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Her entire body appeared in the air above my wrist, a huge smile on her face.
“I mean, you’re gorgeous and I love you, but I’d rather see your face up large rather than have you be a tiny little Obi-Wan Kenobi you’re our only hope kind of image,” I frowned at the screen.
“Oh, just use the zoom in gesture.” Caley pinched her fingers and then spread them wide.
“Like on a normal phone?” I asked.
“Yeah, these things are set up to be easy for humans to use so they changed the gestures to match what we already use.” She smiled.
I held my fingers up to the projection and did the reverse pinch.
It zoomed in.
“Woah.” I frowned again. I could see a scabbed over pimple on Caley’s jawline. Not that it was a problem that she was aux natural, but the fact was that I wouldn’t be able to see it in such high definition on my normal phone. “Can you see my face in that detail?”
“Yes.” Caley tilted her head to the side. “You aren’t wearing any foundation. That is really unusual. Normally you are fully covered with contouring and highlights and everything. Why are you wearing a bikini?”
“I can still sunbath on the moon. Plus nobody is here and I decided not to film today.” I shrugged. “No point if I’m all by myself and not putting on a show.”
“You don’t feel the need to ‘make yourself presentable,’” Caley put up her free hand and made a quoting gesture, “for Aeson? You told me you would wake up before your previous boyfriends to get all done up. It's kind of wonderful you don’t feel like you need to do that for Aeson.”
“He isn't here!” I wailed, it all coming out in a rush. “He’s outside, doing some sort of weird giant 3d printing construction! He hasn’t even come back in since he left! Does he not need to breathe? What kind of species even does that? He is just slithering around in the lunar dirt and ice cold nothingness and he isn’t getting chapped? Does he have no nerves at all? Why doesn’t he want to fuck me? He literally bargained with me to insist I spread my legs for him and now he doesn’t seem to be interested at all. This is incredibly frustrating!”
Caley’s mouth opened and closed like a fish.
“Do you want me to send Jevelar to go pick you up?” she asked. “You don’t have to stay there if you’re feeling neglected. If the marriage isn’t working, you don’t have to stay in it.”
“Marriage is a commitment,” I pointed out.
“You didn’t commit to be neglected.” She frowned at me. “Would you tell a woman whose husband hits her that her commitment is more important than her physical safety and comfort?”
“No,” I replied. “That would be stupid. She committed to be loved and honored, and being hit removes the possibility of that ever being true. Ever.”
“If you aren’t getting what you need out of this relationship, and he isn’t willing to work on it, then you should probably just leave,” Caley pointed out.
I hadn’t given her all the information.
She was being a really good friend, but she was only working with one image of the situation, the one where I was abandoned and ignored by my new husband on my honeymoon. Her advice was entirely centered on that. I had to own up to the full truth of the situation if I wanted to get the best advice.
Even though Caley had been terrible at setting boundaries for her parents, she was really good at giving advice. At least, she was really good at giving me something and listening to her let me sort out my internal dilemma and know for certain what it was that I wanted.
“I had a panic attack on the way up here,” I finally put it out there. “I freaked out, like really freaked out bad. So bad that he insisted I go to a doctor and he took me to a Norratar doctor on a spaceship.”
“Oh, that must have been so hard.” Caley’s eyes filled up with tears. “Your anxiety attacks are already bad. To have one in space with a new husband who is as different as he is… that must have been terrible. It’s great that he took care of you but I think I know what you’re getting at.”
She didn’t say it so I did.
“He could be avoiding me because I scared him,” I sighed. “Finding out that you new wife has a medical condition, especially a mental one…. He may be taking the time apart from me to decide if he wants to call off the marriage. That’s why he hasn’t tried to consummate it yet. He wanted a healthy human wife and I’m not that.”
“Oh, Jessica.” A tear slid down Caley’s cheek. She was so damn empathetic it drove me nuts. I couldn’t even cry despite the intensity of my feelings and here she was dribbling like a rainy day in the Pacific Northwest.
Damn it, she got me.
I quickly wiped my eyes.
“I was considering masturbating in front of him to see if I could get a reaction,” I redirected the subject aggressively away from those intense feelings of vulnerability.
“Wait, what?” Caley sniffled.
