“I thought you didn’t believe in love?” my inner cynic asks because I can’t get out of my own way and accept what he’s saying is true. I’m the ultimate skeptic who wants to believe, but can’t.
“Where’d you get that idea?” He jerks his chin back.
“You said as much when we were in Alamogordo. You asked if I’d ever been in love. I told you I didn’t think so, and think most people who believe they’re in love are miserable.”
“I agree with all of that, but that doesn’t mean I’m incapable of falling in love. Although this is a first for me, I’m all in. I’m also confident I’m doing it wrong.” His shy smile cracks open the layers protecting my heart.
What I believed was the truth isn’t.
Not even close. My mind flips through memories of our time together in a new light. I even reexamine his reaction at Pete’s when I showed up with Brayden through his eyes. Ouch.
“Earth to Lucy.” He squeezes my hand.
“I’m sorry about Brayden.” I feel tears prick my eyes. “I swear I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”
“Do not apologize. You’d ended things between us. I had no claim on you and acted like a jealous caveman.”
“I’m sorry I told you I didn’t want you.” Shit, now tears spill from my eyes in a steady stream.
Boone wipes them off my cheeks with the pads of his fingers.
“Truth?” he asks.
I nod, afraid to open my mouth and start bawling.
“I didn’t believe you. Not at all. But I wasn’t going to force you to see me if you needed space and time to work out your issues.”
I mumble, “I might be unloveable.”
“Now that’s the biggest crock of shit I’ve ever heard.” His laugh fills my car. “And I live in Roswell.”
“I have a lot of issues.” I press my hand over my mouth.
He gently pulls it away and kisses my palm. “We all do. It’s what makes us interesting.”
“You’re so normal. Except the mustaches.” I do the thing I’ve been dying to do forever. “May I touch it?”
He stills.
Inhaling another shaky breath to stop my tears, I slowly reach out and stroke my finger over the prickly baby caterpillar riding around on his upper lip. The hair isn’t soft like fur, more like a bottle brush. “That’s going to leave a burn. How long do you have to keep it?”
“Tell me more about the location of this burn . . .” Smirking, he catches my finger. “Can we get out of here now that the storm’s passed? There’s something I want to show you.”
Bright sunlight spotlights the mesquite trees and scrub against the black clouds of the storm north of us.
“One thing first.” I lean close. “Kiss me?”
“What is it about you and kissing in cars?”
He doesn’t give me the chance to answer before he melds his mouth against mine, sliding his tongue between my parted lips and making me forget my middle name all over again.
Boone drives his truck and I follow. Less than a quarter of a mile back the way we came, he stops at a gate and opens it with a remote. When the two sides swing ajar, I gasp.
The doodle symbol, he drew on a napkin and I found in my Dad’s book as well in an old article, is welded to medallions on both sides of the gate.
“What the—” I freeze.
Boone’s truck pulls through the opening and waits for me. After a minute or two, he leans out his window and honks.
My mouth remains hanging open as he guides us up the slope of the mountain. I’m barely aware enough of the drive to pay attention to the scatter of barns and metal outbuildings we pass along the way.
He parks in front of a single story, adobe ranch home flanked by a couple of casitas around a large courtyard.
We both get out of our cars. He’s smiling. I’m impersonating my dead goldfish, complete with bugged out eyes.
“What? How? What, what is going on?” Apparently, gobsmacked is my new normal.
He taps his finger on my chin. “Close your mouth, Lucy. I’ll explain everything soon, but I need to show you something first.”
I snap my mouth closed.
Taking my hand, he gives me a soft kiss before leading me along a gravel path between the main house and one of the casitas. Cactus and succulents fill the garden beds against the house, which extends back in two wings, creating another courtyard around a large patio.
“Wow,” I say when he steps to the side. “The view is incredible.”
Nothing obstructs the sightline from the patio east to the horizon. A few pine trees dot the hill around the house, but below it’s all gently rolling grassland crossed with rocky ravines.
“We have the best sunrises. I can’t wait to show you.” He pauses to kiss my hand.
“It’s not even sunset, we have a long time to wait for sunrise.” I can’t help myself.
“Always the cynic.” He grins at me. “Ready for your surprise?”
“No. I hate surprises.”
“Come on.” He pulls me by the hand to the low, stone wall bordering the patio. “Look.”
I don’t get too close to the edge. Instead, I stand behind him, leaning forward to peek over the side.
“Holy shit.”
HONESTLY, AFTER ALL the talk of knowing Zed and the Center, when he said he wanted to show me something, I thought he might mean spaceship wreckage on the hill.
Which makes no sense. Why would they leave it there for seventy years? Wouldn’t someone else have noticed the shiny metal, intergalactic spacecraft?
What I do see is even more shocking, strange, and unexplainable.
The road I followed runs below the house in a straight line until it gets to the sinkhole. A row of fencing intersects the perfect circle at a right angle. My breath turns to stone in my lungs when I see a narrow riverbed cut through the middle diagonally.
“Breathe, Lucy.” He strokes his hand down my spine, grounding me in my body again.
“How?”
“The sinkhole’s been here for decades. Technically, it’s on our property and we’ve never bothered to fix it. That’s why the county road didn’t get paved. There’s a turn shortly before where you ended up that bypasses it. You must’ve missed it in the rain.”
“But, the same design is on the gates, too,” I whisper because it’s all I can manage.
“Yeah, it’s become the ranch’s brand as kind of an inside joke for our family.”
All logical, rational explanations. Except it doesn’t explain the connection to me. “I doodled the same pattern in one of my dad’s books when I was a kid, and then saw it drawn in the margins of an article from the fifties about crop circles. I drew it on my chest to smuggle it out of the Center.”
Boone’s eyebrow lifts. “Is that why you had it on your breast?”
“Wait, did you think I had a tattoo of your brand? That must’ve freaked you out.” I widen my eyes at the realization.
“It was too odd to be a coincidence.”
“Is that why you were a jerk at Pete’s?” I ask, missing pieces falling into place.
“Which night? The first? Partly. I didn’t know why you’d have a tattoo of the ranch’s brand. The second time? No, that was all me. Through Zed, I’m familiar with Brayden and his demon theories. I couldn’t believe you were with him after complaining about all of your boring dates before me.” He twists his mouth. “Maybe we need to avoid going back to Pete’s.”
“Can we call that night the Brayden Incident and erase it from our collective memory?” I want to forget it ever happened. “I promise I’ll never go on dates for research again.”
His brows furrow. “Research?”
I sigh. “We should probably sit down for this part.”
He leads me over to a sitting area in front of a large outdoor fireplace. When he takes a seat in a deep chair, I sit on one of the adjacent outdoor couches. I need space for the tale of crazy I’m about to unload on him.
He listens while I retell the s
tories of my life. Never once does he laugh at my beliefs or doubts. At one point, he reaches over and laces our fingers together, holding my hand to show his support.
“And that’s me. I’m a waitress with daddy issues and a cynical obsession with aliens.”
He chuckles. “Is that what you put on your dating profiles?”
I glare at him, but I laugh, too. “What happened to our pact about the Brayden Incident? I thought we promised to not discuss my online dating life ever again.”
“Truce. Just so you know, Axl, from the band, won’t shut up about that night. Says he’s writing a new song about it and the working title is, ‘Lucy, Are You Sleeping with Him?’”
Too soon.
“Delightful. It’ll probably become a one-hit wonder. Next year’s ‘Gangnam Style’.” Maybe I can get a job inside Carlsbad Caverns and hide in there. Apparently living in the middle of a desert isn’t isolated enough for me to avoid notoriety.
“What are you thinking about?” He touches my knee.
I skip sharing my snack bar fantasy and ask something I’m curious about. “How does your family know about the Center?”
Shifting forward, he rests his elbows on his thighs. “Can you keep a secret?”
I lean closer and nod.
“As you know, Zed’s focused on documenting every published account of UFOs and aliens, from a blog post to a YouTube video or a NASA press release. We’re interested in the same information.”
“Why? Do you really believe Zed and the rest of the ufologists are the ones with the answers?” Not once did I guess he would be a believer.
He shakes his head no. “I think the only one who truly believes Zed is himself. Staying on his good side is the easiest way to know the latest chatter and conspiracy theories, which helps us track the current feelings about aliens—the ones from space, not the humans who immigrated outside of the government systems.”
“As what . . . hobbyists? Is this why Shari loves her conspiracy game?”
“I hate that game,” he grumbles. “We own a lot of acreage in the area, including the land around one of the alleged crash sites, so it’s important to know what the ufologists are doing.”
Tears prick like tiny needles in the back of my eyes. “The deeper I delve, the more questions I have, and the less certain I am about anything. Zed and his circle have devoted their lives to finding the truth. If they don’t know, who does? I truly believed I’d come to Roswell, restore my faith, and find my people in the true believers and zealots. I even imagined them welcoming me with their silver, robe-covered arms wide open, and I’d finally have answers.”
“That hasn’t happened.” He states without hesitation or doubt. His long fingers brush against my wrist as he listens. “What if you’re asking the wrong questions because you’re working off of false information? You were led here based on a lie.”
In my head, I curse Zed again but also thank him for meddling. “Usually I assume everything is a lie, and through elimination, I’ll be left with the truth.”
“You’re a cynic.” He grins, flashing his perfect teeth between his perfect lips.
“I’m a realist.” I counter.
“Are you sure? Wouldn’t it be easier to believe in the possibility of the unknown?”
“Aren’t you a pocket full of sunshine?” I grumble.
He laughs at this. “You’re the only person to ever refer to me as sunshine.”
“I was being sarcastic. I thought you were fluent in sarcasm.” I frown, making an exaggerated disappointed face.
“I am. And you’re deflecting. I offered you an alternate solution and you mocked me, leaving me to conclude you don’t want answers. Are you afraid of the truth?” He gives me a pointed look.
“That my father left of his own free will and was enough of a scumbag to hide himself from us?”
“What’s the other option? The one that brought you to Roswell?” He attempts to refocuses me with his question. “He was kidnapped by aliens who decided to keep him?”
It still sounds crazy when I hear it spoken out loud.
“Why are you here if part of you doesn’t hold out hope for aliens?” He pins me with his stare, green dominating amber in his eyes.
“Process of elimination?” I don’t intend for it to be a question, but my voice lifts at the end. “Over the years, I’ve hired multiple private investigators, spent money I don’t have, and none of them have definitive answers. When I first drove out here, I stayed in Albuquerque for a couple of months, retracing my parents’ early life together. Nothing came of it. Roswell was my last option. A final stand. My Alamo.”
Brushing his finger over his micro-stache, he thinks for a moment. “What about a third outcome?”
“Between aliens and scumbag?”
“Somewhere more to the left of scumbag.”
I furrow my brow.
“Can you live your life without an answer? Accept that there are events for which we’ll never have conclusive answers? This world is full of theories without proof. Hell, even proven facts can be debated and discredited by opposing factions.”
“Accepting uncertainty feels like giving up.” I have to wipe away the tears of frustration that have trailed down my cheeks as I speak. Finally composing myself, I focus on him again. He’s not laughing, not even smiling.
“You don’t need your beliefs to be validated for them to be real. Faith doesn’t operate on tangibles. Ask any major religion. Look at all the people who believe in green aliens in flying saucers. The government has given a reasonable explanation of the crashes, yet people still believe in the impossible.
“What do you want to happen, Lucy? To find a grainy video of your father caught in a glowing beam, being levitated into a hovering spacecraft? Or discovering he’s been dead for almost twenty years but buried as John Doe? Would you feel better knowing he walked out one night, recreated himself, and has been happy for decades in a new life without you? Which is the better outcome?”
Inhaling to the point I feel my ribs forced to expand to accommodate my breath, I mull over his options. I hold my breath for a second before exhaling.
“Honestly?” My voice sounds small to my own ears, almost childlike.
He nods and touches my cheek.
I concentrate on the warmth where his skin makes contact with mine.
“Aliens.” It’s the twisted, ridiculous truth. “I’d rather believe he’s somewhere in outer space than in the ground or still walking this planet. Because if he was abducted by aliens, that means my mother’s loyalty and love meant something. She didn’t cling to her love until her last breath for some loser who abandoned her and their child. It means I’m special, and not some throwaway kid whose dad left and never looked back.”
He rubs his thumb along my jaw as my tears quiver along my bottom lid, threatening to spill over.
Discarded.
Unloveable.
“So aliens it must be,” I say out loud, barely above a whisper.
Has to be.
The other reality sucks too much.
“Then that’s what happened. You can decide what is true, what is real, and if you believe it, who cares if anyone else does? There’s no proof aliens don’t exist. Millions of people believe we’re not alone in the galaxies that make up the universe. We’re all energy, made up of the same material that exists in the stars. You’re contain the same stardust as I do. Why couldn’t someone from a planet far, far away travel here? It’s not impossible. ”
Processing his words, I stare out at the valley still in the sun while shadows from the mountain have crept across the patio. A peace settles over me, like being cocooned in one of my grandpa’s cardigans.
“I’ve been rambling for too long.” I stand and stretch. “I crashed your house, and you probably have things to do or family hiding from the unexpected guest.”
“Crashed? Nice pun.” He stands as well. “I’m the only one of the family who lives here now. Shari’s in Roswell and our paren
ts stay in Santa Fe most of the year. Want the tour?”
Thinking of the here and now, instead of the past, I grin at him. “You have this huge house to yourself? With no neighbors? Do you run around naked all the time?”
“Of course,” he deadpans, stepping closer, crowding my space. “And I expect my guest to do the same when she spends the night.”
Images of his beautiful body naked send a buzz through my body. There’s nowhere, no other place where I want to be in this moment. Even with his ridiculous mustache.
I squeak when he scoops me into his arms.
“I think we’ll start the tour with my bedroom.”
“Boone?” I whisper in the fading light inside his bedroom. Dusk casts a purple glow on the white sheets on his large wooden bed. Curtain-free windows reveal an indigo sky outside. I never want to leave this room.
“Yes, Lucy?” he asks, quiet as possible.
“I’m falling in love with you, too.”
He kisses my neck, right below my ear, making me squirm a little. “That’s good to know. I want to tell you—”
I cut him off by pressing my finger against his lips. He kisses the tip. “Can I ask for a timeout on the love talk? I’m feeling raw and vulnerable, and all squishy today.”
“I love your squishy side.” He nips the tender spot where neck becomes shoulder.
Swallowing my nerves as well as a moan of pleasure from his mouth on my skin, I continue, “Please don’t make a big deal about it. At least not yet. I’m still getting used to the idea.”
“Deal.” He smiles against my naked shoulder where he’s currently kissing a trail from my arm to my chest. Placing a kiss over the spot where I drew his symbol, he whispers, “I promise to always protect your heart. Promise me you’ll stay?”
“The night?” I ask.
“That’s a start.” His eyes meet mine.
I see nothing but love in his beautiful, strange, ever changing eyes. I’ve never seen anything like them. Except Shari’s.
I still, my pulse thrumming in my veins, my breath frozen in my chest.
“Earth to Lucy?” he chuckles. “Where are you?”
“You always ask that. Like I’m floating in out space when I’m right in front of you. Why?”
Tinfoil Heart Page 21
