So she turned her back on the keyboard and its protective bubble, and looked instead at her girlfriend, Selina Perez, who sat beside her at the bar.
“Can’t fool me,” Selina said. The warm light from the vidscreen illuminated her face, glossing her curly dark hair and showing the playful dimple at the corner of her mouth. “I can see you thinking about that dusty old thing.”
Liza shook her head, denying the truth. You loved to play, her memories whispered. Music was the one thing keeping you sane back then.
She never should have admitted her interest in the keyboard to Selina. Her girlfriend was tenacious, and in their six months together had pried more out of Liza than she’d ever wanted to give.
A knot deep in her belly reminded her it was dangerous to get close. To share information that might give away all her secrets. But it was too late. She’d already lost her heart to Selina.
Eventually, she’d tell her girlfriend about her past.
Just... not yet.
“Look.” Selina blew a stream of clove-scented vapor past Liza’s cheek. “If you can play, you owe it to everyone in this granky place to share that gift. Life is hard enough as is. We need a bit of sweetness to keep us going—you know that. Music. Beer. Kisses.”
She bent close to Liza, pressing their lips together to illustrate her argument.
Liza let herself get lost in that softness. After she’d fled Earth, she didn’t know if she’d ever be happy again. Selina had showed her that she could start over—that a broken heart didn’t last forever.
As their kiss deepened, a few people let out catcalls, and further down the bar someone started belting out a raunchy song. Reluctantly, Liza broke the kiss.
Selina winked at her. “Really, though. You should play that piano.”
“The bartender said the parts for the jukie system will arrive soon,” Liza said. “Then they can fix the music and we won’t have to listen to drunken bar songs anymore.”
“Soon can mean months,” Selina said. “You’ve got light inside you, novia. Let some of it out.”
“We’ll be down planet soon enough.” Liza changed the subject. “On vacation there’ll be plenty of music to listen to.”
“And dance to.” Selina slipped off her bar stool and did a little shimmy. “I wish you could come down with me tomorrow. Stupid schedule rotations.”
“Just two days, and then we get most of the break together. You can scout out the place and show me all the good stuff when I get there.”
“There’s way more than ten days’ worth of fun on the pleasure isle of Raldoon, so they say.” Selina grinned. “It’s only the top vacation spot in the whole sector. I’ve been saving up for this trip for ages.”
“We both have.”
It was expensive to shuttle down to the nearby planet of Doralfi, let alone take a jaunt to the pleasure isle. But Selina made everything worthwhile.
“Gonna stay up here and turn into a dried-out stick?” her girlfriend had said when Liza had expressed her doubts. “We only get one life, darling. Let it shine.”
Selina was right. After almost a year working the asteroid mines, Liza needed a break.
Sometimes, late in the dark when she was alone, she’d curl into a tight ball and allow a few tears to seep out the corners of her eyes, remembering everything she’d left. Was this life she’d made for herself any better? Had she made the wrong choice?
In the morning, though, all her reasons would come flooding back. It wasn’t much of an existence, true, but it was hers. Her choice. And she’d found some happiness in it.
Selina hopped back onto her stool and took another suck of clove-steam. “I want to buy a nice dress down there. And shoes, if I can afford them. Something with sparkles.”
She stuck out her foot, studying her scuffed boot.
“You’d look good in dimsilk,” Liza said, then bit her tongue. “I mean, there are some decent imitations.”
“It’s pretty stuff, from what I can tell on the vids.” Selina winked at her. “Think of the highbrows we’ll be rubbing elbows with—and us a pair of granky miners. Play our cards right, and they’ll never know.”
“Right.” Liza took another swallow of her beer, letting the tangy flavor fill her mouth.
She’d have to be careful in Raldoon not to let herself slip. It would be easy to revert back to the ‘highbrow’ ways she’d been born to. One year as an asteroid miner couldn’t erase the nobility she carried, all unwilling, in her blood.
“Dance with me,” Selina said, lacing her fingers through Liza’s.
“There’s no music.”
“We’ll make our own. On the floor, and off.” Selina’s eyes were bright with promises.
Liza finished off her beer, then let her girlfriend pull her off the barstool and into the rest of the night.
“Figure they’ve landed by now?” Trudi Miller asked, leaning on her diggerbot, her helmet’s face mask covered with fine dust.
“Probably.” Liza slid a load of rock into the cart. More dust rose, glittering in the harsh artificial lights. “It’s only four hours down to the surface.”
Before she’d run away, she had never thought about the kind of menial work people all over the Empire performed—or if she had, she’d assumed that mechanicals did most of it.
But mechanicals were expensive, and the mining dust damaged their circuitry. Human labor was cheaper, and easier to replace.
“Hope we can ping chat down to Doralfi after shift,” Trudi said. “I miss my boy already.”
Trudi and her son had been working the asteroid mines for four years, and Rand looked forward to his yearly vacations on Raldoon. He and Selina had been on the same shuttle down, leaving Trudi and Liza to wave them off from the docking bay.
Trudi preferred to spend her vacation time relaxing in her room, devouring vids and screenbooks.
“I’m too old for that kind of fun,” she’d said when Liza asked. “And I always have been, even when I was young. Dancing and carousing and holo-games—the thought wearies me to the bone. I like my pleasures on the quieter side. Though I do enjoy the tales Rand brings back.”
Liza spent the rest of her shift wondering what Selina was doing. She could hardly wait for the moment she was planetside, holding her girlfriend in her arms. With the added bonus of being able to wash the miner’s dust off her skin without it settling right back on again.
Before dinner, she got a quick chat in with Selina, whose smile was brighter than ever.
“I wish you were here, love—there’s a sunset dinner and, oh, the water is so warm. I’m going dancing later, in my new dress.” She twirled, the pale fabric swirling about her, contrasting with her dark skin. “Like it?”
“You look beautiful,” Liza swallowed the lump in her throat. “When I get down there, I’ll buy you a necklace to match. Something shiny.”
“I’d love that. But I love you more.” Selina blew her a kiss. “This cheapass handheld is almost out of credits. Talk to you tomorrow.”
“Goodnight, love.”
Selina smiled, her image dissolving into the blank screen of Liza’s handheld. Communications planetside were horribly expensive, for both the sender and receiver, but the minute of conversation and the sight of her girlfriend’s smile had been worth it.
A grief-stricken cry woke Liza. She sat up, blinking, then fumbled for her handheld. It was almost three in the morning. Was someone having night terrors?
The cry came again, floating down the corridor, and Liza heard someone yell to shut up.
She pulled on her thin robe and went to the door, sliding it open to reveal the gray walls of the sleeping area hallway. Someone was sobbing—Liza could hear it through the closed plasmetal doors, and it didn’t sound like the aftermath of a nightmare.