Zoraida Cordova - A Crash of Fate

The answer wasn’t simple. Even if what Belen had said was true, he was his own person. He’d had a good life on Batuu. It didn’t matter why he’d stayed.

“Why wasn’t it enough that this is my home?” he asked. “I can imagine what my sister said. But, Izzy, everything has changed. Now I have—”

“Oga offered me a job,” she said quickly. “An audition, really. I’m going to take it.”

The wind blew around them, cooling as the suns began their descent. He’d been hit by a lot that day, but nothing compared with those words.

“Why would you do that?”

“Because it’s the only thing I have.” Her eyes were glossy. “I was just beginning to think I belonged here, but now I’m not so sure. But I do know one place that has always been constant for me, and that’s my ship. It’s the sky.”

He wanted to hold her, to tell her that she could have him. She didn’t have to feel she was alone in the galaxy anymore. But he didn’t think she wanted to hear that. “An hour ago you were furious at your mother for leaving you behind. What now? You’re just ready to follow her into the grave?”

“Do you even know what’s out there, Jules?”

He scoffed. “You know that I don’t. But please, enlighten your farm boy on the great wide galaxy.”

“I asked you to come with me,” she said.

“That wasn’t a real offer and you know it. That was you wanting to be certain that you can’t trust or count on anyone. You set me up to take that fall.”

“You don’t know me.” She shook her head. “We can do this little tour of the Outpost, but at the end of the day we are virtual strangers.”

“Lie,” he said again. She was so close to him that if she tilted her head up they would be close enough to kiss. Why did he want her more than it was reasonable to? Why did she have to come back only to keep reminding him that she was leaving again? “I know the galaxy will never be big enough to fill that emptiness in your heart, Izzy, because you don’t want it to. You want to keep running because you wouldn’t know what to do if you had to stop.”

“And you want to stay here because the second you left atmosphere you’d lose the only safety that you know.”

He reached for her, to hold her, to tell her that there was nothing wrong with safety. He wished he could make the galaxy safe for all of them, but he was only one person. So he closed his fists around air and put more distance between them until he was leaning against a rock wall.

“You’re right,” he told her, weary and spent. “It’s best you leave. Chase the memory of your mother or Ana Tolla. Skies, even Oga’s a better option for you than I am. But while you’re chasing that, don’t forget that you had a father, too, and from what you’ve said he wouldn’t have wanted this for you.”

She walked over to him and pressed a finger into his shoulder, hard. “That doesn’t change that I can’t give you what you want.”

He was so angry with her. But when her jab softened into a touch, some of that anger melted. She pressed the palm of her hand on his shoulder. “What have I asked of you that you can’t give, Izzy? Because I think we’re fighting for the same thing.”

“Me,” she said. “You were willing to change the course of your life on a whim. That’s too much pressure to put on one person. I don’t know how to be that much to someone.”

He felt his anger simmering, melting, and reshaping itself the way he’d seen the vendors in the glass market stall do with bags of sand. Breakable. Fragile. He could not afford to be that. Neither of them could.

Izzy and Jules had a long past and seemingly no future, but as she brought her lips to his, the singular thing in their lives that hadn’t changed was that they had each other.

She should have kissed him hours before, but it was as difficult to be honest with herself as it was to be with others. Jules gripped her softly by the shoulders and pulled her against his chest. Her anchor, solid as the boulders around them.

When she’d woken up that morning, angry and heartbroken after being left behind, she couldn’t have predicted where she would end up—surrounded by jagged rocks and trees so crooked they looked like they were hitchhiking their way up the cliffside. She pressed herself against him, wished they could take back all the terrible things they’d said to each other. But wasn’t that where they’d gone wrong? Her lying. Him holding back.

She thought of the little girl she used to be, chasing spiran fireflies across the plain behind their homes, her hair in the two braids her father would make every morning before dropping her off to play with Jules. They skinned their knees when they climbed rock spires. Equipped with rusty screwdrivers, they carved their names into the rock. She wouldn’t be able to find the spire where they’d done that, or the cliff where they’d spent their last day together, but she bet Jules would.

It was Jules who broke their kiss first. Somehow they’d ended up on the ground. He propped himself on one elbow and they stared at each other. He met her hands with his, farm boy hands. Now that she knew what it was like to kiss him, how was she going to keep her promise to Belen and leave?

Jules let out a deep chuckle. “Say something, Izzy, because my brain is fried.”

“I wish I’d come back sooner.”

He took off his canvas jacket and offered it to her as a pillow. She watched the sky. They had to leave soon to go to the coordinates Dok had given them, and then the strange day would be over. Izzy felt a kind of excitement she hadn’t in so long. The tight knot of anxiety that seemed to always be lodged in her chest had unraveled sometime between leaving Dok’s den early that morning and reaching the farm. Perhaps it was a side effect of being with Julen Rakab.

“It might not have been the same.” He touched the cluster of freckles along her jaw. “I shaved my head last year on a dare from Volt.”

“You’re right. I would have just kept walking.” She scrunched her nose.

He shook his head, grinning. “I mean maybe I was too busy working or running around with my friends and you were with your crew. We’re not done figuring ourselves out. But maybe you came back at the right time.”

He was right about that, too, she supposed.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” Izzy said. “I’d almost forgotten that my dad brought me to work a couple of times.”

He bit his bottom lip. “I’m sorry I said that about your father.”

“You weren’t wrong. My mother might have taught me how to fly and shoot,” she said, “but I always felt like I was chasing after her love. My father just gave it.”

There were other things her father had taught her: How to be kind when you didn’t always feel it in your heart. How to read star charts, because there was always a way to fly yourself out of anything but a black hole. He’d taught her other things she couldn’t put to use, not if she wanted to pursue a career as a smuggler—like you could love someone even if you didn’t always understand them. It was never an official lesson, but she’d watched and gathered that love was the only reason her father had stayed with a woman who’d been practically married to the stars.

It was stupid to think of her parents at a time like this, but she couldn’t help it.

In truth, Izzy felt out of her depth, though she loathed to admit it. “I made a promise to Belen.”

Jules frowned. “Please tell me it did not involve me.”

She met his eyes, even though she wanted to look away. It was easier to be honest when she didn’t have to look at him. “She told me that if I was going to leave, not to come back.”

He groaned. “She shouldn’t have said that to you.”