IAN

The words come out of Ian’s mouth before he’s fully processed them. By the time he notices Hannah’s raised eyebrows and her dubious expression, it’s just too late to take them back.

She stops in the middle of the hallway.

Ian stops, too.

She looks at him, skeptical.

Ian tries not to avert his eyes.

It’s not easy: The Jet Propulsion Lab is crawling with interns, students, engineers. They’re all at the end of their workday, and they’re all trying to exit the building from that door over there. The one that’s maybe ten feet away.

And, apparently, Ian and Hannah are about to have this conversation right in front of it. Perfect.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing.” He shakes his head. “Let’s just go home. Forget that I—”

“Did you just ask me why we are not married?”

“No. Well, yes, but . . .”

“In response to me asking you if we should get Thai tonight?”

Ian scratches his temple and looks at his feet. “Perhaps not my best segue.” His hand lifts to her back, and he tries to nudge her toward the parking lot. “Let’s go home.”

Hannah stays put. “Where’s this coming from?” she asks, just as NASA’s deputy administrator strolls in and out of Ian’s field of view, waving cheerfully. Hannah’s eyes fall on the phone in his hand. “Aah.”

“Aah?”

“Aah.” She nods knowingly. “You’ve been talking with Erik and Liam.”

Ian frowns. “What does that have to do with it?”

“You get like this when you talk to them.” She grins and grabs his sleeve, pulling him into the parking lot.

“I get like what?”

“Homey. Marriagey.”

“I don’t.”

“Yeah, you do.”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve never mentioned marriage before.” In fact, he’s been very careful not to mention anything that’s even remotely connected. Everyone knows that Ian and Hannah are together, but when Ian’s manager asked him if he’d be taking his “wife” to her barbecue—Dr. Arroyo, right, who leads the A & PE team?—he made sure to say, Yes, I’ll bring my partner. When Sadie pushed her bridal bouquet of Danish lilies into Hannah’s very unreceptive, mostly slack hands, he made sure to nod while Hannah listed the reasons marriage is an archaic institution grounded in a capitalistic landscape.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to get married. It’s more that he knows her, and her issues with commitment. She’s already come so far, and it’s not like Ian doesn’t feel how much she loves him every minute of every day. Which means that he can accept the way she is, and the fact that she’d laugh in his face if he bought a ring, went on one knee, and proposed.

“You never mentioned marriage, and yet here you are.” Hannah’s eyes are inscrutable as they walk to his car. “Thinking of proposing because my best friend is having a little ginger baby.”

“The baby might not be ginger—”

“It will be.”

“Okay, it will be. But it was an unrelated question. I was just wondering if . . .”