Project 621310

He wasn't going to last, he knew. She groaned under her breath with each thrust he made, and he felt her pussy grab hungrily as he drew back; she was almost there, too. He stared at an empty space on her wall and took deep breaths; she cried loudly. Shit, he thought. Just a few more seconds, that's all. "Oh god," she whispered. "Oh God."

She choked out a breath. Here it comes, she thought. She buried her head in the mattress and clenched her pussy on him. "Come on," she groaned, "come on." He fucked her as hard as he could, feeling himself building up inside, in one solid, devastating wave. She was coming, her pussy wet and trembling; he clutched her hips as his prick began to surge. "I'm coming," he warned her. She looked back, her mouth open, her eyes wild. She nodded. "Don't stop," she whispered. He let go, coming inside her, long jets he thought would never end. He waited until she was asleep before he used her shower, dressed and left, giving her one long last look from head to toe before he went. He had no idea who she was. It was four in the morning. At eight the phone rang.

"Did you think it was a fluke that Jeff Siebern was placed on your crew?" Matthew Morris asked her.

"Yeah," she answered. "Luckily for me."

"It wasn't a fluke, and it wasn't luck."

Kick stared at him.

"How many people left your team while you were training?"

"A couple."

"Four?"

"Maybe."

"What were their spots on the team?"

She frowned at him.

"What do you mean?"

"Did you change commanders? Payload specialists? Was it different spots, or was it one spot in particular?"

She shook her head. He was doing his job. He had been a space geek as a kid, growing up in Cocoa Beach near where the spaceships were launched. He had blown off two fingers on his left hand as a kid, trying to set off a model rocket in his back yard. He studied hard in school, but learned that his missing digits — along with his excess weight — would keep him out of the space program. He settled instead for writing novels about space travel, and reporting on NASA for a string of local papers across Florida and the South.

"I'm going to ask you a stupid question," he said to her. "Did any of the guys on your flight crews ever hit on you?"

"Once or twice."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. Matthew, you may find this hard to believe, but guys hit on me all the time."

"Did each of the guys who tried to hit on you eventually get taken off of your team?"

"I think so. Yes. Why?"

"Stay with me. How about Jim Collins?"

"Well, yeah, he left. But he never hit on me."

"Is there a chance that he would have hit on you, but you weren't attracted to him?"

She shook her head. "What are you getting at?"

"Did you ever tell anyone that you thought that Jim Collins was an asshole?"

"I may have."

Matt Morris smiled. "You did, I can assure you. And that's why he was taken off your team."

"Bullshit. Who told you that?"

"Kick, everything you said about the guy who occupied that one spot on your crew was reported back to the project coordinators. If they found out you weren't compatible or interested in the guy they chose, he was gone, just like that. They were trying to find a guy that you were interested in so that they could send you into outer space to have sex."

"That's a lot of shit —"

"Not really. They spent months on this, and finally somebody figured out that they should just ask you what kind of guy you like. Then they went out and found Jeff Siebern for you."

The answering machine came on. It was Jeff's voice on the greeting. She looked at the clock. It was just past eight. The morning light flooded harshly across the bedroom. Her breasts were sore. Her pussy ached. Her head was throbbing from too many beers. She pulled the sheets up over her body.

"Kick, are you there?" It was Matthew Morris. "I just wanted to call and express my sympathy and let you know that, if there's anything —"

She reached up and grabbed the phone.

"Matt?"

"Oh Jesus, Kick," the voice said. "I didn't know if you'd be home."

"Matt, what's up?

The silence at the other end of the line was deafening.

"Matt, what happened?

She took the information like a soft blow to her forehead. She remembered the night, at some noisy bar, after a couple of shots of rum and a couple of beers, talking about her love life with a bunch of other astronaut-trainees. "Who are you shacked up with?" she had been asked.

Nobody right now.

"Why not?"

No time.

"What are you waiting for?"

Mr. Right, she laughed.

And she told them who he was. Handsome. Athletic. Blue eyes. Hell of a guy. Jeff Siebern in her dreams. And, two weeks later, there he was. Her resolve had remained firm until he showed up. Then it disappeared, completely.

"You were everything they wanted," Matthew Morris told her. "Young, beautiful, fun-loving, single. And straight."

"Jesus Christ."

"When you interned in college, did you ever sleep with any of the guys at Ames?"

"One."

"Or two?"

"Maybe. Fuck you, Matthew," she said, "quit playing with me. You know all this shit."

"You guys hung out at the Tied House, drinking beer? Partying on the weekends, playing soccer, then partying some more? They knew all about all of that. They had you under a microscope. You were their dream girl. They knew way back that you were the perfect woman to go into the great beyond and give it up for science."

She took a deep breath.

"How did you find all this out?"

He shrugged. "Damn it, Kick, I'm a reporter. Do you remember how many reporters were there for the press conference when they introduced you?"

"Seven."

"And I was one of them," he said, and he laughed. "Oh God, I fell in love with you that day. Just like everyone else did. And all they wanted to do is get into your panties from the very first day."

The plane was lost somewhere in the Rockies. He was an excellent flyer, but something had gone wrong. The Air Force compiled the data and said it could have been a mechanical failure, but the evidence was inconclusive.

The funeral was held back home in Texas and Jeff was buried in the cemetery at Fort Bliss. Kick sat and cried with the family and listened as the Vice President read the eulogy. She worried about what they would think if they knew that, on the night their son died, she was in bed — in his bed — with a man whose name she didn't know.

He watched her eyes well up, and then she scowled and regained control of herself.

"Matthew, what am I supposed to do now?"

"You can run and hide," he said. "Or you can make the best of it."

"I just want to go home and die."

"Hey, there's an idea." He shook his head at her. "Get yourself an attorney and an agent, Kick. One of these asshole TV networks will gladly pay you a couple of hundred grand to talk. You can write a book and make another bundle. Some dumb shit broad gave the President a blow job, and she's set for life. Look at you: you've made the space program sexy for the first time since men landed on the moon. Cash in. Listen, I can even ghost write for you —"

"This is so wrong."

"And being noble about it ain't going to do shit for you."

He stood and watched her for a long moment as she drank down the last of her beer and stared out at the ocean.

"If you want to talk about it —"

"No," she said. "Not now. I think I just want to sit here with Milton and talk it over with myself."

"Okay, but —"

She looked at him and shook her head.

"Gotcha," he said, and he sat the brown paper bag down on the sand. He twisted the bottle opener off of his key chain and tossed it in the bag. "You going to be all right, Kick?"

She forced a brave smile and nodded. He smiled and nodded, too.

"Okay. But you call me, all right?"

"Sure."

He patted Milton on the head and got in his jeep and drove off. Katherine McCormick watched him go, and then stood listening to the waves crashing softly on the shore. This was this place that she would miss the most. From the very start, through all the hassles and the training, the rigorous discipline and the being unselfish for the good of the team, it was here that she could come to be alone, to run the beach and kick the ball around, and chase after her dog. She would miss the swimming in the gentle surf. She would miss the secret thrill of tossing off her swimsuit and sitting there, naked as the day she was born, looking out to sea, getting tan, sipping at a beer, feeling that the world was a million miles or more away. That, too, was gone.

She popped the tape into the VCR and pressed "play." The image came on, just as she remembered it: white, antiseptic, clean. The walls. Their jumpsuits. She watched as they undressed. She hadn't remembered it before, but now it made her smile — she hadn't worn fingernail polish (it was considered unprofessional), but as she slipped out of her booties, her toenails, painted fire-engine red, created the only contrasting color in the compartment.

It was strange to watch, the two perfect bodies, floating, touching, joining together. Seeing his face again, seeing how she stared straight into his eyes as they made love. Watching it broke her heart. She would never get over him, or the guilt she felt over the way it ended.

She watched herself orgasm on the videotape, seeing how she manipulated him to make him come, too, as she always seemed to, and then their bodies drifted apart (his prick, now at half-mast and falling, looking silly with the filled condom surrounding it) and then she leaned in and kissed him quickly on the lips.

The tape ended and she closed her eyes. It was late. She needed a drink. She needed sleep. In the morning there would be more phone calls, more knocks on her door. More reporters asking questions. More photographers trying to shoot pictures. More producers trying to get the exclusive. She opened her eyes. Milton was curled up and asleep on the floor at her feet. The lucky son of a bitch didn't have a clue about what was happening. She pushed her bare toes into his soft fur and felt him stir. She stared up at the ceiling and shook her head.

She reached over and picked up her phone and punched the seven numbers, then listened to the ringing on the other end. On the seventh ring, he picked up.

"Were you asleep?" she asked.

"Kick? Shit —"

"Don't get mad at me," she said. "Get up and get dressed and get over here. I think I might have a good story for you."

Copyright © 2004 by Denise Marie Viera. All rights reserved.