Abi already knew he hadn’t gone to college but was sure he’d have either hated it or loved it with no in-between. There was the crux of American college experiences in that you had to select and get into the exact right one for you, with a good course and a great teacher or you’d basically hate it. By hard fucking work, a lot of loans and research, she’d found the right place for her and had loved her journalism and literature classes.
“That’s the thing, isn’t it? There’s always people like that wherever you go and whatever you do. Your opinions and theirs never waiver so it’s like bashing two wrecking balls into one another. It might be even harder as a woman, but it still happens no matter who you are.” She sipped at her coffee, remembering one too many encounters where she’d had to fight just to be taken with a grain of seriousness. It just got worse the more education they had; the guys in the bar knew better than to force her to explain herself.
Maybe being stuck in space with strangers wasn’t a completely awful thing; it gave her freedom from responsibility and debt, a chance to travel the universe, to meet people from all worlds and timelines. It should feel like a haven for lost souls, shouldn’t it? “I have never been near such a small amount of people in such close quarters. I’m used to being left alone, to working my ass off and struggling. What do you do with nearly limitless time and freedom? There’s a reason why there’s so many kids. Nothing else to do.”
A small smirk appeared on her face as she brought another spoonful of cake to her lips. From his books, she knew he hid under that cocky, hyper-masculine bravado but beyond it, felt deeply about other people’s pain and suffering. “You should be pleased, there needs to be fewer assholes in the world as it is, and I’m glad you weren’t one of them.”
She snorted in laughter again, having to cover her mouth to keep from making a fool of herself. “Okay either that was the greatest ending to a sentence in the history of the world, or you’re aware that there’s a movie series called Back to the Future and you’re making fun of me on the sly. I don’t know which one is worse, Hemingway.” The idea of Ernest Hemingway reading Harry Potter with a glass of brandy and watching Back to the Future was hysterical to her. Displacement from time, unrelated things converging. “And you better finish reading Harry Potter because it gets super dark and disturbing and apparently is meant to be a kid’s book. Then we can talk about how Snape is pure trash.”
Man, he was easy to wind up. Were there no other women on this station willing to flirt with him or was he simply that easy? Hell, who was she kidding, he was definitely easy. Abi didn’t think she was that great at it, or had much of an attractive aura about her, but he seemed to be focusing rather intently on her with those dark eyes. Yeesh. “I’m not completely sane either, let’s get that straight off the bat,” she replied, eating more cake and not caring if she looked sexy this time. “But any woman who marries a man she barely knows is either already pregnant and terrified or thinks she is; there’s no other logical explanation in my eyes. You don’t need to be married to prove your commitment and I think it’s even more of a commitment to trust that someone, who could just get up and walk away, wouldn’t.”
Just listening to his reasoning was turning into a headache. It was mind-fuckingly strange, wasn’t it? He was Hemingway but not, going in and out of his own lifetime at random points with people probably jokingly asking him why he suddenly looked so old. It was tiring just trying to figure out how he had bobbed and weaved through decades of his own life.
“You don’t owe me any explanation, Ernest, it’s not like you asked for any of this,” she replied, scraping frosting from her plate. “It’s gotta be hard to keep track of when you’re in a linear path, let alone bouncing from decade to decade and landing in this place in between. All you can do is go with the flow and do what your heart tells you to.” She reached over and squeezed his arm reassuringly. “None of that is your fault, you know. You just have to do what you think is best in a fucked-up situation, right? Even if, on the surface, it looks like the wrong thing.”