by Magan Vernon
"Yeah, it sucks. He should hopefully get out soon, but I didn't get too much detail."
The truth was, he wouldn't tell me anything. Not if he broke a bone, or if he spent days in the goo bath, nothing. I was just supposed to believe that he was fine even though Justin informed me on the ride in that Ace was definitely unconscious for a while.
Before Lucy could say another word my phone rang a rockabilly version of Video Killed the Radio Star, my ringtone for when I got a video message. I wanted it to be Ace, but knew it wouldn't be.
Mom. Ugh. I talked to her briefly after the accident, but nothing in length. Justin informed me that since it was a Circe vehicle and we didn't want her questioning anything with Ace's injuries, or calling insurance, to just say it was minor and that my dad came and picked us up.
I slid the screen on my smartphone and opened the video chat icon. "Hey, Mom."
As always, she was way too close to the screen. I swore I could see every single one of her nose hairs.
"Hey, Alex," she practically yelled into the phone. "How are you doing? How was your first day of classes? Tell me everything!"
"Whoa, slow down there, lady." I held the phone as far as I could away from my face, for fear of hearing loss from her yelling. She needed to learn that one didn't need to yell on a video chat, and fast, before I went deaf.
"I'm just excited to actually talk to you. After your accident I was worried sick, even if it was just a scratch! How is a mom supposed to concentrate when her newly engaged daughter has an accident and starts college all within a few days? It's a lot to take in."
I rolled my eyes, hoping she couldn't see it with the pixilation of the screen. "Yeah, I'm the one living it so I understand. Sorry I didn't call earlier. I've been busy."
I looked up to see that Lucy had turned off the TV and was putting her laptop in her bag.
"Going somewhere?" I looked over the phone at my roommate.
"Why would you ask me that? Do I look dressed up?" mom yelled from the phone.
"No, ma, talking to my roommate," I huffed.
"Oh! Let me say hi to your new roommate!" mom squealed.
"Fine." I turned the phone toward Lucy.
"Hi, Alex's new roommate!" mom yelled and I could just picture her waving frantically.
"Hey, Alex's mom." Lucy slung her bag over her shoulder and did a little wave in the direction of the phone. "Would love to stay and chat, but I'm going to head down to the Union for an Americano."
"I don't know what that means, but have fun!" mom yelled.
"Alright." Lucy nodded and went toward the door. "See you later, Alex." She called before closing the door behind her.
"She seems nice, reminds me a little of that girl, Simone, you used to hang out with," mom said as I turned the phone back to me. Yeah, like Simone if she was an evil alien who tried to kill me.
"She definitely isn't anything like Simone, ma."
"Oh, good." Mom nodded. "I liked her until I found out about that horrible robbery at Cuppa Java. Such a shame."
"Yeah..." I really didn't want to talk anymore about Simone. "Okay, sorry to let you go, Mom, but I have to catch up on stuff from my online mythology class. I will call you tomorrow."
"Okay," she sighed, the disappointment evident in her voice.
"Bye, Mom."
"Goodbye."
I tossed my phone on my bed and slid onto my uncomfortable desk chair. The school could have at least provided us something better than a hard, wooden vessel, but it would have to do until I found something different.
I opened my laptop, clicked on the internet icon, and slowly made my way to the transcript from mythology. Before I even got halfway through the document my phone sang from the bed. Frank Sinatra's Fly Me To The Moon blasted from the phone's speakers. Ace's ring tone.
Quickly, I pounced on the bed, unlocking my phone and sliding it up to my ear. "Yello?"
"Hey, Princess, miss me already?" His voice made me smile, especially since I hadn't heard it much in the last few days.
"Of course, I did. Always do." I rolled over so that I was lying on my back. Gone was the pink madness that my mother bought for a comforter; it had been replaced by a soft green down comforter, courtesy of my dad's credit card. lying on it made me want to drift off to sleep after all the craziness of the last few days.
"Good, wouldn't want you to have ran off with some new co-ed in your dorm."
I rolled my eyes, even though I knew he couldn't see it. "Please, Ace, first off I'm on an all-girl's floor, so there isn't a single boy around. And second, there is no way I would find someone else. If someone else liked me, then they should have put a giant Caltian rock on my finger like you did."
Ace laughed. "I'm glad you are amused by the Caltian rock."
"It makes my finger all sparkly. People can't help but notice, including my alien communication professor and a waiter at La Noria."
"Oh." He swallowed. "Take it you've realized that Arizona isn't exactly alien free?"
"I guess I should have expected that with Circe being so close by." I lifted my feet in the air and kicked off my flip-flops so they landed on the floor at the end of the bed.
"Speaking of Circe. I should be released from the infirmary tomorrow if you can make time out of your busy college schedule to see me after classes."
"For real?" I asked.
"Why wouldn't it be real, Alex?"
I shook my head. He still wasn't used to figures of speech. "What I meant to say is that it sounds great."
"Good, I look forward to seeing what all this fuss is about dormitories," he said with a laugh.
Tomorrow I would finally get to spend time with Ace, real time that wasn't in an infirmary or with anyone interrupting. I would just have to wait another day. At least that gave me time to prepare and show him how much I actually did miss him.
Chapter 10
I thought my second day of classes would never end. I constantly kept checking my phone, hoping that it would be five o'clock and I would get to see Ace, but I would always be disappointed.
By the time my biology lab was over, I found myself running back to my dorm. The last time I actually ran was when I was throwing fire balls and being chased by evil Caltians through a space ship. Who knew that this time I would be running to get back to a Caltian?
"You survived your second day of classes!" Lucy threw her hands up as soon as I sprang through the door. She was definitely the smarter one out of the two of us. She scheduled her classes for later in the day, so while I was up at 6 a.m. and dead by the time classes were done in the afternoon, she was refreshed and ready for her day.
"Yeah, I guess you could say I survived." I kicked off my flip-flops and tossed my messenger bag on my desk chair.
"So, I'm meeting up with my girlfriend after classes at the Union for coffee. Want to join us?" Lucy pulled what little bit of hair she had into two tiny pigtails.
"Since when do you have a girlfriend?" I asked, trying not to sound like I was judging her for it. I didn't care that she was gay. Who was I to judge? I was marrying an alien. But the fact that she was dating someone was definitely news to me. At least that was a way to get Monte off my back about meeting my roommate.
"We've been talking for awhile now. She is a grad student and helps monitor the chem lab," Lucy said as if it were no big deal.
"Oh, an older woman!" I laughed.
She shrugged. "Yeah, what can I say? Ever since I saw The Graduate I've had a thing for older women."
"So you'll admit that you are a Dustin Hoffman fan?" I arched an eyebrow.
Lucy rolled her eyes, stuffing a notebook in her giant knit bag before putting it over her shoulder. "No matter how hard you try, I'm not going to succumb to your love of old Dustin Hoffman movies."
"Come on!" I sighed sarcastically as Lucy went to the door. "One look at Dustin in drag during Tootsie and you will be a changed woman."
"We'll see about that one," she said with one hand on the doorknob. "See you
tonight, Alex."
She smiled and with a small wave was out the door, giving me enough time to get ready for a visit from my alien.
***
Even though I just moved into the dorm, I still felt the need to clean it again from top to bottom before Ace came. That literally left me only about thirty minutes to take a shower and get the smell of sweat and cleaning supplies off my skin.
I still had my hair wrapped in a towel when Sinatra's voice started crooning from my phone. Crap, was it already that time?
I picked my phone off the bed, slid it unlocked, and held it to my ear. "Hullo?"
"You didn't tell me how wonderful the decor was in the lobby bathrooms in this dorm."
The alien could even make talking about bathrooms sexy.
"I take it you beamed in alright?" I asked, quickly trying to comb out my hair. He couldn't have waited a few more minutes? At first I enjoyed that he could see me whenever with the beaming technology, but when he could see me even when I looked my worst, it was hard to enjoy it.
"Yes, I am actually down here waiting near the front desk. The lovely woman with the pink hair behind the counter said I need an escort from a resident before I can enter your domicile." He said it smoothly, but I could hear the hint of annoyance in his voice. I could also just imagine how the girl at the front desk was looking at him. If she always looked at me like I was a pushy idiot, then she probably thought the same about Ace.
"Alright, hold on, I will be right down."
I panicked. I wanted everything to be perfect. I finally had Ace alone and it wasn't in a car, or him beaming into my mom's house late at night. But nothing was ever perfect when it came to alien and human relationships. I sucked it up and threw my wet hair into a ponytail before sliding on my flip-flops and taking the elevator down to the lobby.
As soon as the doors opened Ace was waiting. He stepped right in before I could even say a word.
"Did you upset the front desk girl that much, already?" I cocked an eyebrow, looking over at him.
Obviously the Circe doctors did a fine job healing him. He didn't look like he ever had a scratch on him with his smooth, porcelain skin and his hair in his usual spikes. I wanted to pull him close to me and just inhale his clean scent. But the giant camera facing us from the corner of the elevator made me think otherwise.
"Can I not just be excited to finally be able to see my princess?" His warm hands found mine, intertwining our fingers as he pulled them up to brush his lips against my knuckles.
"You are a smooth talker, sir."
"Likewise." He put our intertwined hands down and a smile crept along his statuesque face. Every time he smiled, it made his dark eyes light up and brought me back to the first moment I met him the moment he saved my life. If I wasn't already excited to see him, the smile was all I needed to get him off the elevator and lead him to my bedroom.
"It's smaller than the rooms at Circe, and you are to share it with someone else, but it's..." Ace paused, walking from one end of the room to the other in only a few long strides. "Nice."
"Well I'm sure you will be able to make yourself at home." I slid past him and sat down on the bed, patting the spot next to me.
Ace sat down and then laid down, spreading his long body across my bed. "Yeah, I can deal with this."
Seeing him stretched across the bed, his hands behind his head and every muscle rippling through his arm, made me want him so bad. My V card was still very much intact, but after all of my run-ins with death and after seeing Ace so close to it, the fear of losing him forever made me want to give up that card in a bad way.
I laid down next to him, placing my head on his chest and trailing my fingers up and down his chiseled stomach.
"Princess, if you keep touching me like that I'm not going to be able to stay still for long."
I lifted my head, meeting his dark eyes with my own. There was nothing more that I wanted to do than to get lost in them. His hand crept up to the side of my face before he pulled me down until his mouth was on mine. The sliding of his tongue between my lips was the go ahead I needed to move from my spot next to him and climb onto his beautiful body. His hands were on fire, sending the spark all the way through my back while his fingertips scaled my bare arms. My body pressed against his cold shell made me want to cry out with a mixture of fire and ice against my skin.
While his hands were against my shoulders, my fingers made their way to the buttons on his shirt. He'd become accustomed to wearing plaid, pearl snap shirts over his temperature control suit when we were in public. Normally I thought the shirts looked silly, but with the easy access they provided me, I suddenly liked them more.
Ace gently pushed my shoulders back, prying our lips apart until he was looking right at me. "Alex, what are you doing?"
I widened my eyes, like a kid who just got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. I kept my fingers on the last button of his shirt, exploring my mind for anything sexy I could say to get the mood back.
"I'm thinking of taking a class in extraterrestrial anatomy and thought you would be the perfect teacher." I smiled, trying to make it sexy and wiggling my eyebrows at the same time.
Ace scowled, his nostrils flaring like he just smelled something terrible. "I have no idea what that is supposed to mean."
"You know..." I ran my finger down from the top of his chest to just below his navel. He still had on his temperature control suit, but I could still feel every bit of his tight abdominals underneath it. His muscles clenched underneath my finger. "Just a little something to show you that I love you."
"Alex." Ace grabbed my wrist, moving my hands up in the air above his chest. "You don't need to do that, or prove anything to me."
I pouted. "I'm not trying to prove anything. We've been together for over a year. We are engaged for Pete's sake!"
I released my wrists from his grip and snapped my body back up, so that I sat on his lap with my arms crossed over my chest. "Is there some reason you are resisting me? Did you find some hot nurse from Venus in the infirmary and now you want to leave me?"
Ace groaned, pulling himself up so he was sitting underneath me. "Princess, I can assure you that there is no one but you." He leaned in, pressing his forehead to mine. "I just don't think now is the right time."
I let out a deep breath, blowing it out of my nose and onto his face. He was right, of course, the moment definitely wasn't there.
"Hello? Oh, God!" Lucy's voice rang through the door.
I scrambled off Ace and he did his best to button up his shirt, his fingers struggled at each pearl snap button.
"Sorry, I should have knocked."
I turned to see Lucy with her hand up to her face.
"It's alright, um, we were just talking." I positioned myself so I was sitting on the bed, near the wall and Ace propped himself into a sitting position next to me.
Lucy dropped her hand down. "Okay, so if you all were just talking, do you mind if my girlfriend comes in? The coffee shop was closed so I invited her over to watch some Rocko's Modern Life."
"Sure, that's fine." I nodded, smoothing my hair out, which probably wasn't even that messed up.
"Alright, babe, the coast is clear," Lucy yelled and opened the door.
There, standing in my bedroom doorway, was the same girl that turned me in for sneaking out to see Ace. The same girl who last time I saw her had a gun held to my head. And now she looked at me like she had absolutely no idea who I was, and after a memory erase from Circe, she probably didn't. But the very sight of her sent a chill through every part of my body.
"Hi, you guys, I'm Riley. It's nice to meet you."
There, in the flesh, was Riley from Circe.
Chapter 11
I couldn't speak. My throat felt like it closed up. Luckily, Ace was there to save me.
"Hello, Riley, it's good to meet you." Ace stood up, shaking her hand like she wasn't the spawn of Satan.
"And this must be the infamous Ace." Lucy smiled as Riley release
d her hand from Ace's and stood next to Lucy.
How the heck could this be possible? Last I saw of Riley was when the Circe guards were taking her to wipe her memory of her time with aliens. Now she was standing in my dorm room. Not to mention that she was a grad student at my school and dating my roommate.
"That would be me, and you must be Alex's roommate." He peered at Lucy, taking her hand in his to shake it briefly as if it weren't insane that we were standing there and facing a crazy person.
I scrambled up from the bed, sliding in my flip-flops and stood next to Ace. "It's good to see both of you, but, uh, since you two probably want some alone time, I'll give Ace a tour of campus."
"You sure?" Lucy arched one of her barely there eyebrows, tossing her purse on her bag chair.
"Yeah," Riley added. "I've just met you all. I wouldn't mind getting to know the other women who will be sleeping with my girlfriend." Riley winked and slid an arm around Lucy's waist.
This was just too weird. When I interned with Riley, she wanted nothing to do with me or Ace and now here she was begging us to stay.
"I'm sure we'll have plenty of time for that this summer." I forced a smile before dragging Ace out the door and down the hall to the elevator.
"You did not tell me that Riley was romancing your roommate," Ace said as we stepped onto the waiting elevator.
"Obviously I was just as shocked as you were. I didn't know that Riley was going to school here, let alone that she played for the other team."
"Play for the other team?" Ace asked.
I shook my head. "It's just an expression, meaning that she is gay."
"I still don't understand how two humans can be this gay thing, as you call it. What benefits do they get?"
I rolled my eyes. I had enough to figure out with Riley, let alone trying to explain homosexuality to Ace. "Can we talk about that some other time? Right now, I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that Riley is even still around."