My two best friends are great rival astronauts, always gallivanting around the universe.

I'm the underachiever of the group. While they're out reaching for stars, I'm happy here, both feet planted on Earth's warm dirt.

Between them, they've reached every edge of space. They won't admit it and I'd never say it first, but they've spurred each other on more than any rocket or notion of discovery ever could.

The day after one returns, as long as the other is on Earth too, the three of us go for beers. No matter what shift pattern I'm on, we make it happen. Me, with gravity and the week's graft pulling on my bones and under my eyes. Them, a couple inches taller.

It goes the same every time. I sink into my chair, smiling and drinking at twice their pace, while the two of them spar with stories about aliens and constellations and cosmic rays in their hair. If one narrowly avoided a fatal asteroid collision, the other had a meteor shower before breakfast.


*


I live alone. My family are on the other side of the world.

This week, my brother died. Came about quickly, not unexpectedly.

Mum messaged to say he was drifting in and out, so the end was very near.

I'd just put a load of washing on. I dropped my phone. Sat on the kitchen floor. Let the spins of the machine keep me company.

Gentle, violent, gentle...

My brother's eyes, red and watery after I'd just fed him a heaped spoonful of wasabi. I'd told him it was watermelon ice cream. My eyes streamed as much as his from laughing, "Watermelon isn't even that colour, dipshit!"

Him in that hospital, motionless, all hooked up to tubes.

Me in a chokehold, convinced my head was about to pop clean off, tapping his arm to submit, knowing he was always going to let go an agonising second later than necessary.

My family around his bed, grasping for more time.


*


Flight times and a regressive employment situation meant I couldn't get out there for a few days. My two friends, though. They're much smarter than me.

Both were in space when I told them the news. Both were able to abandon whatever intergalactic structures they were building, pull in a few favours and wormhole back to Earth to be here the night after it happened.

The night was clear and warm, so we got a table outside. Normally, they buy the beers. This time, I insisted and for once they knew better than to protest.

They asked how I was doing.

I told them I didn't know how to be. Couldn't get my head around it. I'd never see him again, you know?

They nodded. Took nervous sips. Wore expressions that suggested they'd just been given ten seconds to solve the hardest quantum physics problem known to humankind. In the silence, I remembered my brother, who hated them but sort of loved them at the same time, telling me there was a reason those two chose to spend their lives away from people and basic human interaction.

I asked them how the cosmos was treating them.

And off they went, back and forth, arguing which one had travelled the greatest cumulative distance around the universe, whose portfolio of nebulae was the stronger.

I sank back. Relaxed, for the first time since the news. The sunset was all smeared in reds and greens, like a watermelon. I took a gulp of beer. Felt my eyes finally allow themselves to water over.


.

Detail of art on main page by Andrew Kitzmiller.





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