Learning to Dance

forgotten in the sand, but she was wearing February’s dress,
a simple one in a deep bluish-purple, its skirt pooled around
her, her legs bare and drawn close to her.
He wondered what she saw in him, an old man with a
limp and a fake moustache, a man who could only pretend
to be tough, a man who was half a robot. The flame of hope
that had been alive in his chest since he’d killed those
mosquitoes flickered a little.
“You asked me,” she said, quietly. “When I first came to
see you in the hospital again, if I had been happy.”
He waited.
“I’d been miserable, on the Bright Eye. I gave you the
wrong answer. I said I never had been.”
Yes. That had hurt.
She slid down from the rock and stood before him,
barefoot in the sand, her eyes downcast. “But I figured it
out – I know where I was happy now.”
Up thought of her laughter, of chasing her through the
waves, collapsing on the sand, her falling asleep in his
arms... “Here?”
“Here. At the Academy. On the Cazadora, or Europa.
That damned desert moon. Anywhere.” She took a breath.
“With you.”
She looked up then, and he thought his heart might burst,
it was beating that fast.
Her voice shook. “But I gave up on you, Up. I gave up
on you twice.”
She blinked, and looked down again, and he closed the
distance between them.
“Taz,” he said, wanting to reach for her, wanting to hope,
afraid to. “Mi querida. I gave up first. How could I expect
you to do what I couldn’t?”
“I shouldn’t have left you,” she said. “I knew it as soon
as I was on that dead goddamned ship. I hated myself for