of sync. She had stepped onto Galileo, and something inside of her had stilled, as if she had stopped worrying a wound.
And for that, if nothing else, she was grateful to Arin. Worrying about him had allowed her to avoid the fact that she was just going to have to leave again.
She would have to speak with Jessica, too. During their conversations over the last year, Jessica had volunteered information on Greg, knowing Elena would never ask; but Elena had realized almost as soon as she had seen him that Jessica had left out some important things.
Elena knew Greg had been seeing Andriya Vassily, captain of the Third Sector starship CCSS Cassia, and that Jessica didn’t entirely approve, worried that Greg had fallen back into the patterns of his failed long-distance marriage. Of course, he also had other lovers, including a journalist for the streamers whom Jessica openly disliked. Elena had seen the woman’s reporting, and she could understand why Greg might like her: she came across as quick and good-humored, and she was stunningly, vid-ready beautiful. Jessica had ranted, but Elena had found herself oddly pleased. After the marriage he had escaped, he deserved beautiful women. He deserved legions of them fighting over him. Sometimes, when she thought of him, she imagined just that.
But she had seen it in his eyes as he sat in the infirmary offering her absolution: he was lonely. He had always been lonely, as long as she had known him, but that was supposed to have changed. Over the last eighteen months, Elena had been jealous of his blossoming friendship with Jessica, the professional and personal relationship she was closed out of. She had been happy for them both, and bitterly sorry for herself. But apparently, despite their easy camaraderie, their relationship had changed nothing for Greg at all: he was still by himself in all the ways that mattered.
As long as she had known him, he had lived behind a wall. He would tell her, if she asked, that it was necessary, that he was the captain, that distance was critical. But she had seen it in him from the start, from the first time she met him, when she was an ensign looking for a transfer and he was the captain she wanted to impress. All these years she thought he had done it on purpose, kept himself away from everyone. She wondered, sitting in Galileo’s shuttle, if the truth was he had no idea how to let anybody in.
She had a moment of self-awareness at the thought, and nearly smiled. Always easier to psychoanalyze other people than to understand yourself, right?
“Nightingale, what’s our travel time?” she asked.
“Two hours, forty-seven minutes,” the shuttle responded.
“Wake me up in two hours and seventeen minutes,” she said. Unfastening her harness, she stood up from the pilot’s seat and wandered into the back of the little ship. She stripped off her filthy env suit and tucked it into a corner, then turned on the shuttle’s utilitarian sink and sponged off, dipping her head under the faucet to wash the dome dust out of her hair. When she finished she pulled on one of the regulation Corps env suits folded neatly in a storage drawer. She had no comb, but she ran her fingers through her long hair, working out the tangles, and weaved it into her usual loose braid.
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