance dress on a chilly midwinter night, holding a flashlight while Jimmy evaluated any potential vehicle damage beyond the front passenger wheel coming off and bouncing down into the ditch. Carl, despite this happening to his car, proved to be minimal help. “And yet for some reason we kept riding around in that thing.”

“Only ‘cause it gave Jimmy a break from driving all the time. Hey, in case I forget to say anything later: sorry about your mom.”

“Thanks.” Cindy twirled the wire of her earbuds tight around one finger. “Guess you’d know about losing a parent, huh?”

“Yeah.” Sheen’s voice was as quiet as she’d ever heard it. “I used to feel kinda weird about it, you know, when kids at school would talk about their grandparents dying or their aunt dying and stuff. Like, I’d feel bad for them, but I knew what they felt wasn’t the same thing I felt. It’s a different kind of hole that gets left behind.”

“That’s…pretty profound, Sheen.”

“I have my moments. So listen, if you ever want to talk about it…I mean, maybe save it until after our honeymoon, but even if you did call during our honeymoon, I know Libby would make me answer it.”

Cindy chuckled. “Probably. See you soon.”

“See ya.”

About an hour later, they pulled into the Dallas Greyhound station. The long, shuffling line to collect luggage stowed under the bus was far preferable to waiting around a baggage carousel. Once in the parking lot, it took Cindy no time to find Carl’s car. The paint was an unquestionably ugly color, but also unquestionably distinctive.

Carl was dozing in the driver’s seat and screamed when Cindy tapped on the passenger’s side window.

“Sorry, sorry!” He scrambled out of the car. “Here, lemme take your bag.”

Cindy started to protest, but Carl plucked her duffle away, hefted it inside the microscopic cargo area, and slammed the hatch door shut before she could say much else. She took that as her cue to settle into the passenger seat, messenger bag in her lap. 

“Might take a while for the air conditioning to kick in,” Carl said, turning the key in the ignition and lovingly patting the dashboard. “Gina’s having an off day.”

Right. Cindy had forgotten Carl had named his weird little car. No wonder he was so attached to it. “Fine by me. I was actually sitting right under a vent on the bus – might be nice to warm up.”

Carl finessed his way out of the parking space, looking both ways twice before shifting gears and puttering off. His childhood cowardice had somehow translated into him only being an abundantly cautious driver rather than a fearful one; it’d been the buzz of Retroville High when he was among the first sophomores to get a driver’s license. Even merging onto the highway, which had always made Cindy hold her breath back when she had to drive around in Seattle, didn’t seem to rattle him.

Neither of them said anything for a few minutes, the radio playing a piano ballad Cindy vaguely recognized from childhood. Carl hummed along until it clicked over to a light rock song, at which point he started to drum his fingers on the steering wheel.

“I’m sorry about your mom,” he said quietly after the chorus kicked in.

Cindy twitched her lips to one side. She was not enthused about having to have this particular verbal exchange more than once a day. “Thanks.”

“She was kinda mean to everybody.”

The tone of Carl’s voice – calm, observational, like he was pointing out an odd-shaped cloud in the sky – struck Cindy as extremely funny, and she burst out giggling. Carl glanced at her sideways, mild panic in his eyes.

“Did I say something wrong?”

Cindy shook her head and pushed her fist up to her mouth, but the giggles kept coming. When she finally recovered, she said, “I’m not used to you being so blunt.”

Carl shrugged. In such a tiny car, it seemed like his shoulders almost touched the roof.

“You’re not wrong, by the way,” Cindy continued in a more sober voice. “I learned how to be a bitch from the best.”

“You’re not always a bitch.”

Again, it was his tone of voice that tickled Cindy so much, but she kept her composure this time. Instead, she looked over at Carl, analyzing him for a hint of sarcasm or artifice, but found nothing.

“I mean, you were the one who encouraged me to go through with my bar mitzvah when I was sixteen even though I was scared to read in front of so many people. You might’ve threatened me with a karate chop if I didn’t do it—”

“Knife-hand strike,” Cindy corrected.

“—which you said would’ve fixed my weird scapula. And you sat and listened to me read my Torah passage over and over until I could do it without stuttering.”

Memories of blowing off track practice to sit cross-legged on the couch in Carl’s basement while he read in Hebrew from photocopies clutched in his trembling hands rose to the surface in Cindy’s mind. “Wait. Didn’t you ask me to do that because I was, and I quote, ‘the most judgmental person you know,’ and if I didn’t yawn or look at my phone, it meant you did it right?”

“Yeah, but,” Carl shrugged again, “you didn’t have to agree.”

“True.”

“Also there was all that free Cosmic Crust pizza you’d bring to our sleepovers.”

“Those were kitchen mistakes, and Jimmy would slip me a twenty for ‘em every so often.” Not that Cindy would ever admit to intentionally making mistakes just so her friends could have pizza.

“And you went and found Jimmy again after all these years. Sheen told me, by the way.” A frown did not belong on such a round, friendly face, yet Carl bore one all the same. “None of us did that.”

“You were busy. You had your own stuff going on.”

“We had our own stuff going on as kids, too, and we still all fit into each other’s lives.”  

Silence fell between them. Carl switched lanes twice and headed onto the Retroville exit while Cindy searched for the right words. For once, she wasn’t going to let a conversation with him end on an awkward note.

“When I went off to college, I’d kind of convinced myself that if I wanted to mature, I had to walk away from everything in my past. Including people I used to know and love.” She scuffed the toe of her sneaker against the crusty tan carpet. “Ever since I came back to town, though, I’ve realized how dumb that was. You can’t choose whether you grow up, but you can choose whether you grow apart. There’s no rule saying you can’t grow together.”    

The frown on Carl’s face slowly curved upward. “Does this mean we can all have a sleepover sometime soon?”  

Cindy hesitated, ready to point out how weird it’d be for five adults, two of whom were married, to have a sleepover. Then she banished that snap judgment to the back of her mind. “Sure, Carl. We can do that.”

“See? You can be kind, which my mom has always said is better than being nice.”

Cindy snickered, and they drove on.

Libby and Sheen had opted to hold their wedding at Old Memorial Hall, a regal, cream-colored building with fluted columns that sat on the southern edge of town. Once Retroville’s preeminent destination for live theater, it’d fallen into disrepair by the late 1970s thanks to shifting audience tastes in entertainment and the whole town bleeding closer to the Dallas suburbs. Some years back, a town councilmember took pity on the place and brought a motion to allocate money for roof-to-floor renovations in the name of historical preservation. Old Memorial then became a much-sought-after event space; Retroville High even held their proms there instead of cramming a couple hundred kids into a single gymnasium.

Cindy grinned at the marquee, which read ¡Bienvenidos a la boda de Sheen Estévez y Libby Folfax! and had its lights racing even though it was only mid-afternoon. She headed into the lobby, garment bag draped over her arm and Carl trailing after her, where she was greeted by a riot of color in the way of streamers and balloons in orange, aquamarine, pink, and purple. If Sasha were here, she’d have made some snide comment about how the décor was more appropriate for a child’s birthday party rather than a wedding, but thankfully she was not and never would be.

“Gotta go find Libby,” she said over her shoulder. Carl nodded and lumbered off in search of a snack.

Although no longer strictly meant to be used as a theater, the renovations at Old Memorial had maintained two stage spaces. Since they were accommodating so many guests – a hundred seventy-three, by Cindy’s final count a couple weeks ago – Libby and Sheen picked the thrust stage so more people could properly see the ceremony. Cindy headed into the service door for the thrust stage and made a beeline for the dressing rooms.

Libby was in the dressing room furthest back, lounging in an old Ultra-Lord T-shirt and leggings. Her braids had been undone earlier in the day and redone into twists capped off with gold beads. Even though she was nodding and singing along to the music playing through her headphones, she immediately spotted Cindy walking through the door.

“Somebody’s really gotta figure out how you can send a hug long-distance,” she said, peeling off her headphones and tossing them down on the couch.

“I’ll get Jimmy on that. Maybe it’ll win him his precious Nobel Prize,” Cindy snarked before dropping the garment bag in a heap and embracing Libby tightly.

“I thought so many times over the last few days about hopping on a plane down to Houston, wedding be damned. You said it yourself: Sheen and I already do all the married couple stuff anyway.”

“I’m glad you didn’t. You probably would’ve died of secondhand embarrassment.”

Libby pulled back enough to look Cindy in the face. “How are you doing?”

“You mean am I doing any differently from when you texted that exact question to me this morning, and every morning since you found out what happened?”

“Emotions can change, girl.”

Cindy looked off to one side, considering this. “Right now, I’m fine. Maybe a little sad, I guess?”

Libby jerked her head toward the couch and raised an eyebrow.

“Part of what drove me nuts about being around my dad is he expected me to act a certain way.” Cindy dropped down on the couch, arms crossed, and Libby knelt on the cushion beside her. “Not like how my mom used to, but it was like he wanted me to…perform grief. And I wasn’t gonna do something if I didn’t feel it.”

“I get that.”

“I’d kinda already felt like she was dead when I decided to quit talking to her. Seeing her in the hospital was more like exhaling after holding my breath for too long.” Cindy wrinkled her nose. “Is it fucked up to say my mom dying was a relief?”

Libby shrugged. “Maybe it would be if you were talking about literally any other mom we know.”

“At least my Aunt Susie was normal. And Jimmy. I know it probably ate him up to be away from the lab for so long, but he stayed.”

“Is he running around out with the other guests somewhere?”

“No. Carl took me home to drop my stuff off and pick up my dress, and I didn’t see Jimmy anywhere. Goddard was offline and charging, so I couldn’t ask if he knew anything. But,” Cindy closed her eyes and tilted her head, “Jimmy’s a grown-up. I trust him to make it to a wedding by himself.”

If Cindy had her eyes open, she would’ve seen Libby smile knowingly. “Hey, speaking of that dress, why don’t you try it on for me?”

“Like I haven’t modeled it for you eighteen times already!”

“Yeah, but we got a few hours to kill, and there ain’t much else around here to do. Besides, it’s my special day.” Libby pressed a hand to her chest. “So what I say goes.”

Cindy stood outside Old Memorial Hall, scanning the skies and tapping a foot on the sidewalk. She had a feeling Jimmy would show up in his hovercar, if not in one of his more sophisticated vehicles. He hadn’t answered any of her texts or calls, which on any normal day wouldn’t worry her. It’d crossed her mind that this wedding was likely the biggest social outing he’d been to since high school graduation; he’d told her that he skipped out on his undergrad and graduate ceremonies. What if he got cold feet at the prospect of being around so many people?

She wrapped the red shawl – newly crocheted and a gift from Ysabel – tighter around her shoulders and headed back inside. The high-low hem of her maid of honor dress, as well as the orange, gold, and pink hues that melted and blended into each other, made it look as though Cindy was trailing the sunset in behind her.

Once inside, she ducked into a nearby bathroom and, using her compact, triple-checked that her hair was fine. Large loose bun, tails secured at the base with a gold pin shaped like a treble clef and with a few pieces framing either side of her face. It was elegant, yet simple enough not to detract from the main event.

“Cindy!”

She snapped her compact shut. “Gordon! This is the women’s room!”

“I know, I know!” Libby’s little brother winced as the camera hanging around his neck clunked into the bathroom door. “Libby said you’d probably be off hiding—”

“I’m not hiding.”

“—anyway, she wanted to make sure you got these.” Gordon produced a bouquet of orange and yellow tiger lilies from behind his back.

“…How close are we to starting?”

“T-minus…” Gordon shoved the wrist of his suit jacket back to check his watch. “Ninety seconds.”

“Shit!” Cindy tossed her compact into her clutch and darted out of the bathroom. “Thank you!”

“Want me to hold onto that?” Gordon asked, gesturing to the clutch.

“Uh, yeah, sure. Trade ya.”

The bouquet was traded for the clutch, and Gordon jogged off to get in position for photographs. Cindy ran for the thrust auditorium entrance, thankful she’d talked Libby into letting her wear shorter heels, and came to a stop at the back of the bridal party procession.

“Señor Estevez,” she greeted Sheen’s father, who was serving as best man.

Harp reached into the inside pocket of his charro suit jacket, produced a wad of tissues, and dabbed at his eyes. “Perdóname,” he whispered. “I’m just so proud of my son.”

“I understand,” Cindy said softly.

“I wish his mother was here to see this.”

The word mother made Cindy’s stomach flip. She curled her bottom lip under her teeth, nodded, and looped her arm through Harp’s. The mariachi band at the entrance began to play, and the officiant walked toward the stage, hands clasped in front of them.

Cindy hadn’t been able to attend the rehearsal dinner, but the procession was simple enough: enter down the center aisle, split at the stage, climb up the stairs on the left or right depending on your half of the wedding party, and rejoin arms briefly on stage before parting again. She watched as Libby and Sheen’s grandparents made their way to their respective seats near the front, followed by Libby’s mother, who was already bawling. Then the music shifted to a more triumphant tune, one Cindy recognized but couldn’t quite place. She leaned to the left and saw Sheen take his place at the end of the aisle.

“Oh my God,” she muttered to herself. The instrumentation and arrangement did enough to obscure it, but there was no question: he was walking to the victory tune that played after a successful Ultra Lord match, the nerd. Yet she’d never seen such a pep in his step before.

Sheen stood downstage, and every piece of glittering gold in his ensemble – from the band and swirling accents of his sombrero, to the buttons and cuffs of his jacket, to the stripes of his pants and the tips of his boots – seemed to catch the overhead lights. Cindy had to admit: the charro suit was the right call. He looked radiant, handsome, and ready.

Then the bridesmaids and groomsmen began their walk to a different song, this one heavier on the guitars rather than the horns. Cindy also noted Carl as a late addition to the wedding party, apparently charming one of Libby’s cousins judging by how she giggled behind her hand.

“¿Listo?” Harp asked, patting Cindy gently on the arm.

Cindy smiled and nodded. “Listo.”

They walked together, slow and steady. Harp started sniffling as they drew closer to the stage, and once there, he clapped Sheen on the shoulder with pride. Cindy took her place opposite Sheen and two steps over, forming three corners of a box with Harp across from her.

Next came baby Dion riding in a canvas postal bin on wheels, pushed by another of Libby’s cousins. The guests cooed as Dion tossed pink, orange, and gold flower petals willy-nilly out of the bin, making more of a mess than a true path as he did so. At the end of the aisle, he was handed off to his mother, and the bin pushed off to the side.

“Please, stand if you are able for the receiving of the bride,” the officiant’s voice rang out loud and clear. “Levantase si puede, por favor.”

The guests rose and turned. The mariachi began playing a different song, one Cindy had heard countless times blasted out of boomboxes and car stereos over her life: “All I Ever Need is You” by Three-4-Three. Libby had once declared it was the most romantic song she’d ever heard; clearly she hadn’t changed her mind. Never had Cindy considered swapping out R&B crooning for a mellow trumpet and violin, though.

Libby was an absolute vision coming down the aisle, arm in arm with her dad. Ysabel had worked magic, embroidering a vibrant rainbow of music notes that swirled around the bodice of Libby’s dress and circled the hem, a personalized play on the traditional Mexican flowers. When she stepped to the edge of the stage lights, every gold thread in her dress and veil sparkled, and several wedding guests audibly gasped. Cindy cut her eyes over to Sheen, who was utterly transfixed. She watched as, in a gesture of old-time respect, he fumbled for the crown of his sombrero, pulled it off, and placed it over his heart.

The smile Libby gave Sheen when she finally got on stage would’ve powered an entire city. “Hi,” she whispered.

“Dios,” Sheen breathed. “Eres un ángel.”

Libby tilted her head, looking him head to toe. “Te ves bastante guapo también,” she replied.

A couple of the groomsmen snickered, and Sheen put his sombrero back on, blushing.

“Dearly beloved,” the officiant began, “we are here to join these two in cherished matrimony. I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Libby and Sheen in the weeks leading up to today’s ceremony, and one word comes to mind: dedicated. Rarely have I seen two young people so utterly dedicated to one another outside the bond of marriage…”

It was wrong of Cindy to let her mind wander at a time like this, but she couldn’t help herself. Jimmy’s reserved seat still sat empty, a conspicuous hole in the audience. He knew what time this wedding began, and they’d started more or less on the dot at 7:30. Where the hell could he possibly be?         

A muffled boom caught Cindy’s ears. It wasn’t loud – like someone dropping a large box down by the lobby – but it was enough to grab her attention. There were caterers and other workers putting the finishing touches on the outdoor reception, so she put it down to that, readjusted the bouquet in her hands, and refocused on Libby and Sheen. Don’t think about it.

“…source of inspiration for us all,” the officiant said. “Now, before the couple recite their vows, I’m given to understand there is a musical selection—”

The doors at the back of the auditorium flung open. In a wave, the audience turned toward the sound. Oily smoke and the sharp, sweet smell of jet fuel floated in, and Jimmy strolled down the aisle, adjusting his cuff links.

“Buenas noches,” he greeted. “Did I miss anything?”

Cindy gripped her bouquet so tight she was sure to snap the stems short. How dare he? How dare he come swanning into his best friend’s wedding late, and how dare he look so damn good doing it?

“Jimmy!” Sheen cried. “You made it!”

“I did.”

“Get up here on stage, dude, come on!” Sheen leaned over to Libby. “You don’t mind, do you, babe?”

“Only if I get to make a sub-in of my own,” Libby replied. “ALTHEA!”

Althea, dressed in fuchsia and giggling with delight, bolted from midway back in the guest area and bounded up the stage steps to join the other bridesmaids. Jimmy took it a bit slower, only for Sheen to bend down and haul him up the rest of the stairs for a giant onstage hug; Jimmy hugged back to a smattering of moderate applause.

“The Three Amigops reunited at last!” Carl crowed.

“All is now right with the world,” Sheen sighed over Jimmy’s shoulder. 

“Um,” the officiant held up a finger, “are we ready to proceed?”

“Yeah, yeah, totally! Sorry.” Sheen let Jimmy go and jerked a thumb to his right. “Over there, my dude.”

“Much obliged.” On his way to join the other groomsmen, Jimmy shot Cindy a wink, and it took an exceptional amount of willpower for her not to chase after him.

The ceremony continued with a gospel performance from Libby’s grandmother who, despite being not a day less than eighty, had a rich singing voice that filled every corner of the auditorium and brought a tear to more than a few guests’ eyes. Next came el lazos, a pair of flower necklaces linked by a multicolored bow that were draped over Libby and Sheen to symbolically join them together. And finally, it was time for the vows.

Libby went first, handing her bouquet off to Cindy so she could take both of Sheen’s hands.

“Ramon Sheen Juarrera Estevez,” she started, dropping the first name hardly anyone outside of Sheen’s immediate family knew. “When I met you, I had no idea what to think. At first, you were the loud, kinda weird kid in the back of class who was really into this one superhero I’d never heard of. And you were friends with this other kid who had the answers to every question the teacher asked, no matter how out there it was.” Libby cocked her head at Jimmy, who raised both eyebrows in acknowledgement. “Somehow, I got roped into the adventures y’all had, and even though some of them were absolutely nuts, one thing I could always count on you to make me laugh, even when I was scared outta my mind. I don’t…” There was that winning smile again. “I don’t think anyone’s ever made me laugh as much as you.”

Libby took a steadying breath. “You’re the song I wanna play back every day for the rest of my life. And you know how much I love music.” The guests tittered at that line. “Te amo.”

Sheen’s hands fidgeted in hers, and he let go only long enough to swipe a knuckle under one eye. Harp offered his son a tissue, and Sheen waved it off.

“Liberty Danielle Folfax. Do you remember when we had to go save our parents from those aliens?”

A confused murmur rose up from the guests – not everybody was from Retroville, so not everyone was aware of the Yolkian story. But Libby nodded all the same.

“We were all trying to figure out what to do next, and I was spouting off about what my favorite superhero would do. You were the only one who actually wanted to hear me out, even if what I suggested was pretty ridiculous. I, um…” Sheen glanced down, then up again. “That’s why I had such a crush on you: you listened to me. You’ve always been so good at listening.”

Libby’s eyes went wide.

“You’re kind, and you’re smart, and you’re totally bodacious. I could say more, but there are kids in the audience, and on the advice of my lawyers—” Sheen winked at Cindy, who raised her chin at him, “—I’ll keep this PG.”

Everyone laughed.

“When I was little, I’d dream about being a hero. You actually make me feel like one every day. But that doesn’t mean you’re automatically my damsel. It means I wanna stand side-by-side with you and take on this world together.” Sheen grinned. “Every Ultra Lord needs an Ultra Lady. Te amo.”

Not even Cindy could muster an eye roll for that sentiment, cheesy as it was.

“I think that just about says everything,” the officiant said, and raised their hands high. “By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you wedded for life. You may kiss.”

Libby wound her arms around Sheen’s neck, and Sheen’s arms went around Libby’s waist. They dipped together in a deep kiss to uproarious applause, hooting and hollering, and a storm of confetti raining down on them all.

Throughout the whole recessional, Cindy had an irrepressible itch under her skin. She had to find Jimmy and demand answers. Get a proper eyeful of him in that tux, too, but that was lower on the priority list. Not by much, though.

She thought she had an opening to slip away once everyone had trailed outside to the reception area. Then Gordon popped up with his camera, and it was suddenly time for specific bridal photos in seemingly endless grouping combinations. Cindy though the whole point of having a roving photographer was to get more candid shots rather than staged ones. If she had to smile wide any longer, her face would freeze that way.

Finally, Gordon wandered off to snap photos of the guests, and Cindy let out a heavy exhale. She really didn’t want to get up on the dais and sit at the long wedding party table just for a better view over the crowd, but needs must. Cindy hiked up her dress and prepared to climb up the stairs when a message blared through the speakers strung up all around the reception.

“Could the maid of honor report to the wrestling ring, ¿por favor?”

Cindy whirled around and glared, annoyance oozing from every pore. Sheen stood in the middle of the wrestling ring, holding a megaphone and grinning that idiotic megawatt grin of his. Distantly, she realized that if she got up in the ring, she’d have the best vantage point to spot Jimmy. More urgently, though, she really, truly needed to kick Sheen’s ass.

“This had better be good, Estevez!” she hollered as she stomped over in his direction.

“Oh trust me, it will be!”

There was a small group of people gathered around, clutching beer bottles and murmuring to each other in Spanish; they parted as soon as Cindy glowered at them. Sheen sauntered over, megaphone still in hand, and squatted at the edge of the ring. He was wearing a white singlet decorated in a similar way as his charro suit, gold banding and swirling every which way.

“What the hell do you want?” Cindy snapped.

“As the maid of honor, I figured you should have the privilege of the first match against me!” Seeing Cindy’s bewilderment, Sheen added, “What, you didn’t think this thing was just a party decoration, did you?”

“I…” Cindy shrugged. “You know what, I had no idea what to think about this. You got me at a loss here.”

Sheen smirked, then leaned in closer. “I kinda feel like you need the release of a good grapple sesh. Also, my cousin Alberto wanted to go first, but if I face him, I may literally die.”

Cindy cast a glance at the group behind her. “Is that the guy built like a refrigerator?”

Sheen gulped and nodded.

“Yeah, all right, if anyone’s gonna snap you in half tonight, it’s gonna be me.” Whoops and wild cheers went up from the growing audience as Cindy pulled herself onto the edge of the mat, ducked under the ropes, and shrugged off her shawl. “I’ll try not to be too rough on you – gotta leave Libby some fun for later.”

“Gracias.” Picking up the megaphone again – whoever let him get his hands on one needed their head examined – Sheen fired off a decent imitation of an announcer’s pre-match patter. Once he was done, he tossed it off to the side with an unholy screech and got into his starting stance. Cindy assumed her own stance and, with a near-imperceptible crook of her fingers, beckoned him to lunge. Sheen followed through, toppling them both to the mat.

“Hey, while I’m here,” Cindy grunted, slapping her forearms on the mat and pivoting with her hips so they flipped positions, “got a question for you.”

“Hit me.”

“Don’t ask for things you don’t want. Anyway,” she pinned Sheen’s shoulder, and the count of uno, dos, tres, cuatro started up from the crowd, “when I told Jimmy about your wedding, he said he now owed you five hundred bucks over an old bet. Have any idea what that’s about?”

On ocho, Sheen broke away and shoved Cindy off with brute strength; she rolled deftly off to one side. “Hmm, it does sound familiar,” he mused as he righted himself. “Did he say anything else?”

“Said you swore on a comic book.”

“Gotta narrow it down more than that.”

Cindy lunged for Sheen this time, bringing them both back down to the mat with a thud. “Mint-condition. Something about the multiverse, maybe? Ringing any bells, or is your belfry a bat sanctuary?”

“Ohhh.” Sheen’s eyes widened with recognition. “Okay, I’ll tell you, but you gotta promise not to get mad.”

 “I know you think saying that softens the blow, but all it does is piss me off.”

“All right, all right! But first, make like you hit me in the gut.”

“What?”

“You’re the heel!” At Cindy’s confusion, Sheen added, “Did you really think I’d be the heel at my own wedding? Plus, we gotta sell it to these guys.” He jerked his head behind to where the crowd watching them had grown.

Cindy rolled her eyes and obliged, Sheen curling in his side like a pained shrimp. Loud boos erupted from all sides, and he motioned for her to get down low so he wouldn’t have to speak too loud.  

“In junior year at one of our guy sleepovers, Jimmy and I bet on which of us would get married first. I bet on marrying Libby, and he…” Sheen fluttered his fingers, hoping Cindy would catch on.

“He…bet on marrying me?”  

“Bingo.”

“Wait. You didn’t rush this wedding just so you’d win five hundred bucks, did you?”

“What? No! Honestly, I’d forgotten about the whole thing until you brought it up. Plus, not to brag, but I kinda don’t need the money.”

Cindy clicked her tongue. “Must be nice.”

“Look, can we skip the part where you sit here and freak out about how Jimmy’s been a total fruit salad for you since forever and just get back to you kicking my ass?”

Cindy raised an eyebrow. “Fruit salad?”

“More than bananas,” Sheen explained. “Geez, I thought you were supposed to be smart.”

He was goading her – that much was clear by his shit-eating grin. That still didn’t stop a flare of anger from surging up in Cindy, nor did it stop her from flattening him into the mat for yet another pin attempt.

Their grapple went on for three rounds, ending only because Alberto succeeded in clambering into the ring and drunkenly demanded that it was his turn. Cindy seized the opportunity to slip away and grabbed her shawl. Based on the hurried shuffle of hands and murmurs as she exited the ring, she’d made a couple of Sheen’s other cousins some substantial money.

She found Jimmy at one of the guest tables close to the dais, deep in conversation with Sheen’s abuela. Ysabel had the makings of another shawl in her lap, her crochet hook little more than a regular thin flash of silver as she worked the yarn without looking.

“Cindy!” he said excitedly. “Ysabel and I were having a fascinating discussion about the evolution of state-led conservation efforts for the nine-banded armadillo. It was the focus of her honors thesis when she went back to complete her wildlife biology degree at the University of Texas about five years ago.”

“That…is fascinating, actually,” Cindy replied, surprised. “Listen, Jimmy, do you think we could go somewhere and talk? Privately?”

Jimmy tilted his head, curiosity piqued, and turned to Ysabel. She shrugged and nodded without skipping a beat in her crocheting. He stood, the motion carrying with it the smell of his minty aftershave; Cindy had the sudden urge to bury her face in his neck there and then. Instead, she took his hand and gently led him toward the hedges that lined the perimeter of the reception area.

“Hi,” she said, turning to face him once they were alone.  

“Hi,” Jimmy breathed. “You look—”

“Like a mess, I know. I didn’t exactly select my maid of honor outfit in preparation for combat.” Cindy reached up and tugged the pin at the base of her bun just to be sure that was still secure.

“I was going to say you look stellar. Quite literally, I might add – the purple areas on your dress are like magnetic flux concentrations, while the predominant orange hue evokes a G-type main sequence star. And of course, you…” he gestured with his hand from her head to toe, “I mean, you’re always radiant.”

Cindy blushed hard. “Thanks. You’re pretty easy on the eyes yourself,” she said, stepping toward him and laying a hand on the lapel of his tuxedo jacket. “Might have to consider dropping the muffin from hunkmuffin entirely.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Right after you tell me,” she curled her fingers into his lapel, “why the hell you were late!”

Jimmy didn’t flinch like she expected. Instead, he smiled softly. “I was out getting a present.”

“Neutron, we already went together on those dishes from Libby and Sheen’s registry, remember? The ones shaped like different vegetables? I swear, if you went out to try and one-up something they picked out for themselves—”

“Didn’t say the present was for them.” He produced a small, dark box from the inner pocket of his jacket and flipped open the lid. A bluish-green ring was tucked into the cushion, and three deep red gems embedded in the band winked up at Cindy.

“You’ll have to forgive the incongruence of the setting to the jewels,” Jimmy continued. “But the program was already set in the 3D printer, and it’s generally inadvisable to engage in silver soldering while flying spacecraft.”

Cindy’s eyes were drawn down to the gems again. Something about their glow seemed awfully familiar…“Wait. Don’t tell me these are—”

“We never did stop to look for aster-rubies on our trip, and I’ve felt guilty about you having to give yours up way back when. So given the significance of the occasion, I thought you deserved some to keep for good.”

Cindy reached for the ring to examine it more closely, but paused. “Significance of the occasion? Jimmy, what are you—?”

The words choked off in her throat as he sunk to one knee.

“I know the timing is far from ideal,” Jimmy began. “But if my dad taught me anything, it’s that if you wait for the right time to do something, that time may never come.”

Were it not for the fact that her heart was banging its way out of her chest, Cindy would be fairly confident she’d died. She certainly wasn’t breathing.

“I love you. I know this, just like I know that the energy of a particle is equivalent to the product of its mass and the square of the speed of light. Or that there are four fundamental forces that encompass and govern all physical interactions in the observable universe. Or that the ingredients of said universe can be laid out in a beautifully organized table.” Jimmy smiled gently. “And I also know, with the same level of certainty, that I never want us to be apart. Not like we were before. I want…” The box trembled in his outstretched fingers. “I want to stay beside you. And I’ve tried to articulate that in so many ways, except this one: Cynthia Aurora Vortex, will you marry me?”

Blood thundered in Cindy’s ears. Every nerve in her body was a sparking live wire. So many old, plaguing voices rose from the depths of her mind – self-hatred, cynicism, doubt – all ready to inform her why she couldn’t, shouldn’t, and wouldn’t do this. Yet above them all was a newly-discovered, stronger voice, one that spoke loud and clear: self-assurance. You can have this. You’re allowed to have this. You deserve this.

“Yes.” In case he somehow mistook that word for an exhale, Cindy nodded. “James Isaac Neutron, I love you, and I will marry you.”

He wobbled rising to his feet, but he slid the ring onto her finger with unwavering confidence. Just as he was about to lean in for a kiss, she stopped him.

“Need to fix something first.” Cindy took his left hand in the palm of her own and saw the ring she’d given him was still firmly on his middle finger. She slid it off and onto his ring finger, all while Jimmy watched her closely.

“Did I misinterpret this when you gave it to me?” he asked.

“No. But I’ve decided it means something different now.”

Their eyes met, and shortly after, so did their lips.

With several loud clangs of a bell, all guests and the wedding party were summoned back to the seating area to eat. The air filled with intermingling smells of dried chiles and brown sugar as people loaded their plates with barbecue chicken and pork, tamales de elote, rojo, y verde, cornbread, macaroni and cheese, and refried and baked beans. From there, the atmosphere shifted to that of a picnic: people hopping from table to table, sharing food, and clinking glasses of beer and champagne together.

Harp gave a heartfelt best man speech in a mix of English and Spanish that ended with him fumbling for his cloth napkin to wipe away tears. Cindy spoke next. She’d tried writing a speech at various points while in Houston, but hadn’t find the right words to put down; thankfully, she’d always been a gifted extemporaneous speaker. She talked about finding your person, the one you want to have next to you for anything and everything, and how you can’t let them go. Libby kept giving her classic I’m onto you look, but Cindy didn’t falter.

After a couple more speeches, including a joint one from Libby’s mother and Ysabel, it was time for the first dance. Sheen had changed back into his charro suit, this time without the sombrero, and he and Libby glided together on the floor in perfect sync. Cindy, having descended from the dais and found a seat next to Jimmy, rested her head on his shoulder and watched her two friends have eyes only for each other.

“Just think: that could be us pretty soon,” she murmured.

“Mmm, I don’t know. I think I’d prefer something a bit more energetic for our first dance,” Jimmy replied. Under the table, he flashed his watch screen at her.

Cindy raised her head and then an eyebrow at his smirk. “‘Neutron Dance’? Really?”

“Only a suggestion.”

“That song would get everyone on their feet,” she conceded. “We’ve got time to figure all that out, though. I’m not doing a rush job like these two.”

“Agreed.” Jimmy interlaced his fingers with Cindy’s, and they looked on as Libby and Sheen shared their first kiss as a married couple following their dance. Once they were done, Gordon scrambled up and handed his sister a microphone.

“All right, before we really tear up this dance floor, I gotta part ways with this bouquet. Gettin’ tired of carrying it around,” Libby said, even though she’d set her bouquet down during the speeches. “Everybody who wants to catch some flowers better get on over here now!”

There was a mad dash for the dance floor by girls and boys alike, young and old. Libby scanned over the crowd as it gathered, visibly confused.

“Cindy! Get over here, girl! Don’t you want your chance?”

“Don’t need it!” Cindy called back. She motioned for Jimmy to kiss her, and as he did, she raised her left hand high, knowing Libby would see the aster-rubies sparkling in the night.