I'd only just made my way up to my car, when I head a voice calling my name.
Running across the gravel and grass, was one of my favourite pilots, Jaya. I didn't see her enough anymore. Her family had moved to a far western holding during my final year of university. But she was determined to keep up her testing apprenticeship here, which I admired.
"Hey, Jessyn!" She called. Up close, I could see her tired-but-happy dark eyes. She must have been out on a test, too. She had faded green hair to her chin, slightly mussed by a helmet, and a wide, brilliant smile. "Have you been around? I haven't seen your name on the board in a month."
"I've done a few flights," I replied. "I think we keep missing each other."
In fact, I'd spotted her in the hangar, but she'd had her head in her locker.
"I'm glad you're still coming out this far," I said.
"For a bit longer." She shaded her eyes from the sun. "There's not a kit club out by my parents. It was a major letdown."
"That's odd," I said. "It's a much bigger spaceport."
"It's a newer settlement. I think it takes some time for things like that to get going."
"Hmm, that's true." In fact, there hadn't been one at Southport when I'd first started hanging around and pestering the older pilots. "We're lucky to have one way down here."
"Are you ever going to show up to a meeting again?" Jaya asked me. "I thought for sure you'd have some new things to talk about, since last fall. I've learned a lot, especially from how you did the stern fabrication."
"Ah, yeah," I replied, scratching the back of my head nervously. Truth was, I hadn't done much until recently. Thoughts of the distractions of the past year flitted across my mind, but I pushed them away. But then I bit my lower lip. I very much couldn't mention what I most wanted to bring up. Not yet, anyway.
To change the subject, I asked, "What have you been getting into this spring?"
Jaya told me about her ship, the Vendetta. True to its name, it was an imposing black craft, with deep red highlights. She'd painted it by hand, and if rumours were true, it had taken her an entire summer. She'd recently been granted permission by one of the owners of a personal shuttle she'd tested, to adopt an upgrade he had put into the engine of his ship.
"It flies so much faster now, I'm thinking of reshaping the bow," she went on, with a sparkling grin. "After inspection, though. Gotta pay for that first."
"When is that coming up?"
"My second license test is in a month," Jaya replied. "I've booked them for the same day. I want to get it all finished, get a bunch of hours in, before I go to university this Aphelion."
My emotions split in two and went down parallel tracks. One part of me, the pilot part, wanted to talk shop til we both got sunburned out here. Another part felt a spike of wincing pain at her progress. I told myself that time meant nothing. And it wasn't envy, exactly. I was just tired of struggling not to compare myself to others.
"I really would be happy to see you at the next meeting." She interrupted my thoughts. "You basically re-started the whole thing. Vendetta wouldn't exist without the club. I almost gave up, how many times?"
I made a smile appear on my face. "I'll try," I said. "As soon as I can show you something. But message me when you get your test results, either way."
"If we pass!"
"You will," I told her with certainty.
Soon after, we hugged, and I watched her trot happily towards her car, her sea-green hair blowing behind her. Then I turned and opened my own car with the print-sensor. Tossing the flight jacket into the passenger seat, I was much more careful with my shoulder harness, folding it and putting it down on the silky black pillow my jacket made. I had left the remainder of my flight clothes in the port's autowasher. But the harness needed some lubrication, and I wanted to check it over anyway. Better safe than in pieces.
The chest straps of the aircar were much simpler than the ship I'd just bid farewell to. But I didn't power it on right away. Jaya's excited confidence burrowed under my brain like a thorn. I didn't grudge her anything -- that would be foolish -- but it felt like one more thing to add to the teetering stack of incompletions that was looming over my life.
It seemed everywhere I turned was a sudden pressure. And they were things that shouldn't feel that way! Friends wanted to see progress with a hobby I'd shared with them for years. I had a lead on a wonderful place to live, the level most people got during their second or third work contract. Hell, tomorrow I was scheduled to meet with a man who might offer me a better job than I had any reason to hope for.
It felt like chaos. Or, no. It felt too simple, and demanded a response from the growing chaos inside me. Why couldn't I answer?
It was becoming obvious that there was a downside of being without the pressure of school. I could no longer delay the big stuff life required me to decide. Well, I could. There was much less space to maneuver now, though. And if things worked out for me the way I knew everyone wanted them to, I wouldn't have time to devote to pastimes that weren't going anywhere. Literally.
My twinge of insecurity deepened into real anger -- with a sickening thread of fear woven through. For the first time, I thought about all the things I could let go of. I couldn't help but see the fresh start I was possibly getting. Let that old life go, and all the things that belonged to the past. Give the projects away to someone who could look upon them with a joyous smile.
Someone who could look at them at all.
I sat in my sweltering car, aghast. My hands toyed with the mundane, worn throttle. But I couldn't stop the pictures in my mind -- an apartment in the city, an engineering job in Damor, no reminders of old disappointments and frustrations. No more days like this.
I couldn't dismiss it, and it infuriated me. I drove badly the entire way back home.