Rockets and Romance Read online

  Julian told himself to be diplomatic. “While I appreciate the thought—”

  “Oh, no need to be worried,” she declared over his interjection. “I’m sure you’ll pick it up without too much trouble. We’ve had Cody fill in on our team for other reasons in the past, and I have every confidence that he’s an excellent teacher.”

  Right, because I’m secretly a kindergartner in need of someone to hold my hand. Julian fought to keep his expression neutral. Sure was nice to know that Cody had torpedoed everyone’s expectations of Julian before he’d even arrived in the state. Christ, the way Martha was trying to reassure him he could be a big boy and do things himself with enough tutelage from Cody… damn it. There was nothing Julian could say without sounding painfully petty, though, so he bit his tongue and let the topic go.

  The rest of the meeting was mercifully short. Martha made a few suggestions, then announced a few nonpressing things for people to work on if anyone needed a break from their current task. All in all it took under twenty minutes. Martha thanked them and retreated to her office, leaving Julian with his curious new coworkers.

  “So.” The man across the table from Julian—Robert, he thought—interlaced his fingers and leaned forward like they were in a mock interview. “You moved from California, I heard? Is that where you’re originally from?”

  Julian answered the team’s basic questions one by one. He was born in Seattle but grew up in LA. Yes, this was his first job at NASA. He’d worked at Boeing between college and now and had done a yearlong internship at a smaller aerospace firm before that. No, he’d never been to Huntsville, but it was going fine so far. No, he didn’t have a church yet, but thanks for offering to help him find one.

  That last one maybe wasn’t what he would have considered a “basic” question before, but Robert was the third person to ask in the less than a week that Julian had been in Alabama, so it was probably the southern equivalent of bringing cookies to the new neighbor. Nobody had been pushy about it when he demurred, thank goodness. Pretty sure Alabama churches aren’t ready for my kind of Christian. The Bible Belt seemed awfully… Bible-y. If that was a word.

  “Are you house-hunting?” one of the other two (Greg? Geoff? Grant?) asked. “No hurry of course, that goes without saying, but I remember how daunting that search can be. Let me know if you need any help—my wife and I moved across town last year and our real estate agent was excellent. I’d be happy to get her in touch if you want.”

  “Signed the papers on an apartment the day before yesterday, actually,” Julian told him. It was good to finally have a place to stay besides a hotel room. “I also bought a car last week about two hours after the plane landed. Living out of suitcases until the rest of my things arrive has been a royal pain, but it’s nice to at least be able to start planning out what will go where.”

  “Too long a drive to do the U-Haul thing?” Greg/Geoff/Grant asked sympathetically. “I don’t blame you.”

  LA to Huntsville was a ridiculously long drive, but the last-minute flight was also due to the fact that Julian and his boyfriend had shared a single beat-up Toyota—a car Alex had been driving since freshman year of college. Julian was happy to see it go. Even apart from the logistics of leaving, the car’s 170,000 miles gave it enough “unique quirks” it could have been its own sitcom star. Julian’s new Honda may have been a plain old sedan identical to every other sedan out there, but it had amazing features. Like power windows that stayed in the position you put them, a functional trunk latch, and Bluetooth. It also hadn’t had Enya’s “Orinoco Flow” stuck in the CD player for the last eight years. Nothing fancy, but it was still a big step up.

  “There wouldn’t have been enough time to drive, honestly,” Julian said. “I did look it up, but it’s thirty-plus hours on the road—not counting stopping to sleep or eat—and NASA didn’t give me that kind of lead time. Even as it was, taking this job was basically pack up and go. Easier to leave most of the furniture and plan on a fresh start here.”

  Maybe-Robert nodded. “Big step. Are you settling in well?”

  “About how I’d expected.” Moving was a pain in the ass, but it could have been a lot worse. At least Huntsville gave Julian a clean break. “I didn’t think about what it would be like starting over without all the little bits and pieces of junk that are normally sitting around. Things you wouldn’t necessarily go out and buy, but you don’t realize you’re missing until you need them and they aren’t there.” He shrugged. “Condiment packets in the fridge, the handful of random screws in a drawer somewhere, the grocery bag crammed full of other grocery bags… stuff like that. It’s going to take a while to accumulate those again.”

  “Start with the basics,” Cody suggested dryly. “Coffee, Wi-Fi, and a bookmark on your phone for whoever delivers decent Chinese nearby. The condiment packets will grow from there.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right.” The solution, much as Julian was dreading it, was probably a $500 stock-up trip to Target. Most of which he’d end up throwing out half-used when he got the chance to move back, hopefully after a year or so. The price of opportunity. Which brought him back to something he actually had wanted to ask. “On a totally different topic, though: how long have all of you been here with the Systems Engineering team? And is there anything I need to know about working for NASA before I put my foot in my mouth too badly?”

  “You can say ‘y’all,’ you know,” Cody interjected with a bit of a nose crinkle. “Might as well get used to it. It’s a useful word.”

  Might as well came out more like ma’zwell how Cody said it, and the way the word y’all dripped from the sentence in that relaxed drawl made it sound almost profane. “I’ll try to work up to it,” Julian vowed. “Have to get used to hearing it first.”

  Ayaan chuckled. He had the mildest accent of the group, which Julian had noticed immediately and then felt bad for being surprised. Not every engineer who looked desi had direct ties to India, obviously. “They’re still waiting for me to give in,” the man joked. “My wife is crossing her fingers that our daughter somehow manages to avoid sounding like she’s from here, but we’ll see how that goes once she starts making more friends at school. We moved from DC almost three years ago now.”

  Julian could picture him in a more formal suit, commuting on the subway and looking perfectly at home in a bigger city. The guy had probably felt even more out of place coming from the East Coast than Julian did coming from the West, back when he first moved. “How old is your daughter?” Julian asked.

  “Also not quite three, so she’ll be starting preschool in the fall.” Ayaan made a face. “Sabita was seven months pregnant during the move and wasn’t allowed to lift anything. I don’t recommend doing that unless you particularly love chiropractors. Huntsville is an excellent place to raise children, though.”

  Maybe-Robert turned back to Julian. “Do you have a family in tow, or are you relocating solo?” he asked. “My wife Nora gave me her card to pass on to you. She works on the other side of the Arsenal, but she’s got this women’s book club that meets for lunch twice a month and I’ve been instructed to extend an invitation. They’re a friendly group. In case you brought a wife who wants a leg up on making some local friends.”

  Now or never. Julian sucked in a breath. “Actually… my boyfriend and I split right before I left. He didn’t want to uproot his own career. Leaving him behind was disappointing, I’m not going to lie, but I understand why he decided to stay.” He paused, waiting for the awkwardness that his friends in LA all hinted he’d have to deal with….

  It didn’t come. Everyone was looking at Cody instead, who jumped up out of his seat and pumped his fist in the air. “Ha!” He grinned at Julian’s bewildered expression. “I’m not the office gay anymore!” he announced in a singsong voice.

  “For God’s sake, Cody,” Ayaan groaned. “You’re making it sound like you’re our mascot. You’ll scare the poor guy.”

  “I kind of am, though.” Cody sat down and lea
ned back in his chair, a cheeky smirk on his face. “I mean, I’m mostly kidding, but it’ll be nice to have someone else besides me to be an ambassador for the LGBTQ umbrella around here. I know there are other queer employees at NASA, but sightings are still rare. Nobody in this building, as far as I know. It does get lonely sometimes.”

  Julian blinked. “Oh.” They’re all being surprisingly chill about this….

  “Most people won’t notice or care, but it’s fine.” Cody spread his hands to indicate the rest of the group at the table. “You’ve got an excellent team here. It’s been a good couple of months, getting to work with them. I promise they’ll take good care of you as I help you learn the ropes.” He looked back at Ayaan and raised an eyebrow. “Gonna miss y’all when I’m back on the other side of the hallway, I’ll tell you that.”

  “I think you’re jealous we’ve got a better view,” Ayaan countered. “You guys are stuck with a north-facing window overlooking the parking lot.”

  Cody laughed. “Also true.”

  “Right. Okay.” Probably-Robert stood up and offered Julian a handshake. “And with that, I’m taking a side trip downstairs to get a cup of the lovely neighborhood caffeine vector, and then I’m getting back to work. Nice to meet you, Julian.”

  “Same.”

  Cody tilted his head toward his—their—office door. “Ready to experience the world wonder that is Kevin Montegue’s programming?”

  Chapter 3

  CODY LET the office door fall closed behind them, the better to muffle any stray noise from them talking, but he did open the blinds next to it. There was a decent line of sight across the conference room to the bay of windows on the other side. It wasn’t as good as having an actual exterior window in the office, but it made the room feel a bit less like a closet. Ayaan had been at least a little bit right—Project Engineering was downright gloomy compared to the sunny vista visible on Systems Engineering’s side of the building.

  Julian’s pleasant expression vanished as soon as the door clicked closed. “Before we go any further,” he declared abruptly, “you need to know that I worked my ass off to get here. NASA offered me the job because I’m a damn good analyst and an even better engineer. I’m sure your intentions were positive, but all that talk out there”—he waved vaguely toward the conference table through the window—“about ‘getting me up to speed’ and ‘taking time to settle in’ made me sound like I’m gonna need someone to hold my hand while I learn about these scary things called com-poo-ters. Pardon my French, but that’s bullshit. Show me what you need to show me, point me toward the last guy’s documentation, and then get out of my way.”

  Oh, for…. “It’s not that simple,” Cody retorted. “Sure, I’d love to dump this in your lap and go back to my own department. Be my guest. But I don’t care how good you are—you’re not going to make any more sense of Kevin’s code than I have. Three months of work and half of it still doesn’t make sense.”

  Julian narrowed his eyes. “Maybe you’re a crappy programmer?”

  “Want to wait until you know me before you start throwing that accusation around?”

  “Want to wait until you know me before telling everyone I need extra babysitting?” Julian countered. “Look, I get that this room has been your office for a while now. I get that you’re feeling protective of your role on this team, and it feels like I’m coming in and taking all that over from you. Deal with it. The sooner you go back to your old job, the sooner I can start mine.”

  What the hell? California McBigShot had sounded like a dick from the moment Cody overheard that bitchy phone conversation, and the last hour and a half hadn’t changed that first impression much. Julian had covered it with fake pleasantries for Martha, his new boss, but as soon as he and Cody weren’t in public anymore…. Cody drew in a deep breath and counted to three. It was supremely tempting to say “fine” and dump a few notebooks on Julian’s desk, go back to his Special Project Engineering coworkers—who truly were swamped and on deadline and probably pissed that they’d lost Cody to Systems Engineering for so long—and leave the pompous jackass to decipher Kevin’s mess all on his own. Tempting, but unfair. Because Martha had been trying to get Kevin to retire for years, and she was constantly being overruled by the higher-ups. Everyone who worked in ES-08 knew the score. It wasn’t the ES-SE team’s fault the guy was incompetent.

  Not incompetent, Cody corrected himself. Kevin really had been good at finding unique ways to tease important numbers out of the noise and extracting what people actually needed to know instead of merely what they’d asked for. The programs themselves were elegant, in the computer science sense of “the least possible amount of code to achieve the desired result.” They were great as long as you ignored his giant leaps of logic and complete lack of documentation. It was Kevin’s home-brew programming language that was such a pain in the ass.

  “Luckily for your new coworkers,” Cody declared, “I’m a damn good analyst too. I take pride in my work. Which means I’m going to stick around until you can do this job properly, no matter how much you try to piss me off. Your team doesn’t deserve to be left hanging solely because you can’t keep your ego in check. Are you going to work with me on this or not?”

  Julian scoffed. “Treat me like a peer and we’re okay,” he retorted. “Treat me like an idiot and we’ll have an issue.”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  They stared each other down until Cody realized how stupid that was and glanced down at his phone instead. Ten thirty. Probably too early to take a proper lunch, but to hell with it. The cafeteria in the building next door was always open. He dropped his binder on Julian’s desk and pulled out the top page with the master list of Kevin’s programs—the ones he could make sense of so far, at least. Three months of work went into that binder and Julian was more than welcome to bang his head against it for as long as he wanted. It wasn’t going to help.

  “Here. Have at it,” Cody told him. He stood, flashed Julian a politely Southern “bless your heart and/or screw you” smile, and went to go eat something.

  Julian immediately started ignoring Cody in favor of reading over the notes. He didn’t look up when Cody left.

  Chapter 4

  HALLELUJAH AND praise the Lord—finally, working Wi-Fi.

  Julian banged his head (gently) on his laptop a few times for emotional emphasis, then abandoned it entirely and lay on his back on his empty floor instead. Nearly a full week now in his new apartment and he was filling in the necessary furniture piecemeal, which meant he had a brand-new desk but no desk chair yet. Maybe he could get one by Monday, if Amazon’s two-day shipping was to be believed. In the meantime, Julian had to either sit on the bed in the other room or make do with the squeaky folding chair the apartment manager had loaned him. The nice thing about rental prices in Huntsville was how much space he got for so much less than he and Alex had been paying before. The downside was that more space meant more apartment to fill. His and Alex’s one-bedroom in LA’s gay-friendly Silver Lake neighborhood was small, but it was theirs. Every junk-crammed inch of it. Although Alex took up at least half that space with the sheer force of his personality alone.

  Thinking of whom…. Julian fished his phone out of his back pocket and punched out a number he’d probably have been able to dial in the dark with his eyes closed and no contact list to work from.

  “Julian?” Alex’s sleep-rough voice asked. “One sec.” There was some clattering in the background, which Julian knew from experience was Alex knocking his glasses off the nightstand and then hunting on the floor for them. Julian put the phone on speaker so he didn’t have to go to the effort of holding it. “Hey,” Alex said a moment later, sounding much more awake. “Sorry, hadn’t intended to take a Saturday afternoon nap, but apparently my body disagreed. How’s the Alabama thing going? Is it more Deliverance or Beverly Hillbillies?”

  “Ha-ha.” Julian rolled his eyes. Just as well Alex couldn’t see him—at this point, Julian wa
sn’t entirely sure whether Alex was kidding or not. “It’s going. Slowly. I did finally get my router problem sorted out, so I officially have internet. Well, what passes for it here.”

  Alex made an interested sound. “Heard you guys had Google Fiber?”

  “In theory. In practice the rollout may take years, or so I’m told.”

  “The wonders of last-mile monopolies.” More shuffling. Julian could easily picture Alex at that moment: probably shirtless, terrible bedhead because his hair used even casual contact with a pillow as a reason to rebel, and—assuming the thing about the nap being unplanned was true—his eyeliner and mascara all smudged to hell. For someone who did other people’s makeup for a living, Alex sure managed to wreck his own on the regular. He was probably peeking through the blinds at the pedestrians down on the sidewalk and mentally grumbling about having to fix his look before he went out. Not that their apartment had an amazing view, but city was city. There was always someone to people-watch.

  “It’s good to hear your voice, though,” Julian admitted. “Even with… well. Even though you’re there and I’m here.”

  “Babe.” Alex sighed. “Even if we had been like that, you know there’s no place for someone like me in the Deep South. There’s barely a place for me here.”

  Julian tried to picture what his new team’s reaction to his ex-boyfriend would be if they ever met him in person. Cody and Becca and probably Ayaan might take him in stride, but the others wouldn’t know what to do with him. It’d be Awkwardsville the whole time. “Yeah, I know,” he replied. “And I don’t blame you. We were basically coasting through our relationship over the course of the last year or so anyway, weren’t we?” It had been nice to be living with someone, but Julian couldn’t remember there having been that much passion between them in the first place. Sex, sure, but nothing dramatic even in the beginning.