by Lisa Henry
“Let’s open up to the first chapter and get started,” Doc said gruffly.
I slid down into my chair comfortably and turned the page.
****
Every Friday night the guys turned up at our apartment and we ordered pizzas and drank beer. Well, Lucy and Thomas drank soda because Lucy had only just turned nine and Thomas didn’t like the taste of beer. To start with Thomas had arrived every week with Chris and a pair of escorting officers, but those escorting officers soon got sick of sitting in the stairwell because they weren’t invited to our party. So now Thomas turned up after dark with a hoodie pulled forward to hide his alien face, and Chris drove him. Thomas had quarters on the base, and Chris lived there with him. At first Chris had worried that Thomas would fail to thrive in our atmosphere, with our food and a hundred different viruses that he was exposed to through living surrounded by humans, but it turned out his human side was tough as nails. And so it should have been, right? It came from Kopa.
The first day he called one of the officers on the base an asshole, I knew he’d be just fine.
Doc was the first to arrive, a six-pack wedged under his arm. He’d only seen me hours before in the classroom but that didn’t stop him from pulling me into a hug. Then he found room for his beer in the refrigerator, and went to see how Lucy was going with her homework.
Andre and Harry were the next to turn up. They brought the pizzas. Andre and Harry were both in intel still, and Andre was getting married in a few months to a girl who didn’t think it was too weird that he’d once shared a psychic connection with a bunch of other guys and the Faceless. I mean, she thought it was weird but she was going to marry him anyway, which was probably about the best he could expect.
Chris and Thomas were the last to arrive, but the pizzas were still hot so I didn’t give them too much shit for it. We sat around the living room and ate and drank and watched some bullshit movie with a bunch of car chases and explosions. I looked around the room, around at the people I cared about, and let contentment settle over me like warm water.
Life wasn’t perfect. It would never be perfect. But we were still here, still living it, and that was more than a lot of people got.
Doc sat in the armchair, with Lucy sitting on the arm and chattering at him like a bird. Chris and Thomas and Andre took the couch, leaving me and Cam and Harry the floor. I didn’t mind. I could reach the pizza faster from my position by the coffee table. And to think my instructor in tactical orientation back when I’d been a lowly recruit had thought I’d never learn a thing. Fuck that guy. I’ll bet he wasn’t eating pizza right now.
“How’s class going, Brady?” Andre asked, leaning out past me to snag a piece of pizza.
I grunted and shrugged.
“He’s my worst student,” Doc said. “The little shit is also the smartest one in the bunch.”
I grinned. “A bad attitude—”
“Is better than no attitude at all,” Doc finished for me, and raised his beer in my direction.
We both knew my insolence kept him young, and that he loved me for it. He would have stayed on Defender Three if he really hated me, but he’d leapt at the chance for a teaching position planetside. And not just planetside, but at the base in Fourteen-Beta. I’d take him to Kopa one day too, I thought. To show him what it was like there. I’d take all of them. They’d seen it in my memories, but I wanted to show them it was real too. Wanted to show them how reffos had to live. Because even on nights like these when I was scarfing down pizza and beer—especially on nights like these—I thought a lot about how the people in townships like Kopa lived. And the more people who saw it, the more we had a chance of changing it. And maybe that was a pipe dream, and maybe I was kidding myself, but here I was in a room full of people who’d been in a battle with the Faceless and won. If anyone could do the impossible it was us.
“How about you, Thomas?” Andre asked. “How are things with you?”
Thomas made a so-so gesture that was new. “There is a lot to learn.” He glanced at Chris. “A lot.”
Chris reached for his beer, saw that it was empty, and then pushed himself off the couch to head into the kitchen for another one. Thomas followed him.
I leaned against Cam and he put an arm around me.
On the television, someone’s car exploded.
I looked at the empty pizza boxes for a while, figured they wouldn’t take themselves out, and stood up and carried them into the kitchen.
Chris was leaning against the counter. Thomas stood in front of him bracketing him with his arms. Chris had a hand against his chest, holding him at a slight distance. Not pushing him back, just not letting him as close as he wanted. Thomas straightened up as he heard me come in, and turned around to lean against the counter with Chris.
“There’s more soda in the fridge,” I told him.
Thomas smiled. “Thank you, Brady.”
Thomas looked less like a Faceless these days, and it wasn’t just that I was used to him now. He had a faint tan that made him less garishly white and corpse-like. He’d never be able to walk openly down a street or anything without getting stares for being weird, but those stares would mostly be from people wondering what the hell had happened to that poor guy, not thinking he was half alien.
Maybe I’d take him to Kopa too, and show him where half his DNA came from.
Thomas got his soda and headed back into the living room.
I looked at Chris.
Chris folded his arms over his chest and looked back, eyebrows raised. “What?”
I shrugged. “I was just thinking.”
His posture relaxed slightly. “About what?”
“About that time you told me you were jealous of Cam because Cam had found what he was looking for.”
Chris’s mouth quirked.
“Thomas is stubborn,” I said. “He’ll wear you down eventually.”
Chris snorted. “Maybe.”
I chewed my lip for a moment. “He’s his own person, remember? You gave him a name because of that.”
“It’s not that straightforward.”
“Says the guy who bluffed the entire military and also told Kai-Ren to fuck off?” I waited for his wry smile of acknowledgement and then I shrugged again. “So did you? Did you get what you wanted?”
Chris smiled slightly, his gaze drifting past me to the living room. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I think that maybe I did.”
****
After everyone left and Lucy was tucked up in bed, I took my pack of cigarettes from the top of the refrigerator and went and sat outside on the balcony. Cam was already there.
The night was cool and dark. Lights glinted all the way down the hill, from apartment blocks like ours. I could hear the distant whine of the train. I leaned on the balcony railing beside Cam, and took out a cigarette. Turned it over a few times, and slotted it back in the pack. Quitting was fucking hard, okay? But it turned out I was better at it if I had some cigarettes on hand, just so I remembered that not smoking them was my choice and not something forced on me by deprivation.
I tucked the pack into the pocket of my jeans and rested my forearms on the rail again. Turned my hand palm up so that Cam could catch it in his.
Cam’s face was tilted up as he drank in the might sky. He wore that expression of faint wonder he always did when he lost himself in starlight. I loved that about him, even though I’d never felt the same. There had been a time when all I’d known about the black was that all my nightmares came from there. Which was still true and always would be, but I also remembered the beauty of the clouds in the nebula, the endless spread of stars like lanterns scattered in the black, and the way the light of them caught in Cam’s eyes when he smiled at me.
I held his hand tightly, filled my lungs with air, and lifted my gaze to the starlight.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lisa likes to tell stories, mostly with hot guys and happily ever afters.
Lisa lives in tropical North Queensland, Austral
ia. She doesn't know why, because she hates the heat, but she suspects she's too lazy to move. She spends half her time slaving away as a government minion, and the other half plotting her escape.
She attended university at sixteen, not because she was a child prodigy or anything, but because of a mix-up between international school systems early in life. She studied History and English, neither of them very thoroughly.
Lisa has been published since 2012, and was a LAMBDA finalist for her quirky, awkward coming-of-age romance Adulting 101.
ALSO BY LISA HENRY
Dauntless
Anhaga
Two Man Station (Emergency Services #1)
Lights and Sirens (Emergency Services #2)
The California Dashwoods
Adulting 101
Sweetwater
He Is Worthy
The Island
Tribute
One Perfect Night
Fallout, with M. Caspian
Fall on Your Knees, with J.A. Rock
Dark Space (Dark Space #1)
Darker Space (Dark Space #2)
Starlight (Dark Space #3)
Playing the Fool series, with J.A. Rock
The Two Gentlemen of Altona
The Merchant of Death
Tempest
With Heidi Belleau
Tin Man
Bliss
King of Dublin
The Harder They Fall
With J.A. Rock
The Preacher’s Son
When All the World Sleeps
Another Man’s Treasure
Mark Cooper versus America (Prescott College #1)
Brandon Mills versus the V-Card (Prescott College #2)
The Good Boy (The Boy #1)
The Naughty Boy (The Boy #1.5)
The Boy Who Belonged (The Boy #2)
Writing as Cari Waites
Stealing Innocents
