It's close to three in the morning now, and they've been talking for hours. They take turns—Rick tells a story and she asks questions, excited, non-stop, as if it had been her turn all along—but he doesn't mind, because she has a right to be curious. It doesn't feel like they've only known each other for a few weeks, but in reality, they have, and no amount of newspaper articles about the famous racer Rick Thunderbolt can compare to the real thing. When it's her turn to talk, she runs her mouth like a star racer's motor until she's out of things to say. But he could listen to her talk about anything, because in these moments he wonders how the Molly he knows during the day and the Molly sitting next to him could be the same girl. He's thinking this as he stares into space, listening to her chatter on about something—she's already told him this story, but he can bear hearing it again.
He's adjusting himself on the bed and it creaks when he notices that Molly's voice has gone silent. When he looks over at her, she's looking down at her feet and she curls in on herself, just a little, as she holds her legs to her chest. Molly, who is really so young and naive in some ways despite her being so mature in others, says something, small, but audible, to him. She says,
"Rick, have you ever kissed someone?"
It hits him like a brick—maybe it's because it's so off topic, or because it's late, but he looks at her and she's so small, sitting here in his bed, with a pillow pressed between her and the headboard and the soft light from the window framing her face. He's taken aback because he thinks that she probably never had the time to worry about this kind of thing; kissing. He sits there and realizes that she's really just a fifteen year old kid, even though he's made a pro pilot of her in less than a week and she's racing for the well-being of humanity. She's just a kid.
What the hell are they doing, anyway, millions of light years across the galaxy? What are they doing? He could be in his expensive apartment back on Earth, drinking a cup of that shitty coffee brand he always buys and watching a bad porno on late night TV, with his nerves still intact and many days of racing still to come. Instead, he's here, with this.. really, she's just a kid. Just a kid, sitting on the bed, so small, not just to him, but to the world. She looks like she's kind of regretting the question, really a question that she should be sharing with kids her age huddled in a dimly lit dorm room, not with a man twice her age on a planet that humans haven't even discovered yet. Yet, here they are, the two of them, together, broken in two distinctly different ways. They've lost so much and haven't gotten over it, with his wound so fresh and her loss still close to her heart even after all those years. He can take it, and he knows she can too, because she's a tough kid, but battle after battle has worn her down, he can see it in the bags under her eyes and the heaviness in her steps—will this kid ever get a break?
He looks at her again, still curled into herself, and smiles, leaning back on the headboard.
"Yeah," he says to her, as casually as he can muster, "I have, why?"
Instantly, she relaxes a bit, her iron grip on her legs softening. She looks up at him, relieved that he didn't tease her for it. And how could he, when she looks so scared and hopeful all at once? Upon making eye contact with him, she glances away, embarrassed.
My little mouse, he thinks fondly as she opens her mouth,
"Oh, no reason," she says, like she hadn't been the one to bring it up, "I was just curious.."