The crowd fell into laughter and more applause. Noelle giggled in Steve’s arms, her hand toping the long, green sleeve covering his forearm. Behind her, Steve drew in a breath, his chest rising and falling, then he leaned down to whisper into her ear.
“Would you like to get some coffee… with me… after the dinner, maybe,” Steve tried to make his tongue cooperate. “Or…”
“I’d love to.” Noelle’s stomach fluttered. In that moment, she decided to stop doubting everything and accept this Christmas wish come true if that’s what it really was. If it wasn’t, she was at least going to have coffee with a nice guy and see where it could possibly go from there. No expectations, but she would allow herself a small sliver of hope.
Much pie was consumed and joyful conversation shared. Carols were sung, including a humorous rendition of ‘Baby It’s Cold’ by Amber and Kyle, followed by Garry and Mike serenading Rosa and Mary with ‘Feliz Navidad’. Noelle and Steve both had pumpkin pie, and they ate half a tub of whipped cream between them.
Garry groaned as he waddled between the tables, picking up cups. “Just point me in the direction of the door and roll me out to the truck!”
Steve laughed from the hallway leading into the kitchen. The guests had all departed, the younger kids were already in bed and the older kids were doing their best to stay awake and help the cleanup. Kyle was carrying a stack of plates behind Amber, Steve not missing how glued to her the young man had been all night. Steve hoped Amber had noticed it, too, and would let the kid down easy.
“You wouldn’t be hurting so much if you hadn’t eaten a whole pie,” Mike huffed, but he was no less full.
“It was pecan!” Garry argued, dumping the cups in the sink. “You know that’s my favorite, and Rosa’s pies are like magic in your mouth.”
Amber snickered. “Something tells me we’re going to be seeing a lot of boxes from Rosa’s in the office.”
“This is the last of it,” Anna carried in another stack of plates, setting them down and then helping Noelle unload her armfuls of cups filled with silverware. Anna glanced at Mike and Garry then put her hands on her hips. “Don’t just stand there groaning in gluttony! Get scrubbing!”
“Yes, ma’am!” Garry and Mike saluted in unison then began washing the dishes.
Noelle giggled, wondering how common that was for them. “You don’t have to do that.”
“You’re right,” Steve kissed the top of her head as he walked past on his way to grab a dishtowel. “We’re still going to, though.”
Amber grinned a flash of orange then looped her arm through Noelle’s elbow. “C’mon. It will be fast if we all do it.”
“I’ll help dry,” Kyle offered.
“You should be getting home,” Noelle protested. “You have work tomorrow.”
“Tonight, actually,” Kyle sighed. “They messed up my schedule again. I start at eleven, so no sense in me going to my apartment. I brought a change of clothes.”
Amber frowned at Kyle’s back and a silence fell over the group as they washed, dried and put away the dishes. They made quick work of the stacks, deciding to let the bigger pots soak overnight. Father Nathan appeared after putting the rest of the children to bed in the dormitories. Thanking them for their help, they said their goodnights and parted ways.
“I’m just going to give Kyle a ride to work,” Amber rocked from her heels to her toes then back again, avoiding the scrutiny of Anna’s gaze. “See you guys at the house.”
Noelle waited until it was just she and Steve standing out front of the Center before asking. “You guys… live together?”
“Oh, uh,” Steve stalled for a second. Shit. “Yeah. We bought a farmhouse northwest of the city. It serves as a place to store all our stuff, too. It just kina made sense at the time.”
“Were you all friends in college or something?” Noelle began directing their walk towards the bus stop.
“Yeah,” he lied. What else could he say? Deciding to change topics, he took note of where they were headed. “Guess it’s pretty late. Going to head home?”
Noelle nodded. “I make a decent cup of coffee, if you’re still up for it?”
Steve stumbled, and he cursed whomever poured the horribly uneven sidewalk between the Center and Noelle’s bus stop. A coffee shop was one thing. Going to her home, at night, with just him and her and all the crazy urges he’d been fighting all night… well, that was dangerous. With a deep inhale, he weighed his options, felt the six years of solitude creeping into the lingering joy from the evening, and decided to just jump in and see what happened.
“Alright,” he reached out and took her hand then smiled as she put it in her pocket again. “I’d love to.”
This time, when the bus’s airbrakes sounded, they both rose from the bench and boarded. The bus was practically empty, but they still said very little the entire ride. It was obvious that a nervous tension existed at the possibilities floating between them. They held on to it as tightly as they held each other’s hand, laughed it off when Noelle dropped her keys three times, and replaced it with friendly conversation as Noelle made a fresh pot of coffee.
5: On A Cold Winter’s Night
Stevverax commanded his leg to stop jostling, but it just ignored him and continued bouncing. He tried repositioning his body on Noelle’s overly comfortable couch, but that didn’t help. He could hear her humming from the kitchen, which set every nerve on fire. He should leave, his mind argued. He should most definitely stay, his heart argued back. Between his legs, his nerves, his heart and his head, he had no real idea what he was doing.
By the time Noelle returned to her living room with a tray, he could barely manage to keep breathing. She smiled sweetly, setting the tray down on the coffee table. It held two mugs, some sugar and little creamer packets. Ignoring the coffee, he focused on her smile and the look in her eyes behind the lenses of her glasses. The dynamic between he and Noelle had shifted at some point during dinner. He was both anxiously exuberant and mildly terrified.
Okay, if he was being honest with himself, he was more than mildly terrified. He was pretty certain he’d finally figured out what that ‘deer in headlights’ Earther expression meant. Noelle was a bright, radiant light, and he was too caught up in it to move. Or speak. Or breathe.
“Steve?” Noelle sat down cautiously next to him, the strange expression on his face giving her second thoughts about her moment of bravery back at the bus stop. She didn’t have any expectations for the night, but she also wasn’t going to push him away. Perhaps it was moving too fast for him, though.
“Sorry,” he finally managed, blinking away from her light. “Just a little tired, I suppose.”
Noelle tilted her head, certain she had just seen him blink twice – at the same time. Shaking away the ludicrous thought that he had two sets of eyelids, she nodded. “Me, too. Thanks again for your help. It really meant the world to those kids,” her hand shook a sugar packet nervously, “and me.”
He watched her fiddle with the sugar packet, her fingers dropping it then failing to tear it open. With a soft smile, he reached out and topped her hand with his, relieved that he wasn’t the only nervous one. “I enjoyed it.”
Looking back at him, she inhaled against the tight pressure in her chest. “I enjoyed your company tonight.”
“You still are, I hope?” he joked.
She laughed and more tension evaporated from the room. “I am.” She put her other hand on top of his and squeezed gently. “You’re very good company, Mr. Mason.”
He chuckled. “As are you, Miss Smith.” Sliding his hand free, he brought her hand to his lips. He kissed her hand in a gesture he had seen a hundred times in movies, hoping it was proper.
Her cheeks blushed, but she couldn’t turn away from his grey eyes. They really weren’t blue at all. They were a silver grey with flecks of lavender. Lavender? She leaned in closer, trying to believe what she was seeing. Then he blinked – one set and then another.
Noelle gasp
ed and jumped away from the couch. “You… you just… twice, and…”
Steve inhaled sharply, holding up his hands while cursing everything. The air in her apartment was so dry and he was so damn nervous, his secondary lids weren’t cooperating. He hoped he could play it off and then get out before he totally wrecked it. “What’s the matter? Did I move to fast?”
Noelle held a breath, clenching her fists at her sides. She knew she wasn’t seeing things, but would she run away frightened, or would she give him a chance? Exhaling, she sat back down on the edge of the couch. “Steve, I… I like to think I’m an intelligent person who’s within her right mind.”
She stopped and he grimaced. “I would agree to that,” he ventured.
“That being true,” she continued, “I… I know I just saw you blink twice.”
“Well, sure,” his lips ticked in a pitiful smile. “I blinked and then blinked again.”
“No,” she pushed. “You blinked one pair of eyelids and then a completely different pair. They didn’t really look like eyelids, but you blinked them!” Her voice raised with a small tremor at the end. Closing her eyes, she inhaled. Exhaled. Opened her eyes again. “Your heart is also in the wrong place.”
“W-w-what?” Oh, crap. The hug.
Noelle reached out to him, paused, then touched his chest just left of center. “It should be here,” she moved her hand to the right, “but instead, it’s here. I felt it yesterday when I hugged you.”
“Well, that,” That what? What could he possibly say to explain how his heart was in the wrong place? At least, the wrong place for a human. With frustrated disappointment, he resolved himself to digging the neuronite injector out from his pocket. “I’m sorry, Noelle. I wanted to try this, but I… Damn, I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she edged closer to him. “Be honest with me.”
His hand stilled against his pocket. Her eyes were searching his, asking him to be something he hadn’t been in six years. Himself. With a heavy, sighing groan, he rubbed both hands up his face and through his hair then put his head in his palms. He was so very tired of living a lie. “I’m not human.”
Noelle let those three whispered words sink in. Her brain fought against them, but she wanted to try to be as understanding as he had been for her last night. “Okay,” she exhaled the word, let it sit between them, then repeated again with a smile. “Okay.”
Steve peeked out at her from between his fingers then raised up. “Okay?”
“Okay,” she nodded. The disbelief on his face was easy to see. She had wished for someone who could understand. Maybe he had been wishing for the same. “Well, are you going to make me guess? I’m going to assume you aren’t from around here.”
His jaw slacked, he double-blinked, and then he smiled when she didn’t flinch away from it. Then he laughed. He laughed so hard his chest began to hurt. “No,” he snorted through his tear-inducing laughter. “I’m not from around here. Not even close.” He wiped a tear away and smiled at her. “Unless you consider approximately twenty-three thousand light years close.”
“Twenty-three thousand?” she gasped. “But that’s… I mean, even with warp drive like they have on Star Trek…”
“You like Star Trek?” he wondered, hoping that might make this easier for her to swallow.
“I do, though I’m admittedly more a Picard fan than a Kirk fan.” She leaned in slightly, lowering her voice. “You have to be careful who you say that around. Kirk fans are loyal, and a little crazy.”
“You…” He was dumbfounded for a minute. “I’m sorry. I just expected the first time I do this for the person to be screaming, or pointing a gun at me, or calling the government.”
“You’ve never told anyone before?”
“No,” he shook his head and muttered. “Annadri kina has a rule against it.”
“Annadri?” Noelle tilted her head the other way. “Oh! Anna?”
“Uh… shit.”
Noelle snickered, his flustered cussing breaking through her nerves. “I’m going to guess the rest of your friends…” she nodded as she spoke and he nodded along with her. “Well, that explains the living situation and a few other things I noticed.”
“Noticed?” He sat forward. “Are we that obvious?”
“No. I mean, no one would ever just guess ‘hey, you guys are aliens’, but hindsight is twenty-twenty.” She stopped, cupped her mouth and swallowed. “Oh, wow, you guys are aliens.”
“Just hit you, did it?” he tempted a joke. She nodded slowly, her hands still covering her mouth and her eyes going wide. “If it makes you feel any better, to me, you’re the alien.”
“Slightly better, yes.” She lowered her hands. “But how did you get here from so far away? And where did you come from? And what are you doing here? And can you explain your eyes, and… wow. I have an alien sitting on my couch.”
“Yes, you do.” He could tell it was all just starting to get past her initial shock. He hoped it didn’t end with her screaming. Or calling the government. “We come from a part of the galaxy you guys call the Perseus Arm. We called it the Yurusi Sector. We don’t use warp drive like they do on Star Trek, though we found it to be an interesting concept. We actually use hyperspace technology. We punch a hole in space and jump through it”
The term hyperspace sounded familiar, but it was all very science fiction to her. She guessed the more important question than how they got here was why they were here. “Why’d you jump here? To study us?”
“No. We jumped to escape another ship that had attacked us, and we ended up here quite by accident. Our hyperdrive malfunctioned.”
“Oh,” she frowned. “You couldn’t jump back?”
He matched her frown, the heavy weight of sadness in his eyes. “No. Our ship was barely functioning when we came back into normal space. It fell apart on entry. We lost most of the crew and our only real way home.”
“You’re stranded here, forever?” she asked and he nodded. That’s when it really hit home. Yes, he was an alien sitting on her couch. Yes, she had always believed that God hadn’t made such an infinitely huge universe just to surround one inhabited planet. To quote one of her favorite movies, that would have seemed like an awful waste of space.
Now he was here, stranded, thousands of light years from home. “You’ll never see your families again,” she whispered, a familiar sting in her eyes.
“Not likely, no,” he whispered back, his own throat filling with bitter ache.
“That’s awful,” her hand moved to his arm and rested there. “They must be so worried.”
He couldn’t believe the compassion in her eyes. This wasn’t going at all like he had thought it would. He hadn’t even dared to dream about it going this way, that she would be more concerned with his predicament than with what he was. “We left a large debris field behind when we jumped. It’s been six years, Earth time, so it’s most likely that we’ve been declared dead.”
When her eyes went round, tears threatening to fall on his behalf, he cupped her cheek with a small smile. “It’s probably for the best. We hope that our families have moved on with their lives, as we are trying to do with ours.” His smile faded slightly. “We were a young crew, only leaving behind siblings and parents. Captain Annadri, though, she left behind a husband.”
“I can’t imagine how hard that must be. Never having family is one thing, but losing them all, in one single moment,” Noelle sniffled and lowered her eyes.
Steve gently removed her glasses then set them on the coffee table. He wiped away her tears, catching each one as they fell. “How do you have so much room in your heart?”
Noelle blinked against the wetness and looked back up. “What?”
“I never expected an Earther to cry for our situation, or even understand it. I’m an alien, Noelle. Instead of freaking out about that, you’re crying because we can’t go home.”
“Oh, I’m freaking out,” she let out a tiny laugh. “On the inside, my mind is going
crazy with all the questions I want to ask, while my good sense is trying to accept the fact that you really are an alien and this isn’t just some candid camera game show. It’s… It’s not, is it?”
An equally small chuckle passed his lips as they curved into a gentle smile. “No,” he rubbed her cheek, staring at her and intentionally blinking with both inner and outer eyelids. “It’s not. What are your questions?”
“Well,” she thought for a moment, squirming under his intense stare. The lavender flecks within his steel irises were sparkling behind the moisture of unshed sadness. There was also something more. The playful kindness she had begun to grow attached to was there, too. Behind the misplaced heart and the double-blinks, Steve was still Steve.
She scrunched up her nose. “Steve Mason is not what I expected an alien to have as a name.”
“Stevverax,” he provided. “My people don’t have last names.”
“Stevverax,” she repeated. She still preferred ‘Steve’. It was the name she had associated with the feelings she had for him. She took a sip of her coffee as her cheeks warmed. She did have feelings for him. What exactly those were, she was still working out, but she really did enjoy his company.
Setting her coffee back down after reining in her blush, she asked her next question. “What are your people called?”
“Karraxians,” he replied while musing over what exactly her little blush she tried to hide was all about. “Karrax is a great deal like your Arizona.”
“Really?” Noelle tried to imagine a whole planet like Arizona. “You mean a desert?”
“Mostly, yes. It’s hot and dry, but full of life. The dryness is the reason for my secondary lids. It’s actually a membrane that moistens the eye and removes dirt.”
“I’m sure some Arizona residents wouldn’t mind having that option,” Noelle laughed at her own quip as more tension dissipated. The longer she sat with him, the more at ease she felt. “So, are you all from Karrax?”
“No, just me,” Steve paused, wondering how much he should reveal. Annadri was going to be unhappy, either way, so he just decided to go with it. He didn’t want to lie to Noelle anymore. She deserved nothing but honesty. “Annadri is Utarrian, Ambrisa is a Cloedyte, and Garrok and Mike are Vragans.”
Nebula Nights: Love Among The Stars Page 72