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Description
Ariel walked through the arched doors of the Interstellar Academy for the first time, squinting to keep from staring in wide-eyed wonder. She looked down at her knee- high boots, concentrating on walking in the inch heels through the spacious cobblestone foyer. Twin staircases bowed away from each other, framing floor-to-ceiling stained glass windows depicting space ships on the far wall. Natural light streamed in through circular windows in the high ceilings, and the room was designed so it always sounded busy. Today, though, it actually was. Students in white and blue uniforms bustled about, the new students gathered in clumps to figure out where their classes were located. Ariel, standing as straight as she could to look confident, rushed to the table with a sign which read “Information and Student Help.”
“Excuse me,” she chirped, “I need my schedule, and hopefully a map?”
“ID,” the girl behind the counter said in monotone. She appeared human, but her blue hair was twisted into a high spiral on her head, and she had three nose piercings. Ariel shuffled all her books to her left arm to fish the laminated card from her skirt pocket. The girl looked from the redhead to the ID photo, frowned, then scanned a few lists.
“You’re in the democratic class?”
“Yes ma’am,” she said, just as Jim taught her when speaking to authority. “Am I in the wrong place, uh, ma’am?”
“My name tag says Yu’mime,” Yu’mime corrected her. “And you’re in the right place. I’m just surprised you’re alone.”
“Oh, I’m not alone,” she corrected her. “My boyfriend had to come early to talk to some professors about academic probation. But he told me everything I need to know, so I’ll be fine.”
Yu’mime arched a blue eyebrow. “I’m sure you will be.” She handed Ariel two papers. “Here’s your schedule and a map of campus. Do you want a guide to help you to your first class?” The student sitting next to her with an elephant snout whispered to her they didn’t do that, but she waved him off.
Ariel shook her head nervously. “No thank you, Yu’mime. Jim and I toured this building a few times in the last week so I wouldn’t get lost.”
Still, as she stared up the high staircase, she wished her spacer was with her, holding her hand like all the times before.
She reached her first class without getting lost. When she entered the auditorium, she realized what the blue-haired girl meant by “alone.” There were more bodyguards in the room than students. She knew the type from life in the castle in Atlantica. These bodyguards wore black clothing and protective headgear, while their wards wore the ISA standard of white jacket with gold accents, blue bottoms, and knee-high boots. One of the bodyguards, a scaly creature with suction cups for hands, blocked her path.
“Identification,” he said. She wondered if that was the proper form of greeting here. She showed him her card and he stood aside with a bow. She took a seat in a middle row in the center section.
“Are you from the Outer Regions?” a boy next to her asked. He had blond, spiky hair and wore a bejeweled necklace with a family crest over his uniform.
“No, I’m from Earth,” she replied, confused.
“So past the Outer Regions, then. Not even in the alliance,” he noted. He seemed to be judging her and intrigued by her at the same time. “I’ve heard the border planets are so short on resources they can barely afford to have governments. That must be why you don’t have a bodyguard, right?”
“My planet has resources,” Ariel said, her fists clenching under her desk. “Probably even resources you’re never even heard of, since you obviously haven’t traveled outside the Core systems. I don’t have a guard because I can take care of myself.”
The boy sniffed. “Sure you can.”
“Do you want me to show you?”
His bodyguard stiffened, but he held up a hand. When he turned back to Ariel, he wore a smile that didn’t quite reach his bright orange eyes. “I think we got off on the wrong foot. I am Duke Treve of Troveno.”
She shook his hand, squeezing hard enough to make him uncomfortable. “Princess Ariel of the Earthen Seas.” She suppressed a smile at Treve’s surprise that she outranked him and turned her attention to the professor, who was writing her name on the black board with two of her tentacles.
“Are we on for lunch today, Jim?” Han asked as he closed the tool kit. They had just finished Advanced Engineering. Jim had completed the distress beacon assignment in the first half of class and spent the rest of class time on an independent project. “We can discuss that secret project you won’t tell me about.”
“It’s not worth talking about until I know it works,” Jim said, untying his apron as fast as he could and throwing his jacket over his shoulder. “Besides, I’ve got plans.”
Jim and Han’s only female friend, Ollie, lifted goggles off of her large dark eyes and onto her forehead. “In the three years we’ve been going here, you’ve never had other plans,” she accused. “What’s up?”
Han gasped. “It can’t be the mysterious girlfriend I’ve heard so much about!”
“Girlfriend?” Ollie said the word like it left a bad taste on her tongue. “Why haven’t I heard about this? I thought you were out of the dating game, Jimmy.”
“It’s kind of a new development,” Jim said, giving the girl a look. “And yes, I’m having lunch with her. Alone.”
His friends talked him in to at least letting them come along and introduce themselves. Jim tried to keep himself from running. He’d told Ariel it took him a while to get from the Aviary wing to the Democratic side of the school, but he hated to think of her waiting all alone in the crowded halls. They had been dating for two months now, but his heart still beat frantically when he thought about seeing her, not to mention when he was actually around her.
When they reached the Democratic main room, though, it was not at all like Jim had imagined.
“She’s not making a great first impression,” Ollie commented.
Ariel was across the room in a circle of her classmates, talking to a spiky- haired boy who stood a little too close. She laughed, and the hair on the back of Jim’s neck prickled.
“What do you wanna do, man?” Han said, but Jim was already marching over. By the time he reached the group he’d thought of about ten cutting remarks, but Ariel spotted him before he had a chance to speak. Her face lit up, and his shoulders relaxed. She jumped into the arms he hadn’t outstretched but immediately wrapped around her, burying his face in her red hair. When he released her, he kept an arm around her shoulders and she held onto his hand.
“Are you ready—”
“Who’s this, Ariel?” the spiky-haired boy asked. He looked offended, but Ariel didn’t know why. Jim did.
“Oh, Duke Treve, this is my boyfriend, Jim Hawkins.”
“The Jim Hawkins, who was expelled to the Academy after failing his field test, so has to take senior year all over again?” Treve smirked. “That Jim Hawkins?”
Jim opened his mouth to speak, but Ariel beat him to it. “That was my fault! He saved my life, and the lives of my people!”
“Sounds like some story,” Ollie grumbled. The two friends had caught up to Jim but had lingered a few feet behind. “Wish I’d have heard it.”
“That sounds like an amazing tale!” a girl from the group of aristocrats spoke up. She took the redhead’s arm, pulling her away from her beau. “You should tell us about it over lunch.”
Ariel bit her lower lip. Treve annoyed her a bit, but her other classmates seemed genuine and friendly. Then again, she hadn’t seen Jim all day. “I—”
“Go with them,” Jim said. She tried to catch his eye, to see what he meant by this, but he avoided her gaze. “Go make friends. I’ll see you later.”
“Jim—”
“The spacer has spoken!” Treve announced, taking her other arm. “Let’s go to the commons. I noticed you don’t have a purse of any kind. I’ll buy your lunch today, and you can taste for yourself why they say the Interstellar Academy has the best chefs in the system.”
Jim and his friends watched the upper crust students walk away with their heads held high, like a flock of rainbow-tailed swans.
“Are you really OK with this?” Han asked his friend. Jim didn’t say a word, but trudged back the way he came, Ollie bumping his arm with hers as they walked.
Ariel chewed slowly on her salad, lost in her confused thoughts.
Jim wanted to have lunch with me, right? she thought, tapping her fork against her chin. I missed him all morning. I wondered what his classes were like and who he was with. Did he not think the same about me?
She blinked when her brain registered a hand waving in front of her face. It was Yu’mime. “Your Democrat friends just left,” she said, sitting in front of the dazed mermaid.
“Oh my gosh, what time is it?” Ariel gasped, looking around for a clock.
“You’ve got a while, but you really spaced out.” She tilted her head, but her hair did not seem to obey the laws of gravity. “What did you do to scare off the Snob Squad?”
Ariel shrugged. “My boyfriend called off our lunch date, and I don’t know why.”
“The boyfriend you were gushing about this morning?” The alien clarified, opening her lunch box. “Do tell.”
Ariel told Yu’mime about the confrontation in the common area. Yu’mime almost choked on a white liquid that looked like milk, but Ariel wasn’t sure. “He’s the one who’s upset,” she said. “Your first day at school and you’re already talking to other guys? Not to mention rich, handsome guys he can’t hope to compete with.”
“But I love Jim,” Ariel insisted, stabbing into her plate with the fork she still held. “I’ve chosen him over princes before, and I’d do it again.”
“I believe you,” Yu’mime said, raising her hands at the other girl’s sudden passionate outburst. “But have you told him that?”
Jim finished his lunch early, so decided to go see Ariel before his next block of classes. He had told her to have lunch with the other aristocrats because he wanted her to make friends, but he worried that she thought he had other reasons for telling her to go. Treve’s face came to mind and his jaw set. Maybe he did. Which is why he had to set the record straight, before she zoned out in all her classes trying to figure it out herself.
When he reached the commons, Treve and his posse sat in an alcove of couches. Ariel was not among them.
“If it’s not the Jim Hawkins,” Treve said, sounding mildly more annoyed at the name than he had at the start of the lunch period. “I understand we should worship the ground you walk on.”
“Where is she?” he asked, standing over the dignitary. Treve’s bodyguard glared at him, and he glared back.
“Ariel?” Treve said, as if he did not know the name. “Oh, she started staring off into space, so we left her in the cafeteria with her thoughts. I don’t think she even noticed us leaving.”
“Show some dignity,” Jim scolded, resisting the urge to grab the duke by his pressed lapels. “When you are rejected, at least pretend not to be a child and be civil. She’s new here. Leaving her among a throng of strangers will frighten her, you pig.” He glanced up at the guard. “We good?” The bodyguard nodded, and Jim ran to the cafeteria unhindered.
It surprised him to find Ariel in deep conversation with a girl he recognized from some of his classes.
Maybe I should leave it for now, he thought. That blue-haired girl is nice, from what I can tell in class. Definitely more of a deep thinker than the aristocrats she hung out with earlier. But I was prepared to break up their lunch party to explain myself, which is still an issue here. He exhaled through his nose and approached the table where Ariel laughed.
“Ariel,” he tapped on her shoulder.
She turned at the sound of his voice. She smiled, but looked confused. “Jim, is something wrong?”
Jim turned his attention to Yu’mime. “Would you excuse us?”
Her eyes widened as she put the pieces together— this princess and common spacer were dating, something unheard of in ISA society— but she quickly composed herself. She picked through a container with a pair of chopsticks. “Sure, whatever.”
He took his girlfriend by the hand and dragged her from the dome-ceilinged cafeteria to the adjoining gardens. She slowed down to take in the greenery, but he pulled her along.
“Over here,” he said, his voice lowered to avoid detection by students lunching around stone tables nearby. “I haven’t shown you this yet.”
He led her to a tree, more like an oversized bush, which had leaves so closely woven together she could not see the infrastructure of branches within. Lifting the canopy of leaves, he gesturing for her to crawl inside, then followed her in himself. The patchwork of leaves concealed a little alcove, just big enough for three people to sit. Fluorescent fungus clung to the bark of the tree, giving off light to see by.
“You must come here often,” she said as he laid out a small blanket to sit on. Her voice quivered a little.
“It’s a nice quiet spot,” he agreed, sitting cross-legged next to her.
“Jim,”
“Ariel,” they said in unison. She covered her mouth to suppress a giggle and motioned for him to go first.
“Ariel, I wanted to clarify why I didn’t eat lunch with you today.”
She looked down at her toes, which nervously tapped together as he spoke.
“I know you think I’m angry with you for some reason, but I promise the main reason I told you to eat lunch with your class is because we don’t have class together. I won’t be there to help you with what you don’t understand, so making friends in your class is very important.”
She nodded. “And— what’s the other reason?”
Now Jim looked at his shoes. “I uh, I was jealous of you talking to that duke. You come from a line of royalty, Ariel. I want to keep what we have, but a guy with his background would make more sense for you.” He ran a hand through his chin-length hair. “I thought something like this might happen, but I never expected how—” he covered his cheeks with a hand to hide his blush “—how jealous I’d feel.”
He jumped when Ariel lunged at him, shaking him by the shoulders. “I would never choose anyone over you, Jim,” she said, making sure to enunciate her words so he could not mistake her. “I had the chance on Earth to choose the life of a princess in two different worlds, but I chose to be part of yours. I don’t care how poor you are or how many days a week you wear the color brown. I love you.”
He evaded her eyes and his fingers dug into the blanket, unsure of whether to push her off or embrace her. “We’re still teenagers, Ariel. Sure we’ve been through a lot, but we can’t be positive who we are going to spend the rest of our lives with.” His throat was dry and his tongue felt heavy, not wanting to say what he knew he must. “Even though you came all this way with me, I don’t want you to feel shackled to me. You don’t owe me anything.”
Using his coat lapels, Ariel pulled herself into his lap and kissed him. His shoulders hunched in surprise, but she wrapped her arms around his neck to keep him from pulling away. It was an unnecessary precaution. His train of thought effectively scattered, he held her close to him, combing her long hair with his fingers as she tilted her head and opened her mouth to deepen the kiss. When they broke apart they were both gasping and their lips buzzed from where they touched. Jim felt lightheaded, the sudden change from emotional stress to emotional bliss scrambling his brain. He wanted to kiss her again, but her hand covered his mouth.
“Now listen here, Jim Hawkins,” she said, her voice low and blue eyes intense. “I’ve made some stupid mistakes, but I learned from them. I would not have traveled light years away from my home for a crush I didn’t think meant something more.” She held his nose between her index and forefinger. “And if you ever mention the idea of marrying for rank around me again, I’ll run off with some deck swabber on the next ship out of here. Got that, spacer?”
He detached her hand from his face, his eyes watching her lips and his mouth twitching up in a dazed and mischievous smile. “Yes, Your Majesty,” he said before closing his lips over hers, drawing her closer to him with each kiss.
“Is this going to be a lunchtime tradition?” she asked when they paused for breath.
He grinned against her mouth. “I don’t see why not.”

Description
Ariel walked through the arched doors of the Interstellar Academy for the first time, squinting to keep from staring in wide-eyed wonder. She looked down at her knee- high boots, concentrating on walking in the inch heels through the spacious cobblestone foyer. Twin staircases bowed away from each other, framing floor-to-ceiling stained glass windows depicting space ships on the far wall. Natural light streamed in through circular windows in the high ceilings, and the room was designed so it always sounded busy. Today, though, it actually was. Students in white and blue uniforms bustled about, the new students gathered in clumps to figure out where their classes were located. Ariel, standing as straight as she could to look confident, rushed to the table with a sign which read “Information and Student Help.”
“Excuse me,” she chirped, “I need my schedule, and hopefully a map?”
“ID,” the girl behind the counter said in monotone. She appeared human, but her blue hair was twisted into a high spiral on her head, and she had three nose piercings. Ariel shuffled all her books to her left arm to fish the laminated card from her skirt pocket. The girl looked from the redhead to the ID photo, frowned, then scanned a few lists.
“You’re in the democratic class?”
“Yes ma’am,” she said, just as Jim taught her when speaking to authority. “Am I in the wrong place, uh, ma’am?”
“My name tag says Yu’mime,” Yu’mime corrected her. “And you’re in the right place. I’m just surprised you’re alone.”
“Oh, I’m not alone,” she corrected her. “My boyfriend had to come early to talk to some professors about academic probation. But he told me everything I need to know, so I’ll be fine.”
Yu’mime arched a blue eyebrow. “I’m sure you will be.” She handed Ariel two papers. “Here’s your schedule and a map of campus. Do you want a guide to help you to your first class?” The student sitting next to her with an elephant snout whispered to her they didn’t do that, but she waved him off.
Ariel shook her head nervously. “No thank you, Yu’mime. Jim and I toured this building a few times in the last week so I wouldn’t get lost.”
Still, as she stared up the high staircase, she wished her spacer was with her, holding her hand like all the times before.
She reached her first class without getting lost. When she entered the auditorium, she realized what the blue-haired girl meant by “alone.” There were more bodyguards in the room than students. She knew the type from life in the castle in Atlantica. These bodyguards wore black clothing and protective headgear, while their wards wore the ISA standard of white jacket with gold accents, blue bottoms, and knee-high boots. One of the bodyguards, a scaly creature with suction cups for hands, blocked her path.
“Identification,” he said. She wondered if that was the proper form of greeting here. She showed him her card and he stood aside with a bow. She took a seat in a middle row in the center section.
“Are you from the Outer Regions?” a boy next to her asked. He had blond, spiky hair and wore a bejeweled necklace with a family crest over his uniform.
“No, I’m from Earth,” she replied, confused.
“So past the Outer Regions, then. Not even in the alliance,” he noted. He seemed to be judging her and intrigued by her at the same time. “I’ve heard the border planets are so short on resources they can barely afford to have governments. That must be why you don’t have a bodyguard, right?”
“My planet has resources,” Ariel said, her fists clenching under her desk. “Probably even resources you’re never even heard of, since you obviously haven’t traveled outside the Core systems. I don’t have a guard because I can take care of myself.”
The boy sniffed. “Sure you can.”
“Do you want me to show you?”
His bodyguard stiffened, but he held up a hand. When he turned back to Ariel, he wore a smile that didn’t quite reach his bright orange eyes. “I think we got off on the wrong foot. I am Duke Treve of Troveno.”
She shook his hand, squeezing hard enough to make him uncomfortable. “Princess Ariel of the Earthen Seas.” She suppressed a smile at Treve’s surprise that she outranked him and turned her attention to the professor, who was writing her name on the black board with two of her tentacles.
“Are we on for lunch today, Jim?” Han asked as he closed the tool kit. They had just finished Advanced Engineering. Jim had completed the distress beacon assignment in the first half of class and spent the rest of class time on an independent project. “We can discuss that secret project you won’t tell me about.”
“It’s not worth talking about until I know it works,” Jim said, untying his apron as fast as he could and throwing his jacket over his shoulder. “Besides, I’ve got plans.”
Jim and Han’s only female friend, Ollie, lifted goggles off of her large dark eyes and onto her forehead. “In the three years we’ve been going here, you’ve never had other plans,” she accused. “What’s up?”
Han gasped. “It can’t be the mysterious girlfriend I’ve heard so much about!”
“Girlfriend?” Ollie said the word like it left a bad taste on her tongue. “Why haven’t I heard about this? I thought you were out of the dating game, Jimmy.”
“It’s kind of a new development,” Jim said, giving the girl a look. “And yes, I’m having lunch with her. Alone.”
His friends talked him in to at least letting them come along and introduce themselves. Jim tried to keep himself from running. He’d told Ariel it took him a while to get from the Aviary wing to the Democratic side of the school, but he hated to think of her waiting all alone in the crowded halls. They had been dating for two months now, but his heart still beat frantically when he thought about seeing her, not to mention when he was actually around her.
When they reached the Democratic main room, though, it was not at all like Jim had imagined.
“She’s not making a great first impression,” Ollie commented.
Ariel was across the room in a circle of her classmates, talking to a spiky- haired boy who stood a little too close. She laughed, and the hair on the back of Jim’s neck prickled.
“What do you wanna do, man?” Han said, but Jim was already marching over. By the time he reached the group he’d thought of about ten cutting remarks, but Ariel spotted him before he had a chance to speak. Her face lit up, and his shoulders relaxed. She jumped into the arms he hadn’t outstretched but immediately wrapped around her, burying his face in her red hair. When he released her, he kept an arm around her shoulders and she held onto his hand.
“Are you ready—”
“Who’s this, Ariel?” the spiky-haired boy asked. He looked offended, but Ariel didn’t know why. Jim did.
“Oh, Duke Treve, this is my boyfriend, Jim Hawkins.”
“The Jim Hawkins, who was expelled to the Academy after failing his field test, so has to take senior year all over again?” Treve smirked. “That Jim Hawkins?”
Jim opened his mouth to speak, but Ariel beat him to it. “That was my fault! He saved my life, and the lives of my people!”
“Sounds like some story,” Ollie grumbled. The two friends had caught up to Jim but had lingered a few feet behind. “Wish I’d have heard it.”
“That sounds like an amazing tale!” a girl from the group of aristocrats spoke up. She took the redhead’s arm, pulling her away from her beau. “You should tell us about it over lunch.”
Ariel bit her lower lip. Treve annoyed her a bit, but her other classmates seemed genuine and friendly. Then again, she hadn’t seen Jim all day. “I—”
“Go with them,” Jim said. She tried to catch his eye, to see what he meant by this, but he avoided her gaze. “Go make friends. I’ll see you later.”
“Jim—”
“The spacer has spoken!” Treve announced, taking her other arm. “Let’s go to the commons. I noticed you don’t have a purse of any kind. I’ll buy your lunch today, and you can taste for yourself why they say the Interstellar Academy has the best chefs in the system.”
Jim and his friends watched the upper crust students walk away with their heads held high, like a flock of rainbow-tailed swans.
“Are you really OK with this?” Han asked his friend. Jim didn’t say a word, but trudged back the way he came, Ollie bumping his arm with hers as they walked.
Ariel chewed slowly on her salad, lost in her confused thoughts.
Jim wanted to have lunch with me, right? she thought, tapping her fork against her chin. I missed him all morning. I wondered what his classes were like and who he was with. Did he not think the same about me?
She blinked when her brain registered a hand waving in front of her face. It was Yu’mime. “Your Democrat friends just left,” she said, sitting in front of the dazed mermaid.
“Oh my gosh, what time is it?” Ariel gasped, looking around for a clock.
“You’ve got a while, but you really spaced out.” She tilted her head, but her hair did not seem to obey the laws of gravity. “What did you do to scare off the Snob Squad?”
Ariel shrugged. “My boyfriend called off our lunch date, and I don’t know why.”
“The boyfriend you were gushing about this morning?” The alien clarified, opening her lunch box. “Do tell.”
Ariel told Yu’mime about the confrontation in the common area. Yu’mime almost choked on a white liquid that looked like milk, but Ariel wasn’t sure. “He’s the one who’s upset,” she said. “Your first day at school and you’re already talking to other guys? Not to mention rich, handsome guys he can’t hope to compete with.”
“But I love Jim,” Ariel insisted, stabbing into her plate with the fork she still held. “I’ve chosen him over princes before, and I’d do it again.”
“I believe you,” Yu’mime said, raising her hands at the other girl’s sudden passionate outburst. “But have you told him that?”
Jim finished his lunch early, so decided to go see Ariel before his next block of classes. He had told her to have lunch with the other aristocrats because he wanted her to make friends, but he worried that she thought he had other reasons for telling her to go. Treve’s face came to mind and his jaw set. Maybe he did. Which is why he had to set the record straight, before she zoned out in all her classes trying to figure it out herself.
When he reached the commons, Treve and his posse sat in an alcove of couches. Ariel was not among them.
“If it’s not the Jim Hawkins,” Treve said, sounding mildly more annoyed at the name than he had at the start of the lunch period. “I understand we should worship the ground you walk on.”
“Where is she?” he asked, standing over the dignitary. Treve’s bodyguard glared at him, and he glared back.
“Ariel?” Treve said, as if he did not know the name. “Oh, she started staring off into space, so we left her in the cafeteria with her thoughts. I don’t think she even noticed us leaving.”
“Show some dignity,” Jim scolded, resisting the urge to grab the duke by his pressed lapels. “When you are rejected, at least pretend not to be a child and be civil. She’s new here. Leaving her among a throng of strangers will frighten her, you pig.” He glanced up at the guard. “We good?” The bodyguard nodded, and Jim ran to the cafeteria unhindered.
It surprised him to find Ariel in deep conversation with a girl he recognized from some of his classes.
Maybe I should leave it for now, he thought. That blue-haired girl is nice, from what I can tell in class. Definitely more of a deep thinker than the aristocrats she hung out with earlier. But I was prepared to break up their lunch party to explain myself, which is still an issue here. He exhaled through his nose and approached the table where Ariel laughed.
“Ariel,” he tapped on her shoulder.
She turned at the sound of his voice. She smiled, but looked confused. “Jim, is something wrong?”
Jim turned his attention to Yu’mime. “Would you excuse us?”
Her eyes widened as she put the pieces together— this princess and common spacer were dating, something unheard of in ISA society— but she quickly composed herself. She picked through a container with a pair of chopsticks. “Sure, whatever.”
He took his girlfriend by the hand and dragged her from the dome-ceilinged cafeteria to the adjoining gardens. She slowed down to take in the greenery, but he pulled her along.
“Over here,” he said, his voice lowered to avoid detection by students lunching around stone tables nearby. “I haven’t shown you this yet.”
He led her to a tree, more like an oversized bush, which had leaves so closely woven together she could not see the infrastructure of branches within. Lifting the canopy of leaves, he gesturing for her to crawl inside, then followed her in himself. The patchwork of leaves concealed a little alcove, just big enough for three people to sit. Fluorescent fungus clung to the bark of the tree, giving off light to see by.
“You must come here often,” she said as he laid out a small blanket to sit on. Her voice quivered a little.
“It’s a nice quiet spot,” he agreed, sitting cross-legged next to her.
“Jim,”
“Ariel,” they said in unison. She covered her mouth to suppress a giggle and motioned for him to go first.
“Ariel, I wanted to clarify why I didn’t eat lunch with you today.”
She looked down at her toes, which nervously tapped together as he spoke.
“I know you think I’m angry with you for some reason, but I promise the main reason I told you to eat lunch with your class is because we don’t have class together. I won’t be there to help you with what you don’t understand, so making friends in your class is very important.”
She nodded. “And— what’s the other reason?”
Now Jim looked at his shoes. “I uh, I was jealous of you talking to that duke. You come from a line of royalty, Ariel. I want to keep what we have, but a guy with his background would make more sense for you.” He ran a hand through his chin-length hair. “I thought something like this might happen, but I never expected how—” he covered his cheeks with a hand to hide his blush “—how jealous I’d feel.”
He jumped when Ariel lunged at him, shaking him by the shoulders. “I would never choose anyone over you, Jim,” she said, making sure to enunciate her words so he could not mistake her. “I had the chance on Earth to choose the life of a princess in two different worlds, but I chose to be part of yours. I don’t care how poor you are or how many days a week you wear the color brown. I love you.”
He evaded her eyes and his fingers dug into the blanket, unsure of whether to push her off or embrace her. “We’re still teenagers, Ariel. Sure we’ve been through a lot, but we can’t be positive who we are going to spend the rest of our lives with.” His throat was dry and his tongue felt heavy, not wanting to say what he knew he must. “Even though you came all this way with me, I don’t want you to feel shackled to me. You don’t owe me anything.”
Using his coat lapels, Ariel pulled herself into his lap and kissed him. His shoulders hunched in surprise, but she wrapped her arms around his neck to keep him from pulling away. It was an unnecessary precaution. His train of thought effectively scattered, he held her close to him, combing her long hair with his fingers as she tilted her head and opened her mouth to deepen the kiss. When they broke apart they were both gasping and their lips buzzed from where they touched. Jim felt lightheaded, the sudden change from emotional stress to emotional bliss scrambling his brain. He wanted to kiss her again, but her hand covered his mouth.
“Now listen here, Jim Hawkins,” she said, her voice low and blue eyes intense. “I’ve made some stupid mistakes, but I learned from them. I would not have traveled light years away from my home for a crush I didn’t think meant something more.” She held his nose between her index and forefinger. “And if you ever mention the idea of marrying for rank around me again, I’ll run off with some deck swabber on the next ship out of here. Got that, spacer?”
He detached her hand from his face, his eyes watching her lips and his mouth twitching up in a dazed and mischievous smile. “Yes, Your Majesty,” he said before closing his lips over hers, drawing her closer to him with each kiss.
“Is this going to be a lunchtime tradition?” she asked when they paused for breath.
He grinned against her mouth. “I don’t see why not.”