NOVEL NEXT Chapter 76: Sincerity
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Gordon: I hate the audio setup here; it makes everything I say sound stupid.
Claire: Skill issue.
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November 17th, 2090, about 11:55 pm MST, Solar Orbit
Gordon lay on the narrow shuttle bunk, wrapped in that weird, suspended quiet you only get between planets—no wind, no crickets, no power grid hum. Just the muffled ticking of his own thought processes.
He wasn't ashamed, exactly.
But he'd made something messier than it had to be. And instead of cleaning it, he'd sorted it into boxes labeled tolerable, unconfirmed, and likely to resolve itself in time.
And he'd really enjoyed talking with Marie today. SO much. He felt like he was being unfair.
Now, maybe, he was ready to do better than that.
So he made a choice.
Not about Karen—he already knew that path was narrowing behind him.
Not about Marie—he'd chosen her once already.
But now he chose to mean it.
Not conditionally. Not tactically. Not "we'll see what the vibe is when we're together."
Marie was either worth losing Karen over, or she wasn't.
If she was, then he needed to act like it.
Up front. Mature. No hedging. Set boundaries with Karen—he wasn't just going to throw her away, but he could make her safe, for Marie's sake. Probably.
And if Marie wasn't the woman he thought she was…
Well.
He wouldn't like that answer. But he could live with it.
He doubted that would be an issue.
His conscience was mostly satisfied.
The secret still sat there, unopened, like a folder he didn't want to double-click.
A leftover task for another version of him to deal with—maybe one with better tools.
For now, he owed her a real apology.
Gordon sat on the shuttle bunk, knees drawn up, headset on, while Hiram snored with the soft, glottal irregularity of a machine nearing end-of-life diagnostics. The room smelled faintly of freeze-dried coffee and too-clean metal, and somewhere in the forward bay a gyroscope thunked into position. Twenty-two more hours of this. Him, his father, and a narrow metal corridor pointed at Mars.
He took a breath. Then another. Then he called Marie.
She answered faster than he'd expected. Her voice was friendly, open, still high off the emotions of the stream—but slightly concerned at the unexpected call, he felt..
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"Hey."
"Hey," he said. "You got a minute?"
"Always."
He didn't ease into it.
"So just off the bat—I owe you another, better, apology," he said. "I dismissed your concerns about Karen. Because I didn't share them. Because I didn't want to think about what it might mean if you were right. The possibility of being forced to choose between my girlfriend and my oldest friend? I didn't want to go there. So I got off the topic as fast as I could. Didn't revisit it."
He looked down at the edge of the console.
"That's not taking your feelings into account," he said. "And if we're going to make this work—your concerns and mine have to share priority."
Marie nodded slowly. "I don't want to ask you to choose," she said. "We just need to talk about boundaries."
"And that's fair. But it wasn't just avoidance," he said. "I got angry. I let myself feel protective of her. I sort of...sided with her, emotionally. Which is backwards. Because this isn't about tenure. This is about what you and I are trying to build. That's the thing with future in it. That's what matters."
Marie smiled—small, genuine.
He didn't smile back. He wasn't done.
"But the worst thing might be that I lost my temper and ducked out of the conversation altogether," he said. "That's not communication. That's not even conflict management. That's exit. And it's kind of aggressive."
He looked up at the screen again.
"That's really not who I want to be with you," he said.
"Thank you," she said.
He nodded. Let the silence hang for a moment.
"I needed to get my head on straight before making this call," he said. "But part of the reason I needed time was because I let myself get overwhelmed. And then I made excuses. And my emotional hygiene shouldn't ever get to the point that it's impacting you. That's not your burden."
"To err is human," he added, half-rueful. "But I'll try to do better next time."
Marie watched him, eyes softening.
There was a difference, he'd come to realize, between fault and responsibility.
He hadn't meant to hurt her—but that didn't mean he couldn't have seen it coming. He couldn't be omniscient. But he could be attentive. And when he fell short, it wasn't guilt he felt—it was a kind of structural regret. Like missing an off-ramp on a long highway. The moment passed, and now the cost was baked in.
That was the difference between apology and performance. You didn't grovel. You just said what was true, owned what you could have foreseen, and left space for comfort without borrowing guilt that wasn't yours.
He breathed in. Let it go.
"I've also been thinking about when you told me you were afraid of seeming clingy," he said. "I didn't say much at the time. I didn't really know what you needed from me in that moment. But looking back...I think I missed an opportunity. To comfort you. To make sure you knew I didn't see you that way."
She lowered her eyes slightly. Not embarrassed—just seen.
"That's something I want to do better with next time," he said. "If I miss something like that again, feel free to ask me directly—'Am I being clingy?' I'll try to notice the quieter signals too. But I'll never fault you for checking in."
Her smile turned upward, gentler now. "That actually helps," she said.
"I don't want to guess wrong about you again," he said. "I want to learn how to guess right."
"That's kind of romantic," she said. "In a very nerdy way."
He shrugged, the gesture loose. "Can't help that."
"I know."
They sat there a moment in soft quiet, two digital ghosts in the void.
"We're still about twenty hours from orbit," he said. "Hiram's asleep. Which means, if I'm lucky, I might get a nap in."
"Do that," she said. "You've been running on fumes since Earth."
"I'm looking forward to seeing you," he said. "In person, finally."
"Me too."
A pause. Then her voice, a little smaller:
"I'm glad you called."
"I'm glad you picked up."
The silence was more friendly this time.
"Gordon?"
"Yeah?"
"Since you're going to be pretty bored for the next ...several hours ...you might want to see what Claire has made of your stream while you've been away—"
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Claire's portable buzzed.
[SLAVERY?!]
Claire's voice was flat. She'd expected this. He was probably smirking at her from a video on demand window even now.
"Here we go."