would sit on a bed and blub about her feelings. “Honestly, I’m just having a moment. I’m okay.”
Jackson eyed her. “So it’s like that.” She rose, moved to a drawer, and came back with a metal cup and a dark vial. She sat and began to pour it out. “I only have one cup, so we share.”
Talia accepted the cup. The liquid smelled sharp and rich. “Are you supposed to have this?”
Jackson said nothing.
“Scandalous,” Talia said. She tipped up the cup and fluid slid down her throat and lit her insides on fire. “Oh my God.”
Jackson took the cup, poured a measure for herself, and threw it back.
“Well,” Talia said. “Now I know what you do with your spare time.”
“Oh, no. This is just for emergencies.” Jackson poured another cup and offered it to Talia. “What I do in my downtime is write.”
She rolled the cup between her hands. Her throat burned. “Write what?”
“Letters,” Jackson said. “To my husband. Ask me how many.”
“How many?”
“Seven hundred and twelve. One for each day we’ve been out here.”
She blinked. “Jackson, that’s a stupid amount of letters.”
“Yup,” said Jackson.
“Why don’t you send him clips?”
Jackson sat back. “I don’t know. In a clip, I feel watched. Like I need to perform. I doubt you’d understand.”
“No, I get that.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed,” said Jackson. “You’re very natural.” There was a pause, during which Talia resisted the urge to confess that her whole life was a performance, Jolene, all of it. There was no time when she didn’t feel watched. “I don’t send them.”
“Pardon?” Talia said.
“The letters. They’re just for me.”
“You’ve written seven hundred letters to your husband but not sent them?”
Jackson nodded.
She laughed before she could stop herself. “Why?”
Jackson shrugged. “I never seem able to say it right.” The corners of her mouth tugged.
Talia covered her mouth. “That’s terrible.”
“Is it?”
“This conversation never happened,” Talia said, “because if I reported that to Operations, it would set off so many red flags, you have no idea.”
“Deal,” said Jackson, and they drank, one after the other. When the cup was refilled, she said, “Why did you come out here?”
“What?”
“What brought you to this ass-end of nowhere,” Jackson said. “And don’t give me the prepared answer.”
She stared. There was a hot tingle at the back of her brain. “I don’t know.” Suddenly she felt sad. “I think I made a mistake.”
“Drink,” said Jackson.
She obeyed. “I thought it was important. I thought we’d be safe. I thought people would respect me.”
“I respect you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Well, you’re growing on me.”
Talia snickered. “I always thought you hated your husband,” she confessed. “I thought you wanted to get away from him.”
Jackson looked shocked. “No, no. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry for thinking you were an empty-headed waste of space.”
Talia gasped. “I knew it. You’re not as good at hiding your feelings as you think, you shitty simulacrum of a human being.”
“Drink,” said Jackson.
She obeyed. The liquid burned less, going down easier.
“I hate Service,” Jackson said. “I hate all of it. And I hate the people who aren’t in Service, too. I don’t know which I hate more: Service or civilians.”
“In month seven,” Talia said, “I was so lonely, I started to fantasize about Anders.”
“Well, now,” Jackson said. “That’s understandable.”
“He’s so pretty,” Talia said. “But such an asshole.”
“He’s a toddler. I can’t watch him eat.”
She leaned forward. “Me too. That’s the worst part.” She exhaled. Now that someone was listening, she couldn’t stop talking. “I feel like I’m suffocating out here. As if I died the day we left but I didn’t notice and I can’t figure out why I’m not breathing.”