Mara woke on the fifth morning with Ivo's mouth at her shoulder and a piece of the bed restraint pressing into her thigh.
“Bad design,” she said.
“That's a professional finding?”
“I'll put it in a report.”
His arm tightened. She turned toward him and they kissed, slowly, before ordinary discomfort separated them. She had to find her clothes. He had to stop taking up the whole small room. They had to eat.
There was an ease in being irritated with him again. She had missed the right to be irritated by little things.
In the dining space he fetched breakfast while she secured their places. Yesterday's improvised feast had left some odd survivors. He brought a peach portion and bread, and a single pepper sweet on top like a garnish.
“For your accent,” he said.
She put it in his hand.
Across the room Nessa was sitting alone, looking at something on a screen. Nobody had asked her to cook breakfast. She looked almost suspiciously happy.
Mara spread the bread and saw, suddenly and without warning, her apartment on Earth. The window open. Ivo behind her in the kitchen, discussing some terrible piece of furniture they could buy. They would need a larger place than the one she'd kept. She had left a drawer empty for him as though a drawer could accomplish what she hadn't said plainly enough.
He was here now. He knew the old home couldn't be kept. Perhaps he had needed to see it end before he could want another.
“The big front room would suit,” she said.
He looked up. “Which room?”
“There's an apartment available near the market. Larger than mine. I meant to tell you about it.”
He put his bread down.
She felt the mistake begin before either spoke.
“I've been thinking,” he said.
“So have I.”
“You wouldn't have to be the engineer. Suri wouldn't expect it. You could take contract work. We could keep a corner for—”
“A corner.”
He stopped.
“For us?” she asked.
“Why are you saying it like that?”
“Because I'm talking about a home and you're talking about where to fit me.”
He looked genuinely hurt. “I'm talking about a home too.”
Neither moved. People passed them carrying bowls and cups; their table was a little obstacle in the middle of a functioning ship.
She wanted, very badly, to return to the cabin and finish being happy before they did this. That wish almost made her laugh.
“Ivo. I want Earth.”
“You know I don't.”
“After yesterday, I thought—”
“Yes. I thought too.”
He pushed the peach portion toward her, something for his hands to do. She couldn't bear that kindness or refuse it.
“You never said,” he began.
“Neither did you.”
“Not about the night. About how final you'd made it.”
“I haven't made anything final. I've wanted this for months. You kept hearing it as a complaint you could fix.”
“Maybe I wanted a chance to.”
She brushed a loose crumb into the bread container, then put her hands flat on the table. Her voice had grown louder and she was frightened of the controlled quiet she would use next.
“I don't want you to fix it. I want to be outside. I want a room I can leave, a neighborhood I can walk away from when I don't like anyone in it. I want to work on something that isn't this place. I don't want to bring all my work home and put my bed beside it.”
“That's not all we are.”
“I didn't say it was.”
“It sounds like you think the life I want is a very competent mistake.”
She looked at him. That hurt because it was close to a thing she had done.
“I've sounded like that,” she said. “I don't mean it.”
He pressed his lips together.
“What does Earth take?” she asked. “Tell me without telling me why I should feel differently.”
He looked across at Nessa, then beyond her, toward the ship's wall.
“The people. Not forever. Not everyone. But we'll arrive, and they'll go to relatives or cities or a cheaper place somebody found. I'll know them through calls. I'll teach strangers. Which is fine. I like strangers.”
“I know.”
“I'll spend years making something useful. And maybe it'll be wonderful. But here I've already done those years. Some of them.”
“The commons is gone.”
“Yes.”
He said it without defending anything, and she saw how much effort it took.
“I don't want to start by leaving the people who want me beside them,” he said. “Or leaving this.” He lifted a hand toward the room, toward the window, toward the floating bodies and the great world outside. “I like being up here. It makes me happy before I know whether the day will be any good.”
Mara looked at his hand, brown and nicked, the hand she had held all night. She understood that much. The rain did that for her. She had hated him for making it sound small.
“I thought you'd come,” she said.
“I thought you might not go.”
For a moment there was only the absurdity of their two hopeful plans, each so lovingly inhabited that the other person barely had to be present in it.
“I wanted you last night,” she said. “I wasn't trying to change your mind.”
“Neither was I.”
They sat with that. It didn't rescue the morning. It did keep the night from becoming something they would have to take back.
He rubbed at his eyes. “I have to talk to the others.”
“About the commons?”
“Yes.”
She nodded.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Finishing the qualification. Work.”
He almost smiled. “Me too.”
He left half the bread. After he had gone, Mara ate her peach slowly, tasting it, swallowing against the thick feeling in her throat. She could hear Nessa laugh at something on her screen.
The apartment on Earth remained available. So did the decommissioning contract, local enough for her to come home most nights. Mara wasn't ready to accept either that morning. She opened the message anyway and read the description again, this time without putting Ivo in the room.