”“Let me guess, once Ship gets up to speed, it takes to long to slow down.”“Got it in one! I guess those physics lessons took.” Angel hugged...me and tried to stick her tongue down my throat.“Ship?”“Yes, Mick.”“How long until we get to Venus?”“I can make it in a day and a half if I go at full non-light speed.”“Good, let’s do that. In the mean time Angel and I are going to our room.”I slid Angel off my lap, and we walked, hands on the other’s butts, to our cabin, where we experienced zero-gravity. I closed my eyes again, drifting in and out of sleep as my drowsy brain tried to put the room back together. Her left arm cradled my head into her shoulder. Her length lay snuggled along my right side, her tuft warm and crinkly against my right hip, her right leg draped around my right thigh. I settled fully onto my back and her face turned and looked into mine. She said nothing. Her only movement was the slow grazing of a finger across my forehead. She repeated the motion over and over. I felt. I was half right."Aye fucking jellyfish?" I heard a familiar voice crawling over my crumpled body. "Hailey?!" I asked in bewilderment, and the two of us embraced in the longest hug I could remember. "Is that a tear? Oh you're such a wimp" she said with playful laughter. "All this time and you've gone soft on me." HEY!" I shot back. "I absolutely have never gone *soft* on you." That's actually completely true" she giggled. "Did I catch you off guard?" "Yes!" I couldn't help but laugh. "This is. As the arms tightened around me, I thought, 'He smells much better than he did.'Then I thought, 'He feels much better than he did before, too.'I didn’t want to open my eyes, squeezing them tight to control the tears, but I couldn’t contain the tremors. Then I felt the linebacker’s cheek against mine.Shocked, I backed off and opened my eyes. It wasn’t the linebacker.I was looking at my wife’s angelic face.“Why, in our.