Science fiction, Romance, Queer.

Stargazing.

There was a galaxy in her eyes.

“Tony walked into the hangar and my heart stung. She was the love of my life. She brought me the spaceship’s power core. Now I could fly among the stars and explore the galaxy.

“Tony…”

She smiled and led me onto the big platform around the ship without stepping on it herself.

“Here,” she said and gave me the power core. I held the stone between us.

I stared into her blue eyes through the ruby red power core. Its glow reflected in her tears and eyes.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’re welcome.”

Our tears intensified the core’s glow. Whatever it was made of, I swear that ruby-like stone was magical. Tony’s sapphire eyes turned into the vacuum of space. I saw a million stars in them. A galaxy.

My arm gave at the elbow and I knelt down, trying to breathe in the cool air of the hangar and sobbing instead. Immediately, I felt her arms around me, soothing, comforting.

“Now, now. Remember,” she said, also sobbing.

I tried to talk, but my throat was swollen and the tears got everywhere.

“Sheila. Remember, we talked,” she said.

“Yes, baby?”

“How to… How to insert the power core?”

“Yes, baby.”

“I love you, Sheila.”

She kissed me, I think. I don’t remember. My lips were swollen and so were hers.

Yes, she kissed me.

After our kiss, my lips went numb and I blanked for three seconds.

When I came to my senses, I was still sitting on the platform in Tony’s arms. My whole body was limp and numb. I felt anemic, as if all my power was gone.

“I love you, Tony,” I said. “But I have to go.”

I wanted to look her in the eye but couldn’t. She leaned into me, as if I wasn’t locked in her arms already, and pressed her face against mine. She was full of questions we had discussed before and her whisper broke the leftovers of my heart.

I couldn’t react. I couldn’t even move.

Why did I have to leave? Were our dreams and plans more important than our love? Was that spaceship, my ride to the stars, more to me than she was?

Yes, she was my galaxy on this planet, my little galaxy in one person. But she was leaving soon for a better life as a scientist in the metropolis and was to climb the social ladder higher and higher. I would be too lowly and too poor for her, as I am for the rest of the people on this planet. I’d be forever stuck in low paying jobs with no one to support my plans and unable to afford training for a better job. It’s even a miracle that I got this ship together! I’m done with this planet. Done.

Finally, Tony and I looked at each other. There was a galaxy in her eyes. In that galaxy, I saw the two of us walking along the beach. Our bungalow tilted in front of the happy palms. The festive waves broke on the hot sand. Blue enveloped us from below and above. This could have been if I stayed.

I threw my numb arms around her as tight as I could.

“Thanks for the core.”

She smiled through tears, her face more red than the ruby-like stone clenched in my hand.

“Good luck at the university, Tony. Maybe we’ll meet again, at work.”

“Oh, shut up, Sheila.”

“Maybe I’ll bring you something, and it’s exactly what your lab needs.”

Without a reply, she moved out of my arms and was almost at the door.

“See ya, Sheila.”

And she was gone.”

Sheila closed her diary and put away her pen. Then, she pressed her diary between her chest and legs and wept.

So, while our heroine cries, let me explain a few important facts about space ship power cores and how Tony got one.

She got it pretty easily. As an intern at a lab of an important scientist, she could order an extra one any time she wanted.

A regular person, on the other hand, can never get to even see a power core. The cores are made in factories from both organic and inorganic matter. That combination keeps the cost of manufacturing them pretty high.

Oh, and did you know the organic matter in the cores makes them sensitive to organic creatures that touch them? It’s pretty neat, thought you might want to know this.

Anyway, back to our grieving heroine.

Sheila was sitting in much the same position as when Tony was in her arms. The ship was behind her, in the middle of the platform, waiting for the power core to be installed. Beside her, leaning at the wall was a magnificent painting of the dark blue vacuum of space, speckled, nay, densely populated with stars. Constellations, solitary stars, even the Milky Way were suspended on the canvas. All this, drawn by the young pilot who was ready to fly.

Or was she? As her full duffel bags waited in a line at the painting, Sheila was crying in the fetal position. The cost of space travel was high, and Sheila felt anemic with grief. Her body was numb, her face swollen and her thoughts with Tony who was likely in the same state. Perhaps, Tony would still love her through the next however many decades and separated by light years. Perhaps, Tony would forget her, distracted by her move to the metropolis, the city of lightning speed progress and scientific discovery where all the labs were. All the labs that Tony could possibly imagine working at, for or with.

What kind of scientist was she? Sheila strained to remember.

“She’s a space scientist,” she told herself. “And I’m a space pilot, and I gotta go!”

At long last, she recovered her breath, sighed and worked her breathing into a steady rhythm. As her chest let go of the last sobs and her eyes of the last tears, she rose. She held her pen and her diary in one hand and the power core in the other.

Her weightless body swayed twice, thrice and tilted dangerously. Sheila righted herself much as she would a spaceship and limped and wobbled to the ship, only to find herself far away from the section where the power core went.

Her sigh made her cough for a good three minutes. Holding her arm up to cover her mouth, she realized she was still clutching her pen and diary. When her coughing fit was over, she wobbled up to her backpack, placed the diary and tossed the pen inside. Her unsteady gaze fell upon the magnificent painting that stood on the floor, leaning back at the wall and towering above her duffel bags. Sheila saw a galaxy in that painting, her fate.

After five more minutes of staring at her painting, she remembered her note. She reached into her backpack for her trusty purple folder where she kept all her documents, important notes and her darling sketches. She thumbed through the papers, finally reaching the one with the note. The note read:

“Dear idiots.

I’m leaving.

I’m leaving your dumb asses on this dumb planet full of you, idiots.

You’re right. Customer service sucks. I hate it.

You’re right. I’m good for nothing here, on a planet full of you, idiots.

I’m not an idiot. I’m not you.

I’m leaving. Bye.”

“That’ll give them something to gossip and laugh about,” Sheila said to herself and laughed.

This fit of laughter caused her to kneel, hunch over her backpack and drop her folder and note. She covered her face with her hands in a futile attempt to hide her nervousness from herself.

Two minutes later, the laughing fit was over. Sheila grabbed her note and stood up slowly enough to feel every part of her body come back online. She jogged to the door, opened it and placed the note on the other side, securing it with a pin that had been stuck there for centuries.

Closing the door, she jogged back to the ship, but this time, to the part where the power core went. She placed the shiny red stone in its place and saw it feed its energy to the spaceship.

Sheila ran to the cockpit to gaze at the monitors that were lighting up, with numbers showing up on them. This and the data she saw made her happy with all her painstaking efforts. All these long seven years in customer service? Definitely worth it.

Sheila skipped and hopped up to all her stuff at the wall and put on the backpack. She hesitated, not knowing what to grab next, and went for a duffel bag. She dropped it in the main section of the ship and placed the backpack next to the pilot’s seat in the cockpit. Then, she put the second duffel bag in the main section and picked up the painting.

It was giant and slowed her down as she carried it to the main section of the ship. Avoiding imaginary asteroids, Sheila almost dropped the painting twice and, finally, it fell on her feet. Her howl pierced the silence of the night. She was glad to be the only living soul in the building.

Having learned not to play with heavy, unwieldy things, she placed her prized painting, with great care, into the main section of the ship. She secured herself in the pilot’s seat, checked all systems, locked all doors and pressed a combination of buttons. The ship, fully alive, hovered above the platform and teleported itself above the building.

“Farewell, and turn the lights off yourselves!”

Becoming the space pilot she longed to be for over seven years, Sheila steered the ship to outer space. The bulky, unwieldy-looking spacecraft reached its destination, at times flying, at times teleporting. And at last, real stars surrounded Sheila, including constellations and the Milky Way, suspended in the blue vacuum of space.