They agreed on two weeks later. Monty met her at the restaurant.
"I was just about to order." She looked stunning in a flowing, silver dress.
"Why don't we wait until after? You may not want much on your stomach for this."
"Where are we going?"
"Space."
She squealed and hugged his neck.
"It's an experimental design John and I are working on," Monty explained as he led her out to the landing lot. "We're modifying a Yager GR-3743 for marine use too. The submarine operation isn't safe yet, but it runs fine as an aerospace craft."
"That?" She pointed at a craft on the edge of the lot. It looked like the no-contest winner of the You'd Be a Fool to Trust Your Life to It Award.
"Ah, we're still working on it." It came out a wee bit testy for a fourth date. He tried again. "But if you'd rather not…"
"I did nae say that." She ran her hand over the underbelly of the starboard engine with the gentle sensitivity of a lover's touch. "Just makin' sure." She quirked her head up at him. "So, can I drive?"
That's my girl! Monty's face about split with an ear-to-ear grin as he opened the passenger hatch. "She's a little finicky; mebee next time."
They flew with her face pressed to the window. She took in absolutely everything. Her islands, the ocean, the mountains, the lights, the nuclear void on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean where there would be no human habitation for the next 600 years still. Like most Terrans, she couldn't look at it with out a lump forming in her throat at the magnitude of devastation that power and stupidity had wrought.
"Are you ready?" he asked as they left the coast of Africa to pass over the Pacific for the second time.
"Ready for what?"
"This." He cut the gravity, and she went floating with a cry of glee.
He put the controls on automatic with a large perimeter alert and floated up to join her. Brushes and tubes floated everywhere. Apparently her rucksack had been undone.
"You should have warned me," she laughed as she propelled herself around collecting stray items in the air.
"Now what would be the fun of that?" he asked, catching a tube of cinnabar red where it spun above the console.
She took the tube from him and stuffed it back into the sack with the rest of the errant items.
"What's this?" Monty asked as he tucked a handful of items back in. At the bottom of the sack was appeared to be a big, soft, wad of fur.
"Dropcloth," she said as she stuffed paint tubes and brushes back in.
"Fur?" he asked.
"Are you an art critic now too?" she bounced around the small cabin collecting the stragglers and looking decidedly more at ease. It was a side of her he liked and wanted to see a lot more of. "How's your stomach?" he asked as he snagged one last brush drifting near the controls.
She tossed her head back and collected her hair into a makeshift knot. "Okay, if I don't think about it--I think."
"That's the spirit." Monty tucked a few straggling hairs behind her ears and twisted the paintbrush into some hair and slid it behind an ear too.
He dress billowed about her chest and arms as she tried vainly to push it down into some semblance of propriety. There was no underwear in sight.
He stroked her thigh. "Lassie, have ye ever heard of the 100 kilometer high club?"
"Huh?" She tried again to push her dress back down.
He pushed her dress back up and kissed her--no where near the mouth.
"Oh, I think I'm going to like space flight," she said. She wrapped her legs around him and together they went spinning.
When they finally landed back on his apartment rooftop, the restaurant had already closed.
She sighed in resignation. "It's hard to keep track of time when you're going back and forth across the terminator and such, I suppose."
"Not really. That's what chronometers are for."
She slapped his arm. "You knew? I'm starving! Why didn't you tell me?"
"You don't think I wanted it to end, now, do you? And I have food at my place."
"That's very sneaky, Mr. Montgomery Scott."
"I have eggs and sausage," he offered.
"Sold," she said. "But you're cooking."
"Anything for my lady."
Forgetting everything else, they raced each other to the fridge for some soda. Monty said that something about how zero-g always dries out the mouth. She said she thought it was more likely the pubic hairs. He said he was willing to experiment as many times as it took to be sure.
By the time she had finished her second glass of juice, the eggs and toast were ready and the sausage was very close. She thought of going back to the roof for her rucksack, but cold eggs are good for no one and Monty assured her she wouldn't be needing her clothes until morning.
The scraps of dinner were left to congeal on the table, the extra time to take them to the washer seeming too great a sacrifice at that moment.
Fed and full they loved each other again. Lying beside him, she painted invisible pictures on his skin with the paintbrush from behind her ear. She told him it was a scene of pirate and his fair maiden on the high seas. He closed his eyes and followed her brush strokes with just the sensation of his skin until he could see it too.
In a short while, her eyes closed too. Her head flopped over against his chest and the paintbrush fell from her hand and rolled off and onto the floor.
In the middle of the night there was a knock. "Pssst! Monty!"
"Go away."
"Monty, get up! I think I figured out a way to damp the Kyhlmer wave variance."
Monty blinked fully awake. That would solve all of their water surface problems. Lesa stirred beside him. He stroked her hair. "Go back to sleep."
"We'll test it tomorrow," Monty whispered to the door.
"I have classes all day. Come on, I'm dying to know if this works."
Monty rubbed his eyes and stomped to his jumper pocket for the key. He passed it out through a crack in the door. "Let me know how it goes, but remember, no more than a 0.003 percent variance. I'll be wanting ta see the datacorder."
John's eyes widened. "You're kidding! You'd part the dynamic duo for a girl!"
Monty clapped his shoulder. "Nae! Not any girl, me lad. And I'll tell ya, a man can be just as dynamic without his pal as with him. Mebee more." Monty inclined his head towards the bed, shut the door, and practically dove back under the covers.
He almost didn't answer the comm when it beeped. There was no one else he wanted to talk to. There was no news that could make his life any better than it was now. He would have been happy to live in this one moment forever, but the comm kept right on insisting.
He pulled on his pajama top and ran fingers through his hair in a token gesture. "Scott here."
The report hit him with a sort of dreamlike incredulity. The young never believe that things like this can really happen to people like them, He sat there staring at the blank screen until she came up behind him and kissed his neck.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"There's been an accident. John and the spacecraft--"
"What?" She raced into the other room and threw open the bedroom door. "John!"
"They say it just exploded. No one on the ground was hurt but--"
"No! John!" She punched up the landing pad on the outside monitor. The place where they had parked was empty.
"No! Where did it happen? I have to go." She scrambled into clothes and shoes.
"Lesa, there's nothing to see." Monty grabbed her shoulders and tried to hold her eyes. "It exploded in the air. He's gone. The craft vaporized."
"I have to be sure. Where?" she pleaded.
"I'll take you, if you must."
"No! You don't understand. Just tell me where!" Her voice was shrill and desperate. He could feel the racing of her pulse beneath his hands.
He let her go. "Dornoch--just over the water, they say. Witnesses said he fought it back out to sea so that--" He couldn't finish. "I'm sure the authorities can direct you."
She dashed out the door. It was the first time ever that she had left without kissing him goodbye.
Monty went back in their bedroom. He slipped on something: the paintbrush. He picked it up and out of habit looked around to stick it back in her rucksack, but of course, he couldn't.
The rucksack and all its mysterious contents had gone down in the explosion with the spacecraft.