Kirk finished his rum, then reached past Antonia to set his mug down next to hers on the end table. Once he had, he didn’t lean back on the sofa, but remained leaning over her. Peering into her dark brown eyes, he said, “Doctor Salvatori, what would you think about moving in here?”
Antonia wrinkled her brow. “Is that a hypothetical question,” she said, “or are you really asking me to move in with you?” She had a penchant for reacting to certain situations in a deliberately obtuse manner, but Kirk had learned to bully his way through such tactics.
“I’m asking,” he said. He bent forward and kissed her lightly on the lips. “We’ve been seeing each other for months now and things seem to be going well between us.”
“Oh, you think so?” Antonia said, without any inflection to indicate a blithe spirit behind her remark.
“Yes, I do,” Kirk said, refusing to be denied.
“Well…yes,” Antonia finally agreed, but she appeared less than pleased by the admission. Abruptly she pushed past Kirk, stood up, and walked toward the corner of the room. “It’s been wonderful,” she said, facing him, but when she continued, she looked down at her hands, which she nervously twisted together. “It’s just that I’m not so sure that we have a future together.”
“What?” Kirk said, unprepared for Antonia’s assessment. He rose from the sofa but did not try to approach her, instead gazing at her across the room. “I…I thought we were growing closer,” he said. “I thought we had a good thing going and that we were moving forward together.” It had been some time since he’d been seriously involved with a woman, but it shocked him that he could have been so mistaken in his evaluation of their relationship. With Edith it had been so easy-Kirk cut himself off in midthought, wanting to prevent himself from comparing Antonia to Edith. Besides being unfair to Antonia, it also did him no good. Edith was gone, and she always would be.
Across the room, Antonia raised her eyes and looked at him. “We have grown closer,” she said. “We do have a good thing going. I really enjoy your company and we always have a fine time with each other, but…I’m just not sure that we’re moving forward together.”
Kirk looked away from Antonia and over at the logs burning in the fireplace. He didn’t know what to say or think, and he told her so. “I’m shocked,” he said, “but I guess maybe that just illustrates how badly I misjudged our relationship.”
“No, no, you didn’t,” Antonia said. “But…tell me, what were you looking at through the window before?”
“What?” Kirk said, completely nonplussed by the question. “I was just looking to see if it was still snowing.” The more he considered what she’d asked, the less sense it made to him. “Why?” he said. “Is there something else you thought I was looking at?”
“Another woman,” Antonia said.
“What?” Kirk couldn’t believe her claim. He had been seeing no one but her, though he now felt a pang of guilt for his errant thought of Edith.
“The stars,” Antonia said.
Kirk shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he said. Antonia couldn’t possibly know about Edith. Other than Spock and Bones, he didn’t think anybody did. Even when he’d sought counseling after Sam and Aurelan’s deaths, which had immediately followed his loss of Edith, he hadn’t spoken of her to his psychiatrist.
“I think you do understand,” Antonia said. She took a step toward him, but then seemed to consciously stop herself from coming any closer. “Jim, I really have enjoyed being with you. You’re fun and funny, a good companion and an interesting man. Certainly you’ve lived an interesting life.” She paused, then added, “Maybe too interesting.”
“What does that mean?” Kirk wanted to know.
“It means that I don’t want to get too involved with a man who’s eventually going to leave me,” Antonia said. She spoke without anger or bitterness, but with a conviction that suggested she believed her opinion of their future to be fact, not conjecture.
“I have no intention of leaving you,” Kirk said. “Why would you think that I would?”
“Tell me when you were at the window that you weren’t looking at the stars,” she said.
“Honestly, no, I wasn’t,” Kirk said. He recalled comparing in his mind the snowflakes to the pinpoints of light in the sky, but that seemed immaterial. “I was just looking out at the snow.”
“I believe you,” Antonia allowed. “But I have seen you looking at the stars.”
“Well, yes, of course,” he said. “Doesn’t everybody? Don’t you?”
“Sure, but not in the same way that you do,” she said. “When I look at the stars, all I see is a beautiful night sky. When you look, I can tell that you’re remembering alien worlds you’ve already visited and imagining the exotic places you’ve yet to explore.”
“Antonia,” he said. He started to move toward her, but she held her hand up, and he halted a few steps from her. “Yes, I admit that I can recall the different planets I’ve been to, the strange landscapes I’ve walked, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to leave you.”
“It also doesn’t mean that you’re going to stay,” she noted. “That you won’t decide at some point to go back to Starfleet.”
“I’ve been retired for two and a half years now,” Kirk said. “Why do you think I’m suddenly going to want to return to space? Have I ever given you any indication of that? Other than looking at the stars, which as you said, you do yourself?”
Antonia did not answer immediately, and Kirk suspected that when she did, the future of their relationship-or the lack of a future-would turn on her answer. Finally, she said, “No, you haven’t acted like you want to go back to Starfleet. But when you do look up at the stars, it just seems like we don’t connect.”
“Then that’s my fault,” Kirk told her. “I never meant to make you feel disconnected from me. I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
“It’s all right,” Antonia said. “I don’t want to change who you are. I like who you are. I just don’t want to be involved in a long-distance, part-time relationship. I’ve had a couple of those in my life and I don’t like them. I want a partner who will be here with me.”
“Antonia,” Kirk said, and this time when he went to her, she didn’t try to stop him. When he reached her, he put his hands on her arms and looked her directly in the eyes. “I’m not asking you to be in a relationship while I board a starship and go running off through the galaxy. I’m asking you to move into my house with me, right here in Idaho.”
“And what happens when you go back to Starfleet?” she asked quietly.
“That’s not going to happen,” he promised her.
“How can I be sure of that?” she asked him. “How can you be sure of that?”
Kirk chuckled. “Next year I’ll have lived half a century,” he said. “I think by now I ought to know myself.”
“You ought to,” Antonia said, peering at him in an almost pleading way. “But do you?”
“Yes,” he told her. “I think I do.”
Antonia nodded, and then she actually smiled. She moved to the side, and Kirk let his hands drop from her arms. She passed him and crossed the room, back over to the window. Holding the curtains open, she looked outside. “I like it when it snows,” she said. “When there’s an accumulation, there’s a surreal quiet, like a thick blanket’s been draped over the land.”
Kirk walked over to Antonia and sent his arms around her midsection, hugging her to him. “I told you that I’ve got a house up in the Canadian Rockies,” he said. “We should go. Lots of snow up there.”