"I knew it that night," Lamont said quietly, extending a hand to accept the cigarette from her before taking a long draw. "Back on the ship, though, it didn't seem like anything could be done with it."
"What do you mean?" Constance asked.
"The New Year's party," Lamont replied, his icy blue eyes turning to her. "First time I ever saw you. You were a real spitfire. I've never seen Rico so frightened."
Constance smiled, taking another tentative draw from the cigarette. It felt like a different life, a different world, but it had actually happened less than two months before. She had decided to attend the crew's New Year's party, an act of rebellion that had stuck in Miss Anna's craw. After loudly fending off Clyde and Walter, her would-be chaperones and Rico Estevez, who had assumed the role of Knight in Shining Armor, she had stubbornly done her best to enjoy the party until nearly everyone had left. She had ended up sitting in front of the observation window with Lamont Townsend, sharing his cigarette and having some silly conversation about what it was like to be a colonist. She figured she had made a fool of herself in front of everyone, once again betrayed by her temper, but Lamont gave no sign of that. He spoke with her, adult-to-adult, asking questions and listening to her answers with genuine interest. She had never met anyone like him before; unlike the colonist men, he was nuanced, complex. His words had layers. He had a sort of tragic gravity pierced through with cavalier wit. When she had returned to the colonist deck early that morning, quietly slipping into the cabin that she shared with the other single women, she felt happy in a way that was almost unknown to her, almost giddy. And she had been surprised when, a week or so later, after the memory had begun to feel like a barely-remembered dream, Lamont reappeared. Formerly a stranger like everyone else on the crew decks, he now became a regular visitor among the colonists.
"I knew it that night," Lamont said quietly, extending a hand to accept the cigarette from her before taking a long draw. "Back on the ship, though, it didn't seem like anything could be done with it."
"Done with what?" Constance asked, startled out of her reverie.
Lamont Townsend looked her in the eye as if the answer were obvious, a muscle working in his stubbled jaw. "How I feel about you."
Now Constance did cough, though Lamont was still the one holding the cigarette. She felt as if she had been hit in the chest with a cannonball. "What—what do you mean?" She stammered.
The newspaperman looked at her intensely. "You were like a firecracker. So full of life—blazing, glorious. Something in me had gone dark and, that night, I realized that you had set it to light again. I knew that I had found something—someone—that I couldn't live without. I had to get to know you better. To be close to you."
He handed the cigarette back to her. She took it, dumbly, automatically. As it passed between their hands, his fingertips brushed against her palm, nearly forming a grip before slipping away. "Surely," he said, earnestly holding her gaze, "you must have felt something too?"
I'm calling this another layer of dream. I don't feature Lamont this forward, at least about relationships.