Page 33 of Remmen

The Alien Matchmaking Agency sending me away from Ceres-9 didn’t mean they were firing me. They ran programs on dozens of planets and probably needed counselors elsewhere. I could be inviting orcs to sit on my couch and cry about their heartache by the end of the month.

And I’d never see Remmen again. Fuck!

I knew he was there the second before he knocked. I’d started being able to do that lately, sense him a beat before he arrived, and I’d decided a while ago not to examine what it meant. It was late and people talked, so I opened the door and waved him inside without a greeting.

“What are you doing here?” I sounded harsh, accusatory. I wanted to throw myself into his arms and never let go.

He had one hand behind his back like he was hiding something, and he wouldn’t quite meet my eyes. Was he… nervous?

“What have you got?”

“Nothing.”

He was a terrible liar. I’d dated a man who lied for a living, so I knew the difference, and Remmen didn’t have it in him. I went for the hand. He turned with me, easy, and kept it out behind his back, which cost him nothing since his arm was longer than I was tall.

“Remmen.”

“Anne.” He was enjoying himself.

“Keep your voice down.” I pointed at the wall over the couch. Chelsea lived on the other side of it, and the walls in these units were less wall than polite suggestion. “She can hear me chew. I heard her sneeze last week and say bless you to herself.”

“Then she has heard worse than this.” But he quit dodging, which wasn’t fair, doing that to me while I was working up a decent mad. He brought the hand around.

A box. Plain brown cardboard, taped up, dented on one corner, the kind of thing that had come a long way in the back of a hauler.

“Open it,” he said.

I sat down with it on my knees. Standing had gotten to be more than my legs wanted to do around him. I peeled the tape back and dug through a nest of wood shavings until my fingers hit glass, and I pulled it out. There was a cylinder with a plunger and a little handle. Underneath it, wrapped twice in wax paper, sat a bag the size of my head.

I knew the smell before the paper was even open. Dark and bitter and green at the edges, and my eyes stung so fast I had to blink hard and swallow it down.

Coffee.

A press, and enough coffee that if I was stingy with it, it would last me months.

I’d complained about the coffee since my first morning on this planet. Loudly, to anyone who’d hold still for it. The boiled root they drank here tasted like wet dog, and I’d said so more than once, including to Remmen. I’d never once thought he was actually listening.

But he had, the whole time. He’d heard me be loud and miserable about something as small as coffee, and he’d made no show of fixing it. No audience, nobody to be impressed, nothing he wanted back. He’d just heard one small unlovely thing I wanted and spent god knows how much quietly getting it for me.

My eyes threatened to water. I tipped my head back and waited for the tears to pass. One got loose, and I wiped it off my jaw with the heel of my hand and pretended that hadn’t happened.

Oh, no.

I was in love with him.

When had that even happened? Maybe with the kiss we shouldn’t have kissed, or Charter Day, or a dumb dented box. Whenever it was, the timing couldn’t have been worse.

I’d signed the contract with the Agency and barely looked at the don’t fall in love with anyone clause. My heart had been so battered and bruised and my psyche needed a quiet place to heal that I had never considered the possibility, not once.

Served me right to not consider all the possibilities.

I kept my eyes on the wax paper and folded it and unfolded it. I did not look up because if I looked up I was going to say it, all of it, out loud, and you couldn’t take a thing like that back once it was in the room. I kept it behind my teeth. I had no idea how long it could stay there.

“How did you even get this?” My voice came out rough and I cleared it. “There’s no coffee on this whole planet. I asked. I practically begged the man at the commissary. He looked at me like I’d asked him for snow in July.”

“I know a few traders. Freight comes through the far port twice a season.” He rolled one shoulder. “I called in some favors.” Then, lower: “Do you like it?”

He sounded almost shy. This male who could pick up my whole apartment and carry it off under one arm, in the middle of my too-small living room, not sure whether he’d gotten it right.