How to Date an Alien (25 page)

I nodded, not looking up from the ground.
"It's okay. I understand."

Gavin left the room, not saying another word
as he closed the door behind him. I definitely understood what he
had been saying. The worst part was that he had said everything I
was too afraid to even let myself think.

The interns' last day really wasn't spent
working, but more like visiting every department so you could say
your goodbyes and be treated with whatever was the specialty
dessert of that planet. Mars had the best gelato, but Venus had a
concoction that I didn't think any human or alien should even try
to consume.

Things between Ace and I hadn't been the same
since we came back to Circe together. Sure, we still worked
together, and some nights I would stay with him in his room, but
there was this unanswered tension that neither of us wanted to
bring up. Our conversations always danced around what we really
wanted to talk about and usually were limited to talking about
work. He didn't even look at me the same. Instead of his eyes
glowing when he saw me and his teeth gleaming as he smiled, he just
looked like an empty vessel, without a thought behind his face.

When he kissed me it felt just as empty as
his eyes. There wasn't any passion behind it and he always looked
away when he was done. I wanted to talk about everything from being
captured to our agreed-upon, future marriage. But every time I
thought about bringing it up I couldn't. I did everything I could
not to talk about it, even though it was all I could think about,
and I wanted some comfort as to what our future was going to be
like.

"Congratulations on surviving your
internship!" Ody grasped me into a giant bear hug that I swore
broke another two of my ribs.

"Thanks, Ody." I tried to breathe against his
chest before he let me go.

"Are you going to come back next year? I'm
sure that Ace will always save a spot for you in the security
office." Ody looked past me, his eyes searching the room. "Where is
that Caltian of yours anyways?"

"Oh, he's in the office. I was on my way to
go see him." I sported the biggest grin I could for Ody's sake.

"You'd better not keep your future husband
waiting." Ody winked, patting me on the back before I started
toward the office.

The differences I saw in Circe since I first
started my internship were bizarre. Instead of being scared of the
aliens that walked by me, it was like they had become my new
family. Some of the aliens or humans would avoid me when I first
arrived, but now they went out of their way to talk to me or ask
how Ace and I were doing. I didn't fear the different creatures
that would sometimes fight in the cafeteria, but I did learn to
hold up a tray if an ink-spraying species started fighting with
another alien. Circe had become a second home to me. One where I
actually felt like I belonged more than I ever did in high
school.

The feelings I had for Circe made me really
think about my relationship with Ace. Sure, it wasn't the normal
high school relationship that other girls my age were having. He
wasn't going to give me his class ring, and we weren't going to
talk about going to prom. I had to face the facts that I wasn't
really a normal high school girl to begin with anyway, and being
happy meant a whole lot more to me than being normal.

"Ace?"

I pushed open the door to the office, knowing
that Ace would be inside. He sat in his usual chair, but instead of
turning toward me when I walked in the room, he sat still and
stared at a blank screen. Nothing was on it. No alien dating
profile or some sort of demonic alien blog, just a blank
screen.

"Is everything okay?" I walked closer, taking
my seat next to his.

He shook his head focusing his dark, empty
eyes on me. If I knew he had tear ducts I would swear that he might
have been crying. "Everything is fine." He took his eyes off mine
and turned back to the screen.

I grabbed his hand, even through his gloves I
could usually feel his warmth when it would radiate through me, but
they felt as cold as the rest of his body. "What's going on? For
real."

His eyes slowly shifted from the screen until
they were fixated on mine. The sadness behind them was the kind of
dark sadness that you found when you turned the lights off in an
orphanage. I could barely look at them without tearing up
myself.

"Do you really want to be with me, Alex? Or
did you just say those things to spare your own life?"

I shook my head. "What are you talking about?
Of course I want to be with you." I scooted my chair closer to his,
feeling the cold shock from his body when I leaned in.

"I heard your conversation with Gavin."

I rolled my eyes. "Oh please, since when do
you care what some lame human guy thinks?"

"Since you actually listened to what that
lame human guy had to say."

I tried to catch my breath, realizing that
Ace was right. Instead of enjoying what little time I had left with
Ace at Circe before going home, I was letting what Gavin said about
our relationship get inside my head and tear me away from all of
the things I really felt.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, looking down to the
ground. I felt ashamed and embarrassed. This alien gave up
everything to be with me and stay on Earth, and I took it for
granted by listening to what Gavin had to say.

"Hey." He tilted my chin up with his fingers,
letting our eyes meet. I could feel the warmth as it started to
spread back through his hand. "Nothing to be sorry about. If that's
how you really feel, we have at least five years before you're done
with school and we have to figure it out. But in the meantime
there's no reason why we can't just try and be a normal
couple."

A small smile started to creep onto my lips.
"Since when have we ever been a normal couple? I don't think we've
even been on an official date."

"That's because you always pick the stupidest
movies to watch."

I started to laugh, but stifled it, knowing
this was a serious conversation despite his attempt to make jokes.
"Ace, I do want to be with you, whatever that means now and for our
future. I'm not going to let someone else make my decisions for me.
You should know better than that."

He grinned, the whiteness of his teeth
spreading over his pale face as he leaned in closer. "So you're
saying that you still want to be with me? Maybe even think about
wearing a tiara?"

I shook my head. "I am not wearing a tiara.
That's not my style."

"Well I've got a few years to convince you of
that." His other hand trailed up my side, landing on the small of
my back as he pulled me closer. "You'll have a lot of time to think
when you're sitting alone in your room back in Illinois or your
dorm room at one of those Ivy League schools."

I didn't want to think about spending the
next year without him. How was I going to explain to my mom about
my new boyfriend? How would I even arrange to see him? "I'm sure
we'll have the holidays together and The Northern Arizona
University isn't that far away from here."

He tilted his head. "You know, I'm pretty
good at Earth's geography and I'm pretty sure that Columbia isn't
in Arizona."

"Well then it's a good thing that I'm not
going to Columbia." I breathed the words onto his lips before he
kissed me. His warm glow radiated through every part of my body and
made me never want to leave that moment.

"Elijah has been talking non-stop about how
his big sister went off to spend her summer playing with
airplanes," mom gushed as we pulled into the familiar oak-lined
neighborhood.

I smiled, watching out the window. Kids
played in the yard, making the most of their last few days of
summer. I might have hated living in small town suburbia for so
long, but there was something eerily comforting about the
cookie-cutter homes with their white picket fences and two-car
garages. I figured just because I was with an alien didn't mean I
had to give up that little piece of suburbia. After spending the
summer watching aliens surf the internet, I knew most of them lived
farther into the suburbs than I did.

"Yeah, I'll have to tell him all about it."
Of course, I had to leave out the fact that I was actually
interning at a secret government alien operation center, but I was
sure he would lose interest as soon as his favorite show came on
TV.

Mom pulled the sedan into the driveway of our
brick home that I never thought I would see again after that
summer. I inhaled the scent of fresh-cut grass and hose water as I
walked down the stone path to the front door. Inside I was greeted
by the familiar red walls of our living room and let my feet tap on
the hardwood floors. It smelled like my mom had attempted to bake,
again, and the aroma of spices and yeast rolled in from the
stainless steel kitchen. I dropped my suitcase near the leather
sofa and scanned the room, taking in everything from the pictures
on the walls to the toys scattered randomly on the floor near the
TV. Everything that I thought I would never see again and there it
was.

After spending the summer coming so close to
death more times than I could count and living my daily life among
people I barely knew, it felt good to be in some place so familiar.
I took in everything that I used to complain about from the house's
open floor plan, with the living room and kitchen all combined into
one and realized how good it felt to be among the things that were
normal. I knew there wouldn't be any evil queens or aliens coming
out from the fireplace, and even though I missed Ace and the other
alien friends I made, it was so good to be back home.

"Awex, you made it back fow me!" Elijah ran
toward me as fast as his chubby little legs could carry him.
Watching the way his eyes lit up when he saw me made it all
worthwhile to be back on Earth alive.

"Hey, little man." I crouched down as Elijah
threw himself into my arms.

"Did you bwing me somefing?" He pushed back a
strand of curls that had stuck to his forehead.

I smiled. "Well if you look in the front
pocket of my suitcase you might find something for you in
there."

"So it looks like the internship turned out
better than you thought." mom placed her hands on her tiny hips.
She looked more like my older sister than she did my mom with her
fitted t-shirt and boot cut jeans clinging to her small frame, but
I guess I couldn't blame her for looking good in whatever she wore.
She was still my mom and it was good to be able to see her
again.

I shrugged and stood up. "I think it won't
hurt to put on my application to Northern Arizona."

"Northern Arizona?" she questioned, tossing
her blond ponytail back before crossing her slim, pale arms across
her chest. "What happened to Columbia?"

"Awex?" Elijah tapped his tiny fingers at my
leg.

I looked down at him. "Yeah, El?"

"Who's dis?" He held up a picture.

I grabbed the picture from him, almost
forgetting that I put it in my suitcase. It wasn't anything
special, just one that I happened to snap when Ace and I were
fooling around with the webcam in the office. Even a photograph
couldn't hide the way that Ace's dark eyes could take my breath
away, or how much his radiant white smile could always make me
smile as well.

"That would be someone very special to me," I
replied.

"Is he youw boyfwiend?" Elijah giggled and
flashed his tiny teeth.

Boyfriend? It seemed kind of silly to call
the guy that I had agreed to someday marry in front of one the most
powerful queens in the universe my boyfriend.

"Yeah." I smiled, not taking my eyes off the
picture. "That would be Ace."

"Would this be your reason for wanting to go
to Northern Arizona?" My mom plucked the picture from my hand,
studying it as if Ace were any other boy with spiky black hair and
what looked like guyliner.

"Don't you think that he's a little old for
you?" She looked back at me.

I rolled my eyes, taking the picture from my
mom. "He's only eighteen." I turned, hiding my secret smile,
wondering how long I would be saying that about him. Elijah found
the plastic toy airplane that I had brought for him and was played
with it on the floor.

"I guess I better start unpacking."

I grabbed my suitcase and headed down the
hallway toward my room. I opened my door to see it was exactly how
I left it—same twin size bed in the corner, desk with my laptop,
and posters of different celebrities (who I now knew that most of
them weren't from this planet) parading my purple walls. But as I
shut my door, I suddenly felt different about my room, like
something had changed in me that made me a whole new person. I
smiled to myself, thinking that even though I was a different
person than the girl that left this house, one who knew more of
what she wanted in life, I wouldn't have traded my summer at Circe
for anything in the world.

I set the picture of Ace down on my desk,
propping it up against a stack of books. I looked up from the
picture at my computer screen where I saw the outline of someone's
head. I gasped, grabbing a paperweight from my desk as I turned
around. But it wasn't an evil alien coming to destroy me, or even
just my mom coming in to check on me, but my favorite alien.

"Ace?" I whispered, putting down the
paperweight. "How did you get here?"

He looked out of place in his temperature
control suit, standing in the middle of my pink shag rug and I
could tell that he felt it the way he shifted from side to side. I
started to feel self-conscious about having him in my room, which
was definitely crazy since we had been through a lot more together
than most couples did in their entire relationship. But yet I still
felt the urge to throw the kitten stuffed animals off my bed and
hide all traces of my girliness before he saw it.