Sex on the Moon by Ben Mezrich Page B

willing to take risks.”
    “Anyone who wants to be an astronaut has to like to take risks.”
    Thad was surprised to see the mischief in her thin smile. Thad liked her immediately—not in a romantic sense, even though her hard little body filled out the boy shorts and tank top in a remarkable way. But the fact that she was fighting her shyness to joke with him—it was platonically interesting. He had a lot of acquaintances at NASA, but other than Helms, nobody he would call a good friend. That was the way his life had always worked. There was Sonya, and then there was everybody else.
    Recently, there was barely even Sonya. It had only been three weeks since her visit to the JSC, but things had gone downhill pretty quickly once she’d returned to Utah. That weekend had been incredible, a sort of honeymoon, inspired by the gift of the meteorite from Dr. Gibson. But the minute she’d stepped back onto the plane, her demeanor toward Thad had seemed to change. When they talked on the phone, all she wanted to speak about was her modeling, her life in Utah. It was getting harder and harder for Thad to live in both places at once.
    Here, on the top of the granite dome, his face brightly lit by a canopy of stars, it was frighteningly easy to forget about Sonya.
    “It’s easy to talk about risk,” he countered, now facing Sandra head-on. “It’s a lot harder to live it.”
    Sandra had inched a little closer, maybe because she didn’t want any of the other co-ops or interns to hear what they were saying. Thad didn’t want to lead her on, but he was enjoying the attention.
    “You think I’m all talk?”
    “Actually, I didn’t think you talked at all. I wonder what else I got wrong about you.”
    “I guess that’s something you’ll have to figure out for yourself.”
    Thad grinned. She was an eighteen-year-old girl trying to sound older, trying to impress him by pretending she wasn’t scared. He felt it was his duty to help her along. To open her up. If she really wanted to be an astronaut, she’d have to break out of her shell.
    “You think you’re ready to do something risky?”
    Sandra’s smile tightened a little, but she seemed to fight through it.
    “What, exactly, did you have in mind?”
    …
    “You sure about this?”
    “I think so.”
    “Because if you’re not sure—”
    “Thad, just shut up and take off your clothes.”
    Thad laughed; it was hysterical, hearing that Disney-mouse voice giving him an order like that. He guessed that she was terrified by now, because even he was feeling butterflies. It was pitch-black where they were standing, beneath the thick overhang of trees—so dark he couldn’t see his own hands. But even so, they were right out in the open, and only about a twenty-minute hike from the top of the granite dome where the other co-ops and interns were presumably still sleeping. It hadn’t been hard to creep out of the campsite and make their way to the bank of the winding stream that ran down one of the natural ravines. But now that they were standing there, side by side, barefoot beneath the trees—it felt so deliciously wrong.
    “On three,” Thad said, reaching for the buttons of his shirt.
    “Way ahead of you,” Sandra replied.
    The next thing Thad knew, a little white tank top landed on his face, making him blinder than he already was. He laughed, yanking the soft material free—just in time to catch a flash of moonlit, lightly freckled skin racing down the bank toward the gurgling stream.
    He hastily went to work on his shirt, giving up on the buttons and ripping it over his head. His belt gave him a little trouble, and by the time he had his pants down around his ankles, he could hear her splashing into the water, giving off a little squeak of pleasure as she submerged as deep as the shallow stream would allow.
    “And you claim you’ve never done this before?” Thad yelled as he ran forward, his bare feet turning against the damp mud of the bank.
    His underwear