“No it wasn’t.”
“Then why haven’t you been speaking to me?”
“I thought you didn’t want to speak to me!”
She stared at him. “So… you still like me? I mean, as a friend? You still want to be friends?” She wasn’t going to make the mistake of asking for more.
Ro looked at her as if shocked she would even ask. “Of course!” he said, his voice dropping a note until it was richer than molasses.
Maggie stared at him, disbelieving. Had all her angst and grief of the past week been for nothing? Then her stunned expression split into a wide grin, and he smiled back at her, his pink moons bending with the size of it.
“Yay,” she laughed, for lack of anything better to say.
For once it was Ro who looked away first, as if he couldn’t bear to hold eye contact. He scanned his menu, so Maggie did the same, though she expected to get the same mixer she always did: coconut rum and orange juice. It tasted like a pina colada but cheaper, and the vitamin C was good for her skin, or so she told herself.
“These are alcoholic?” Ro verified with her.
“Yep. On me today, so don’t worry about it.”
“Because of the Balor?”
“Something good might as well come out of it,” she bit out. Reconnecting with him had almost made her forget the reason they were there, but she was still mad. She wanted to find that Balor and give him a real kick in the jimmies, and she was not normally a violent person.
“What would you recommend?” Ro asked.
Maggie welcomed the change of subject. They would get to what had happened soon enough, or leave it alone if that was what Ro wanted, but Maggie wanted some booze to grease the way, and give her a glass to fiddle with for the awkward bits. Maybe it was cowardly, but she was shy. It mattered to her what Ro thought and she wanted this to go well. It hadn’t been her intention to do anything other than help him drink his problems away when she had followed him out of DETI, but now they were alone, and apparently friends again, there was an atmosphere that she couldn’t shake. If she messed this up like she had messed up the last time they were they alone together, she couldn’t see how she could show her face again.
“What do you like?” she asked, putting her menu aside and leaning forward on the table. They discussed it until the waitress came, and they ordered. Maggie bought Ro a Yo-Ho, which seemed to be made entirely out of lemons, with limoncello providing the alcohol content. The waitress left, and they were alone again.
“So…” she began, unsure how to breach the subject. “Want to talk about it?”
Ro sighed. “I didn’t want you to know,” he said. “What Balin are on Teiss.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it? I still feel like I don’t know anything. You’ve never told me anything about your life before you came here, but I want to know. I want to know about you,” she said, not sure if she was over-stepping. It was the truth, she did want to know, she wanted to know everything about him and it wouldn’t change how she felt, but maybe if she was in his position, she’d want to forget everything too. “If you want, you can lie, I won’t know,” she offered.
That got her a flicker of a smile. “What do you want to know?” he said, scratching at a groove in the table top.
She hesitated. “Why did he call you… what he did?”
Ro sighed, and looked away. “On Teiss… Balin live underground. I never saw the sun, or the sky, or felt the wind until I landed on Earth. Where we live, choba grows in many different bright colours, and the Balor want those colours to dye their fabrics, and make paint. At first, generations ago, the Balor traded for the choba. Then they took control of the lands above where we lived, and stopped trading. Instead they threatened us.”
“How?” Maggie asked, horrified.
“They usually cut off our light,” Ro said. “We had tunnels for sunlight to come through, and they would cover them. We don’t need much light to see, but we do need some. And with no sunlight, our food wouldn’t grow. Sometimes they flooded our tunnels, or threw fire into them.” Ro spoke as if it was old news, normal, but Maggie couldn’t imagine living like that, forced to farm or risk being starved or plunged into total darkness.
“They gave us quotas of different colours, and they punished us if they were not met. Always their demands got higher, and their tempers shorter. The choba got so important, we stopped eating it ourselves, grew less food to make room for it. It made us sick and weak, but the Balor didn’t care. We became desperate and cruel to each other. I am glad not to live like that anymore,” Ro said wistfully. “On the transporter ships, the crews told us we did not have to work for the Balor anymore, and they told the Balor not to expect it, but some of them refuse to change.”
“That’s terrible,” Maggie said. “If anyone ever tries any of that shit with you, tell me and they’ll regret it!” She was aware she probably didn’t look or sound very dangerous, but she felt mad enough to make it happen.
Ro smiled a wicked smile that sent a chill between her shoulder blades, and leaned forward, folding his clawed hands on the table top. She leaned forward to meet him without thinking, and he whispered for her, “I think you are probably right. I am finished taking orders from them.”
She swallowed.
The waitress arrived with their drinks, and Maggie jumped back, straightening up almost guiltily, but Ro eased back slowly as if he was perfectly at his leisure. They each sipped their drinks as if to test them, and Maggie watched Ro for his opinion.
“Like it?” she asked.
He nodded. “So drinking alcohol in the afternoon is normal?” he asked.
She laughed, a little uneasily as she remembered that she had left work without permission or even telling anybody. “Well, it doesn’t sound great when you put it like that. But it’s pretty common to get a little drunk if something bad happens, or a lot drunk, depending what it is.”
“I have never been drunk on human alcohol before. I’m not sure I can be,” he mused, turning his glass in his hand as if looking for instructions.
“Well, I don’t recommend it this time. It’s more of a night-time activity,” Maggie explained, propping her chin on her hand and watching him. She sure hoped alcohol wasn’t poisonous to Balin, but she thought she would have heard about it if it was. It was poisonous to humans though, and she still drank it. “Tell me more about Teiss,” she prompted.
“What do you want to know?” he asked. It seemed like the seal had been broken now the big secret was out, but she still felt like he was a little cagey, braced for a question he didn’t want to answer.
“What was that merchant in the market talking about with the ‘colours’ thing? The way he said it made me think it meant something.”
Ro laughed. “Of course you would ask about that,” he said. “How to explain… To Balin, colours are very important. We live with very little light, and our scales are dark, but our colours shine. Our colours are determined by the choba our mothers eat while they are pregnant, so a Balin with bright colours, or many colours on his body, is considered healthy, well-fed, from a good family. The contrast between the dark and coloured scales helps to show them off. The darker the scales, the brighter the colours, or the more colours a Balin has, the more desirable they are,” he explained, a genuine smile twisting his mouth as if he was trying to hold it back, then it faded. “The oldest of us had many bright colours, but our mothers could only eat a little choba, because of the Balor’s demands. It became common to focus on one colour, in the hope that it would at least be bright. The females did the best they could.”
“Wow, I would never have thought of that,” Maggie said.
Ro shrugged and sipped his drink.
“So… if you don’t mind me asking, you must have been pretty popular,” Maggie pointed out.
Ro made a noise that was half-choke, half-laugh, then said something in Balin that she thought must be some kind of curse or exclamation. He wiped his hand over his head, his eyes wide in disbelief.
/> “Sorry, I shouldn’t have commented,” Maggie said, trying to take it back. “That was probably rude of me.”
“No, no, not rude… Very forward, if you were Balin. Flattering, very.” He laughed again. “Ahh, Maggie. Careful,” he said, shaking his head.
She dared to smile at his flirty tone. “Am I wrong?”
He looked like he was trying to look humble and didn’t quite pull it off. “No… My scales are darker than most, and my colours are bright. Thank you for noticing,” he laughed again as if he couldn’t believe the conversation he was having. “I shall take it as a compliment and not an invitation this time. But the truth is,” he seemed to sober. “I was injured in an accident when I was young and that made me… invisible, shall we say? I’d rather not explain further.” He took a drink to punctuate the end of his sentence.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Maggie commiserated. “If it helps, I like your-”
“Don’t say that, Maggie,” he warned her.
“Why not? I do like-”
“Maggie!”
“Fine. But I do. I think they look very-”
He groaned loudly to drown her out, putting his face in his hands, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms, muttering to himself.
“Okay, okay… Wait, does that mean you think humans look boring? Because we don’t have them?” she asked, suddenly self-conscious. She had never turned heads, but she had been called cute a few times. She was short with a round face and freckles so it was kind of unavoidable.
Ro straightened, pulling his head up and laying his hands flat on the table. He blinked at her a few times, his eyes moving over her face, and she wished she hadn’t asked as she sat for his consideration.
“I don’t think humans are boring,” he said. “I find you very interesting.”
She wasn’t sure if he meant the singular or plural form of ‘you’, but she blushed anyway. “Thanks,” she said lamely, squirming. “So does it hurt when you file your claws down?” she said, changing the subject to something safer.
“No,” Ro said, stretching out his fingers and looking at his claws. “They’ll grow back if I stop, so it takes up a lot of my time, but it doesn’t hurt as long as I don’t overdo it.”
“That’s good. I’d hate for it to be permanent, and you had to change like that just for work. Can I ask, what does fila mean?”
“It means ‘family’. It is how the Balin address each other. We feel that, living as we did, underground, controlled by the Balor, it made all Balin the same. No Balin is better than another, it doesn’t matter what clan you are from. We all know the same life, and it is something no outsider can know. On Teiss, it was not as common to use it as it is here, but I think people are trying to hold onto each other. They want to remember it more now,” he finished, laughing a little.
Maggie could understand that, but it still made her sad. Kez called Ro that all the time, and Ro made it sound like he only did it to remind himself he wasn’t alone.
Ro let her quiz him on other aspects of Balin life and culture, laughing at some of her questions, and she filled him in on the office party plans. She didn’t have much else to report on from the time they hadn’t been talking, since most of it had been spent agonising over him, and she wasn’t going to tell him that. His mood seemed to have improved so much it was like nothing bad had ever happened to him, but then, she was also feeling lighter than she had in a long time.
They each had a second drink, but then it was time to go. Despite her talk, she didn’t want to get drunk in the middle of the day, and she was beginning to feel a little loose and flushed from drinking on an empty stomach. Ro was chatty enough that she thought he was probably feeling the effects of the alcohol too, and if this was his first encounter with it, she didn’t want him associating her with a hangover.
She paid for their drinks. “So I’ll see you at work tomorrow?” she asked, knowing they would be splitting up soon. The dorms were one way, while her bus stop was the other.
“Of course. Maggie, do you want to meet in the café? Like we used to?”
“Sure, yeah, that would be great,” she smiled, utterly failing to sound as casual as she’d wanted.
He smiled back at her. “Okay. I’ll see you then,” he said.
He pushed the door open and froze. It was raining. Not hard, but the late afternoon light had been covered by clouds making it look much later than it was. She could smell the dryness of the road getting wet carried on the chill air.
“Damn, I don’t have an umbrella,” she said. It was California, of course she didn’t. “Maybe I should just call a cab, we could share one?”
She looked at Ro but he was watching the rain, his mouth open in amazement. He held his hand out past the protective awning of the doorway, catching drops in his palm.
“You’ve never seen it before?” she asked softly, remembering what he had told her.
“No,” he replied. “I have heard about it but…” He leant forward, looking down the street. “It’s everywhere,” he said.
“Yes. It’ll stop soon, I should think. This is just a shower.”
“A shower. Is it safe?”
She might have laughed once but she didn’t now. “Perfectly safe. Though you can get pretty wet if you’re stuck in it without shelter.”
Ro let out a breath and took the step out of the doorway into the rain. She watched him blink and flinch as the rain hit his face. He came back into the dry with her. “I don’t like it,” he stated.
She giggled. “Most people don’t. Come on.” She took his hand and pulled him out onto the bar’s covered porch, obviously meant to be reminiscent of a dust-bowl farmhouse, with a few empty benches for patrons who wanted to sit outside. She pulled him down onto a bench so they could face out and watch the rain. He didn’t pull away from her, so she let his hand go on her own, remembering to keep her distance. They sat side by side and waited for it to stop.
Chapter 13
They went back to being friends as if they had never stopped. They had coffee and choba every morning, and the rest of the team stared at them or rolled their eyes, but Maggie couldn’t blame them. She could barely keep up with the whiplash back and forth of their relationship herself.
This time they were strictly friends, Maggie had decided. Ro had never done anything to make her hope for more, and they had been alone outside of the office exactly twice, once to effectively break up, and once to make up. She wasn’t willing to make that mistake again. She didn’t think she could handle it, going through it all again, sitting opposite him while thinking he hated her. She was happier as his friend than just his colleague. She wanted to be able to talk to him and laugh with him.
And they got on so well, at least in her mind. She was still charmed by him, and he sought her out enough to make her think he enjoyed her company. She did everything in her power to stick to friendship, stay behind the line she had drawn in the sand, but he didn’t make it easy for her. Sometimes she wondered if he was flirting, the way he teased her and smiled and held her eyes, but she wouldn’t fall into that trap again. He was just being friendly, and she was projecting too much onto it because of her own crush.
Just then they were sitting alone in the office after everyone else had gone home. Ro had volunteered to help her with the party preparation. The party itself was only a week away now, and she was showing him how to cut snowflakes out of paper and make paper chains and decorate paper baubles with glitter. She’d bought all the craft paper over the weekend, and she didn’t mind spending the money out of her own pocket. It was only once a year. The decorations they had in storage didn’t go far enough, in her opinion, especially now DETI had expanded and they would need more tables, more chairs, more food…
Ro had started teaching her Balin words and phrases at her request, which she practiced now. She knew how to say “Hello, my name is Maggie. I live in San Diego and work for DETI. What’s your name?” and “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Balin,” which she saw he
rself needing far more often. Ro still laughed occasionally at her attempts to string her own sentences together, but she could tell he liked it when she said something right. He didn’t reply or laugh, and just listened instead, a slight smile on his face. That made it worth it to keep trying.
“Okay, so teach me something else,” she said, finishing another snowflake. The majority were going to be white, but there were going to be silver and glittery ones as well to break it up. Ro was lagging behind her, still having to be careful and focused as he cut out the shapes, while she could probably do it with her eyes closed by now.
“What would you like to say?” he asked.
“I don’t know. What would you like me to say?” she offered.
He laughed and shook his head.
“Come on, I’m giving you an opportunity here. You could make me say anything and I wouldn’t know it.”
“Are you encouraging me to do something I shouldn’t?” he asked, looking at her from the corner of his eyes.
He had turned his chair to the side so he could stretch his legs out, and she had brought her chair around to the side of her desk so she could see him without their screens in the way, keeping her supplies next to her. He rarely offered her such a good view of his feet, which he seemed convinced she would have a problem with for some reason, but the more time they spent together the more he relaxed around her. He flexed his toes and his claws clicked together quietly, drawing her attention briefly. She didn’t want to stare, but she was still kind of fascinated by his differences.
“You could give me something nice to say,” she reminded him.
“Hmm… You could repeat it to another male though, and I wouldn’t like that,” he said, his voice taking on a certain teasing lilt that she would normally associate with flirting in a human man, but that she did her best to ignore from him. He was just joking around.
Maggie laughed. She knew the conversation they were having wasn’t totally innocent, and it was mostly her fault, but she wouldn’t end it just yet. Not while she still had plausible deniability and room to enjoy it. “Oh, I see… Well, I can keep a secret,” she teased back.
The New Guy (Office Aliens Book 2) Page 10