by S E Anderson
“Marcy let it slip when she was wasted once.” I smiled. “Huge secret. I don't think she knows she told me.”
Zander grinned. “Well, if anyone knows about secrets, it's Dany.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hey.” Matt handed me a glass of something fizzy. “Where'd Luna go?”
“It didn't work out,” Zander muttered.
“Sorry, man.” Matt patted his back apologetically. “You all right?”
“Completely fine,” he replied, staring intently at the dancers who were moving out of the way of something. They were stepping back, expanding to give them the widest floor space possible.
I downed my drink and put the glass down, pushing my way through the barrier of people without really knowing what compelled me to do so. As I broke through the crowd, I emerged in a hollow circle where two figures twirled as if this were the turn of the last century rather than the new millennium. The crowd watched as two figures waltzed around the dance floor; all eyes trained on them as they spun together.
“Know any other dances?” Marcy giggled, as they slowed.
The DJ changed the music to some remixed version of a classic song I had never taken the time to learn by name, and we watched, astounded, as Dany led her through the paces of an amazingly complex dance as simple to her as breathing. The way she led Marcy made it seem as though she knew the dance already, as if she were as talented as Dany. All the while, Marcy brimmed, glowing with joy, her grip tight on the woman's shoulder.
“Can you dance?” I whispered to Matt, caught in a trance. “Not like that, but … can you?”
He shook his head, equally awed by the spectacle. They looked otherworldly on the floor, as if they belonged in a realm much higher than this.
“Wait a minute,” Zander said slowly, his eyes glued to the figures before him. The intensity of his stare was impossible to measure.
He took a step forward, reaching a hand toward me. I didn't think. I took it, and suddenly we were whizzing across the floor, the dance complex and fast paced.
At first, it seemed as if Zander were copying Dany's footsteps, his feet barely half a second behind hers, twirling me and continuing with the movements. Slowly, the steps became more intricate, building off the base Dany had built as she glided across the floor with Marcy.
My feet were flying, working without my mind having time to think. I followed as the dance shifted from ballroom to something entirely new. Zander seemed to know what he was doing. Even in the sudden, improvised dance, he never misstepped, the dance perfect yet new.
I suddenly realized that Dany and Marcy had stopped dancing and everyone was watching us, their eyes larger than I'd seen on a human being. I spun around and saw the whole crowd before me.
“Zander,” I whispered. He didn't seem to take notice. “Zander,” I said in a sharper tone. He threw me over his arm, catching and swinging me around before stopping, suddenly noticing, as I did, the look on the faces of those watching.
“Not normal?” he whispered.
“Not in the slightest.”
And Matt stood, glaring at us. His eyes shot daggers, cutting and tearing where they touched me. I pulled away from Zander, still out of breath, but Matt was already pushing through the crowd and away from the dance floor.
“Matt, hey, wait up,” I shouted, racing after him. I shoved people out of the way to follow him, but the crowd closed in on me, and I couldn't see where he was going.
I could guess, though.
I darted outside, the cold slapping my face. Matt wasn't there. He must have taken the back exit. I made my way around the building as quickly as I could, rubbing my hands over my arms to keep warm. Nights were frosty this time of year.
I found him standing in the back, leaning against the brick wall. He looked up, saw me, then put his head down again. He twisted a cigarette between his fingers.
“You smoke?” I asked, calmly.
“We all have our vices,” he said, his voice sharp, “though I have been trying to quit. Which is why I don't have a lighter.”
“Oh,” I replied.
We stood there in silence for a bit. He twiddled the stick between his thumb and index finger, staring at it with sullen eyes.
“What's going on between you two?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I insisted, glad this wasn't a lie.
“It doesn't look like nothing.”
“Well, it isn't,” I said. “Wait, no. It is nothing. It isn't anything. Ugh, this is confusing.”
“Tell me about it,” Matt said, taking the cigarette and placing it between his lips.
“Come on, Matt, I really like you. There's nothing between Zander and me. Honestly.”
“But he's always there.”
More than you know. “I'll have a word with him when I get home tonight. He needs to learn to respect boundaries, that's all.”
“You sound like you're talking about a child.”
“Like you said, we all have our vices.”
“I guess so.” He extended a hand, lazily, to take mine. I grabbed it, intertwining my fingers with his, feeling the softness of his skin against my own. The touch warmed me inside, and I was beginning to forget it was cold out.
“Look, Matt,” I said, insistently. “For me, there's only you who matters. I know this is only our second date and all, but I really, really like you, and I want this to work.”
“I do, too,” he replied, giving my hand a tight squeeze. He removed the cigarette from his mouth, putting it back in his pocket, “Could you just … have him less involved in your life? Ask him to keep a bit of distance?”
“If that will make you more comfortable, sure.” I nodded. “But he's still my friend. He might be clingy, but I worry about him. You can't ask me to cut him out completely.”
“No, of course not,” he sputtered, like it was impossible for me to even suggest it. “I'm not going to be that guy. But if you want this to work, I'd love it if we gave it a chance without him always in the background.”
“I'll talk to him,” I promised.
He leaned forward, and he smelled of sweet, fresh flowers. Our faces edged closer. I felt a buzz around us, an electricity in the air, the anticipation rising.
Oh, what the heck. Our lips touched, and I moved mine against his, beckoning for him to respond, to join in the silent conversation.
My heart didn’t join in, but who cared? I kissed him harder, running my tongue against his teeth, urging my body to feel him, to feel something. His free hand pulled me closer, and I fell into the kiss, into him, feeling myself melt in his arms.
It felt good. It felt gentle.
It just didn’t feel right.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It’s Not a Drinking Problem if Aliens Are Involved
As it turned out, all I needed to do was sit Zander down and tell him I didn't need him constantly on my back. Apparently, he had no idea that this was odd: perhaps television wasn’t the best way to teach him about life here. While our relationship stayed the same, he stopped popping up in weird areas or in the places I was at. I ran into him at work from time to time. Sometimes we'd carpool, me driving as he blasted tunes and sang along to practically every song, his repertoire growing daily. Other days, he'd sleep in longer and jump all the way to work—though I never got to carpool jump.
And time went on, for once, completely normal. Except for one thing—I was happy. I liked my life. I liked it a lot. Matt and I were good, our relationship was growing stronger by the day, and I could feel myself falling in love with him.
Work was amazing, my only job being to answer the phone. If it rang, I would pick it up, invent an excuse as to why my boss was not available, and hang up. This is what I had been hired to do—keep Mr. Grisham from ever having to deal with phones. Or people in general.
Mr. Grisham always seemed too excited for the work he did. He always wore a grin, as if he was born with it baked into his features. When talking to his employees, he'd wave his han
ds in a grandiose sweep and shout whatever sentence sounded like it could be printed on a poster. Some eventually were.
I made coffee for the man a few times a day and, as promised, played Scrabble with him every once in a while. During these hours, he would talk about his plans to expand the plant and ask my opinion when it came to dealing with random situations.
Some days, I was instructed not to pick up the phone at all. I would jot down the messages left on the machine and bring them to my boss, who promptly ate them; Grisham had some odd habits. The part of my job that did not consist of answering phones revolved around making sure the world didn't learn about those quirks.
Zander was on a quest to solve all of Earth's problems, though he was currently focused on finding the Killians and setting everything right with them. Every week, he was off on a research project, sometimes asking if I wanted to join him and smiling when I said no. I was done being a part of his messy, alien life. I wasn’t a superhero; I was only me. And Zander could handle saving the world by himself, even if it looked like he wasn't making much progress.
So, time went on. Until everything, like it usually does in my life, came crashing down.
It was the night of our two-month anniversary. Matt and I had planned a night in. Serenity was cued up on the TV, and he drove us home while the fresh pizza sat on my lap. Zander had told me that morning he would be out doing research and the apartment would be mine, so it was perfect.
Only it wasn't.
“Ugh, what is he watching in there?” Matt asked, leaning against the banister as I fiddled for my apartment key. I heard a jumbled mush of voices coming from inside. Zander wasn't out, as he had claimed he would be.
“Hang onto the pizza while I clear this up?” I asked, and Matt nodded.
I touched the door handle, and it glided open. Strange, it wasn't locked in the first place. I pushed it open.
“Close it!”
My mouth snapped shut when I saw the room before me. Zander sat in the armchair clasping a huge parchment, blinking ferociously in the near darkness as if I had just shined a flashlight right into his eyes. In front of him on the table, rolls of parchment and foreign gizmos were strewn about. A lone eyestalk swiveled and fell upon me, the alien to which it belonged bellowed a shriek that resembled the bleat of a goat. Its face was short and flat with a single round hole in the middle that could have been a mouth or a nose or both. It wore jeans and a surfer’s t-shirt. Discarded on the sofa beside him were a latex mask and sunglasses. He threw up an arm to block the light.
“The door, Sally,” Zander insisted. “Please. Barcheens are sensitive to fluorescent light bulbs.”
I shut the door hastily, trying not to gawk at the very alien alien in the living room. As the door slammed, the room filled with hovering stars, each one annotated with red figures that could have been numbers or letters; I couldn't tell. A blue giant floated past my nose, a large, fully detailed star in brilliant, burning 3D. I stepped through it.
“Thank you,” Zander said, returning to his parchment. How he could see, I didn't know.
“What's going on?” I snapped. “Who's he?”
“Dru, meet Sally, my Earth friend.” Zander waved his hand in the guise of an introduction. “Sally, this is Dru. Dru has been helping me figure out where we fit in on the grand scale of things.”
Dru waved his orange hand, each of the twelve fingers jittering. I waved back awkwardly.
“What's he doing here?”
“Showing me his maps.”
“Yeah, I get that,” I replied, “but what's he doing here?”
“We needed a place to talk.”
“Zander, Matt is standing outside that door,” I scoffed. “You can't bring aliens into the apartment willy-nilly. What if he finds out?”
“Look,” he said, standing up. “I get that. But we've been careful.”
“Careful? The door wasn't even locked.”
“Oh.” He grinned. “They don't lock automatically? My bad.”
“You've been living here for months,” I continued. “You have to take this seriously. Be more careful.”
“Sure,” he replied. “Have you seen this, though? Look, here's your sun, here's where Earth is.” He pointed at a star floating above his left shoulder. “I bet you've never seen a map this detailed before.”
“Nope.”
“You don't sound impressed?”
“Zander,” I growled, “you brought an alien into my home to look at stars. Matt is outside. And you are in here … with an alien.”
“So, no care for the map then?” He sighed. “Haven't you ever contemplated your cosmic purpose before? Where you fit in? Where you—”
“Shut up with the pretentious crap,” I ordered. “Can you even hear yourself? Zander, these are maps, not an answer to the meaning of life. Now turn it off, clean up your mess, and get that alien out of here.”
“Sally,” he snapped. “I live here too. I pay my share, and if I want to figure where I am in the cosmos in the living room, I have a right to. I am not endangering anyone, certainly not you. This is important to me.”
“Fine.” I spun around, grabbing the door handle with angry ferocity. “Take your time, but I want this gone by the time I get back.”
“Where are you going?”
“Out,” I growled and slammed the door shut as I left.
“What's going on?” Matt asked. “I thought I heard my name.”
“We have to go,” I snapped, storming down the stairs. “Zander's got company.”
“Seriously?” He glared at my door. “I'm going up there.”
“No!” He froze, looking back down at me.
“Why not?”
“Because—and let's just leave it at that.”
“Why are you defending him?” Matt asked, taking a step down the stairs toward me. “Come on, Sally, he's walking all over you.”
“Do I need a reason?”
“What aren't you telling me?” he urged, his frown growing.
I took a step back. “Nothing.”
“I don't believe you.”
“Come on, Matt, trust me. It's nothing.”
“No, it's definitely something.” He scowled. “What's going on? And don't say nothing.”
“Look, it's personal, okay? Can't you just leave it at that?”
“No, I can't just leave it at that.” He shoved the pizza into my hands and marched past me down the stairs. “You're hiding something. Something to do with that Zander, and I don't know what to think. But until you get him out of your life, the two of us won't work out, all right?”
“Where is this coming from?” I could feel my eyes getting heavy, the wetness of tears piling under the lids.
“I need some space.”
And, just like that, he took off.
I stumbled and grabbed the banister for support. I could not even begin to comprehend what had just happened. Had I been dumped? How could a conversation turn to a fight and an exit so quickly?
Somehow, I ended up behind the wheel of my car with no destination in mind. My vision blurred as my eyes filled with tears. I felt full of rage—rage at my regular life being replaced with insane, backwards nonsense. How it had turned from being at the peak of normalcy to being filled with alien-explosion-and-assassin regularity completely escaped me.
It was out of control.
Then I saw a light. Unsure of how much I could trust myself behind the wheel, I parked the car and stepped outside. It was pouring—when had it started raining? —and the storm dumped buckets on my head. I dashed to the closest doorway, hoping it was a place I could get a drink.
I was in luck. It was Scintillance.
The music inside was invigorating. I could feel it thrum with the rhythm of my heart, swinging it back and forth. Times like these, I needed a drink and cut loose on the dance floor until I couldn’t hear my thoughts or even feel my legs.
I collapsed in a stool. The bartender, a gorgeous young woman in her late twenties,
gave me a sad look.
“Looks like you could use a drink,” she said kindly, over the beat of the music. “What's your poison?”
“What's the strongest stuff you've got?”
“Polish vodka?”
“Can I afford it?”
“Probably.”
“Then give me some of that.”
“A shot?”
“Three, and we’ll go from there.”
The woman checked my ID—I felt no guilt handing her the fake—then poured out three shots and turned to her other customers. I downed the first one, gasping for air as I put it down. It burned my throat like hot lava, grabbing my mind and giving it a tight squeeze before releasing me back into the wild.
It was glorious. I was starting to feel better already, or worse, I couldn't really tell.
The bartender was fuzzy looking, and it made me laugh.
I took the second shot, chuckling. Down the hatch. At this point, my tongue was completely numb, my teeth tingly, and my stomach out for the count.
“Did you fall from—”
“Move along,” I snapped. Though it sounded more like nouanhanhan, it was effective all the same. The man slipped away without another word.
Now I wanted to dance. Shame there was no music. Or was there? Was it in my head or out in the world? I wanted to let loose, spin around in circles with my hands in the air, screaming at the top of my lungs. Not that I couldn't scream without music. I tried, but it came out in a low hiss.
I downed the last shot. Time stood still. I giggled as I watched everyone freeze in place, in mid-movement, and start to move in slow motion. I marveled at the essence of time, which, in my current state, seemed completely linear and obvious.
I held up three fingers.
“Shit, girl,” the bartender said, coming into my field of vision. “You're cut off. This stuff hit you a lot stronger than it should have.”
“More,” I hissed, shoving the empty shots at the woman. “I need—”
“Sally?”
The voice sounded familiar, yet I couldn't place it. But it sounded worried, that much made sense. I threw out a hand to slap him away but missed. The swing almost pulled me from my chair, but he grabbed my arm and helped me regain my balance.