Dating an Alien Pop Star

by Kendra L. Saunders

  When I wake up, I can smell something delicious and feel the warmth of unfamiliar blankets. At first, I smile, stretching, thinking I must have fallen asleep at a friend’s house, but then all at once, I realize exactly where I am and bolt upright in bed.

  Griffin’s beside me, cross-legged, reading from an issue of Cosmo while munching down a juicy piece of bacon. He turns his head and smiles at me, brown hair sticking up here and there in patches. He looks incredibly comfortable, casual, and familiar, except for those strange eyes.

  “They brought us breakfast,” he says. “Help yourself.”

  “Ugh, I thought you were a dream!”

  Griffin finishes his piece of bacon and closes the magazine. “Do you know that most human men lie about wanting to get married so they can trick a girl into sleeping with them?”

  “I’m sure they do.”

  Griffin clicks his tongue. “You slept with me last night, and I didn’t lie to you about anything.”

  “I didn’t sleep with you. We did sleep beside each other, but that’s not what they’re talking about in that magazine. It means something different when people say it, you know… that way.”

  “Curious.” Griffin leaps off the bed, leaving the room only long enough to retrieve two bags from Macy’s. “Here you are. They should fit.”

  With a bit of hesitation, I peer into the bags and find dresses inside… several dresses, one red, one yellow, and one pink with black piping. I remove them, one by one, and stare at them. They are cute—really cute. The yellow one has a Kim Gordon vibe, too.

  “Well?” Griffin says. “Do you like them?”

  I turn over the price tag and spot a four-digit number. “They’re great, but I think this one cost more than I earn in a year. Are you sure you want to spend this much…?”

  “We acquired a good deal of your money before we arrived,” Griffin says with a casual wave of his hand. “Today we meet our new fans, so you’ll want to look good. There will be a lot of holopics.”

  “Holopics?”

  “What do you call them? Photographs? There will be a lot of those.” Griffin pats at his messy hair, grinning. “I’ve been told there are paparazzi waiting outside already.”

  “Why?”

  “For me, of course!” Griffin stalks off then, into the bathroom, and I hear the water turn on. Thankfully, he doesn’t request my presence or command me to join him in the bath, so I’m left to my own devices in the room, alone except for one of the bodyguards.

  “You must have an exciting job,” I say, laughing a little. Wait, why did I laugh? I feel and sound nervous. And my hands are doing that nervous thing they usually do during job interviews or really long dinner parties at home with my mom and her sisters. “Following him around all the time, I mean. He’s so peculiar.”

  “Dangerous is a better description,” the bodyguard says, speaking for the first time. His voice is raspy and a little frightening—certainly less human than Griffin or Devon’s. “The Emperor President’s son is very… should I say, unpopular.”

  “With who?”

  “Everyone.”

  Devon throws open the doors to his room, waltzing in wearing a gray robe tied tight around his waist. Now he really does look like a billionaire on holiday, complete with glowing, bronzed skin and a huge smile. He’s holding a glass of orange juice in one hand. “Ah, good morning! What a beautiful day.”

  Beautiful? One glance at the window reveals it’s a bit overcast and will likely rain at any moment. “Morning.”

  “I hope it’ll rain today,” Devon says. He takes a long sip from his orange juice. “This is wonderful. Very tasty. I much prefer it to that strange Coke stuff you have. But it’s not as good as coffee.”

  “You want it to rain? In Manhattan?”

  “Well, rain is wonderful.”

  “Not in Manhattan. Not when you’re walking. Not when you’re probably going to run into a really cute guy on your way to the subway, your hair’s ruined, he’s miraculously going to appear and see you, and you’re a mess and you have to spend three stops hoping to sink into the floor, only to spill your latte all over yourself while trying to walk by him to get off the train.”

  Suddenly, I realize I’m actually standing in a swanky hotel suite with a bunch of aliens who kidnapped me, not reliving an embarrassing moment from my fifth day in the city.

  “Well, I happen to like rain,” Devon says. “It very rarely rains where we’re from. We have to process a lot of our own water after what happened in the last war.”

  Now I really realize I’m in a swanky hotel suite with a bunch of aliens. “I’m sorry,” I say after a long pause. “About the war.”

  “It finished up quite some time before I was born, so it’s alright. We’re figuring it all out as best we can. Our population is almost half what it was before the war, which is quite impressive, considering it had dwindled to thirty percent for a while. Of course, a lot of our population is a bit young, still.”

  When I think of wars, I think of the grainy, disembodied sort of things I’ve seen on the television since I was a little girl. Wars in deserts, in small villages, in places I’ll never visit in my life, and in my history books. I’ve never seen anything outside of a television screen or a newspaper article that even slightly resembles a real war. It’s the dumb luck of being born in America, but suddenly, I feel more than a little guilty.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.” Devon shrugs. “Sometimes, it takes ruining everything you love to realize how much you loved it in the first place.” He casts a wistful look at his orange juice, as if he too has disappeared elsewhere in his mind and memories, but then he smiles at me. “We’re working on it, though. All of us.”

  “What was the, uh, the war about?”

  “Oh, the usual. Resources. Fear. I’m a peace lover myself, but I can see how some people might justify their violence when fear’s involved. Especially fear on such a massive scale. It’s sad, because before all that, we’d progressed to a point of scientific excellence, a real beacon of thought and discovery in our galaxy.”

  “Is your planet sick now?” The theme music from Bill Nye the Science Guy fills my head, uninvited.

  “Sick? Well, I suppose it’s a bit worse than that, really. But we’ve made a lot of progress, all of us. Lots of advancements in new science and technology. And once we nearly destroyed everything in the name of making it better, we realized we needed to try a different approach. There’s still those who believe in violence and seek to hurt anyone they disagree with, but their numbers are decreasing, I think. Griff’s father’s got a very strong grip on things.” He pauses. “Some would say too strong, but he’s got a real load to deal with, doesn’t he?”

  Without thinking, I raise an eyebrow and must look quite incredulous, because Devon laughs.

  “Are you surprised?”

  “No! Wait, what do you mean? Surprised about what?” I ask.

  “That Griffin’s the way he is, when his father's like that.”

  “Well, I don’t know him very well, so who am I to judge?” I clear my throat. “But he is kind of spastic.”

  As if on cue, Griffin marches out of the bathroom, mostly dressed. He has on the black skinny jeans from before, along with that ugly, yellow shirt and half a sweater, which he seems to have tried to put on upside down. It’s now hanging strangely around his neck, pooled at his shoulders.

  “What’re you two in here whispering on about?” he demands.

  I can’t help laughing at his predicament, even as I’m untangling him from the mess he’s made. “You’re not wearing the yellow shirt. And you’re not wearing this sweater. Stand right there and don’t move,” I say as I remove the shirt from him. Maybe if I hide it under the bed, he’ll forget about it.

  “Today, I meet my fans,” Griffin says. “So you need to dress me accordingly. You’re my stylist.”

  I roll my eyes, but I don’t say anything. After a bit of searching, I locate a wh
ite shirt and the black leather jacket I’d snagged for him during our unending shopping trip the day before. He complains and grumbles as I help him into it, but once he’s dressed and run off to look in a mirror, he returns with a smirk on his face.

  “I look incredible! Good job, Wanda. Why don’t you go get ready now, so we can leave? I have loads of adoring fans waiting outside.”

  After gathering up the pink dress, I hurry to the bathroom and pause in the doorway. “Don’t come in here for any reason,” I say, pointing at Griffin. “Even if you have a fashion meltdown, you are not even to touch this doorknob.”

  “You don’t want me to see you without your clothes?”

  A blush creeps up my face. “No, I don’t want you to, and that’s my right and my choice. Not all of us are comfortable running around in our underwear.”

  Griffin sniffs. “Why? You’re quite beautiful, Wanda. I’d think you’d want to show off at every opportunity. But don’t worry; I’ll respect your wishes.” With that, he turns back to Devon and speaks in their weird alien language, lots of hand gestures included to punctuate his meaning.

  I slam the bathroom door shut to hide a surprised smile that’s trying to take over my face. I’m supposed to be mad at Griffin for kidnapping me, not feeling strangely proud he’s just proclaimed, in that annoyingly superior tone, that I’m beautiful. That’s just silly.

  Now, this bathroom is big enough to need a tour guide, so I locate the shower and just leap in before I get too overwhelmed. Inside, I find about ten bottles; all of them have been left open, and most of them are oozing shampoo, conditioner, or body wash onto the floor of the shower. “Griffin,” I mutter, glancing through them for something helpful. Ah, shampoo. That’ll work. And conditioner! Good.

  I’ve always been an expert at fast showers, thanks to the insistence of my parents and, more recently, the lack of sustainable hot water in my apartment, so I’m in and out of the shower rather quickly.

  The towels are softer and more luxurious than I’m used to, and the array of products and tools waiting on the bathroom counter are a little shocking—a flat iron, two blow dryers, and one of those plug-in spinning brushes are among the selection. Huh.

  After tugging and brushing my very curly, dark blonde hair into something resembling order, I indulge in a few drops of this, a few squirts of that, a bit of this, and a tad of that. Really, if one is offered a free Sephora counter, shouldn’t one accept?

  A screech from the other side of the bathroom door reminds me that I’ve been kidnapped by aliens, and I rush through the last steps of tugging on my new pink dress. It fits almost perfectly around my full hips and doesn’t even gap at the top, like many dresses do. Thanks, Mom, for the lack of substantial cleavage. It swirls out around my knees as I walk to the bathroom door and prepare for whatever will be happening on the other side of the wall.

  “What was that noise?” I ask, noting that everyone’s in roughly the same place they’d been before I walked into the bathroom.

  “Oh, Griff just found out he’s been asked for an interview,” Devon says with a little shrug. “Someone rang the hotel to inquire after him about this one and possibly another one tomorrow night. He’s a bit excited.”

  Griffin screeches again, at a pitch I’m certain isn’t even relatively possible for a human to make, and plants a huge kiss on Devon’s cheek. “This is brilliant.” Griffin waves me over. “They want me to come to the studio later this afternoon for an interview. Think they’ll give me a swag bag? I want a swag bag. Maybe one with some fancy hand moisturizers.”

  “Maybe. But you should probably stop making that noise before you break a window.”

  Griffin just laughs, and Devon disappears to change his clothes. I locate my shoes and before I know what’s happening, we’ve all been herded out of the room and into an elevator by the security team. Griffin’s rocking on his heels even before the doors open, insisting on bursting out first. His security team nervously keeps to either side of him, watchful and vigilant in a manner they weren’t the night before.

  Odd.