At Any Turn

We’d be without each other for long stretches of time. And long-distance relationships—I knew damn well they didn’t last. My cousin Britt had been engaged to her high school boyfriend—once supposedly the love of her life and one of my closest friends in high school. Once she went off to college in Chicago, the relationship hadn’t held out more than a year. By then she’d met Rik, who would become her husband, and my friend Todd had been devastated.

Long-distance relationships did not work. And ours couldn’t survive three thousand miles and four years—probably more.

Fuck. She wasn’t even gone yet. Hadn’t even made the decision to go and it felt like someone had shot me in the chest with a twelve-gauge.

She moved back into my reach again and pulled me into her arms. I closed my eyes, allowed myself a grimace when she couldn’t see me and bent my head to kiss her hair. There was no fucking way I was going to be able to do without her. I’d just have to convince her that UCI was a wonderful alternative to her longtime dream.

Somehow.

***

The day after Emilia got her acceptance letter, we sat at the card table in the game room at my house. Emilia was across from me, impatiently tapping the cards on her hand as if to remind us that we had a game to play here. But Heath had just laid down the gauntlet by bringing up the age-old question: In a fight, which would win, the ships from Star Trek or from Star Wars?

“Well, which version of the Enterprise are we talking about? Because that makes a big difference.” I turned to Heath as I grabbed another pita chip from the nearly empty bowl and popped it into my mouth, sending a wink at Emilia across the table in response to her long-suffering sigh.

“Does it matter? Any version of the Enterprise against a star destroyer would be vapor,” Heath replied, snatching up the last of the chips from the bowl before I could get the rest.

I cleared my throat of crumbs and sipped some ice water, thinking. “Okay, the Enterprise from the reboot movies then. But any version beats a star destroyer in maneuverability alone.”

Emilia huffed and slapped a hand on her forehead. “This is such a man discussion. You guys will be at this for hours. Come on! I have some ass to kick, people,” she said, holding up her handful of cards.

Heath reflected for a moment while chewing his chips, then nodded. “Sure, a star destroyer can’t maneuver its way out of a paper bag, but it doesn’t need to. As demonstrated in Empire during the asteroid field scene, the sheer amount of firepower far exceeds that of the Enterprise.”

Emilia’s head clunked the table. “You guys are killing me. Play a card already!”

I fought a chuckle. “But if you’re comparing sheer firepower—”

“The Battlestar Galactica jumps in and blows them both away. The end.” Emilia waved her arms in a cutting motion to emphasize her point.

“Are we being too geeky for you, Mia? You poor baby.”

She rolled her eyes. “Gawd, you might as well be discussing who could take who in a fight, Captain Kirk or Darth Vader!”

“Darth Vader,” Heath and I both said in unison and shared a grin.

“He’s got elite force power, yo,” Heath added. “He can choke a dude on the other side of the galaxy through a hologram.”

I held up a finger. “Yeah, that’s not an argument,” I said, then threw a playful glance at Emilia. “Now, Darth Vader versus Gandalf, on the other hand…”

Heath’s eyes lit up. “Oooh, epic!”

Emilia sighed. “Gandalf wins. He’s the wizard who killed a Balrog by himself. End of discussion. Now…is this game over? I don’t even remember whose turn it is.”

“Yours,” I said. “Heath laid down a land and summoned a goblin lord.” I pointed to the cards lying face up in front of him.

“This game sucks with three players, anyway,” she sighed, plunking down an island card.

“That’s ’cause you’re losing,” Heath said.

“Either that or she’s calling you a third wheel. And not too subtly, either,” I said giving her a wink.

“That’s okay. I’m about ready to send over my horde of goblins to kick her ass anyway.” Heath waggled his eyebrows at Emilia. “All your base are belong to me,” he said, quoting the famously ill-translated script from a foreign video game. Emilia replied by making a face at him.

She only lasted one more round, then Heath and I ended up battling it out for half an hour after that. Emilia had long since wandered off. I was vaguely aware that she had been acting off all day. Even inviting Heath over to “celebrate” her acceptance to med school and to try easing the tension between us hadn’t worked.