January 14th, 2093

I love when Maya gets excited. The way she let out a tiny squeal and a little applause when one of our experiments actually goes right. How her cheeks color up and her eyes become slits of glinting hazel behind a contagious grin. The way her words become a rapid of white water exploding through a collapsed dam. It’s been five years and I still turn into a puddle of goo whenever our team makes a scientific breakthrough causing her to balloon into a fit of joy.

“Twenty minutes remaining,” the A.I. system announces.

If you asked me what I love the most about Maya, I would tell you everything under the sun. But if you put a gun to my head, then I would say her kindness. That’s what captured my heart and grappled it into submission. You feel welcomed in her presence like a cup of hot chocolate on a winter’s night. When she talks to you, she has this uncanny ability to make you feel like you’re the most interesting person in the world. No matter the cost, she wants you to know that she cares.

“How long?” Maya asks me, with tears threatening to pour from the ducts in her eyes.

Truth is, I was born to love her. When God created me, he had her in mind. We are a perfect combination like peanut butter and jelly or cookies and cream. I wouldn’t be surprised if we were soul mates in a past life or in the next life to come.

“Since January 14^th, 2093,” I admit. That was the day I fell in love with her.

She presses her eyes together absorbing the reality of my answer.

It was our first day at NASA and the first day she walked into my life. Ever since then we were inseparable. The perfect duo–me, the mechanical engineering whiz, and her, an astrophysics savant. We’ve spent countless days together arguing scientific theories and mathematical equations until we were sick of each other, and exhaustive nights pouring over research notes until our eyes were rubbed raw and sandpaper dry. During the quiet times though, we would share embarrassing stories of our youth or confess deeply held beliefs about life and the heavens. Those were the moments I valued most.

“Fifteen minutes remaining,” the sterile voice of the computer drones. I wish it would stop interrupting. I guess it will soon enough.

“Why did you wait so long to tell me how you feel?” she complains with tears cutting rivers down her cheeks.

A simple question with a complex answer.

“I didn’t know how you felt about me,” I answer.

I wanted to tell her a million times. Each time I tried, it was like climbing a snow-capped mountain. What if she doesn’t feel the same way? What if it doesn’t work out between us? These thoughts danced around in my mind like a lullaby. I didn’t want to risk losing her not only as a research partner, but as a friend. And even if it didn’t work out and she had wanted to request a transfer, the space station was only but so large. Between the research labs, mess hall, fitness barracks, and the community room, there was nowhere for us to hide.

“You’re an idiot, you know that?” she pouts, doing that little thing where she scrunches her nose when she’s annoyed. “With everything going on around us, you choose now to drop this on me.”

“Not the best timing huh?” I chuckle.

“Ten minutes remaining,” the A.I. interrupts again with punctual precision. It’s been counting down like that for the past three days ever since the ship’s power core failed, plunging us into the red abyss of the emergency lights. First it would chime in at the top of every hour, but since the twenty-four-hour mark, it preferred more aggressive intervals.

She looks pensively out the window. The blue glow of Neptune washes over her brown skin like summer rain caressing a cabin window. It’s a view worth the year and a half long flight in frozen cryosleep. A priceless work of art blemished only by the thousands of fragments of our space station drifting lazily in the void.

“You know how I feel about you,” Maya says. “After all this time, how could you not?”

“I can’t read minds,” I protest. “I didn’t know if you could ever see me the way that I see you. I guess I never really thought we could be more.”

She gives me a look. God she’s beautiful. I would give anything to have more time with her. To study every nook and cranny of the stern gaze she throws my way. “Sometimes you are the most frustrating person I’ve ever met,” she says in a huff. “You want to know what I see in you? I see my best friend. I see someone who I can lean on and know that I won’t fall. I see everything that is right with our world back on earth.”

Her words soothe me like honey flavored tea.

“But I also see someone who doesn’t believe in himself or knows how great of a person he is. You’re always cutting yourself down–second guessing yourself.”

Honey flavored tea that scolds your tongue and burns your throat.

“You tried to show us that your calculations were correct,” she says. “That we needed to suspend our experiments and leave orbit. But when you got the slightest push back from the captain, who was consumed with finishing our research, you buckled. You didn’t stick up for yourself.”

“That’s really unfair,” I say, a little taken back. It is true that I tried to warn the crew of the meteor shower. Maybe I shouldn’t have doubted myself after the backlash I got, but to blame me for everything that happened is taking it too far.

She a hand on my cheek and repeats the words she told me after we sealed off the demolished portion of the space station. “It’s my fault, not yours.” Guilt seared deep into her eyes.

She wanted to do something nice for my birthday. She made the rest of the crew hide in the mess hall with a cake she whipped up while I ran some last-minute diagnostics in the research lab.

“How many times are you going to check those variables?” she asked me, casually leaning against my workstation.

“I just want to make sure they’re correct before we start the experiment tomorrow,” I responded. “I don’t want any hiccups.”

She rolled her eyes and closed my computer shut. “They’re fine. They’re always fine.”

Of course, I was annoyed. It was our last shot before we had to return home, and yet I let her pull me from my desk. I found it impossible to say no to her.

“Captain wants us in the mess hall. Another lecture on the importance of sanitation I suppose,” she lied, pushing me out the research lab.

The warning sirens were far too late. The meteor shower hit the space station, ripping into the ship’s mess hall like bullets through drywall. No one in our crew survived. If it wasn’t for her sharp reflexes, we wouldn’t have been able to put our side of the station into emergency protocol, closing off the damaged carcass of the ship.

“Five minutes remaining.” The alarms begin to wail. Red lights pulse throughout the bridge, trying to warn us about the impeding threat, but at this point there was nothing we can do to stop it.

Gravity starts to slip away as the emergency power dwindles down to nothing. Unsecured objects slowly float around us as if we were caught up in an elderly tornado. We anchor to one another, drifting in each other’s arms. It is a sweet dream trapped within a nightmare. She scans the chaos of the bridge, unable to tame the terror moving over her face of what is to come.

I see someone who I can lean on and know that I won’t fall. Maya’s words echo in my head, centering my focus and giving me a purpose. “You remember the day my design for the Neptune probe was accepted?”

She questions me with a puzzled look.

“Out of thousands of applicants, they chose me. That was the happiest day of my life,” I say, bathing in the warm glow of the memory. “I carry that feeling with me, letting it guide me through countless failed experiments and tough research briefings. The first thought that shot through my mind after hearing the news was that I wanted to tell you.”

Her face softens.

“You were the first person I thought of at the highest moment in my life. I couldn’t wait to share the news with you. Do you remember that?”

She nods, an enchanting smile floods her features. “I remember how happy I was for you. It felt as though it was my design, seeing you jump around my apartment.”

“The happiness I felt by winning that bid didn’t compare to the joy I feel every time I’m with you. I’ve always loved you and I always knew that you were the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.”

“Warning, one-minute remaining until the oxygen levels are depleted,” the space station informs us. “Engage the backup supply or evacuate the ship immediately.”

The alarms and lights reach a fever pitch, but all of it fades away once she tells me the words I’ve been yearning to hear for the past five years.

“I love you too.”

I can only read her lips over the cacophony of noise, but it does nothing to dilute the happiness spreading through me.

“Since when?” I ask.

“January 14^th, 2093” she replies.

We kiss. We embrace under the burden of five long year–our two souls interlacing. My lungs start to burn, petitioning for a resource I cannot provide them. We don’t stop kissing. As the final pockets of oxygen dissipates, our kiss goes on, lasting for eternity.