Respite
“You never told your father you were leaving Mars?”
“It would have just started an argument, and after six years of arguing with the man, I was done.”
“I’m just saying…”
I was sitting on Julia’s bed while she installed two security cameras in her quarters. it had taken a few days for Julia and Carl to get the equipment together.
This was the first time I had been in Julia’s quarters; more often than not we met at mine when I got off work, or rendezvoused at some obscure location. We had just finished installing cameras in my quarters, and I offered to escort her to hers, making it difficult for her to refuse.
I’m not sure why; maybe because it was so…feminine. It shattered the image she tries so hard to project I guess. I was warned by a telling glare not to comment on the décor, and I decided not to push my luck.
“What did you two argue about,” she continued, not letting the topic drop.
“Normal stuff; life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness; especially the pursuit of happiness. We had a real difference of opinion about what constitutes a valid pursuit of happiness.”
She finished the first camera, aiming it at the door, and was working on the second, hidden from obvious view. She had to reach on tip toe to install it. I chose not to get up and help; I liked the way she looked as her lean body stretch to reach the high point she had selected for the install. She knew it.
“So your father didn’t approve of your being a pilot.”
“Or of the classes I took at university, or of my lack of interest in the sciences, or of the girls I dated.”
The last comment made her pause, and I just grinned. I picked up a stuffed bunny she had laying on her bunk. Odd, I thought, as I turned it over in my hand. To me rabbits were something you cooked, not something you pet. I placed the bunny back down on the bunk.
“So are you playing in the big game next week?”
“Of course I am. Aren’t you?”
“Darlin’, you have all my money. It was all I could do to scrape up the buy in for last month’s game.”
She thought for a minute before responding. “I’ll cover your buy in.”
“No way,” I laughed. “A man has to be able to cover his own bets. That much my father and I did agree on.”
“Come on, Ryan, if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have beaten ‘The Don’. I won more than enough to cover us both.”
“I’ll think about it.” Fortunately she did not throw her pout at me, instead turning her attention back to the task at hand. When she finished, she punched a few keys on her laptop and pulled up the feed from both cameras. She adjusted the second of the two to point at her bunk, and then hopped onto my lap.
“What shall we do?” she said coyly.
“I don’t think so; I don’t do film. Besides, I’m starving.”
It was almost 5PM, and I hadn’t had anything to eat since 3AM. Third shift puts an interesting spin on relationships.
