No sooner have we arrived in our new suite than Devon claims one of the rooms, retiring to it and closing the door without a word. At first, I think perhaps he just needs to collect his thoughts, but then I hear him speaking quietly in his language from the other side of the door.
If Griffin hears it, he doesn’t say anything. He circles his room a few times, poking about and peering at the artwork hanging on the walls, and then turns his attention to one of the silent bodyguards. “Go get our things from our other hotel. Make sure you don’t leave anything behind, understand? I want all of my clothes, and my Bowie record. They’re sending a record player up and I need to listen to Bowie for inspiration, as I plan my concert.”
The bodyguard nods and shuffles to the door without a word, followed by one of his companions.
A quiet buzzing noise, emanating from my purse, captures my attention, and I cross the room quickly to extract my cell phone. Mom and Dad flashes across the screen, and I sigh.
“What’s that?” Griffin asks, perched on the edge of the room’s writing desk.
“My mom keeps trying to call me. She’s probably really worried,” I mumble, weighing the phone in my hand. I can answer it and face my mother’s hysterical blabbering and fear, or I can put it off a little longer. Of course, the latter will only insure even more blabbering fear for the future. “She worries a lot about things—”
Griffin crosses the room so quickly that I barely even register that he’s moved, and he snatches the phone away from me. He slides it open with ease, placing it at his ear. “Hello, hello? Hello? Kirkwood mother? Hello, yes, this is Griffin Valentino. Did you ever consider naming your daughter Wanda?” He bites into his lip, a smile creeping over his face. I try to snatch the phone back from him, but he leaps away from me easily, his footing graceful as he dodges any attempts I make to recover the phone. “Yes? I knew it! Ha-ha!”
I try again to retrieve the phone, but he sidesteps me.
“She’s fine, yes, I assure you. She’s a wonderful girl, very helpful and very smart. And so beautiful!” Griffin says, and then pauses. “Oh, yes, I did. We share a bed so my friend can have his own space. He’s quite fussy, you know, not because of a bad back or anything, but he likes having his space. I invade his space whenever possible, but during a trip like this, so far from home, it wouldn’t be very kind of me.” Griffin snickers. “Yes, what? No, don’t worry about that; my bodyguards look after all of us. What…?”
Growing desperate at this point, I throw my full body weight into him, knocking him back against the wall and grappling for the phone. Griffin lets out a quiet puff of air from the collision with the wall and my body slamming into his, but only responds by looping his arm around my waist.
“Give me the phone!” I say between clenched teeth, finally managing to pry it away from him. “Mom?”
“Daisy! Daisy, how on earth did you meet a rock star?”
I almost drop the phone. “Uhh, what? Mom, I’m okay. Don’t worry.”
“Of course I won’t, he told me he’s taking good care of you. But how did you do it? I thought you said you’d only seen a couple of reality TV stars since you moved to the city!”
Griffin smiles smugly at me, still holding me around the waist. I untangle myself from him and cross the room, phone pressed to my ear. “Aren’t you worried…?” I whisper, and my mother laughs.
“Darling, he promised his bodyguards will take good care of you. Will you get to meet Ryan Seacrest? If you meet him, you have to tell him how much I like him.”
This is insane. My mom and I haven’t had one conversation since I moved that didn’t involve her suggesting I buy new locks, talking to me about ratings for various pepper sprays, or relaying news stories she heard about dead bodies found in dumpsters.
“Mom.”
“Griffin seems like a very nice young man, though I hope you’re being safe. Having a baby with a rock star is a tricky business, what with all those months on the road and the groupies.”
“Mom!”
“Don’t be afraid to remind him about protection. In this day and age, we’re allowed to speak up about that kind of thing.”
From across the room, Griffin snickers, raising one hand to his face and rubbing his eyes. “Ask her about your name, Wanda.”
“You know, I think I have a coupon,” Mom says. “Not for the flavored ones, but the regular ones work just as well.”
“Mom, please stop talking about this.” I shoot Griffin a nasty look. “What did Griffin ask you? About my name, I mean?”
“Oh, well, he wondered about us calling you Wanda. We were going to name you Wanda, but your father vetoed it at the last minute, because he thought it sounded a bit dated.”
Griffin walks by me, smirking.
“Alright, Mom, look… I don’t know when we can talk again, so please don’t worry if I don’t answer,” I say. “I’ll call you when I have a chance.”
“Call me if you meet Ryan Seacrest!”
I slide the phone closed.
“Well now, Wanda, I guess I was right about you, wasn’t I?” Griffin asks, sprawling out on his back on the king-sized bed.
“The only thing you were right about is that my mom wanted to give me a dumb name.” I cast him another dark look, but he just smiles in return. “Aside from that, you were wrong about everything else. You didn’t even want me along at first, remember?”
With that, Griffin’s smile slips a little. “Who do you think chose you for our human escort, Wanda?”
“Devon, obviously.”
“Wrong.” Griffin shrugs, holding my gaze for a few long seconds. “But speaking of Dev, I think he’s had quite enough time in there on his own.” Griffin disappears from view and reappears across the room. He knocks on his friend’s door and doesn’t stop until Dev finally opens it. “What’ve you been in here doing, anyway?”
Dev’s voice drops to an undertone, and they speak back and forth in their language. Judging by Dev’s guarded expression and Griffin’s tensed shoulders, they can’t be discussing something pleasant.
I shove my phone back into my purse and wander closer to them. “Did something happen?”
Dev looks between Griffin and me, as if considering if he wants to tell me anything, but he finally relents and nods. “I’ve just spoken with our contact back at the landing site, and he confirmed it wasn’t anyone friendly. So it’s either nothing or it’s…” Dev stops, sifting his fingers through his golden hair. “We’ll need to be careful. Very careful.”
“We’ll need to set up our concert event, is what we’ll need to do. The sooner we get in touch with the Origin Collective, the sooner we can gather some helpful information and go shove it in the Emperor President’s face,” Griffin says.
Dev lets out a heavy sigh, closing his eyes. “You’re running short on persuasion, Griff, and probably healing, too. Do you think you can handle something like a concert?”
“I’m not running low, look.” Griffin raises a hand to his injured lip, brushing his pale fingers over the wound.
“You don’t have to do that; it’s no time to show off,” Devon says. “We can just use the first aid kit the humans—err, the hotel staff—left for us.”
Griffin motions at Dev with his free hand, as if to shut him up, but as the seconds click by and nothing happens, I can see the slightest twinge of fear in Griffin’s eyes. Then, all at once, the busted lip heals up, the swelling disappears, and he lets out a little sigh.
“See? Good as ever,” he says. “It’s always harder to heal yourself, that’s all.”
“Griff.”
“Don’t use that tone with me, or we’ll end up in another scuffle,” Griffin says, but the look they exchange is far from violent. “I’m fine! I want my bloody David Bowie record, though.”
“What if you didn’t have to use your finger-snappy powers at all?” I interject, and both of them look at me with something like amusement. “No, I’m serious! You want to be a real pop star, you want to dre
ss like one, and feel like one. Why don’t you learn to actually play the music? The instruments, I mean.”
“Real pop stars don’t play instruments. They stand behind a microphone, wear great clothes, and everyone wants to be them or kiss them. Or,” Griffin says, a big smile filling his face, “sleep with them.”
“Maybe you should be a rock star, then. Rock stars are better, anyway. You know, like David Bowie.”
“How’s Griffin going to do that? He doesn’t know what he’s doing!” Dev says.
“I’ll teach him. I’m not very good, but… well, there’s the Internet for everything I don’t know.”
Dev bites into his lower lip, staring at Griffin. “I dunno, Daisy.”
“She’s right. I can learn! I can be a rock star!”
“Yeah,” I say. “And we’ll set up a Twitter account so you can update your fans on progress for the upcoming concert without revealing your location. You can even post pictures of yourself and answer their questions there, so they feel connected, and you won’t even have to use your magic. Or whatever it’s called.”
At this, Dev seems to relax a little. “Alright, we’ll try that.”
The bodyguards finally return with our belongings; Griffin rushes across the room with his arms held wide, demanding someone unearth his Bowie record.
I want to ask Dev more questions, mainly about this other alien who’s showed up on my planet, but he rushes off to sort through the belongings with Griffin. Before long, the two of them are laughing uproariously and playfully shoving each other around, talking in their language. Griffin shoves Devon a little too hard, causing him to fall into a small dresser and upset a lamp. The lamp stops just short of hitting the ground and levitates in place, a whisper away from shattering to a million pieces, and Devon regains his feet to pluck the lamp from its airy perch and place it back on the dresser.
“You little arse,” Devon says, the only warning Griffin needs to make a run for it, apparently. Griffin darts away, jumping on top of and then over our bed, narrowly preventing himself from falling onto a dresser, and then hiding himself behind one of the bodyguards. When this doesn’t halt Devon’s determined approach, Griffin books it across the room again, this time grabbing hold of me from behind, as if I’m a human shield. “Well, that’s heroic of you, Griff. Hide behind Daisy.”
I can feel Griffin’s laughter vibrating through his body even before I can hear it. He releases his hold on my arms and steps out from behind me, making it all of a step before Devon charges him and knocks him clear to the floor.
“Is this really a good idea?” I ask finally, as they grapple with each other on the carpet. “Griffin, you just fixed your lip, you know.”
Just as I think they might kill each other, Griffin manages to pin Devon down and hold him in place long enough to assert his authority, and then climbs to his feet with a smug expression plastered on his face. He picks up a bag with the clothes he’s bought me, holding it out in offering.
“Don’t you like the tops I got you?” he asks, probably because one of the sparkliest bras sits directly on top of the bag, in all its lacy pink, bedazzled glory. “I was assured they’re the finest breast decorations that your planet has to offer.”
A slight blush creeps up my face. Usually, the only two people in my life who talk about my breasts are my mother—worrying if I show too much cleavage—and one of my roommates—making oddly specific and somewhat hurtful analogies about my small chest. “I’ll try them on later.”
“But don’t you like them?” Griffin continues, dangling the bag between us, so I snatch it away from him.
“You need to get some rest,” I say. “It’s getting late. Wrestling like a seven-year-old boy on sugar isn’t going to help anything, especially when you fell asleep in a busy restaurant earlier.”
Dev picks up a few bags from the floor and stifles a yawn of his own as he stands up. “I think she’s right, Griff. You should get some rest. We all should. If we’re in danger, we’ll need our wits about us.” He walks over to me, planting a quick kiss on my cheek, before saying something stern in his language to Griffin and retreating to his room.
The bodyguards shift around a bit, deciding who will stay awake and stand guard, and who will sleep. I finally feel as if I can turn the lights down in the room and get ready for bed. Despite all the excitement and tension that the boys experienced today, I’ve experienced just as much stress. Meeting Kyran at the library, making an appearance on a television show, sitting by for Griffin’s first musical performance, and then the whole scene at the restaurant with Jimmy… Never mind Griffin and Devon’s fight and the news about a possible new alien visitor…
I’m exhausted.
Placing the bag of clothes and underwear on the floor by the bed, I boldly climb up and claim my spot on the right side. When I turn my head to seek out Griffin’s gaze, I find him watching me with a raised eyebrow and a half smile.
“Get over here and go to sleep,” I say, with an unusual amount of authority. And, somewhat surprisingly, he obeys me, going so far as to leave behind all of his belongings without looking back.
In fact, he’s only looking at me, which is a bit unnerving once he’s joined me on the bed and stretched out on his side. We stare at each other until I start to feel a bit warm and uncomfortably pleased. No amount of denial could tell me I don’t find him enchanting when he’s so close, staring at me, especially as the remaining light dies out, seemingly on its own.
In the darkness, he’s illuminated by everything that makes him foreign to this planet, to my life, so I look away from him.
“You still won’t look into me, Wanda,” he whispers across the slight space between our bodies.
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Where I come from, we’re not as senseless and hurried as you are. We’re tired. We’re angry and hungry. But some things, the beautiful things, and love above all, that’s sacred. Don’t you look into each other here?”
“Eye contact?”
“No. No, it’s… it’s more than that, I guess. You don’t do it?”
“Most of us try not to make eye contact at all, especially in this city,” I say, thinking of advice I’d been given soon after moving to Manhattan. I’d held dear to it ever since, avoiding connections with other people whenever possible, especially of the eye-contact variety.
“How do you ever know anyone at all then?”
“I dunno. We ask questions when we go on dates. And then we just kind of accept the person and move in with them or move on.”
Griffin lets out a little ‘hmmmf’ noise. “But what about lovers? I understand that pop stars take part in meaningless sex, but surely, the rest of you don’t? Surely, you don’t, Wanda?”
I shift my pillows around a little, feeling nervous. “Earlier you said it wasn’t Devon who chose me,” I say, hoping this will effectively steer the conversation in a more comfortable direction than my lack of a love life. “Are you trying to say it was you?”
“Of course it was. You feel our similarity, don’t you? Our heritage?”
Now I have no idea what he’s talking about. “Uhhh. No?”
He considers this, turning onto his back. I’m sorry for the glow of his eyes to direct elsewhere, but I don’t dare say so.
“Before we exist in the way we do now, we exist elsewhere. We don’t remember it, of course, but sometimes we know that someone we meet came from the same place we did. Someone’s made from the same spirit matter. It’s why we’re drawn together. You don’t seek out that similarity here?”
“We usually seek out… well, I don’t know. A sense of humor? Money? Good hair? We’re not looking for magical spirit stardust.”
“Odd.”
Even though I don’t want to admit it, the idea is a bit interesting, even if nothing else. I shift around and clear my throat. “So you think you and I are made of the same magical stardust or something?”
“I believe so,” he says. “It’s a roman
tic notion, but I’ve always thought it was rather beautiful.”
“Was Devon made from it too?”
Griffin snickers. “Devon? Nah, Devon and me, we’re a different kind of match. After my mother died, my father went round gathering up the kids of nobles and politicians so he could find someone for me to play with, and I didn’t like any of them. He just wanted me to bugger off from moping around him all the time while he was busy. But then there was Devon, sitting by himself in the corner with a disgusted look on his face, so I asked him a question and he told me off. We’ve been best mates ever since.”
At this, I can’t help smiling a little. “That’s probably a better match than any silly stardust.”
“I’m lucky, that’s for certain. You know, one time…” he says, trailing off. After a few seconds, I realize he’s once again fallen asleep on me, this time with his mouth still hanging open, so I sigh and pull the covers up over him.
One of these days, I’ll write a memoir called, I Tucked an Alien Prince into Bed. You know, after we put on a massive concert event, get in contact with the Origin Collective, and send Griffin and Devon back home with good news, that is.
After I teach Griffin to play real music…
Dating an Alien Pop Star Page 17