His blue gaze didn’t leave my face when he said, “It was my decision, Lydia. I mean no disrespect by it.”
Lydia’s voice shook slightly. “You can still undo this.”
Grey finally tore his eyes from me and looked at her. “It’s happening to you, too. I’ve noticed.” Lydia’s face lost a shade of color.
His ocean blue eyes found mine again. I was struck again by their brightness. Like the snow illuminated by the moon. He looked at me with an intensity I had never seen before on his face. Then the corners of his mouth slowly turned up ever so slightly, and he said, “You said you were falling in love with me?”
Embarrassed, I glanced at Lydia, who was staring at me like I was something she just stepped in. I looked back at Grey and shrugged. “Um... well, yeah, but...”
The book fell to the floor as he started toward me. I heard Lydia call his name in a panicked voice. But he didn’t look back. His arms closed around me, crushing me to him, his face filling my field of vision, his eyes sparkling like the sea after a storm. I could have sworn I heard waves crashing on the shore as he kissed me.
My tears overflowed, and I felt the cold wetness of them on my cheeks. I could smell the ocean. The air smelled sweeter. It was colder. But I was warm against Grey’s chest. I felt more drops on my cheeks and now my forehead.
Grey untangled one of his hands from my hair and laid his warm palm against my cheek. He broke our kiss and softly brushed across my lips with his thumb. The cold confused me, but with him so close to me, still holding me against his broad chest, with his fingers brushing the fine hair behind my ear, I couldn’t think straight. All I felt capable of was breathing him in.
A sudden cold wind and barrage of cold droplets of water snapped me awake. I ripped my eyes away from his. We were standing on my terrace at The Water Tower. It was raining. I saw the gray ocean heaving under the heavy surf. Dark clouds hung low in the sky.
I looked around at the familiar terrace, unsure of what I was seeing. Was this a trick? Had he drugged me? My breath started coming in gasps, and I pushed away from him. Where was the door to his room? The walls were gone. The books were gone. Lydia was gone. The cold rain splattered against my face and hair as I walked a few steps, then turned and walked another few steps in a different direction, but the terrace surrounded me. Why couldn’t I breathe? Where was I?
This wasn’t real. It was a dream, I told myself. I tried to take a deep breath but felt like I’d forgotten how. I clutched the neck of my rain-soaked t-shirt in panic. I felt warm hands close around my upper arms. Grey spun me around to face him again.
“It’s okay, Autumn. Everything’s okay. Look at me and take a deep breath.” His voice was calm and low. Little black spots appeared in my vision. I was going to pass out. I stared into his eyes and dragged a ragged breath into my burning lungs. The black spots faded.
“Good. Do it again,” he said.
The next breath was easier. My knees suddenly felt weak, and I wobbled in his arms.
“I should get you inside.” He rubbed my arms to warm me. “Can you walk?”
Definitely not, I thought. “Just let me sit for a second.” I motioned to one of the nearby chairs, the soaked cushion dripping onto the wooden floor. With one motion, he scooped me up, one arm around my back and the other under my knees and carried me across the terrace to the covered staircase. As he descended down the stairs, I noticed Rissi’s yellow rain boots sitting by the top step. They were full of water. For some reason, the sight made it real for me. We were really here. But how on Earth? That phrase suddenly held new meaning for me.
I stared at Grey as he opened the door, and we entered the living room. He sat me down and pulled the giant afghan off the back of the couch, then wrapped me in it like a burrito. His blonde hair dripped rainwater down his face, and his wet navy sweater clung to his chest.
I took a shaky breath. “What happened? How did we get here? How did you do that?” I demanded.
“We call it astral projection. It’s something else we’ve learned to do. Moving atoms around... I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you, but I had to prove it somehow. I didn’t think you’d believe me otherwise.”
I stared at him. Well, I was starting to believe him now. “So we’re really here? This isn’t, like virtual reality or something?”
“Yes,” he murmured, “We’re really here.” He touched his palm to my cheek, then my forehead. “You’re cold,” he said, then stood up and looked around. I watched as he crossed the room to the thermostat and turned on the heat. Then he studied the electric fireplace for a moment until he found the switch. Once the fire was lit, he moved a chair in front of the fireplace, scooped me off the couch and placed me in it. He sat down in front of me on the brick hearth.
“My name is Greyson Alexander. I came to Earth in 1803, after leaving my home planet, Andros. I want to make sure you understand that I’m a human being,
just like you are
.” He said the last four words slowly, emphasizing each one. “I’m just from a different star system. Physiologically, I’m exactly like any other human male from Earth. This is
my
body that I was born with on Andros. I didn’t steal it from anyone. I’m not a parasite that inhabits people’s bodies. My parents didn’t send me here in a little space ship when I was a baby; I didn’t travel here in a lightning bolt, and nothing is going to pop out of your stomach if you kiss me.”
I was surprised when a chuckle escaped my lips at his recap of alien pop culture. Grey’s eyes lit up.
Encouraged, he continued, “You remember me telling you about eradicating emotions from our culture?”
I nodded. He stood up and walked over to a stack of bath towels sitting on a drying rack, waiting to be put away. As he unfolded one, he continued, “Twenty years before I was born, emotions became illegal on Andros. Our government believed emotions were counter-productive and that they hindered us from advancing our race. You’d be amazed at the progress we made after that.”
He rubbed his head for a moment, drying his hair. When he emerged from the towel, his hair stuck straight out, giving him a pleasantly rumpled look. “Have you ever tried to concentrate when something was bothering you? Takes a lot longer to be productive, doesn’t it?”
“So, you’re like that Star Trek character?” I asked, trying to remember if it was the guy with pointy ears who talked about staying rational, or if it was the Scottish one.
He laughed and handed me a fresh towel, then peeled off his wet sweater, laid it carefully across the fire-warmed bricks and sat back down. His gray t-shirt was damp in the front and clung to his chest, and I had to try not to stare.
“I’m with a group called The University,” he said. “We’re historians and scientists, and we pride ourselves on our ability to repress these natural impulses.”
Grey paused to check if I was following. I squeezed my wet hair with the towel and nodded for him to keep going. He leaned back against the brick wall beside the fireplace and continued, “I joined The University when I was seventeen and was a part of the team working on the Elemental Vitamin. It’s a supplement that preserves the human body and keeps it from succumbing to the aging process. You saw me taking my monthly dose yesterday.
“We tried to introduce the vitamin to the rest of the population, but they rebelled, saying it was unnatural to live forever, and tempers were already high because of the Emotion Eradication Act, ironically.
“There was a violent backlash against our government and The University.” Grey’s face began to look troubled. “On my eighteenth birthday, my parents asked me to leave. They were involved with a very radical group that opposed everything the government and The University was doing. We were one extreme, and they were another. We tried to keep order, but it was like trying to stop a dam from crumbling. They became violent, and there was an attack on The University—a bomb went off outside one of our laboratories. A lot of lives were lost on both sides. My parents were among them.”
I held the blanket tighter around me, as if I were trying to hold myself together. I wondered what kinds of emotions Grey had pushed away when his parents died protesting the very thing he believed in.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“We left,” he said, shrugging. “There wasn’t much we
could
do. We didn’t want to cause more problems by staying.”
“You left the
planet
?” I asked, bewildered. “Couldn’t you have just gone somewhere else?”
“Andros is very small and quite crowded, which is part of the reason we created the Elemental Vitamin. So our population growth could be controlled. Once we achieved a certain number, there would be no need for death or reproduction.”
I could get behind the idea of death not being our ultimate doom anymore, but no reproduction? No babies? No... sex? Well, I thought, if you’re repressing all your emotions, I suppose marriage, sex and babies
would
fall by the wayside.
I stood up, shaking off the blanket. The heat from the fire had warmed me substantially. “Are you hungry?” I asked him.
“Um, yes. I guess I am.” He followed me into the kitchen. It wasn’t so much that I was hungry, but that I felt the need to keep my hands busy. “Do you like peanut butter and jelly?” I began pulling items from the pantry.
“Love it,” he said. “One of my favorites. But... where did you get the bread?”
I batted my eyelashes at him. “Made it.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I’m impressed.”
“Good,” I laughed, realizing that my ease was due to my immense relief that he wasn't crazy after all. I pointed to a stool and said, “Have a seat. Tell me what you did after you left Andros.” Grey perched on the stool and watched as I took the bread from the fridge, cut thick slices and slathered them with peanut butter.
“We began visiting other planets, observing and recording history, learning and studying. We never interacted or interfered, and we tried to go unnoticed if possible. The University believes that every society has its own course, and it’s our job to observe and record as much history from as many sources as we can, maintaining the largest collection of sentient knowledge in the universe. I asked to come to Earth, because I’d heard it looked a lot like Andros.”
“It does?” I asked, surprised. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but pictures of giant, sleek cities and futuristic cars came to mind first. “Hope you like extra jelly,” I said and smiled at him as I handed him a plate.
“Is there any other way to have it?” Grey’s smile turned sad. “Earth looks so much like Andros I would forget sometimes I wasn’t home.”
We sat down across from each other at the kitchen table and began to eat. Rain pattered lightly against the window beside us.
“So... if you’ve been here for what... over two hundred years... where’s the rest of The University?” I asked.
“They’re around. Some are living on other planets, some are living on The University’s ship. Lydia and I are the only members currently living on Earth.”
“Why didn’t you just leave when The Plague struck?”
“We travel to and from our ship by astral projection. The University developed the ability after nearly a hundred years adrift in space. It’s quite handy, actually. It allowed us to be more than just explorers in space. Suddenly we could leave the ship. But it’s hard to get back. You see, The University ship is in constant transit. I can only project somewhere when I know exactly where it is. Think of it like this. If you see a target that’s affixed to a wall, you could throw a ball at it and probably hit it, right? Well, take that same target and imagine it moving all around the room at variable speeds, then try to hit it. Odds are, you’re going to miss. So the ship stops every four years at a rendezvous point, and the target becomes still again. When the Crimson Fever appeared, we were in between rendezvous times, so we couldn’t leave if we’d wanted to.”
“Okay, but if you’re not supposed to get involved, why did you? And Lydia?”
“It felt wrong not to help, so I did, and Lydia, well like I said, we’re partners, so she followed my lead. She was against the idea at first, but I’ve seen her crack some since then. The more time she spends in close quarters with others... I know she’s become as emotionally invested in those people as I have. It’s just another reason I think we’re not meant to live this way. My parents were right.” He paused a moment, then took another bite. “Wow, this is the best meal I’ve had in a long time.”
He polished off the rest of his sandwich, and I watched, impressed. I had barely gotten through half of mine, and he’d been the one doing all the talking. I took a deep breath, feeling full already, and detected a lovely citrus hint in the air. Instinctively, I looked toward my lemon tree, but it wasn’t there. Ben must have moved it to the roof. Why did I smell citrus then? I inhaled again, and Grey watched me curiously.
“Do you smell that? The citrus smell? Like... lemons?” I asked.
He chuckled and said, “It’s probably me.”
“You?’ I asked.
“The E-Vitamin. I mix a small portion of it with Vitamin C. Citrus fruits are a good source for that. Sometimes I overdo it a little. Sorry.” He laughed.
Suddenly, I began putting the pieces of the puzzle together. The fruitless lemon tree that always seemed to smell faintly of citrus. The food and water jugs that mysteriously appeared. The shadow that had terrified me and made me think I was going crazy.
“You left me water and food, didn’t you?”
“I told you I checked on you.”
“I knew I saw someone in the kitchen that day! Why did you leave out the detail that you actually came
into
my apartment! I can’t believe you were here all those times? You could have just knocked on the door or something! Why did you leave when I said something?”
“It would have been too hard explain. I’m not supposed to be able to get up the elevator without your key, remember? And how would I have gotten your attention from the lobby?”
“I’m sure you would have thought of something, Mr. ‘I’m good with electronics,’” I grumbled, half-pleased that he had been watching out for me and half-scared that he might have seen me dancing around in my underpants.
He laughed, “Don’t worry, most often it was nighttime when I came.”
Good, I thought, he only would have seen me snoring in my bed with my mouth hanging open. Most likely drooling. Lovely. At least it would have been dark, and he wouldn’t have seen too many horrifying details... my thoughts slowed as a thought drifted to the surface of my mind. Something Grey had said back in his room.
I can see in the dark. That’s how I recognized you.
“You can see in the dark. Is that like what night vision goggles do?”
He shook his head. “Not that well. Because of the E-Vitamin, I’m able to see better than most humans, but not quite as well as a cat.”
Another memory painfully popped into my head. I was flipping through the moments when I’d been alone with him in the dark, grateful he couldn’t see me, and landed on the time when he brought me the backpack I left in the crawlspace. Counting on the darkness to hide me, I’d changed in front of him. I was mortified.