Full Share (Golden Age of the Solar Clipper, #3)

by Nathan Lowell

I looked over my shoulder and out the aft port where the planet was almost visibly falling astern. I turned back to the woman I loved and who seemed to love me in return. I smiled. I knew it couldn’t last. Demands of school and, later, career would drag us apart. We’d grow along our separate paths and maybe come to need things we couldn’t give each other. But still, I remembered the way P’s hand had rested on Q’s thigh. The loving familiarity of long association in the touch and the thought gave me hope for some day, perhaps in a ship like this. I dreamed that it might be with this wonderful woman, but I also knew that not all dreams come true. Most evaporate in the light of waking, disappearing---never to be seen again. Of course, when you are really fortunate, others come to take their places.