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“Well, you were wrong. And I have looked for you, a few times. But after you didn’t answer my messages during the summer, and then during the school year you never seemed to be where I could find you. I got the feeling you just didn’t want to be bothered. At least, not by me.”
Will found that he was smiling for the first time since they’d taken their seats on the bench. “So I’m not the only one who doesn’t always understand other people.”
“People are hard to understand if they don’t communicate,” she said. “But yes, apparently I misjudged you as well. Will you forgive me?”
“I think there’s going to have to be some mutual forgiving,” Will suggested.
“Maybe we should just start over from the begi
“William T. Riker,” he said with a smile. “Valdez, Alaska, Earth.”
“Can we be friends, Cadet Riker?”
“I think I’d like that, Cadet Mendoza.” He felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders that had been there since the end of school last year. The awfulness of the summer had been compounded, he knew, by his confusion over Felicia’s feelings—or, as he understood now, his misjudgment of Felicia’s feelings. He still didn’t quite know what had happened, but he thought that it might be better just to let the details slip away, rather than dredging them up and having to undergo the discomfort of facing them specifically. For now, the softness of her hand in his, her warm smile and the light that danced in her brown eyes and the way a strand of her dark hair rested against her olive cheek, where it had escaped her ponytail, all conspired to make him believe that he had come out of a long tu
When Felicia had dismissed him—and he’d been a little hurt by then, because, after all, who wouldn’t want to be the otherperson in that triangle, the one that Felicia sent somebody away in favor of?—De
Felicia was a beauty, there was no doubt of that. But it was to Will, not Felicia, that his thoughts kept wandering. William Riker had something, some quality, that De
It wasn’t just that Felicia obviously preferred Will to him, though they’d both known her for about the same length of time. Certainly Will was a handsome guy, and De
De
He had just turned back to the computer screen, intent now on finding someone he could study up on, of turning at least this one assignment into a success instead of adding it to the pile of work not-quite-done that threatened to swamp him and drown his career before it started, when there was a knock on his door. “Come in,” he called.
Estresor Fil opened his door and walked in. He waved her toward his couch, and she sat down, her feet no longer touching the floor when she eased her bottom all the way back into it. “Hello, De
“Hi, Estresor Fil. What are you up to?”
She seemed surprised by the question. “Visiting,” she pointed out.
“Of course,” he said. “I meant ... never mind.” He was, in fact, a little surprised by her appearance. They were friends, certainly, but rarely saw one another outside their group.
“Am I disturbing your work?”
He sighed. “If I had been actually working, you might be. But so far, not.”
“You would let me know if I were, right?” she asked.
“Yes, Estresor Fil. Don’t worry about that. Is there some particular reason for your visit, or is it just a social call?”
She considered the question for a moment, causing De
“Social call,” she finally said. “Or possibly not ... I do, in fact, find myself in need of some assistance. De
De
“It’s just all so confusing to me. I try to figure these things out by myself when I can. And there’s an episode of Squirrely Squidthat is really quite helpful, I think.” De
“Like what?” De
Estresor Fil crossed her ankles and broke eye contact, another indicator that she was oddly uncomfortable. “How do you tell? If someone likes you, I mean?”
De
“That’s just so silly,” Estresor Fil said. “It’s so much easier for Zimonians. If we’re interested in someone, that way, we simply display ourselves. If they are interested in us, they will come over and say so. If not, they pretend they didn’t see the display and there’s no more discussion of it. But there is no ambiguity, no wondering or trying to guess.”
“By ‘display,’ you mean ... ?”
“Of reproductive organs,” she said, matter-of-factly.
“Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of. I don’t think that would go over well here,” De
“Oh, I know that,” Estresor Fil reassured him. “I wasn’t suggesting it, just pointing out that our way is vastly preferable to yours. When you leave it all up to guesswork, mind reading, and so on, I think you are just creating barriers to happiness. Particularly since there are so few genuine mind readers among you.”