I wake up feeling a bit sore but deeply rested, sitting up with a loud, exaggerated yawn.
Griffin is nowhere to be seen, once again, but he’s left a stack of scrap papers and musical equipment in his wake. I lean over his side of the bed and pick up one of the papers, finding unfamiliar scrawling all over it.
A voice floats to my ears from the other room, Dev’s voice, but he’s not speaking English or any other human language. I hear Griffin’s voice, too, so I slide off the bed and head toward the doorway.
“Uh, what’s all the paper…?” I say, and Griffin leaps up from his spot on Devon’s bed to greet me with an enthusiastic kiss on the lips. He’s wearing his Union Jack T-shirt and some loose-fitting pants that look suspiciously like women’s yoga pants. But all in all, he’s looking quite snuggly and cute, especially considering how rumpled and messy his hair is.
“I wrote twenty songs last night,” Griffin says. “Do you like cupcakes? The staff sent up a dozen cupcakes this morning. I’ve just had three of them.”
“You wrote twenty songs last night?”
“Yeah, I’ve got loads of them! They’re all amazing, and everyone’s going to love them. They’re going to be the most popular songs in the world.”
“How did you write that many songs in one night, though? Did you sleep at all?”
Devon and Griffin both angle their bodies toward me, almost in synchronization, and stare as if I’ve just said the most ridiculous thing ever. They exchange a look, and then Griffin says, almost gently, “Well, no. We… Last night, we…”
“Alright, someone spit it out. Why are you looking at me like that?” I demand when they’ve weirded me out enough.
“I suppose things are a bit different here, for you, than for us,” Dev ventures, before trailing off. “We’re rather energized by certain events.”
“Like what happened last night before everyone barged in?”
“Yeah, I’m all charged up!” Griffin says. “Do you feel charged, too?”
“I haven’t had coffee yet, so I’ll get back to you on that later,” I say, struggling not to laugh. “So you’re telling me that on top of everything else, the men of your planet gain energy from sex? Do you also keep your rooms tidy? Cook? Remember birthdays? Because I’m starting to think we should turn the tables on this abduction thing and keep a bunch of you here for the ladies of my world.”
Griffin and Dev seem to have no idea why this is funny, but whatever.
“Alright, one of you can get me some coffee,” I say, pointing between them. “And then we should probably get ready and go meet up with Kammie at the studio.”
After a bit of rummaging around, I find one of the dresses Griffin bought me, along with the bag of bras and underwear. I’m halfway through changing into the dress when I realize something all at once.
Last night was a bit unexpected. Okay, very unexpected. And…
My gaze falls to the mirror’s reflection of my belly, which looks the same as always… just a little rounder than it needs to be. Nothing’s grown, my skin hasn’t changed color, and I don’t see any bulging veins or anything, but… but the danger could be real. The danger could be real!
What if he’s planted an alien baby in me? What if Griffin’s whole purpose on our planet was to find a human woman and put an alien baby in her? What if I’m going to blow up? Or what if the baby is going to grow gigantic, gangly, and terrifying… and then eat my guts?
I’ve never felt quite this panicked before. A few seconds of mental torture later, I decide to go right to the source and stomp out of the bathroom. Griffin’s close by, thankfully, fiddling with pedals and humming to himself. I grab him by his shirt and shake him just a bit harder than is strictly necessary. He reacts by grabbing my wrists in a crushing grip, tensing up, and letting out a defensive puff of air.
“Tell me right now, Griffin Valentino. Did you put a chestbuster in me?”
“A-a what?” he says, releasing his hold on me.
“If you put your alien spawn in me, and it’s going to gnaw me from the inside out, I swear I’m going to murder you before it finishes me off. And I’ll call my mom and have her murder you when I’m done.”
He looks so confused that I relent and let him go, though I don’t step away. “I’d better not be pregnant, mister! Admittedly, I forgot to make you use a condom, but whatever. Is it going to kill me?”
Griffin’s eyes narrow a little, the weird blue color darkening. “What’s that? What’s a condom?”
“Oh, great. No one ever told me I’d have to give an alien a sex education class.” I pinch the bridge of my nose and close my eyes, trying to think how to explain it. Memories of bananas and awkward giggles in the classroom come to mind. “It’s something you wear to keep us from making a baby.”
“Why would anyone want to wear something to stop them from making a baby?” he asks in a very slow and deliberate manner, as if I’m the crazy one here. “Do you have any idea how seldom children are conceived on my planet?”
Hmmm. I do sometimes forget he’s not just from England. “Alright, well, around here, they’re certainly not scarce. How are your babies born?”
With this, Griffin yells for Dev. “Oy! Dev! Get in here and help me with something!” he says, and Dev wanders into the room. He’s clutching a steaming cup of coffee in one hand, which he offers me. “Daisy here has some questions about… errr… childbirth. Right, well, enjoy that. I’ll be in the washroom, having a bath.”
He’s gone so quickly that I can’t help wondering if he teleported, and Dev stands in front of me with bright pink cheeks, stammering as he asks me exactly what I need to know.
“The babies on your planet don’t claw their way out of their mothers or something, do they?” I demand, and Dev continues stammering, explaining in very polite and flowery terms that their babies are born from the same place they’re conceived. “Oh, okay. Thanks, Dev. I got it; you don’t have to say anything else. It’s the same here.”
Dev shoots me a relieved smile and suddenly has something very, very, very important to do in the other room.
“Someone bring me some juice!” That’s Griffin’s voice, echoing from the bathroom. I take a deep breath and push open the door, only to find Griffin propped up in the bathtub like a smug king on a bubbly throne. He’s probably quite proud of himself for escaping an uncomfortable conversation. “Oh. Daisy. Where’s my juice?”
I close and lock the door behind me.
“Why’re you doing that? I want my juice!”
“Your juice can wait,” I say, sitting down on the edge of the bathtub. “You need to answer some questions for me.”
Griffin pulls a face and slips down into the bubbles until everything below his nose has disappeared from my view.
“Dev’s already answered the worst of it for you, you coward, but you need to tell me if I need to worry about something gnawing me alive from the inside out.”
“That’s ghastly; where in the cosmos would you get such an idea?” he demands, raising his mouth above the waterline long enough to speak, before submerging again and peering up at me with narrowed eyes.
I grab my cell phone from the bathroom sink, where I’d left it, and find a clip from Alien. “There now, see?” I say, holding it in front of his face. He watches it silently, barely blinking, and as the clip ends, he bursts into hysterical laughter.
Griffin sits up in the tub, doubled over. “What kind of tripe is that? Your people have the damn strangest ideas I’ve ever heard of! I—I don’t even think that the… Well, maybe that could happen on Alscos or its moon. Maybe there. Everyone says you shouldn’t do anything dodgy with them, but I’ve never seen anything like that! What film is this? Really, I think Dev and I’d better watch the rest and have a laugh.”
“So, nothing like that’s going to happen to me?”
“Not unless there’s something about your human gestational period that no one’s ever told me!” he says, slipping back down under the bubbles.
>
Sliding my phone closed, I let out a relieved sigh. “No, no. Pregnancy here is already scary enough without fear of anything busting out of your stomach and eating you alive.”
Griffin muses on this. “There are some holopics of me as a baby, and I didn’t have any teeth at all. You know, I got ‘em later. They never quite grew in exactly right, but that’s pretty common in the royal family. And my mother was quite well alive until she was murdered by terrorists.”
“As long as nothing scary is going to happen to me, we’re good,” I say, and then hesitate. “I’m sorry about your mom. I, uh, I think I saw her last night when we… when we did that thing. The eyeball thing. She seemed really wonderful.”
He looks away from me. “Yeah.”
“It’s awful that someone would actually… you know…” I don’t know what the delicate term is. “Murder her. You were really close with her, huh?”
Griffin shifts around a bit. “You have so much water on this planet,” he says, as if we haven’t just been talking about anything serious at all. “We have one small bathtub in the royal home, about half the size of this one. It’s one of the only ones in the city. Maybe in the world. I don’t use it often, because it’s a disrespectful waste of water, but someone started this rumor that I take baths every night.” His eyes flick up in my direction. “I take regulated showers like everyone else. I’ve used that tub twice in my adult life.”
“I see.”
“Once they believe something like that, though, they’ll believe anything. They’ll believe every mistake I’ve made is a million times worse than it really is. Maybe they believed things like that about her, too. Maybe they thought she was frivolous and didn’t care about them.” He glowers, and the water in the bathtub ripples, moves, even though he’s completely still. “But they never really knew her at all. Not like I did. She was always so kind, and she looked for the best in everyone, tried to find peaceful solutions to things. And they’ve never known me for anything besides a privileged brat with a big house and a white uniform, making a poor choice in his lover and painting a silly message on the side of a building.”
The lights flicker a few times over us. “Whoa, alright. Dark mood.” I slip out of my clothes, climbing into the bathtub with him. His face registers something like shock, rather than just surprise.
“What’re you doing?”
“There’s room for me to join you, so why not?” I say, angling around so I can sit in front of him and lean my back against his chest. After a few seconds, I feel him relax. He settles his arms around me. “You’re on my planet now, and we can waste water sometimes if we want. Just don’t tell Sting.”
“How odd,” he says, but I can almost hear him realizing how cozy and convenient this situation is. “We’d never do something like this back home.”
I glance over my shoulder at him, unable to hold back a laugh at his surprised expression. “Listen, I know you’ve been through a lot, and it sounds like things are even worse on your planet than I could possibly imagine. But things aren’t quite so bad here. My phone’s constantly buzzing with notifications of all the people on Twitter talking about how much they love you. You’ve noticed how much people like you.” I hesitate, but then shrug and just say it… “What if you stayed here?”
“Stayed?”
“Yeah. Instead of going home to your dad and crazy fiancée and people who throw poisonous dust at you, you could just stay here, play shows, and buy nice clothes for us to share. It’ll be fun. And even my mom seems to like you. That’s huge.”
For a long time, Griffin remains silent, but he finally says, “I could write songs.”
“Yeah, you could.”
“And make music videos and appear on important television shows.”
“You could totally do that. And you could actually go to England, you know, for research and stuff. Maybe I could come with you.”
“Of course you’d come along; don’t be daft!”
I laugh a little, feeling his fingers dance up my legs beneath the water. “There are so many foods you could try, too. I’d love to see your face if you ate a hot pepper.”
All at once, though, Griffin sighs heavily and his hands fall away from my legs. “They need me, Daisy. Even if they hate me… I need to do this for them.”
“You’re right,” I admit with a heavy sigh. After all, I have no idea what it would be like to live on a planet in as much trouble as his, and I certainly can’t imagine the embarrassing moments in my life turning into something even uglier and scarier, like some of his memories. But I still can’t help wishing it were possible for Griffin to just stay here. I’m starting to kind of like having him around.
I turn around carefully, slipping a bit here and there, but finally settle with my knees on either side of him, my hands on his shoulders. “You need to promise me something, Griffin Valentino.”
He stares up at me, a rapt pupil now that I’m facing him, though his gaze slips to my chest once or twice.
“Promise me that you won’t just disappear. I know you’re in danger, I know you have a mission to complete, and I know you’re from another planet and whatever, but you have to promise me you won’t leave without saying goodbye.”
Griffin nods, taking his time in answering. “I won’t leave without saying goodbye.”
“Good. And—”
He cuts me off with a fierce kiss that almost convinces me to spend a lot of time in the bathtub, but then I hear Devon calling for Griffin and gently untangle myself.
“You should finish getting ready,” I say, standing up on shaky legs. “We don’t need any more broken doors.”
Once I’m dressed, I exit the bathroom in a hurry. Otherwise, I’m afraid I might climb back into the bath with Griffin and give myself even more reason to worry about alien babies.
Dating an Alien Pop Star Page 21
