I remember very well when we met for the first time. I was in the dining room. I was playing with my food, and that day I was distracted, it was a complicated day for me. I had spent six hours in the plasma conduit network without being able to find the problem with the flow control. I was deep in my thoughts when I suddenly looked up and met your eyes. You were with other co-workers, two tables away from mine. The sparkle of your gaze made contact with mine and I felt that connection that unites us today. You caressed your neck and averted your glance downwards, that's when I understood that you felt something for me.
I'm sure you do. I am not just one face among the hundreds that inhabit this spaceship. My face was special to you, and why shouldn't it be? I'm nice to my shipmates, they always greet me when I arrive at my station. Am I really that easy to forget? I don't think so. Or rather, of course not. That's why it's obvious that she feels the same way I do.
Since the last time we spoke, she keeps smiling at me. That time she said to me, “Can I have the salt from your table?”, it was obvious that she used it as an excuse to address me. She could have chosen any table out of the 20 in the mess hall, but she chose mine. It was her way of asking me for the salt, her smile, and the tenderness in her eyes as blue as the injectors of our FTL engine, said it all, she didn't need to say any more words.
It's her way of asking me not to walk away, although she has never asked me directly either. However, it is obvious that her newly acquired rank prevents her from having a direct relationship with her subordinates, including the injector maintenance staff. You can't always say what you feel when you are in charge of underlings. It's understandable, society, academia, customs, your upbringing; so many things stand between a person and what they really want. However, I can always see her picture in the information section of our work tablets: Junior Lieutenant, Helena Stark. The curve of her cheeks, her straight hair falling over her shoulders, and her half smile. The same one she gave me that time in the mess hall. Clearly, she was thinking of me when that picture was taken.
That afternoon when I was going up in the turbolift. You signaled me to stop the doors, the other three companions next to me were distracted. I immediately stopped the doors. You were late for your post; small beads of sweat were accumulating inside the indentation above your crimson lips. Your chest was rising and falling, you were excited. Intentionally, our hands brushed as we both pressed the turbolift console and reactivated its ascent. We both knew which floor you were going to. Your cheeks flushed, once again. You removed your hand quick and discreetly, looking straight ahead, but I could notice a slight curvature of the corner of your lips. That said it all. You obviously have feelings for me, as I do for you.
She has a rhythm to her walk that I could recognize anywhere. A light step that I immediately recognized. My shift was over, I was about to leave the repair room. You arrived unexpectedly, but I knew it was you. You were startled again, your eyes sparkled as they met mine: “I'm glad I found you,” you said at that moment. I was sure your phrase implied something more than the need to find a #5 cathode for the FTL capacitor muffle power supply. At your proximity, your perfume intoxicated me and like a moth drawn to the light, I dared to come closer than I should have. You recoiled in surprise. I didn't think you meant it, did you? Because you knew that someone else could walk in and surprise us. How could I not have seen it coming? And you did because, within seconds, Jack from communications walked in. There are so many things that stand between us.
On my break time, when I was having coffee with the guys, she looked at me when she walked into the break room. She did. It was a furtive glance, lasting only an instant. A magical moment, if there is such a thing as magic. Again, I could appreciate the bend of your lips, so fleeting that if I had blinked I would have missed it. Smoothing for a second the lines of your face. Of course, I didn't say hello, I didn't want to make you feel uncomfortable or for others to notice anything. Despite being in the 25th century, people don't always understand this kind of thing, and sometimes they think the worst. But for her, as for me, it was enough.
The last time she entered the training station, I followed her, as if I didn't want to be noticed. Five steps behind her, without getting too close. I remember that you had previously asked me not to follow you any closer. You even commented to me, in a serious tone, that I had to let you “breathe”. It is obvious that we all need to breathe, and she knows it too. Sometimes, I think you say these things because you are afraid of what others might think. I understand you, I really do. That's why I kept watching you from the hallway, while you were exercising on the static aereobike, your effort inviting me to take another bike and ride next to you, but I had to respect your space.
I have not spoken to her since that time. She knows I don't need to. But I think something big is coming. I feel it in the way she looks at me, in the way she drinks her coffee in the mornings, in the small gestures she makes when she's focused on her console at work.
Maybe today is the day. Maybe today she will invite me into her cabin, or just leave the door open a little. Those are the details one should pick up on when there is a real connection, and I am, after all, very observant.
But today I got a call from the ship's counselor. She left me a message on the console at work to meet with her this afternoon. She's Betazoid, knows people's feelings, and is an excellent psychologist, or at least that's what I've heard. Some say she is even a mind reader, she surely wants to help me formalize the relationship with Helena. She has the hierarchy to formalize relationships between people no matter what position they hold. I am sure she will bless our love.
This is my approach to the unreliable narrative, it was not easy at all 😜
