How to Date an Alien

by Magan Vernon

  He squeezed my hand. "You're getting pretty good at this reassuring girlfriend thing."

  I shrugged as we got into the elevator. "I try."

  He pressed the button to the thirteenth floor and looked over at me. "You know we could always just get the elevator stuck for awhile and make out." He leaned over, nuzzling his nose against my cheek.

  I closed my eyes, inhaling his cool scent and the feel of his skin on mine. "As much as I'd like to—" I opened my eyes, meeting his. "—this is something we'd better not be late for. Nerses scares me almost as much as your mom, I mean, the queen." I bit my lip at my mistaken choice of words.

  Ace slid his hands around my waist and his fingers trailed to my back. "Alex, she may be my mother and the queen of Calta, but that doesn't excuse what she did to us. She may have given birth to me, but that doesn't mean she can control who I date."

  I sighed, looking into his eyes, and wishing that I could just stay lost in their beautiful darkness forever.

  "Ace, Miss Bianchi." Ace removed his arms from around me as we looked over to see three guards standing in the open doorway of the elevator. "Nerses is waiting." I nodded in their direction and placed my hand back into Ace's.

  "We're ready." I tried my best to force a small smile.

  We followed the guards down the hallway to the steel doors, which had been replaced since I had shot through them. They looked even sturdier than the last ones. One of the guards opened them to reveal that it was just Nerses and my dad sitting together at one end of the large, white table.

  "I thought this would be some sort of board meeting to decide our punishment." Ace looked at all the empty chairs before we took our seats across from my dad and Nerses.

  Nerses sighed, looking down at the table. "Sadly, with these unprecedented circumstances we've had to take a different direction on how to handle this situation."

  A blue beam of light poured from the ceiling above, forming a long cylinder of luster down to the table. Slowly, a white silhouette formed until the full body of the queen of Calta stood staring down at me. Her eyes narrowed in my direction as the blue light faded out.

  "Your majesty." Nerses stood up alongside my dad.

  Ace and I followed suit. I leaned toward him. "Why couldn't we have just used that beaming technology instead of getting shot down in a broken ship?" I whispered.

  Ace covered his mouth to stifle his laughter at my comment, but stopped once the queen got down from the table and found her seat at the opposite end from the rest of us. Ace and I took our seats as well.

  "Machiavelli, always good to see you looking so—" She flicked her wrist, curving her lips into a weak attempt at a smile. "—happy, I guess, is the word."

  "Who is Machiavelli?" I whispered to Ace. "Besides the Italian philosopher?"

  The queen laughed that eerie laugh. "Oh, my son, you tell me that you are in love with this girl and she doesn't even know your real name?"

  Her dark eyes focused on me."You ever wonder how that other Machiavelli got the idea to title his book The Prince? You don't think his pathetic human parents came up with that last name on their own, do you?" She raised her eyebrows.

  I made an O-shape with my mouth and thought that would be something I would need to talk about with Ace later. If there was a later.

  "Where is Marsilo, Mom?"

  The queen cringed as Ace overemphasized the word.

  "Yes, Marsilo." She folded her hands onto the table. "He had enough earthly excitement to last him centuries, or so he says. Nerses thought it would be best if it was just the five of us discussing this matter."

  My eyes trailed over to Nerses. This was her idea to put us in the same room as the woman who tried to kill me? I narrowed my eyes, wondering what her motive was.

  "Yes, your highness." Nerses eyes went from the queen back to Ace and me. "I invited you here to figure out how we can come to a peaceful agreement between Circe and Calta. I've already had the paperwork drawn up and I can have my public affairs department make any changes that you deem necessary." She smiled, placing a large stack of papers infront of her.

  "A peace agreement?" The queen tilted her head back, letting out a single laugh. "How long have you been on this planet, Nerses? You're trying to adapt their same crazy logic."

  "Now, your highness, I know it might not make sense to you," dad interjected. "But I don't want to see our children continue to be stuck in the middle of all of this." His eyes trailed over me. "We have seen what happens when we've tried to separate them, and they found a way to see each other. Who knows what could have happened to them if they didn't succeed."

  Dad sighed, looking over at the queen. "As a parent, I don't want to have to go through that again with my daughter, and I doubt that you would want anything to happen to your son."

  I held back a snort. Like the queen actually cared about Ace. She would have let him die alongside me in that ship.

  The queen's eyes softened when she turned to Ace. "Is this what you really want? To be stuck on this technology-deprived planet with this human girl forever?"

  Ace looked over at me and placed his hand onto mine, laying them on the table. "There is nothing that I want more than to stay here with Alex."

  He looked back at her. "I ignored all of the rules and followed my heart. It may have gotten me into a lot of trouble, but to me she will always be worth it." He squeezed my hand, not taking his eyes off the queen.

  "And do you plan on making this girl your mate?" That evil smirk curved into the corners of the queen's face.

  His mate? I was only seventeen! I was sure in my heart that I loved Ace, but I didn't think I was ready to be someone's mate.

  "I think we'll have to wait until she at least has her bachelor's degree for that one." Ace smiled, keeping a cool demeanor.

  "Or a master's, whichever she decides to get," dad added.

  "And we can put that all in the peace agreement. Even if for some reason Ace decides that he wants to leave Alex, we can still have peace between Calta and Earth," Nerses added, shuffling the papers.

  "Well, then Alex." The queen turned her murky eyes on me. "After you get all of these nonsense degrees, do you plan on letting my son take you as his mate? For all of the universe to see?"

  I looked at the queen, watching her eyes as they searched my face for the answer. I could tell that she was hoping that I would pick the wrong one and choose not to spend the rest of my life with her son. Her superior smirk said it all. My dad sat silently with small beads of sweat forming at his widow's peak, the way it always did when he was nervous. What was the answer he was looking for? Was he ready to see the daughter that he had just started to get to know give up everything she had to spend her life with an alien?

  I looked over at Ace, his gaze fixed on me. I had spent most of the summer wondering what was behind that gaze and slowly falling for the soul of the alien. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life without him, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to spend the rest of my life knowing that I would be mated to an ageless alien. Whatever that meant. I swallowed hard, not taking my eyes off Ace.

  "Well Alex, do you have an answer for me?" she questioned.

  "It's kind of a big deal for her; she may need some time to think about it," Nerses replied in a calm manner. "But if we can just get these papers signed."

  "Some time to think about it?"

  I looked over as the queen rose from the table, slowly making her way toward Ace and me. "I stopped forty thousand Caltian ships from coming down to destroy your planet because my son insisted on saving this human girl, and she needs some time to think?"

  A slow fire brewed in her voice as she loomed over us. It was just like a scene from one of my nightmares, but this time it was real.

  "Are you going to let this pathetic human control your every move for all of eternity? How is a prince supposed to live without the respect of his mate?"

  "Your majesty," Nerses started as she and my dad were at the queen's side. It was too late. The
queen had risen to her full height and her body began to slowly levitate off the ground. Darkness fell around her. The room slowly faded to black and clouds of silver smoke billowed around her extended arms.

  "How dare you defy me! My own son!" Her words boomed from her throat while she hovered over Ace. She lifted her long, white fingers, pointing them at Ace's head. A flurry of sparks formed a ball at the end of her fingertips, gathering into a blinding blue light. The dark room was illuminated by its glow.

  "No!" I screamed and sprang from my chair, knocking Ace out of his and onto the floor below. The blue light started to fade away and the queen slowly made her way back down to the ground. The storm clouds disappeared and the lights flickered back to life, but all I could focus on was Ace's shivering body below mine.

  "I'd do anything not to see you hurt." I looked into Ace's eyes and saw the shadows that I knew would forever be mine. Dad and Nerses rushed to our side, quickly helping us to our feet so that we could face the queen.

  "So do I take that as a yes?" The queen arched her eyebrows. I looked around at all the faces in the room. I didn't know the answer they all wanted me to say, but in my heart I knew the one I wanted.

  "Do I take that as you'd hate it if I called you mother-in-law?"

  Chapter 33

  Ace and I walked back to my dorm room in silence. No one seemed pleased that I agreed to someday marry Ace, not even him, and especially not my dad. The agreement was that nothing would happen until after I finished school. My dad made sure that was in the peace agreement just like the queen made Nerses promise to keep all air space above Circe available for Caltians at all times. But it still left an uneasy feeling in my stomach. I was only seventeen and I felt like I had just made one of the biggest decisions of my life on a whim.

  Ace ran his fingers through his hair, his eyes doing everything they could not to meet mine. "I'm going to go back to my room for awhile. It has kind of been a crazy day."

  I nodded. "Yeah, I should spend some time with Jen anyway. She probably wants to know everything that's going on."

  "Hey, Alex, I was wondering when you'd be getting back." I looked up to see Gavin, leaning his body against the doorframe. "Ace." He nodded in his direction.

  "Gavin." Ace mumbled.

  "Yeah, we just got back not too long ago, but we had a meeting that we had to attend." I looked up at Gavin, wondering if he knew that I had just given my life away to an alien. If he had a bad reaction to the fact that Ace and I were dating, I was afraid of what he would do if he knew about my impending marriage.

  "Well, I guess I'll let you have some human time." Ace embraced me in such a passionate kiss that I was actually embarrassed to be displaying that kind of affection in plain view of everyone.

  Ace let go of me, squeezing my hand before he started down the hallway. "Come by my room when you're done," he yelled and headed down the hall.

  "Jealous much?" Jen popped her blond head out of the room, staring down the hallway before she looked back to Gavin and me.

  I shrugged. I never thought of Ace as the jealous type, but I guess he always did seem to get nervous whenever Gavin was around, and the fact that I just made myself his future princess bride probably escalated his jealousy. "You know Ace."

  "Actually, I really don’t." Gavin pushed his bangs out of his eyes. "That's kind of what I came here for."

  "Well, I'm going to go meet Malcolm in the library, so I'll let you two have your alone time." Jen stepped out of the room. "But don't do anything you wouldn't want a jealous Caltian to see," she called before she disappeared.

  Gavin and I stood in the doorway, staring at each other, before I cleared my throat to hide the tension. "Um, do you want to come in?"

  "Uh, yeah, that'd be cool," he muttered and followed me into the room, closing the door behind us. I looked around for somewhere to sit. I didn't want to sit on the bed and give him any ideas, so I just stood near my desk and luckily he didn't feel the need to sit either. He stood at the other side of my bed.

  "Look, Alex, I know I've been kind of a jerk throughout this internship about the whole Ace thing."

  I let out a stifled laugh. "Kind of a jerk?"

  He pushed his hair out of his eyes. "Okay, a big jerk about it."

  I nodded. "Go on."

  "I just wanted to say that I'm sorry for not even trying to understand what was going on between the two of you and instead just judging you for it."

  I arched an eyebrow.

  Gavin let out a big sigh. "I've just been working around these aliens for so long that I know what they're capable of. Good, bad, and just plain evil. When I met you I thought it would actually be cool to spend my summer with someone normal that wasn't an alien or hung up on themselves like the other human interns can be."

  He took a step around my bed, approaching the desk. "Then I found out that you started to see that—" He swallowed holding back whatever words he really wanted to say. "—to see Ace," he finished. "I was just pissed off that the first girl I could actually see myself wanting to get to know during this program would prefer to be with an alien than me."

  I took a step back, not sure what his motives were and not wanting to be too close. "Well Gavin, it's great that you're telling me this now, but you know very well that I'm with Ace."

  He nodded, stepping back. "Yeah, we heard all about you stealing a plane and getting held captive inside the mothership."

  He looked down, his eyes fixed on me like I was being interrogated in a dimly lit room. "But my real question is, is it true that to save both your lives you agreed to marry him?"

  I did everything to avoid his stare. "I, uh, well…it's kind of complicated."

  "I knew it!"

  I stepped back, gasping at his sudden outburst. He stood there, shaking his head, and slammed his fist into his other hand. He stepped so close to me that I could feel the heat from his words on my forehead when he grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me.

  "How could you do that to yourself? A high school girl engaged to an alien? That sounds like something you would see in the supermarket tabloids."

  I didn't know how to respond, because secretly that was exactly how I felt on the inside. I knew in my heart that I never felt for anyone else the way that I felt for Ace, but the moment I had agreed to marry him all I could think about was saving both of our lives. I didn't have time to consider what that actually meant.

  "I mean, how do you even have sex with a creature like that? Are you even going to be able to have children?" The anger rose in his face as the veins on his forehead began to bulge when he stopped shaking me and just stared.

  Sex wasn't something I wanted to talk about, especially since my virginity was very much intact. I had spent many nights in Ace's bed, but those were spent sleeping and trying to keep the nightmares away, not trying to populate the future alien and human hybrid race.

  Gavin let out a deep breath and shook his head. Letting go of my shoulders, he took a step back. "I’m sorry that got out of hand, Alex. I just wanted you to know how I felt. I guess I just took it a little too far."

  I nodded, not looking up from the ground. "It's okay. I understand."

  Gavin left the room, not saying another word as he closed the door behind him. I definitely understood what he had been saying. The worst part was that he had said everything I was too afraid to even let myself think.

  Chapter 34

  The interns' last day really wasn't spent working, but more like visiting every department so you could say your goodbyes and be treated with whatever was the specialty dessert of that planet. Mars had the best gelato, but Venus had a concoction that I didn't think any human or alien should even try to consume.

  Things between Ace and I hadn't been the same since we came back to Circe together. Sure, we still worked together, and some nights I would stay with him in his room, but there was this unanswered tension that neither of us wanted to bring up. Our conversations always danced around what we really wanted to talk about and u
sually were limited to talking about work. He didn't even look at me the same. Instead of his eyes glowing when he saw me and his teeth gleaming as he smiled, he just looked like an empty vessel, without a thought behind his face.

  When he kissed me it felt just as empty as his eyes. There wasn't any passion behind it and he always looked away when he was done. I wanted to talk about everything from being captured to our agreed-upon, future marriage. But every time I thought about bringing it up I couldn't. I did everything I could not to talk about it, even though it was all I could think about, and I wanted some comfort as to what our future was going to be like.

  "Congratulations on surviving your internship!" Ody grasped me into a giant bear hug that I swore broke another two of my ribs.

  "Thanks, Ody." I tried to breathe against his chest before he let me go.

  "Are you going to come back next year? I'm sure that Ace will always save a spot for you in the security office." Ody looked past me, his eyes searching the room. "Where is that Caltian of yours anyways?"

  "Oh, he's in the office. I was on my way to go see him." I sported the biggest grin I could for Ody's sake.

  "You'd better not keep your future husband waiting." Ody winked, patting me on the back before I started toward the office.

  The differences I saw in Circe since I first started my internship were bizarre. Instead of being scared of the aliens that walked by me, it was like they had become my new family. Some of the aliens or humans would avoid me when I first arrived, but now they went out of their way to talk to me or ask how Ace and I were doing. I didn't fear the different creatures that would sometimes fight in the cafeteria, but I did learn to hold up a tray if an ink-spraying species started fighting with another alien. Circe had become a second home to me. One where I actually felt like I belonged more than I ever did in high school.

  The feelings I had for Circe made me really think about my relationship with Ace. Sure, it wasn't the normal high school relationship that other girls my age were having. He wasn't going to give me his class ring, and we weren't going to talk about going to prom. I had to face the facts that I wasn't really a normal high school girl to begin with anyway, and being happy meant a whole lot more to me than being normal.