yo! i literally /just/ finished the martian and it was SO GOOD. the movie was p decent, too, but the book... ohmygod. 10/10 highly recommend. it was pure science love + hero's journey + awesome first person POV. (i'm heading on to read the man in the high castle next!)
Book talk: Yo, I agree with you 110%. The Martian was so freaking good. I fell in love with Watney from the very first line. He was such an incredibly relatable character despite the fact that he was a super intelligent astronaut on Mars?? I wish I could marry him. I enjoyed the movie version but it doesn’t even hold a candle to the book.URL: 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | +100Mobile: 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | +100Theme: 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | +100Posts: 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | +100Following: no sorry | now | yes | forever
for @finndaumeron / from @wallaceboden
5,403 words
Rating: T
Marrish + Space AU
She goes up alone.
It’s a hard sell at first, she has to admit—one woman, all of five-foot-three and a little more with heels, all by herself up in a condensed version of the international space station? The risk factor is palpable, to say the least. She gets the concern. However, as she’d explained to the leader of the project (with the entire boardroom looking on as an impromptu audience), her intelligence and current nomination for the Fields medal are a solid foundation to go on, not to mention the extensive research she’d stayed up for days compiling.
“It’s clear to me, sir,” she’d stated after shoving a folder into his hands, “that the one person capable of leading this mission would be me. But, by all means, take your time deciding.” She had eyed the list of candidates pinned to the wall and then strutted out, best friend in tow. Unsurprisingly, she’d been called up a few days later, being congratulated on her upcoming mission.
If there’s one thing Lydia Martin is good at, it’s getting what she wants.
(“Make it back in one piece, okay?” Allison asks, the day she boards her flight out of the atmosphere. “I want to hear all about the aliens you’re going up to examine.”
Lydia laughs and hugs her. “I’m not examining aliens, Ally, just the microbacterium that collects when under specific c—”
“Aliens,” Allison interrupts. “aliens. Just come back, okay? That’s all I’m asking.”
And how can Lydia tell her otherwise?)
..
Day one in space is actually enjoyable. Since she’s not at the prime location required to collect samples, there’s plenty of time to waste. In a spur-of-the-moment decision, Lydiastarts to blast music through the built-in speaker system and launch herself wall-to-wall in zero-gravity. She can’t stop giggling. Later on, after her iPod has died, she applies a fresh coat of lipstick while slowly floating through the ship. It’s as carefree as she can be before the real mission begins.
“Station to Ariel, are you receiving me?” A voice crackles through the silence, startling her makeup routine and inadvertently causing her to stab herself in the eye with the mascara wand.
“Aaaah!” She yelps, tumbling backwards into a lazy roll while covering her stabbed eye with both hands. There’s a rustle on the other end of the connection, and the voice sounds muffled as it filters through the ship again, like the speaker has his lips pressed to the mic.
“Station to Ariel, are you—”
“I’m receiving you!” Lydia snaps. She rubs her eye briefly before moving closer to the speakers. “I’m receiving you, station. What’s wrong.” Her voice is flat.
There’s a brief pause. “We were testing the connection, Ms. Martin,” the voice responds. “Just making sure the command center can hear you clearly from all possible points in case of emergency.” There’s another pause. Lydia makes a face at the speaker, as if the voice can see her disapproval from space. “…are you okay?”
She rolls her eyes. “I’m fine.” She waits for him to respond, but there’s just silence from the other end. He’s probably waiting to hear what happened. What is it with command center officers and gossip? “You startled me while I was doing my makeup and I poked myself in the eye. Nothing’s wrong. Are we done?” She expects to hear laughter at the other end. (Hell, if it had been the other way around? She’d be dying on the floor.) Instead, there’s a few more beats of silence, and then an earnest response.
“I’m sorry about that.” He sounds genuine. For a brief second, Lydia almost regrets snapping at him. “I just need to have you test the speakers around the craft. Is that okay?”
God, where did they find this guy? He’s not like any of the command center officers she’d been introduced to before. “That’s…that’s fine. Just tell me what I need to do.”
They spend 15 minutes going over protocol while Lydia makes sure the voice can pick up her signal from anywhere in her ship. It’s boring, and she spends most of the time making gestures with her hands while he speaks, but it gets done. She’s grateful for it, too—the exhaustion of her first day in space is starting to hit her, and she just wants to curl up in her weird spaceship bed and sleep for as long as she can before she needs to return to actively piloting the device. And then she remembers—Allison.
“Alright. Thanks for cooperating. I’ll—”
“Wait!” Lydia practically shrieks. She winces at the sound of her voice in the enclosed area.
“What?”
“Is there a way that I can communicate with other people on Earth that aren’t at the base?” If she can, there will be so many inter-world Netflix marathons with her best friend.
As if he knows exactly what she’s thinking, he answers. “No. But you can provide a few people to keep in contact with as part of your DCL.”
“DCL?” She probably should’ve done more than skim the manual she’d been given.
“Designated Communication Log. It’s exactly what it sounds like. If you have anyone in mind now, I could scribble their information down—”
“Allison Argent.” She starts listing off her best friend’s information before the man on the other end can finish his thought. She thinks about others that she might want to talk to—it’s been years since she’d spoken to Stiles, and she doesn’t think she wants to start now, trapped in a tiny metal box listening to his voice. Scott, maybe—though he and his fiancée Kira are starting to adjust to their life as new parents, and she doesn’t want to interrupt that. Her mom might be a good idea—but she’ll give that information later. Right now, her bed is calling to her.
“Is that all, Lyd—Ms. Martin?” the voice asks. Lydia nods—and then, after remembering that he can’t see her, lets out a quiet laugh.
“Yes, that’s all. Thank you.”
She switches off her comm link and floats to the wall where her bed is jutting out from. It’s not super comfortable, but at this point, she doesn’t care. She’s got a long day ahead of her. She can’t afford to fuss about not sleeping on a memory foam mattress.
..
Day two in space proves to be nothing short of the worst. Lydia has been training for this for most of her life, and she knows the craft she’s in fairly well—at least, the necessary technical points.
She’s got the man back at Command Center for the rest of it.
Her day is the worst because, as soon as she reaches her target destination, she realizes that she’s been sent up with the wrong data for her studies. It’s at least five years old, and completely irrelevant to what she’s working on—she screams in frustration and flings her iPad at the wall. It shatters. She screams again.
And then the red lights start flashing, and an unrecognizable emergency alarm starts going off, and god, can anything go right? She doesn’t think so.
“Lydia?Lydia!” The voice on the other end of the intercom asks, filtering through the shrill noise that’s driving her halfway deaf. She flings herself through zero-gravity towards the speaker.
“What’shappening?!?” Lydia shouts, her hands pressed against the wall. Her head is throbbing mercilessly.
“Are you okay?”
“What. Is. Happening?”There’s a light right next to the com that’s flashing too bright for her eyes, and she slams her palm down on it, as if it’s going to stop everything. Her voice would probably sound shrill to her own ears if she were anywhere else. “I can’t hear myself think!”
There’s a shuffling sound on the other end of the line. Then, as quickly as things had started, everything stops. The lights. The alarm. Her iPad is still sitting shattered on the floor, but she’s too upset to care at the moment. “There. Is that better?” She lets out a half-laugh, half-sob. “That…that doesn’t answer my question. I don’t hear the alarms anymore, but is everything—”
“I’m okay.” Lydia interrupts. She’s not entirely sure why she’s on the verge of tears, but she just goes with it. “I just…they sent me up here with the wrong data.”
“Oh, is that all?” He laughs for a brief moment. “I thought it was something serious, like oxygen deficiency or a fault in the SLS. Let me just send the data you need to your iPad.”
At that, Lydia’s head drops. “About that…” She hesitates for a moment before continuing. “I…may have broken it. Pretty badly. I can’t receive or interpret data from the Command Center.” It had been so reckless of her, she knows, but...she’d always been quick to irritate as a teenager. She guesses some things don’t really change.
“That’s gonna be an issue,”the man on the other end says, all the laughter gone from his voice. “Let me…let me call you back.” The comm goes dead, and Lydia knocks her head against the wall. Of course her first 48 hours in space couldn’t go as planned. Of course.
If Allison were here, she’d be rolling on the ground laughing. The thought makes Lydia smile. She misses her best friend—maybe, if she gets back down to Earth in one piece, she’ll be able to tell her this story and laugh about it. She doesn’t feel much like laughing now, but maybe some day…
She’s broken from her thoughts when the Command Center officer returns to the mic. “Hey, Lydia. You still there?”
“Still here, officer,” she responds reluctantly. He laughs, drawing her eyes up to the speaker as if he was there in person.
“You know, I have a name.” Though Lydia has no idea what he looks like, the sound of his voice makes her think he’s raising his eyebrows at her. It makes her flush a little, though she doesn’t understand why.
“Oh, do you? I thought you were just going to be the nameless voice acting like my conscience for the next three years.”
He laughs again. (It’s a nice sound—she could really get used to hearing it for the next three years, if need be.) “Oh, you thought that? Sorry to disappoint.” He pauses. “My name’s Parrish. Jordan Parrish.”
It’s a nice name. In an odd way, she thinks it suits him—though she couldn’t explain why. “Nice to meet you, Jordan Parrish.”
“Nice to meet you too, Lydia Martin.” His voice sounds warm in her ears. “Now, back to the task at hand—since you’ve conveniently broken your only technological form of data transference, I’ve been given the clear to replace it. It’s going to take a few days, but I’m going to be assisting you with experimental data and other information you need for your project.”
“That…seems like it might be hard?” She’s not complaining—not really, anyway, besides the fact that she thought she would be working on this mission solo instead of having her hand held from many thousands of miles away. “And also incredibly inconvenient for you, which I—”
“Lydia, it’s fine. It’s my job to be of assistance to any and all pilots that come through this center. Besides,” and here his voice gets softer, “you’re actually my first pilot.” At that, Lydia can’t stop the giggle that slips from her lips—and when had her mood changed so suddenly? She’s pretty sure she was about to have a goddamn breakdown about ten minutes ago. And here she is, floating in space, talking to some guy back on Earth who’s making her laugh because of an innuendo. Frankly, it’s a little ridiculous. “Hey! That’s not—I’m not—”
“I know, I know,” Lydia replies, saving him from floundering any more. “I’m honored to be your first pilot. Just don’t mess things up and get me killed, okay?”
“Sounds like a plan.” She can’t stop smiling even though she’s just learned that her life is in the hands of a beginner. “Hey, just so you know, I contacted Allison Argent and she’s agreed to be part of your DCL. She wants to come talk to you tomorrow, and seeing as we still need to put together your necessary data on my end, I figured you’ll be free for most of the day.”
“Oh my god.” Her smile gets impossibly bigger. She has to bite her lip just so that her face doesn’t split in two.
“What, should I not have? I can call her back and tell her otherw—”
“No! No, Jordan, you are amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you.” She’s so happy she can’t breathe for a few moments. (After checking with the life support system, she confirms it’s that and not anything failing mechanically.)
(Allison. Tomorrow. How could today be bad when it’s going to bring her there?)
..
To her complete and utter surprise, the first words she hears from Allison aren’t to her. She’s muttering something barely distinguishable through the comm, and Lydia wonders if she’s started talking to herself again for a moment before she hears Jordan’s voice. His voice matches hers in softness, and she thinks she can pick out her name in the mumblings before Allison’s voice filters clearly into her craft.
“Lydia, this guy is cute! Are you telling me he’s going to be in your ear for the next three years?!” She’s at least an octave higher when she gets to the mic, and Lydia laughs as she hears Jordan sputtering and leaving the room.
Lydia shakes her head fondly. “Is he really? I hadn’t noticed, being a couple thousand miles away in space and all.”
“He is! Seriously, if you don’t make it home in one piece, I might have to take him.” She can hear the smile in Allison’s voice, and she aches to be home for the first time since coming up. It’s only a passing feeling, but it lingers just long enough to slightly wane the smile on her face.
“Enough about him, though. You will not believe what happened to me yesterday, Ally. I swear, it’s like space has it out for me or something.”
..
Jordan calls her later that night, just as she’s starting to drift off to sleep. She’d have fallen out of bed if zero-gravity hadn’t been there to catch her.
“Lydia?” His voice is soft as always, and she can tell he just wants to go home.
“I’m here, Jordan,” she answers, trying her best to not sound like she’d just rolled out of bed.
“Sorry to wake you.” Well, at least she tried. “I just wanted to let you know that I managed to get all of our necessary data on file for the mission. So, you know, if you’re up to it, we can begin tomorrow.” He’s quiet for a moment, and she nods in response, forgetting about their lack of visual connection again but too tired to do anything about it. Her eyes can’t stay open for more than a few minutes at a time. Plus, Jordan continues talking to her in his low, calming voice, which only relaxes her even more. “Allison is nice. It’s no wonder you wanted her on your DCL before anyone else.”
Lydia hums in acknowledgement. “She’s been my best friend since high school,” she murmurs, her eyes closing even as she’s speaking. “’s the best person I know.”
Jordan chuckles at that. “Goodnight, Lydia.” The comm link goes dead, and Lydia barely has the sensibility to climb into bed before passing out.
..
The first day of working on her experiments with Jordan is, to her surprise, not a total waste. He helpfully chatters in her ear about the first bits of data necessary to launch the experiment into its first stage, and she nods along and interjects bits of her own knowledge and hypotheses into the mix. It’s easy, she finds, to communicate her ideas with him. They think in similar ways, which makes the thought process from point A to point B that much easier to plot out.
“Great minds think alike,” he says at one point, which makes Lydia smile.
“Aren’t you humble,” she teases in return.
However, it is only day one of her project. She’s got a couple hundred more before she can even move into stage two, let alone be finished with it altogether. A lot of the things they discuss are pieces of the basic groundwork needed to begin. It’s a little stressful and fairly time consuming, but at the end of the day, she thinks she’s been more productive with him on the other end of the comm than she has been by herself in a while, and they’re a few steps closer to beginning their work. It’s exciting—she’s genuinely excited about her work.
It’s been a long time since she’s been able to honestly say that.
..
Between working with Jordan and talking with Allison, Lydia’s days start to blur together. Things move so quickly—whether it’s one of her weekly discussions about Allison’s love life or one of the daily intricacies of her mission with Jordan, she’s always busy with something, and it reminds her of being back home more often than not. She adds her mom to her DCL and gets to chat with her for an hour or so once every few weeks. She’s finding her routine. She’s finding herself. She’s working her ass off in outer space.
Had you told her she’d be here 5 years ago, Lydia Martin would’ve probably laughed you out of the room.
A few months into her mission and Lydia and Jordan are now pulling all-nighters, studying the space debris that’s collecting on the hull of her ship. It’s nothing too serious—she scrapes it all away and stores it for testing—but it is necessary, and Lydia doesn’t want to get into the habit of procrastinating her work. She never has, really—but outer space changes a person, she’s sure of it, and she refuses to become lazy in her work ethic. So she stays up and collects every necessary particle until her allotted work is done.
To help keep her awake, she makes sure Jordan is on the other end of the mic, talking her through it. Sometimes, he complains about being tired. Always, though, he’s helpful whenever she needs him. (She wishes he were here with her, though—it’s lonely floating out in space alone, even with his voice in her ear.)
Tonight, she’s waiting for her ship to finish an analysis of the most recent chunk of space rock to hit her. It’s mind-numbing; she’s been staring at the computer screen for hours, watching the numbers slowly move as each atom is categorized and labeled. Watching paint dry would probably be exciting compared to this.
“Jordan, how long is this going to take again?” She asks, floating away from the computer screen and toward the comm. She can practically hear him roll his eyes.
“Another hour, at least.” He sounds tired, too—it can’t be fun to do the same thing on Earth. At least Lydia can float around in zero gravity as a distraction. “If you think about how long it’s taking, it’s only going to feel longer.”
“But how am I supposed to not think about it? I’m exhausted and I just want to go to sleep. This data might actually kill me.” She rubs a hand over her eyes.
Jordan laughs.“Distract yourself! Do something that doesn’t involve staring at that goddamn computer.”
Lydia scowls at the speaker. Easy for him to say. At least he’s not cooped up in a giant metal tin. She’s bored out of her mind, and her phone is dead—what could possibly distract her up here? “Hm...how about we play 20 questions?” She muses. “After all, I don’t really know all that much about you, except your name.” She doesn’t get an answer; the only thing she can hear from his end is the clicking of his keyboard. Oh well—silence is acceptance, and she’s going to play whether he likes it or not. “Question one: what’s your middle name?”
It’s quiet for a few more beats. Then, just as Lydia is about to complain about him being no fun, he answers. “Michael. It’s kind of boring, I guess, but it was my grandfather’s name.” He pauses. “Okay, here’s my question: what made you want to be an astronaut?”
“Easy—I wanted to be the first ginger in space.”
“What?” Jordan laughs, making her blush a little. “That’s it?”
She crosses her arms defensively. He can’t see her, she knows, but that doesn’t stop her from acting like he can. “Hey! Don’t bash my ten-year-old self’s dreams. I read a book about astronauts and thought it was really cool. My mom told me that she didn’t think there were any famous redheaded astronauts—probably to inspire me, in retrospect—and it just kind of clicked.” She pauses to think of another question. “What are you wearing?”
“I thought you said this was 20 questions, not interstellar phone sex.” Parrish teases. She can hear the smile in his voice.
“It’s a valid question! I haven’t seen anyone in person in months. I wanna know what you wear. I can’t have my coworker dressing like a complete slob, you know.”
“Oh, so there’s a right answer here?” She giggles at his tone. “Fair enough. It was really warm out today, so I wore a pair of floral shorts and a t-shirt.”
“Floral shorts? Oh god, Parrish. You’re worse than I thought!” she gasps dramatically. He snorts. “I can’t believe I work with a California surf bro. Oh, god. This is it. I thought space would kill me, but this might actually be it.”
“Oh, ha ha. Very funny. Next question time. What’s your least favorite part about outer space?”
“Besides the work?” Lydia laughs.
“Besides the work.”
“Hm.” She’s not sure how to answer that. “Probably the loneliness. That sounds so dramatic, but…I just kinda miss being around people. I mean, even…even in the city, when everyone is shoving you around trying to get where they’re going? I miss that. I don’t know. I’m just kind of alone up here, which is nice, but also really…” She can’t find the word to finish her sentence, so she chooses not to finish it altogether. Her good mood starts to fade a little—leave it to her to get too deep in an innocent game of 20 questions.
“Hey.” Jordan’s voice is soft. “You’re not alone. I know you mean up there, but…I’m here. You’ve got me. And Allison, and your mom, and all the other people in your life. You’ve got people waiting for you to come home. You’re not alone because they’re always with you.” It’s incredibly cheesy, what he’s saying, and if it had come from anyone else she’d probably roll her eyes. But it’s coming from him. And she finds herself tearing up listening to his encouragement. “You’re not alone, Lydia. I promise.”
But she is. She’s by herself in space. She hasn’t been touched by another person in months and she feels like an idiot, talking to a speaker system every single day to get her share of human interaction. She’s throwing years of her life away for work. But he doesn’t need to hear her say that—not now, anyway. She doesn’t want to ruin his mood. “Okay,” she says simply. Then, after clearing her throat: “What do you look like?”
It’s like he knows exactly what she needs. In a calm voice, he relays the information to her—the color of his eyes (or at least, what color he thinks they are—he’s colorblind, he tells her, so this information might be wrong) and the length of his hair. She listens as he describes himself.
The computer beeps at her, letting them know that the data extraction is complete.
Lydia doesn’t hear it.
..
For a while, everything gets better, after that night. She’s more open with Jordan, closer to him than she ever thought she’d be, and actively considers him her best friend as of right now. They talk every day, both about work and life, and she thinks she wants to meet in person when she comes down. It’s been twelve months since she went up. She misses Earth. But she’s glad she’s here, if only because she’d met him because of it.
(Does she like him? Well, if she thinks about it every once in a while, it’s not entirely her fault.)
..
On the third day of her fifteenth month in space, Jordan calls her.
“Hey, Jay! What’s up?”
“Lydia…I need to tell you something.” His voice is serious, and for a moment she thinks that this could be the space version of her own little rom-com; he confesses his feelings for her, she confesses that she returns them after all these months, and that she’s going to run into his arms as soon as she comes back to Earth. It sounds ridiculous, but she’s sure of it.
“What’s going on?”
“I am so sorry, Lydia. It’s Allison. She was in a car crash. She…she’s dead.”
No. No no no. No, this isn’t how this conversation was supposed to go. Lydia feels the world drop from beneath her, and she shakes her head, as if it’ll wake her up. No. There’s no way Allison is dead. She’d just talked to Allison last week—she’d found the ring that Isaac had hidden in his dresser, and Allison and Lydia had screamed at each other over the mic about her being Mrs. Allison Lahey. It was just last week….
“Lydia, I am so sorry. Oh, god. I am so, so sorry.” Parrish sounds like he’s choked up. Lydia feels like she’s going to be sick.
She curls herself into the fetal position and floats, not even turning her comm off. Parrish continues to talk to her, but his voice is nonsense to her ears. She can’t hear anything.
Her best friend is dead.
..
She doesn’t give up working, but she’s stopped talking almost completely. Experiments are in silence. Parrish relays the information, Lydia takes it down and uses it to measure the debris in front of her, and then she shuts her comm off and sleeps.
Sleep doesn’t make things any easier for her at all, but at least she doesn’t have to be awake for it.
..
Her twentieth month in space—month five of complete and utter silence—is when disaster strikes. She’s asleep when one of the pieces of debris she’d collected shatters in its container. It had been left unsealed, after Lydia’s panic attack rendered her unable to finish her examination. In moments, the dust has risen up and throughout the interior of her spacecraft.
The Sustainable Life System silent alarm starts to go off.
Lydia continues to sleep.
Jordan, still sitting at his post back at the Command Center, sees the light flashing. He jerks upright and grabs the mic forcefully, panic practically strangling him.
“Lydia! Lydia!” He hollers, desperate to wake her up. He slams his palm against the head of the mic, knowing that it’ll be loud in the enclosed area of her room. “Lydia, wake up! Please!” He feels hysteric. “Lydia, put on the SLS suit. Lydia!”
Lydia blinks out of her sleeping state only to hear Jordan screaming through the speaker, and red dust rapidly filling her ship. Immediately awake, she pushes herself through the cloud and into the SLS room, sealed off from the rest of the ship itself. She pulls on the Sustainable System suit and bites back a distraught sob. All of her work is at risk. Everything she’s been doing, everything she’s gone through…
In a flash of panic, she realizes that she never let Jordan know that she’s okay.
“God dammit.” The door of the SLS room opens with the press of a button, and Lydia launches herself back towards the ever-growing cloud of red dust filling her cabin. The speaker is practically covered in it, and she realizes with a sinking feeling that it might not work—that it might be too contaminated, too clogged with dust to get her message through.
“Jordan?” She calls, slamming her hand against the comm. “Jordan, I’m here! I’m okay!” There’s a crackle on the other end of the speaker. “What should I do?” But the comm goes dead, and all of a sudden it hits Lydia. She’s trapped in space. With a dust storm evolving in her quarters.
There’s no way she’s going to survive this.
With one final desperate launch, she flings herself back to the safety chamber and seals herself back in before any of the dust travels further into her ship.
Back on Earth, Jordan Parrish is taking the wheel. He hears her crackled voice—“I’m here, I’m okay”—and immediately jumps into action.
“We need to bring this ship back to Earth right now.” His hysteria has developed into terrifying calmness. “Whatever is impacting her climate stability can be decontaminated, and hopefully she’s in her SLS suit.” God, he hopes so. There’s no way to safely bring her home otherwise. “I need all officers to take control of that ship and bring it back. We can’t leave one of our own out there alone. Not like that.” He turns back to face the mic, which is eerily silent. “Bring her home.”
..
They do.
..
Decontamination is a long process—one which Lydia is sure she’s going to hate for the rest of her life. Though technically she’s back on Earth, she can’t leave her ship until it’s been cleared of the dangerous substance that had put her work—and her life—in jeopardy. So she remains in the tiny SLS room, trapped in her seemingly never-ending personal hell.
She’s not sure when she falls asleep, but when she wakes up, the door is being opened slowly. Cautiously. A person in a yellow hazmat suit walks in, reaches out a hand, and helps her up. She can’t see the person’s face—but the fact that it’s a person, a human, makes her start to cry. Her sobs are shuddering and loud, and though she’s being escorted from her completely-destroyed space ship, Lydia has never felt better in her life.
They escort her to a closed-off room, where she can shower and recover from her trauma in peace, and when the hot water spills from the showerhead onto her body, she starts to cry again. She made it home. In one piece.
Allison would be proud.
..
She leaves her room 24 hours later, only to be bombarded by press. She doesn’t know what’s happening—camera lights are flashing, forcing her to keep her head down, and there are so many people talking to her at once. She can’t focus, she can’t—
“Lydia?”
Through the clutter of sound filling her ears, one voice stands out. Her head shoots up, and she hears it again—it can’t be.
A man standing in the middle of a herd of reporters is staring at her, his green eyes wide. He’s got dark blond hair, and he looks like he hasn’t slept in days. His eyes are rimmed red—probably from tears. And then it hits her.
Oh god.
It’s him.
Without thinking about it for a moment longer, she runs at him, flinging her arms around his neck and burying her face into the crook of his neck. “Jordan,” she breathes, tears in her eyes once more.
His arms wrap around her steadily, keeping her close to him. “Oh my god. Lydia.” He ducks his face into her shoulder, one hand coming up to cup the back of her head. She can feel the tears running down his face, and when she pulls away, she looks into his eyes up close for the first time.
“Jordan.” She can’t stop saying his name. It feels like a song, like the most beautiful thing she’s ever heard, and she says it again. He breaks into a watery smile looking down at her.
“Like I said before—I’m here.” He closes the distance between them and kisses her gently.
