“I’m-no,” Kirk managed to say. “My stomach’s a bit upset.” As soon as he’d decided this morning to speak with Antonia about what had happened, his anxiety had physically unsettled him.
“I’m sorry,” Antonia said. “Do you think you’re getting sick? Can I make you some tea?” She reached as though to take the tray from her lap so that she could get out of bed, but Kirk stopped her.
“No, no, I’ll be fine,” he said. “Have your breakfast.”
Antonia smiled at him, then looked back down at the tray. “What’s this?” she asked, holding up the velvet pouch.
“How did that get there?” Kirk teased, trying to stay positive.
Antonia reached into the pouch and pulled out the horseshoe. “Jim, this is lovely,” she said. She held it out before her, the ends up. “For good luck.”
Again Kirk tried to smile, and again failed to do so convincingly.
“What’s the matter?” Antonia asked. “Does your stomach feel that bad?”
“It’s nothing,” Kirk said.
“Jim, I’ve lived with you for two years now,” she said. “I can tell when something’s bothering you.” She seemed to make an assessment while she looked at him. “It’s not your stomach, though, is it?”
“It’s not just that, no,” Kirk said.
“What is it?” Antonia asked, clearly concerned now.
Kirk pushed off the bedpost and walked across the room to the far corner. When he turned back to face her, he knew that the time had come to tell her. “Antonia,” he said, “Harry Morrow contacted me.”
“Harry Morrow?” she asked, her brow creasing.
“An old friend,” Kirk said. “He’s also the commander in chief of Starfleet.”
Antonia set the horseshoe down on the tray with a loud thump. “And what did Harry want?” she asked flatly.
Realizing that he’d unintentionally put distance between Antonia and him when he’d moved across the room, he walked back to the corner of the bed. “He wanted to tell me that he has a position open for me at Starfleet Headquarters.”
Antonia gazed at him for a long moment without saying anything. Then she lifted the tray from her lap and set it gently down next to her on the mattress. As she reached for her silk robe at the foot of the bed, she said, “You told me that you would never go back to Starfleet.”
“I didn’t think I would,” Kirk said. “But this is strictly a supervisory position, maybe with an opportunity to do some instruction at the academy.”
Antonia stood from the bed and quickly pulled her robe on, as though she didn’t want Kirk to see her naked form. After cinching the belt tightly about her waist, she looked up at him, her pain obvious. “You told me you weren’t going back,” she repeated.
“Antonia, this would be at Starfleet Headquarters, in San Francisco,” he said. “I would wake up every morning in Idaho with you, and go to bed every night with you. Things wouldn’t have to change that much.”
Antonia’s eyes widened. “You’re actually considering taking this position?” she asked.
Kirk glanced down, not wanting to make this any more difficult for either one of them, but knowing that he had to tell her. Looking back up, he said, “I already accepted it.”
“What!?” Antonia said.
Kirk stepped over to her, his arms out. “Antonia,” he said, but she pushed his arms away and raced past him. “Antonia,” Kirk said again, but she did not respond. Instead, she stood beside the upholstered bench in front of the bed, where she’d tossed her clothes last night. She quickly pulled on her socks and underwear, then her blue jeans. Kirk walked over to her and placed his hand on her back. “Antonia- “
“Leave me alone,” she said, and she grabbed her sweater from the bench and marched to the other side of the room. Keeping her back to him, she took off her robe and let it fall to the floor. She tugged her sweater on over her head, then pulled at her long hair to get it through as well.
When finally she looked back over at him, he said, “We won’t have to be apart. You spend a lot of your days with your practice anyway. We could still be together.”
“Tell me,” she said. “When did Harry contact you? When did you accept his offer?”
“Last week,” Kirk admitted. “A few days before we left Idaho.”
Antonia shook her head. “And you waited until we came up here to tell me.” She walked over to the other side of the bed and bent over it toward the tray. “You made sure to make me Ktarian eggs before you decided to tell me,” she said, lifting the plate up with two fingers and dropping it noisily back onto the tray. The grape juice splashed over the rim of its glass. “You made sure to give me a symbol of good luck before you told me.” She picked up the horseshoe and then let it clatter onto the tray. Fixing him with a glare, her voice rising, she said, “You made love with me last night knowing that you would do this to me today.” She shoved her hand beneath the tray and sent it flying across the bed and onto the floor.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Kirk said, even though, on some level, he had always known that he would.
“Your intentions don’t really mean much, do they?” Antonia said. “Because you think it’s more important for you to go back to Starfleet than it is not to hurt me. You told me that you would never go back. You promised me.”
“I promised that we wouldn’t have a long-distance, part-time relationship,” Kirk said, defensive despite knowing what he was doing to this woman that he loved-that he loved, but not enough.
“No,” Antonia said. “You promised me that you wouldn’t go back to Starfleet.”
Kirk raised his arms and then let them fall back to his sides. “At the time, I meant that,” he said. “I really didn’t believe that I’d ever want to do something like this, but things change.”
“That doesn’t make your promise any less of a lie,” Antonia told him.
“I didn’t lie,” Kirk bristled. “I believed what I told you at the time.”
“A promise isn’t something with a time limit on it,” Antonia said. “What good does it do for somebody to promise one thing one minute that they believe and intend to live up to, if in the next minute they decide that they’ve changed and so now the promise no longer applies?” She strode over to where she’d dropped her robe and bent to pick it up. When she stood back up, she said, “You can rationalize this any way you want to, but you lied to me.”
Though he knew it would do no good-he’d always known it-he said, “I can be back in Idaho every night.”
“I know you mean that right now,” she said, “but ‘things change.’” She spat the last words back at him, a rebuke that told him she would never again trust him. “One day you’ll come home from Starfleet to tell me that Harry’s offered you the command of a starship.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Kirk said.
“Sorry,” Antonia said, “but your promises don’t carry a lot of weight with me anymore.”
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Kirk said, walking toward her, wanting very much to find a way to ease Antonia’s pain. “We can…” The notion of marriage had actually risen in his mind, though he refrained from saying so on the off chance that she might accept.
“We can what?” Antonia asked. “Get married? That’s just a label if there’s no promise to back it up.” She looked down at the robe in her hand for a moment, then threw it back down on the floor and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Kirk asked.
“I’m leaving,” she said from the doorway. “Don’t come after me, don’t try to see me, don’t try to contact me.” She thought for a second and then added, “I’ll move my things out of the house when you’re away during the day at Starfleet.” She said nothing more, but she also didn’t turn and walk away. She stared at him, and Kirk realized that, amidst her hurt and disappointment, some part of her wanted him to protest, to do something that would keep them together. At that instant, Kirk understood that there were things that he could say to Antonia that would begin to put this incident behind them, that would indeed save their relationship.