Loathe to Love You by Ali Hazelwood

            Kind of. We’re in a room full of people, but . . . alone.

            “Well . . . hi,” I say.

            “Hey.” The pitch is lower. More intimate.

            “I kind of expected this would be unpleasant.”

            “This?”

            “This.” I point back and forth between us. “Seeing you again. After the way we left off.”

            He cocks his head. “Why?”

            “Just . . .” I’m not sure how to articulate it, that my experience is that men who have been rejected by women can often be scary in a million different ways. It doesn’t matter anyway. It sounds like he put what happened between us behind him the second I stepped out of his office. “Doesn’t matter. Since it’s not. Unpleasant, that is.”

            Ian nods once. Like I remember from years ago. “What team have you been assigned to?”

            “A & PE.”

            “You don’t say.” He sounds pleased. Which is . . . new, mostly. My parents reacted to the news that I was hired by NASA in their usual way: showing disappointment that I did not go into medicine like my siblings. Sadie and Mara were always supportive and happy for me when I got my dream job, but they don’t care enough about space exploration to fully grasp the significance of where I ended up. Ian, though, Ian knows. And even though he’s now a big shot, and A & PE is not his team anymore, it still makes me feel warm and tingly.

            “Yeah—this random guy I once met told me it was the best team.”

            “Wise words.”

            “But I’m not going to start with the team right away, because . . . I’ve managed to get them to pick me for AMASE.”

            His smile is so unabashedly, genuinely happy for me, my heart leaps in my throat. “AMASE.”

            “Yup.”

            “Hannah, that’s fantastic.”

            It is. AMASE is the shit, and the selection process to take part in an expedition was brutal, to the point that I’m not quite sure how I made it in. Probably sheer luck: Dr. Merel, one of the expedition leaders, was looking for someone with experience in gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. Which I happen to have, due to some side projects my Ph.D. advisor foisted upon me. At the time, I aggressively bitched and moaned my way through them. In hindsight, I feel a bit guilty.

            “Have you been there?” I ask Ian, even though I already know the answer, because he mentioned AMASE when we met. Plus, I’ve seen his CV, and some pictures from past expeditions. In one, taken over the summer of 2019, he’s wearing a dark thermal shirt and kneeling in front of a rover, squinting at its robotic arm. There is a young, pretty woman standing right behind him, elbows propped on his shoulders, smiling in the direction of the camera.

            I’ve thought about that picture more than just a couple of times. Imagined Ian asking the woman to dinner. Wondered if, unlike me, she was able to say yes.

            “I’ve been there twice, winter and summer. Both great. Winter was considerably more miserable, but—” He stops. “Wait, isn’t the next expedition leaving . . .”

            “In three days. For five months.” I watch him nod and digest the information. He still looks happy for me, but it’s a little . . . subdued. A split second of disappointment, maybe? “What?” I ask.

            “Nothing.” He shakes his head. “It would have been nice to catch up.”

            “We still can,” I say, maybe a bit too fast. “I’m not leaving till Thursday. Want to go out and—”

            “Not get dinner, surely?” His smile is teasing. “I remember you don’t . . . eat with other people.”

            “Right.” The truth is that things have changed. Not that I now go out for dates—I very much still don’t. And not that I’ve magically become an emotionally available person—I’m still very much not. But somewhere in the last couple of years, the whole Tinder game got . . . first a bit old; then a bit tiresome; then, eventually, a bit lonely. These days, I either focus on work or on Mara and Sadie. “I do drink coffee, though,” I say on impulse. Even though I find coffee disgusting.