Mech Pilot who puts a decal of a Diamond ring on their mid-season upgrade Mech.
When Madison looks up, there's a Forestwatch mech pilot on the other side of the desk, all broad-shouldered and smiling and in uniform; olive drab, with a wildfire respirator and a service hatchet in its neatly-buttoned holster balancing his shiny leather belt.
"Hi," he says. "Does the library have any books on remedial communication for meatheads?"
"Hi, George," she says, sighs, and rubs her forehead. "Is she— I'm sorry you're in the middle of this."
"Hey, she'd help if I had a fight with my wife," George says winningly.
"No, she wouldn't."
"Naw, she'd make fun of me." He shrugs. "Still. Partners. And she's a real downer right now."
"Give me a minute," Madison sighs, and goes to tell her colleague she's taking a smoke break.
"You don't smoke, Maddie."
"That nice Forestwatch pilot's going to teach me to start," Madison says flatly, and takes her thermos of coffee round the back of the library building.
"Look," George says. "Kit doesn't know what she did. She's sorry as hell, but she just doesn't, and she's really scared that if she says that it'll make it worse."
Madison sighs. "She didn't do anything," she says. "I'm not mad at her. I'm— maybe I'm a little mad at myself. I just need to cool off."
"You haven't spoken to her in a week."
Madison picks at a chip in the plastic handle of her coffee flask, and tries to remember how long it's been since she talked to Kit less than every day. Less than several times a day.
"She doesn't know where this came from, Mads," George says, in a gentle, nonjudgemental way. "Frankly, I don't either; you're really good together. If you want to talk about it...."
"Talking about it got me into this," Madison says, a little bitterly. "Maybe a month back, I— said a couple of things. Didn't really plan to. Didn't realise how much they'd been on my mind."
"Yeah?"
"I know she's got some bad history," Madison says. "We said we'd take it really slow and that's fine, that's— I wouldn't rush her for the world. But I maybe said some things about how much— how much I feel about her. How serious I want this."
"Okay?" George is squinting at her like there's some puzzle here that doesn't make sense. "So what happened this week?"
Madison takes her phone out of her pocket, finds a picture, turns the phone to show it to him. "You got the new mechs delivered that were in the last budget," she says. "And she pretty much painted hers up to say married to the job, sweetheart."
"Oh, boy," George mutters. "You don't actually have any remedial talk-to-your-girlfriend books, do you?" and he takes out his own phone. "Here, lemme show you— you have to promise not to laugh at the haircuts. This was when we'd been partners maybe a year?"
It's a photo of George and Kit, standing in front of two old-model Forestwatch mechs, looking impossibly young. Kit's is regulation paint; George's has a stylised pinup girl painted on it.
"The nose art, that was based on a photo of Francesca," he says. "We'd been dating for a while, then, and I was trying to work up the courage to pop the question. Took me another six months, but the paint job, that was for luck." He looks at the photo. "And maybe, you know, considering how the divorce went, maybe it wasn't, in the end. Look, this one, right?"
A later photo, later mechs: Kit's regulation, George's with a cartoon strongman lifting a huge barbell. "I had a lump," he says. "Got the paint job while I was waiting for the biopsy. Better luck on that one, touch wood. But then it was a tradition, I got nose art for luck every time, something I wanted to work out. See, this one was is when I started dating Ruth, it's from a crayon picture of a house that one of her kids drew, right? And maybe I'm better at marriage for the practice, touch wood again." He flashes a grin. "And the stork, you probably remember the stork art, right? From when we were trying for Polly."
"Shit," Madison says under her breath. All the painted mechs, and every single one of Kit's has been plain factory colours. Until now.
"Call her, maybe?" George says.
"Shit," Madison mutters again, dialling. "Which one of us was the remedial book for, exactly?"
"...I'll be inside," George says.
