Date Point: New Year’s Eve, 7y 11m AV
London, England, Earth
Ava Rios
Two weeks of Christmas should have been two weeks of topping up on Adam, keeping things going, generally performing maintenance on the relationship. His occasional leave breaks were nice and all, but…
Instead it had been an echo of last year. Mind-blowing sex on the first day, then gym gym gym.
He’d tried to include her, and sure they’d been spending time together…but what kind of a vacation consisted of busting your back in the weight room all day for ten days, interspersed with regimented, pre-prepared meals that were fifty percent supplement pills? Ava enjoyed exercise, and she was definitely proud of herself for burning off some fat and toning up during those two weeks, but come on. Where was the romance? The gym wasn’t a date!
She’d been seething gently about it the whole time, determined not to ruin Adam’s mood by yelling at him again. A bit of a white lie maybe, but those never hurt anyone, right?
All that negative mental energy hadn’t made for a happy flight back to London. Journey times were coming down and down as the new mesosphere airliners, nicknamed “spacekissers”, set ever-higher altitude records and achieved ever-greater multiples of Mach for fractions of the expense of older planes, but flying was still an industrial, uncomfortable mode of transport. The marriage of fuel-less thrusters, ultracapacitors and forcefield flight surfaces had hugely curtailed ticket prices, but the airports hadn’t grown any larger, nor were new ones being built. More people than ever wanted to travel, but nobody wanted the extra noise pollution and traffic, so the number of runways in the world wasn’t increasing and most of them were already at capacity.
Which meant that flying still involved too-small seats in cramped metal tubes shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers, plus the usual ritual of going through border control, baggage collect and customs at the end before Ava was finally able to vanish onto the Underground and emerge two hours and one change later at street level, sweaty, exhausted and jet-lagged, to find that London was being characteristically chilly, grey and dispiriting.
By the time she’d dragged her luggage through every puddle between the tube station and Sean’s house, she’d given up on feeling much of anything positive.
Sean’s house changed that. It was an oasis of light, music and warmth, gearing up for the night’s New Year celebration. Via the plane’s satellite Internet connection, Ava had been involved in the discussion as they had toyed with the idea of going into the city and enjoying the fireworks over the Thames, but the relentless wetness in the air had clearly settled in for the long haul, so they instead elected to stay home in the warm and dry, with an assortment of alcohol, treats and the Christmas decorations still up.
She was welcomed with cheers, hugs, a big kiss on both cheeks from an inebriated Charlotte who was wearing a pointy hat made of newspaper, and something magenta and fruit-flavoured in a bottle from Sean.
Charlotte and Ben being in charge of the party snacks in the oven, their welcome was by necessity brief, and Sean watched Ava with a faint smile as she leaned against the wall and downed half the bottle with an enormous sigh.
“That bad?” he asked.
“I really need a shower.” she nodded.
“Go on upstairs, you know where it is. I’ll get the kettle on then bring your luggage up for you.”
Ava finished her drink, set the bottle down on Sean’s coffee table, and then trotted upstairs, already unbuttoning her jeans before she even reached the bathroom door. She’d used Sean’s shower a few times before, and getting it to the perfect temperature was as simple as twisting the dial two and a half turns and waiting about five seconds.
She used those five seconds ripping off every last sweaty, travel-soiled scrap of clothing she had on her, and took up position under the stream with a grateful sigh.
The heat was just starting to really soak deliciously into her muscles when there was a knock on the door. “Are…You already showering?”
“Come on in, Sean.”
”…Are you sure?”
Ava rolled her eyes to herself. The shower curtain was entirely opaque, what the hell was he so afraid of? “Come in.” she repeated, and leaned back to soak her hair.
“I’ll just…” She heard him wheel her bag in and leave it next to her discarded clothes before turning to leave.
“Come on, man, I haven’t seen you in a fortnight!” Ava protested. “Did you get that money yet?”
Just before she’d left, Sean had won seven thousand pounds on a premium bond that his grandfather had got for him fifteen years previously.
“Oh, uh…yeah. Yeah, it’s all come in. I was thinking of doing up the house a bit.”
“Yeah?”
“Well I mean…It’s kind of old-ladyish in here, isn’t it? I loved my Nanna but it’s not really a young man’s house, is it?”
“True. Got any ideas?”
“I had, um…” he cleared his throat and started over. “I had a few. Thought I’d have the wall out, make the kitchen and the lounge open plan. Get some tiles in the kitchen instead of lino…”
“Sounds good.” Ava agreed. She smiled as she heard Sean mutter something under his breath that sounded like it might have been a ‘what the hell’ and the sound of him closing the toilet lid and sitting on it. “Place could do with some strong reds and greys.”
“Your sense of interior decoration is stuck in the middle of last decade.” Sean commented.
“What? I like red.”
“No strong colours, duck. They are Of The Devil.” Sean snorted, but Ava stuck her head around the curtain to give him a patient look.
“You’re kidding.”
Sean cleared his throat and looked away. “Only, like…a little.”
Ava snorted and dropped the curtain back so she could soap up and rinse off.
Sean clearly thought he was being quiet when he muttered ‘this is so weird…‘
“Why?”
“What?” Sean asked, guiltily.
“Why’s it weird? We’re just talking.”
“Yeah, but, you’re…”
Ava sighed, and looked around the curtain again. “Sean, you know the three things I miss the most about how Cimbrean used to be?”
“What?” he asked, making a commendable effort to maintain eye contact.
“My house, my friend Sara, and skinny-dipping in the lake.” She said. Sean cleared his throat and fidgeted on his seat, sitting further forward. “Y’know, when Sara first invited us to try it, I did exactly what you’re doing now, I got weird about it. But you know what? A body’s not a big deal.”
She put the curtain back in place and began to shampoo. “Besides, it’s not like you can see anything right now, can you?”
“Well, no, but-”
“Then it’s no different to if I was standing here clothed, is it?”
”…How was Cimbrean, anyway?” Sean asked, abandoning ship on that line of conversation.
“It was…” Ava sighed. “I’m getting used to how fast things change, but it’s still tough to really get your head around just how different things can be just one year apart. You know they’re talking about building the tallest man-made building ever in Folctha now?”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah! Not for years yet, but when they do—if they do—it’ll be a third taller than what’s even possible here on Earth.”
“What the hell do they need a building like that for?” Sean asked.
“Why does anywhere need a building like that?” Ava asked rhetorically. “but Folctha’s booming!” she continued, rinsing the shampoo out. “The cost of living out there’s getting cheaper by the week and I guess it turns out that people want to try living on another planet.”
She looked around the curtain again. “Hell, we did. Hand me a towel?”
Sean did so, opening a cupboard to retrieve a huge black bath towel which he handed to her with a kind of forced nonchalance that suggested he was trying to get used to the situation. She just rolled her eyes again, retreated behind the shower curtain and wrapped herself up in it before stepping out of the shower to sit down on the edge of the bath. “You know, girls need more than one towel.” she said.
“Huh? What for?”
“One for this,” She indicated the one wrapped around her torso “One for the hair,” she lifted the dripping weight of it with her thumb “…and one for drying off.”
“Can’t you just use the one?”
“Sure, if you’re cool with me sitting here bare-ass while my hair dries.” she teased.
“What, the nudist is squeamish about that?” Sean teased right back, finally regaining his usual confidence though he opened the cupboard again and pulled out a couple more towels for her.
“Sorry buddy. I don’t think I’m a nudist exactly, but I know I’m not a stripper.”
“Ah, I knew you were all talk and no walk.” Sean grinned as he sat down on the toilet lid again, plainly not serious.
“It’s not that, come on.” she objected. “It’s just that there’s a time and a place, you know? If we were swimming in the lake or we were at the beach or…in a sauna or something, y’know, then swimsuits don’t actually make a whole lot of sense. But I’m not going to just strip off around you in your bathroom, that’d just be…”
She tailed off in search of the right word, and Sean nodded his understanding. “Well…yeah. You’ve got Adam.”
Her mood deflated instantly, like it had so many times in the preceding week. Where Adam hadn’t noticed, however, Sean did. “…what happened?”
Ava didn’t answer at first, she just wrapped her hair up in a towel turban and dried her arms and legs off, wondering how to answer.
”…Sometimes…sometimes I feel like I’m…” She exhaled and tried again. “Adam’s got this mission of his. And, you know what? It’s a good one. He wants to save people, stop anything like the San Diego blast from happening again. I’m…He’s my fucking hero, Sean. And I’m, like…Lois Lane.”
“So…?”
“So…” she sighed. “…Sometimes I feel like he doesn’t love me.”
“Well-”
“No, I know he does love me. I know that. It’s just…he never…He doesn’t…” She trailed off helplessly. “You know?”
Sean blinked a bit, looked down, then hugged her, hard.
It wasn’t a big strong Adam bear-hug like she’d grown used to. It was the hug she needed, a caring one full of real concern and upset for her. She didn’t second-guess herself—she just returned it, and they just stood there for a while, rocking gently in the middle of the room.
“I uh…I have a new year’s resolution I was going to make.” Sean eventually told her, murmuring quietly in her ear.
“What’s that?”
“I…resolved that I was going to tell you about the huge crush I have on you.”
“Oh, Sean…” She let go and sat down again. “Don’t ask me to-”
“I’m not.” he interrupted. “We just needed that out in the open, because I think you need to hear some harsh truths and I don’t want you thinking I’m trying to…Look, the point is, you need some honesty right now, okay?”
”…Okay.”
He sat on the edge of the bathtub. “Your relationship with Adam is making you miserable, and it’s…it’s hard to see.” he said. “The moment he shows up he’s all you’ll even look at, every conversation seems to come back to him at some point, but every week there’s some new thing he’s done, or said, or not done or said, that’s making you feel neglected and, it’s not just me,” he waved his hand in the general direction of downstairs. “It breaks Charlotte’s heart, and Ben’s, it hurts all of us to see. We care about you, and it’s really hard to see you being hurt.”
Ava just nodded, staring at the ground between her feet.
“What are you getting out of him?” Sean asked.
Ava took a deep, thoughtful breath, and didn’t answer for a long while.
“Did…I ever tell you about Sara?” she asked.
“I know she was your friend.” Sean replied. “And you…witnessed her…”
“She was fourteen when she died.” Ava’s voice was quiet, and sad. She screwed her eyes shut, wiped a tear out of the way and composed herself. “She was so sweet, and so…she had wisdom I didn’t have, about how to be comfortable in your own skin and…and how to enjoy life in the moment. And she died because she didn’t understand something that Adam and I both learned from what happened to home.”
“Which is?”
She shrugged. “God isn’t there to hold your hand. He’s not there to…to bail you out of a tough spot or send a guardian angel or any of that stupid Facebook frilly frou-frou bullshit. Okay? He’s fair like that. Young, old, innocent or a fucking monster, he treats everyone exactly the same, because this life…how could we learn anything, how could we become better souls if He just coddled us all the time?”
“I don’t believe in-”
“I know you don’t, I’m making a point here.” Ava snapped. “God, the universe whatever. The point is, the only way shit like what happened to Sara is going to never happen again is if we take charge, if we go out there and make the world better.”
She gestured to her camera, placed safely at the far end of the room from the shower. “That’s why I’m studying journalism, and that’s why Adam’s in the SOR. Because we’ve been jerked around, we have lost people, and if there’s no guardian angel coming, then we have to become guardian angels.”
Sean nodded uncertainly. “But why do you have to put yourself through this?” he asked.
“Because I’m Adam’s angel. Because I really believe he couldn’t do this without me. H-he takes me for granted because he knows I’ve got his back come what may.”
“Even if it makes you miserable.”
“Haven’t you been listening?” Ava surged to her feet. “I don’t CARE if it makes me miserable. It’s all for something bigger than any of us. It’s all for, for them! For everybody!” she flailed an arm at the wall, gesturing towards the whole galaxy and every living thing within it.
“Sounds like you didn’t listen to Sara.” Sean said. Ava paused, so he fired the second barrel. “You’ll do more good for everyone—Adam included—if you’re happy in yourself, Ava.”
She opened her mouth, then shut it again and frowned, fidgeting anxiously with her hands as if by moving them at random she might suddenly come up with an answer to that.
Sean’s chin and the corners of his mouth twitched upwards sadly. “I’ll let you get changed.” he said.
Ava smiled weakly at him and managed to croak out a reply. “Sure.”
He left her to her thoughts, retreating from the room without further comment.
Five minutes later she went downstairs wearing her favourite of Adam’s old t-shirts, which was now far too small for him…but she sat next to Sean, set aside the questions he’d raised, and tried to enjoy herself.