“Yes, Denver,” she smiles. “I poisoned Danielle and set up Olecki using Martin. It wasn’t hard, all I had to do was sleep with the right people. You’d be amazed what sex will get you in this city. Except for you, Denver. You’re impossible to crack. But now you’ve got your perfect dream girl, Chef Tara Rogers, so you can live the rest of your life in blissful harmony.”
Her lunacy is out the window—the three of us stand here, Denver taking the lead, even shielding Martin. I don’t want to be anywhere near the creep but at the moment I don’t have a choice.
“However, I do have proof,” she continues. “And with a new chef I can easily plant Danielle’s death on Tara. That’s no problem. In fact, the three of you can be poisoned. I’ve prepared a small dose for myself so it doesn’t look too inconspicuous when I survive and the three of you die.”
“If you’re going to poison us then what is the gun for?” I ask. “Why didn’t you just poison us and be quiet about it?”
She drops the gun and walks forward to me, pushing Denver aside with her gun hand. Inches away from me now, I can feel Jill’s breath on me, exhaling hard. Although she has a calm front, I know that deep down she’s steaming—ready to blow.
“You see, Tara, when you can’t use sex to get what you want, you have to think of something else,” she says. “See, you were able to get Denver. So you wouldn’t understand what it’s like on this side. You wouldn’t understand what signing your life away is life. Ask Martin, Mae Lin, Gloria. Any of them. He’s sick. I’ll be doing you a favor.”
“If he’s so sick then why go through the trouble? You love him?”
“I did love him, but he wouldn’t have me. I wanted him to be my husband and to share in his life. But, since I can’t have that, I’ll just have his life.”
Jill’s eyes are like glass as they stare into me—I see nothing on the other side of them, just emptiness. In a millisecond there is a CLANK and Jill drops to the ground.
Martin hit her in the head with the pan I cooked breakfast in.
She’s passed out on the ground, but not bleeding. Denver grabs the gun from her limp hand and I feel my lungs regain regularity.
*****
Denver called his connection, Lieutenant Hasboro, who phoned Simi Valley emergency, and they were at the house in minutes. Martin walked without any hassle, and when they put the cuffs on Jill she was still passed out. The officers put both of them into the back of their squad car and pulled away, leaving Denver alone in the yard.
Martin agreed to tell the whole story against Jill in court, because he really did love her and the fact that she was using him broke his heart. In the heat of that showdown, Denver said that they both loved Danielle. I’m guessing that when Jill confessed, it set Martin off.
Now, we’re back inside, all the doors are locked and all of the curtains are shut. Once the house is secure, he comes over to me and puts his hands on my arms.
“This has been one crazy day,” he says.
“I don’t really want to be here any longer than I have to be,” I say. “And to be honest, I feel like I might need some space. So much has happened, Denver. Everything with Jill…I can’t tell what’s real from what isn’t.”
His knowing eyes hold me, and then he brings me into a hug, his lips pecking my ear. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry, Tara. I understand. Just know that everything I told you was true. Don’t let the lies get to you. Trust me, Tara.”
When he pulls away, I want to give in. I want to go upstairs and make love until the crack of dawn, sleeping the next day off. I want to act like this never happened. But it did, and I can’t ignore it. Just like when I made love to him both times, I can’t control my emotions, and I start to cry.
Now that we aren’t making love, the sight breaks his heart. “Please, baby,” he said. “You have to see that now everything is different. Today hasn’t been life altering for just you. It’s now a new beginning for me, too.”
I nod, but I can’t speak because my voice will crack, which is only going to make me cry more. I just have to go. I don’t even have my car here. Looking at the door, I refuse to turn my head toward him, hoping he’ll take the hint.
“I’ll call you a cab, Tara,” he says. “It will take you to wherever you want. When you’re ready to talk, call me.”
I nod my head and go toward the door. With the handle in my fingertips, I twist it and pull the door slightly. I want to say ‘goodbye’ or ‘see you soon’ but I can’t bring myself to, so I just bring it open all the way and step out.
***
I sit on the stoop for what I guess is twenty minutes before the luxury driver pulls up. I look in the tinted windows before walking up, because I am not going to take a vehicle sponsored by Denver D. Phillips. On the dashboard sits a Gogo sign, so I know that he at least thought about me enough to get a public service.
On the way to Burbank I just stare out the window. I don’t want to replay a single thing until I can lock myself in my apartment and rethink things. The driver doesn’t speak a word to me, and I think it’s because when he looks back at me he can see that my eyes are baggy, weighed down. Maybe Denver told him that I wasn’t much of a talker. He’s probably a good tipper.
The driver drops me off and I walk up the long stone path to my gate where I punch in my code. The interior of my complex is one big, gated court facing in on itself. It’s not much, but right now it’s all that I have. Taking the steps up to my apartment, I smell the familiar stench of Mrs. Almadi’s spiced curry, and the college student next door’s reefer. When I unlock my door, I take in the aroma of my place, which I haven’t been in in days—lilac and coriander. I like the soapy, clean smell that they give me every time I come back.
Even though it’s old school, I still have a landline, and it’s full of messages. I don’t even want to bother going through them. I scan through the caller ID and see that most of them are from Dominic, some from my parents and friends. The others are bill and loan collectors. Nobody I really need to call back right now.
I double-check that my apartment is locked tight. After having a gun in your face, there’s nothing like returning to an empty apartment in a not-too-great section of Southern California. The first thing I do is plug my phone in, and then I take a hot shower. When I come back, I see that Denver has tried to reach me. He doesn’t have my landline, but I’m actually excited to see that he’s blown up my cell with texts and calls. They’re all positive, filtered with different ways to tell me he loves me without wearing the word down to nothing.
Right now, I have the upper hand because he knows that my phone has been off, so I text him that I’m going to bed, I’m shutting my phone off, and I’ll get at him when I’m ready.
Deep down I want to send him every heart or kissy emoji I can find, but I have to act hard for a night and make him think I don’t even care. Really, though, I care a hell of a lot.
In the comfort of my own bed I finally close my eyes, feeling protected. It’s funny that even the “safety” of a billionaire feels less guarded than my own, in-need-of-washing sheets. This smell just reminds me of me. Before all of this, I spent so much time with Dominic that my own apartment basically became a place where I store and dump stuff off.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll get around to cleaning. I plan on sleeping for as long as possible. If I didn’t see the police take Martin and Jill away with my own eyes, I probably wouldn’t be able to fall asleep right now. I wouldn’t be able to imagine Denver’s smile, the way he stood in front of a gun for me, or how his eyes rolled back when we came together.
Drifting to sleep, I hold my phone as close as it will go while staying plugged in. I go through all of Denver’s texts—they’re like letters in time, telling me how amazing I am. How he wants to give me the world. How I changed his world.
This is the stuff dreams are made of, Tara, I tell myself. Suddenly my phone lights up and he sends me a picture of himself, lying in the purple sheets where we made love earlier
. The text bubble simply reads “wish u were here”. It’s his face, lip pouty, eyebrows scrunched in—and those deep, brilliant blue eyes.
My man.
I take one of myself, but I don’t use the flash like he did. I let it remain dark and slightly blurred. With a little time I’ll let myself come into focus, and hopefully soon there will be room in the frame for Denver, too.
THE END
Bonus Story 34 of 40
Mated with the Cyborgs
Shimmering and beautiful, space was unveiled around all sides of Juniper as the observation deck folded back its most protective layers. Thick glass allowed Juniper to observe the worlds that stretched and webbed in the galaxies ahead of her.
The observation deck was a large lounge with long couches and tables, an abandoned bar sat against a wall. The floor was a dark and wood-like, created from plastics and manmade fiber when wood became a rarity. Between it and the curtain of space, the white furniture and pale Juniper seemed to float like stars. She collapsed into one of the oversized chairs, its shape was angular but the fabric and cushion of it felt divine against her body.
The Marianne Zoendy, named after the designer’s late wife, was built to house a crew of one hundred. Fewer and fewer people were agreeing to continue on missions that would risk their lives after the first few habitable planets were found, they decided that they were lucky enough to survive and didn’t want to risk more than necessary. Slowly the crew dwindled down to only three, and Juniper was the only one of the remaining three that had joined by their own choice.
Her peach and gold nail polish was tracing small temporary lines into the arm of the chair as she trailed her fingertips across it thoughtfully.
She joined the first mission when she was only 18, ready to explore- to be out there and show that she could be anything and do anything. She wanted everyone to know who she was and what she was capable of. She quickly rose through the ranks into a position that let her be a surface explorer, able to have hands on experience with new lifeforms and worlds no human being had ever seen before.
It had been fifteen years though, and it seemed that she was really the only person with any passion for it left. People were frightened off by the danger of it, or were just ready to settle and evolve a new planet into something habitable, but she had fire in her blood and wasn’t finished yet.
“You don’t have to sit in here alone, you know,” a kind, deep voice said, pulling her out of her thoughts and back onto the ship. She glanced up at him briefly, her gaze pausing on his mint green eyes before looking back out into the spread of space ahead of them. She had tried her best to not let affections for other people interrupt her work. It wasn't a far fetch to say that she had been having difficulties with the two crew members on board about that.
“I just thought it would be nice to unwind a bit before we reach FE302,” she responded. She slid her mahogany colored hair away from her face with her left hand in a thoughtless motion.
“I made lunch if you’ll have it,” he motioned to the door with his left hand: it was pale save for blue and silver wires that let patterns unwind under what might have been his skin, she wasn’t sure what material it was now. A brief pause in her thoughts and she could smell what might have been a tomato based soup, or maybe pasta sauce. He was wearing well-fitting pants that were snug in just the right places, a black stain was on the left leg may have either been from oil or a kitchen incident. His shirt was plain black open just to his clavicles, the sleeves folded up to his elbows to expose his forearms and their shimmering technology.
“I’ll eat after you get me the system’s report on our landing gear, you need to be doing your actual job, not just hobbies,” she responded, sounding exasperated. Juniper had to still herself to keep her eyes from wandering up to his handsome face, the starlight from the galaxies around them played games in his black hair and she needed to focus. He was very distracting.
“Fair enough,” he responded, shrugging slightly. “It’ll take me a couple minutes to get it together, don’t go anywhere,” his voice was playful as he headed out through a different door than the one he had slipped in through.
Bren had been hired for the same reason as their third shipmate, they were both cyborgs, people who had seen tragedy and through science and training had become so much more. They literally owed their lives to HSOC (The Humanity Survival Outreach Corps) who funded their recoveries: which is actually how they ended up on the good old Marianne Zoendy, covering 90% of the jobs that used to be handled by 100 people.
Their job was to ensure Juniper could carry out her mission of exploration to find new planets to colonize without getting in the way or impeding her. Bren had been a water farmer, his father owned a treatment plant. He didn’t know a single thing about space or landing gear before his accident. HSOC made sure that along with a new vascular system, and improved anatomy over all, that his brain was pumped with all that he needed to know about exploration. Two months in a lab and he had as much knowledge about this role as ‘the normal human’ Juniper had, and she’d been doing this for fifteen years- the only thing either of the boys was missing was the fire and passion she had.
You couldn’t replicate or spark that in a laboratory.
Juniper straightened the collar of her jacket, smoothing her hair and clothing as she heard movement in the next room, she didn’t want to be caught off guard again. He couldn't know that she viewed him as anything more than a coworker.
“I thought I’d cover both bases,” Bren said, smiling from ear to ear. In his left hand was a file screen that she could read the reports on, in his right hand was a bowl of soup and crackers on a plate, the spoon clinked as he bumped the door open with his hip.
Juniper stood to take the file screen, and let him set the dish down on a small table beside her. Her index finger’s nail clicked slightly as she slid it over the sleek surface, scrolling through the information to ensure that their landing would be safe. They’d never had an issue, but she wasn’t going to stake her life on the chance that they’d never have problems in the future.
The calculations looked good and she set the file screen down on the table, the numbers clearing out into a blank surface once the device didn’t detect any eyes on it.
Bren came back into the room, bringing out a bowl and dish of his own, Juniper looked up at him expectantly, her heart beat out her surprise that he’d do this. She needed to be more careful.
“As I said, you don’t have to sit alone,” he said genuinely.
*****
Pov was fully immersed into his work when Juniper returned to the control center. Literally. His wiring was extremely compatible with the ship, to the point that there were times Juniper would swear that he could pilot it with his thoughts. Wiring of the ship was hooked into his arms at the elbow so he could monitor everything that was going on with the ship in its current status while working on other projects as well. He was younger than her and Bren by a couple years, his skin smoother and warm with the glow of being in his late twenties. His hair was a dark natural red, curling slightly and brushed back away from sleek features and crisp cheekbones. His eyes were an incredible dark brown, almost as black as the vastness of space, as they scanned over the information on his screen.
“How much longer do we have?” Juniper asked, not bothering to sit.
“Just about an hour, you should go ahead and start suiting up,” he responded, glancing up at her with those endless eyes. “You could always change in here if you wanted,” he flirted, a short smile on his lips.
“Ha-ha, very funny,” Juniper said dryly, smiling only once his eyes were off her. She could feel her cheeks warm at the thought of it. He wasn’t terribly younger than her, and he was incredibly attractive, she couldn’t imagine what it would be like to-
She needed to get suited up, and she had an hour, she didn’t have time to dawdle.
“Make an announcement when we’re ten minutes out,” she commanded.
“Aye Cap’
n,” he teased again, typing something into the screen and not bothering to look back to her.
***
Her suit was skin tight to allow for mobility. Pouches on the hips, and a pack she carried on her back, were used to carry whatever supplies she needed or samples she found on the trip out onto the surface. The planet looked like a giant copper marble that was starting to patina in streaks and streams across its surface. Pov’s voice came in through her earpiece as she finished ensuring her suit and helmet were air-tight and sealed properly. She wasn’t going to start her oxygen converter until she was stepping out onto the surface.
As she came out into the hall from her quarters, she was greeted by an almost fully suited Bren. His face was perfectly framed by the collar of his suit, and through his open door she could see his helmet was still on its hook in his room.
“You should really wear that some time,” she said shortly as he followed her through the ship to the control room. “You may not need to breathe, but you can never be sure if there’s something else going on down there on the surface.” She had said this dozens of times, but he never listened to her. His lungs and a large part of his chest, stomach, and legs had been replaced after what he told her was a fire. He basically had the oxygen converter that was in her suit built into his lungs. That wouldn’t help him if debris came flying at him, or if the atmosphere was corrosive, but at least he was wearing gloves this time.
“I’ll be fine, I always am,” Bren confidently said as they entered the command room.
“Wouldn’t want to ruin that hair of his anyways,” Pov joked without missing a beat. “There’s a lot of water down there and signs of plant life, so be sure to bring a stun gun just in case. I’ve included on each of your handhelds a map of the terrain as clear as I could get but there are red storms going on, so the image isn’t that clear. We’ll be landing a few hundred miles from any of that activity though,” he turned to them, or more to Bren with a stern face.
Alien Affair Page 119
