Atmosphere: A Love Story By Taylor Jenkins Reid - 32

Joan and Vanessa had gotten in the habit of talking on the phone before bed on the days they could not see each other. Those days were coming more and more often as they got more and more busy.

Vanessa had been working as a Cape Crusader—one of the members on the Astronaut Support Personnel team for the missions. They prepped the shuttle, assisted the crew with getting strapped into their seats, and helped close out the shuttle after the mission was over. It meant spending a lot of time on Cape Canaveral.

Which meant that time together was harder to come by lately. Joan would go whole weeks with just these stolen phone calls, whispering over the line to Florida.

But right now, they were both in Houston and Joan was grateful for it. Joan was setting the table at Vanessa’s house as Vanessa came in the side door with the grilled kebabs.

Vanessa set the plate down and told Joan she had a question. “Hank says that if he changes his schedule, he can take me up in the T-38 tomorrow,” she said. “But that means you’d have to find someone else to take you up on Wednesday. I’m really sorry to ask, but he says he’ll let me take the controls the whole time. And I haven’t been able to get up there much this month. Is it okay? If it’s not, I swear I will back out. I don’t want to leave you in the lurch.”

“No,” Joan said, shaking her head and taking a seat. “I mean, that’s fine. Duke had said he could take me up sometime. I can just ask him, but . . .”

“But what?”

“But we both had the afternoon off tomorrow, remember? And you said you wanted to drive to that Tex-Mex place in the city before you take off for KSC again?”

Tomorrow was supposed to be their last chance to see each other before Vanessa headed out.

“Oh, right,” Vanessa said. “No, I do want to do that. But . . .”

“You want to fly the T-38 even more.”

Vanessa paused and then said, “I mean, yeah.”

Joan had known Vanessa for over two years by then, had kissed her for the first time almost a year ago, had waded further and further into this intimacy.

Joan had given in to Vanessa in a way that still surprised her. Joan had not lost herself to Vanessa, but found herself in her. She had not cut off parts of herself to fit so much as learned to make room for someone other than herself.

Joan would so happily, even if she were a vegetarian, make Vanessa a meatloaf.

This surrender had not always been easy—it had shocked Joan just how much physical pain there was in loving someone like this.

It hurt Joan’s hands not to touch her in front of people the way Donna could touch Hank.

There was a fire in her—a burning through her belly and chest—when they fought.

And they did fight. There was the time Joan lost her temper just before Donna and Hank’s wedding, when Vanessa didn’t want to go in the same car. And when Joan started crying after Vanessa introduced Joan to a woman she had dated once, without giving Joan a heads-up first. And the deadly silent treatments Vanessa would levy against Joan when Joan canceled on her one too many times. The fights they’d gotten into when Joan defended Barbara’s questionable behavior.

They both had said awful things to each other. It was the first time in Joan’s life that she’d said something untrue just to upset someone else—just to try to make her own sting go away. She’d been horrified by what could come out of her mouth. “Of course you’re not as important to me as my niece!” “You don’t know how to stand by anyone! You always have one foot out the door!”

And the things Vanessa had said: things that, no matter how many times Vanessa apologized, Joan knew in her heart she would never really let go of. “You’re a doormat to your sister!” “You are childish, Joan. It’s not your fault, because you’re inexperienced, but sometimes you are as mature as a teenager about this.”

How was it, exactly, that two people could scar each other like that and keep going? In fact, go deeper? How was it that Joan could know that Vanessa did mean some of those things—that Joan could admit to herself in quiet moments that she meant some of what she’d said, too—but somehow the effect was to be tied together even more tightly?

Why was it that when you let someone that far in, you learned to be okay with all the ways they saw you, even if they weren’t flattering? Why, right now, talking to Vanessa, did Joan feel the most perfect sense of safety?

Joan’s scientist mind could come up with a series of explanations for this that had to do with the brain’s talent for denial and compartmentalization. But she suspected that the truth was that acceptance so powerful made everything else feel small.

Vanessa loved her. Would love her. Showed no signs of stopping. And did it at great risk to her own future.

“Yeah, of course,” Joan said. “Obviously, you should fly the T-38 with Hank. It’s not even a question.”

“Are you sure?”

“Really,” Joan said. “I get it. You have to do it. I will be mad at you if you don’t.”

Vanessa laughed, and just the sound of it made Joan happy. Joan wanted to love Vanessa in a way that never made her give up what she wanted. That never changed her.

But, maybe, that wasn’t exactly true.

After Vanessa went flying the next day, she showed up late at Joan’s apartment, when Joan was already in her pajamas, getting ready to go to sleep.

Vanessa took off her pants and her bra, brushed her teeth, and got into bed in her T-shirt alongside Joan, pressing her cold legs against the warmth of Joan’s body.

As they were falling asleep, Vanessa said, “I haven’t had a dream about my funeral in months.”

“Really?” Joan said. “I wonder why.”

And Vanessa, as she buried her head in Joan’s neck, said, “You.”

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