The screen beeped. The plain white square was replaced by the interior of a high-tech tent, with scientific equipment around the edges of the frame and a man’s sweet, earnest face at the center. His cheeks were covered in reddish stubble, signaling that Graham had once again decided that being in the field was the perfect excuse to stop shaving. There were no visible bandages. That was a nice change.

“Stasia,” he said, sagging in relief. “I was hoping you’d call.”

“Why not call me?” I asked.

“Because I didn’t know whether you’d be at your computer, or whether you’d be in any condition to talk.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “You’re the one in the swamp. I didn’t know whether you’d be at your computer, either.”

“Of course I am,” he said. “I told my team lead I needed to be here in case my girlfriend, the alien, decided to call and tell me to come home.”

“Seymour misses you.” I held up the cat as a demonstration. Seymour dangled in my hands, a dead weight, not acknowledging my claim. “And yes, I miss you, too. But I’m not going to tell you to come home before you’re done. You’re doing good work.”

“I’m doing grunt work,” he said. “It’s not the same thing, even though I appreciate your faith in me.”

“It looks good on a résumé and it keeps you working in your field, which means you don’t have to look elsewhere for your scaled delights, and I don’t have to move someplace with more snakes.”

Graham smiled, fond and concerned. “That’s my girl,” he said.

“Always,” I said, and smiled back.

Graham and I met in college, when we’d taken the same English elective to round out our course load. He’d been planning to become a herpetologist; I’d been planning to become a computer scientist. We’d both been derailed by the world, but we’d held on to the core of our disciplines, and we’d held on to each other. The make-outs were nice. The sex was nice, too. The friendship, though, the understanding and affection … those were better.

After school, I’d decided eighty-hour weeks and nervous breakdowns weren’t for me and gone into customer service instead, while Graham had gone to work in the research division of a large software company. His team did general science, with the goal of finding ways to apply that science to new technological breakthroughs for his employers. As long as they were willing to let him keep spending all his free time on his beloved snakes, that was fine with him.