Page 23 of Bound By Stars
“This again.” She rolls her eyes.
It’s not like I’ve been stalking her, begging her to partner with me for the past twenty-four hours. She completely shut me down after we got the assignment, and we didn’t get a lot of conversation in between me almost dying in the maintenance airlock and her swooning over that porter. This morning, I managed to get half the question out before she bolted out of the room at the end of class. I tried to ask Calypso for a different project, but they wouldn’t budge. Told me to “make it work.”
“If we can just…talk, I’m sure…we can figure out…a situation…that works for both…of us.”
“No thanks.” Her stride and stony expression are unchanging.
I’m having no luck trying to be friendly, so maybe I need to be straight with her. I hop onto the side of the treadmill closest to her. “If you don’t let me help, I’m screwed.”
“Not my problem.” This girl is impossible.
“Workout incomplete. Workout incomplete. Workout…”The machine chants at me.
I hop back onto the belt in a full run. “What if we—”
“You know, I think I’ll swim instead.” She hops off her treadmill and it repeats the same alert mine did until she pops open a panel on the side and fidgets inside for a second. The machine goes silent, its screen displaying the start menu.
I jump off to follow her. “Wait, hear me ou—”
“Workout incomplete. Workout incomplete. Workout…”
I reach back and hit the screen, but it flashes the same message.
The door to the locker room between the gym and pool slides shut behind her.
“Workout incomplete…”
“Will you finish your run before that thing drives us all nuts?” a girl calls down the row of treadmills.
I jump back on the insistent machine in a full run.
That was a disaster. I have to find another angle. Find a way to make it seem beneficial to her. Dammit. Now this girl has me thinking like my mother.
Curran keeps running like the entire gym didn’t just witness me getting brutally shut down. His speed increases again. He unzips his black hoodie and tosses it on the floor beside the machine.
“Maybe…you…could talk…to her…for me.” I can barely manage a word between short, ragged breaths.
He throws a quick glance back and then frowns at me without breaking his stride. “Why would I have any more luck than you?”
“She seems to be…particularly…offended…by my existence.”
“It’s your rank, not your personality. No one could hate you who really got to know you, Jupe.” He keeps his eyes forward. Compliments, given or received, have always made him uncomfortable.
After thirty minutes of burning lungs and staring out into space, the treadmill slows to a walk and when the timer hits zero, it stops. “Fitness objective achieved. Have a good evening, passenger #374.”
“How…much…longer…do you have?”
“I’m still on for another thirty.” In a full sprint, Curran’s forehead is barely glistening, while sweat rolls down the side of my face.
“See you later.” I grab my towel and mop my head on my way through the door to a hall of lockers. Pulling out my comm, I check for alerts and chug water from my canteen.
Echoey laughter bounces down the tiled hallway from the door to the pool.
Placing my stuff back in the locker, I walk down to peek out the round window in the door. A girl with dark hair in a standard-issue navy one-piece suit shoves off the edge of the pool. She comes up into a freestyle stroke. Making it to the other side, she wipes water off her face and pulls herself up on the far end. Weslie. She falls back, water splashing around her.
I shift to get a better view.
Hale is at the end of her lane with his new collection of followers behind him.
