I grabbed my rations and sat down at a nearby table. In the distance, I could see Chloe and Eli. They were sitting side-by-side, and it looked like they were both looking over the same spiral notebook, laughing as the talked.

"Okay, explain it to me again. Now that I've had my chocolate fix, maybe I could think more clearly."

"All right. Basically, all a derivative is is the tangent line at any given point on a function. There are many ways to find the derivative depending on …." As he continued talking, Eli scooted closer to Chloe as she continued rattling on about how much trouble she had with algebra in college.

"And now, I am understanding calculus, and it's all thanks to you." She said as she gave his hand a gentle squeeze.

Eli smiled as he squeezed her hand back. "I'd do anything for you. You know that, right?"

"Even let me have your pudding?" Chloe asked as she grabbed it and ran a few feet away.

Eli jumped up and chased after her. "Hey, give that back!" When he finally caught her, they both started laughing.

I got up to get a napkin when Eli bumped into me. "Oh, sorry, Alice. I didn't see you there."

"Of course, you didn't." I snarked. Thankfully, neither one heard me.

Eli wrapped his arm around Chloe. "We'll always be together, no matter what, right?" He asked.

"Of course, right." Chloe said as she wrapped her arm around his waist.

Just than, Lt. Scott walked in.

Chloe turned to Eli. "I'll catch you later, okay?" She said as she got out of Eli's embrace and went off with Scott.

"So, typical." Eli muttered so that no one else could hear it but me.

Later on, I was helping Eli in the Kino room.

"Can you hand me that screw driver over there, please?"

"I just don't get it." Eli griped as he was trying to fix one of the Kino cameras. "Why doesn't she see it?"

I sighed. "Well, maybe it's not that big of a loss, after all. I mean, there are other ladies on this ship."

"Yeah, but none like her." Eli swooned.

I rolled my eyes. "So, you're just going to pine away for her until one day, she just magically realizes that you're the one?"

"You make that sound like it's a bad thing. What wrong? You don't think I'm good enough for her?"

"Eli, I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying that you deserve more out of life, but…."

"But what?"

"Never mind."

"No, tell me." Eli had a very serious look on his face. "We're friends." He reassured me. "You can tell me anything."

"Well,"

Suddenly, Dr. Rush walked in.

"Eli, I need you in my lab right now."

"Coming." He said as he followed the Doctor out. He turned to me. "We'll talk later."

I heave a sigh of relief.