My Alien's Baby

by Stasia Black

  “Believe me, buddy, you aren’t the first to have that thought. But if that attendant right there hears us—”

  My pinging phone breaks my train of thought.

  I rustle around in my large purse for my phone. Only to immediately shove it back inside when I see who the text is from.

  “What is it?” Ezo asks in alarm.

  “Nothing,” I try to shrug him off.

  But he covers my hand with his. “Ana, it’s not the first time you have done that. Your miniature tablet produces that noise and then all the happiness leaves your face. I demand to know why it upsets you. It’s my job to see to your happiness and I cannot do that when I don’t know what the problem is.”

  He says the last part so vehemently I know I can’t keep dodging him.

  “It’s stupid,” I say. “It’s just my sister.”

  His face lights up. “Does she dwell near here? What about the rest of your family? You don’t speak of them.”

  There’s a reason for that.

  I shrug. “We aren’t that close.”

  “But your sister keeps attempting to make contact.”

  I shake my head. “It’s not like that. She—” God, how do I explain Alicia? “She thinks she’s better than me and just wants to rub it in my face.”

  Ezo snatches my purse off my arm and pulls out my phone, a deep frown carving his face. “Then I will correct her.”

  But then his features morph into confusion as he looks down at the phone. I didn’t close or lock it and he can still see the screen of our text messages. “I don’t understand. Her messages are pleasant. She’s inviting you to a gathering. She is getting married? But you do not want to go?”

  I drop my face into my hand. Of course it looks bad if you just look at our recent messaging history.

  Alicia: Please, Ana Bear, I can’t imagine the engagement party without you there.

  Me: No way in hell.

  Alicia: I only get married once. I understand why you refused to be a bridesmaid. But please come to the party at least. Even if you just drop in.

  Me: What do you not get about NO WAY IN HELL?

  Alicia: Mom and Dad will be so disappointed if you aren’t there. When was the last time I asked you for a favor?

  That last message from her is just a low blow. That she even has the gall to try to lay some guilt trip on me after what she did—

  “Your parents will be there, too?” Ezo looks from the small screen and meets my gaze, hurt in his eyes. “You do not want them to meet me?”

  “What? No! Ezo, it’s not that.” I move closer to him. “It’s seriously all about my sister. She’s the worst.”

  Again his features knit in confusion. “But she’s family. And she is alive. Don’t you know what a gift that is?”

  Oh shit. He’s never talked about his family and always clams up when I ask him about his past. “Ezo.” I reach out and touch his arm but he pulls away and stares hard at the floor.

  “You should not push away family,” he states quietly.

  I see how much it means to him. This is really important.

  Well shit.

  It looks like I’m going to my sister’s engagement party.

  “How about this one?” I ask, lifting up a blue button-down shirt that highlights Ezo’d gorgeous eyes. “If you’re going to meet my parents, you’ll want to look your best.”

  He grins and then, in the middle of the Target, sweeps me off my feet and swings me in a circle until I’m shrieking for him to put me down.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ana

  We pull up to my parents’ house and already I feel queasy. Ezo is all smiles, though. He reaches over and grasps my hand, a huge grin on his face.

  I try to smile back but must fail because his smile dims. His eyebrows furrow in concern. “Ana, are you all right? Your face is pale.”

  Is it? Shit.

  I pull down the visor and flip open the mirror. Crap. He’s right. I do look a little pale in spite of my naturally tan skin and my makeup. I focused on my eyes and lips but I forgot the blush. I snatch my purse into my lap and breathe out a sigh of relief when I find some blush in the pocket where I keep extra makeup.

  Quickly, I run the blush along my upper cheeks.

  “I didn’t mean for you to paint yourself,” Ezo says in alarm. “I want you to tell me what is the matter.”

  Finally satisfied that I look rosy and as fresh-faced as I can manage, I put the blush away and look over at Ezo. He looks really concerned and I can tell he won’t drop it.

  “My family…” I let out a quick sigh. “They stress me out sometimes. My sister isn’t always that nice to me. Sometimes getting together with them like this is hard.”

  Ezo looks down at his lap. “I’ve been selfish. I never should have pushed to come here.” Then he looks back up at me, resolute. “We will leave. Now. I won’t allow anything that makes you so upset.”

  Awww. He’s so sweet. And it really does mean a lot to me that he’s giving me an out. I reach over and squeeze his hand. “This is hard but it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it. Because you were right. They are my family, for better or for worse. And this time I have something I didn’t have before.”

  “What?”

  I smile at him and this time it’s genuine. “This time I have you by my side.”

  He doesn’t smile, his features only become more fierce. “I won’t let anyone harm you. You will be safe at my side.”

  I nod, feeling safer and more secure than I have in a long while. “I know you will.” Then I take a deep breath, look out at my family’s house and all the cars parked, clogging the street up and down. It seems as if everyone I’ve ever known is here. Plus plenty of strangers.

  Ezo starts to open his door but I put a hand on his forearm to stop him.

  “There’s one more thing you should know before we go in. I don’t want someone to say something and it catch you off-guard.”

  “I will always be on guard.”

  I nod, but my smile dims as I say what needs to be said. “The man my sister is marrying…he used to be my boyfriend.”

  “He was your friend?” Ezo asks, obviously confused as to why I’m bringing this up. Boyfriend must be another one of those terms he’s not familiar with.

  How do I put this delicately? “For a while—a very short time,” I hurry to add, “I considered him as a potential mate. That’s what boyfriend means.”

  Ezo’s eyes narrow to slits and his nostrils flare. “How long is a short time?”

  I cringe. Then again, Ezo is hundreds of years old so maybe it won’t sound like that long to him after all. “A year.”

  Ezo sits back in his seat and I can see that all his muscles are tense.

  “How long ago was this?”

  Another cringe. “Eight months ago.”

  His head snaps in my direction. “Do you still want to mate this man?”

  “No!” I say explosively and he seems to relax a little. I grab his hand and he doesn’t pull away. Thank God. “Look, I’m only telling you in case somebody in there says something. I have no more feelings for Brian at all. He never loved me and he dumped me the second my sister flitted her eyes at him. I do not want Brian. I want you.”

  He nods and expels a harsh breath. After another long moment of silence, he squeezes my hand back. “Then I suppose it’s time to go inside. If this man is part of your family, I must learn to live with him.”

  That’s very mature of him. My solution to this problem has been to hide away and never see any of them again but I know that’s unrealistic. And what I said earlier is true. Facing them with Ezo by my side is probably the only way I’ll be able to get through this.

  Before I can second-guess myself again or speed the hell out of here, I shove my door open and step onto the street.

  In mere moments, Ezo is by my side, my arm in his. Together, we approach my childhood home.

  The house is huge. Built in the era of the McMansions, it was al
ways far too much space for just the four of us. But my parents were always far more interested in status than practicality.

  Four huge decorative white columns flank the front doors but actually support…nothing. There’s even a random turret on the far left side of the house because…who knows? My parents like to throw misbehaving servants up in the ‘tower’? They never even let us play up there when we were kids because the stairs were so steep. Seriously, nothing about the architecture of this house makes sense. It’s all ridiculously ostentatious and ludicrously pretentious as a result.

  When we get to the stoop, I ring the doorbell. It feels weird, but it would be stranger to simply walk inside. This place hasn’t been home for a very long time.

  My mother is grinning her politician’s wife smile as she opens the door but it drops as soon as she sees me. “Oh, it’s just you.”

  My teeth grate but I still managed to get out, “Mom, this is Ezo.”

  “I am her mate,” he states confidently. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”

  Mom looks at him, a little bewildered, and her eyebrows go up. “You’re her what now?”

  “He’s my boyfriend,” I say before he can open his mouth again.

  She nods but looks distracted, something on the other side of the room catching her eye. “Laura! Hi! I haven’t seen you since the Senator’s luncheon.”

  She’s off before Ezo or I can get another word out.

  I expel a sigh of relief. That went about as well as could be expected.

  “And that,” I whisper under my breath to Ezo, tugging him inside the door and closing it behind us, “is my mother.”

  The house is packed. There are a lot of familiar faces and plenty I don’t recognize. My dad is a Superior Court judge for Sacramento County, which means he’s a big deal around here.

  He always hoped for children who would follow in his footsteps. My darling little sister passed her LSATs with flying colors. She did her internship at one of the top law firms in San Francisco. Now she works in the office of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California.

  Dad and Mom couldn’t be prouder of their perfect daughter.

  Meanwhile, I flunked out after my first semester of college.

  And pretty much everyone in this room knows it. Not that they care. They’re here to celebrate my sister. The golden child.

  And concerning myself with what other people think of me ruined my life for way too many years. I can’t backslide now. So I lift my head high, square my shoulders, and go up on my tiptoes to whisper in Ezo’s ear, “Let’s go find the liquor.”

  Thirty minutes and two champagne glasses later, I wouldn’t say it’s going any better, but at least I’m a little tipsy and Ezo and I have escaped outside into the backyard. People mingle around the poolside and there’s another bar and appetizer station set up out here.

  At least Ezo is enjoying the appetizers. I smile while I watch him try the various finger foods on his overstuffed plate.

  He doesn’t bother covering his reactions to each taste as they cross his tongue.

  The sweet cream puffs were a win. And he couldn’t get enough of the little chocolate bonbons.

  He had little reaction to the cucumber sandwiches but his face after he tries the caviar is the most hilarious. His eyes get big, he makes the most disgusted face, and he immediately sticks his tongue back out, scraping the black goo off with his napkin.

  “Here,” I giggle, offering him some of my champagne to wash the taste away.

  He gulps it down but then makes a sour face and starts choking, probably on all the bubbles. I should have warned him.

  I pound his back. “Shit, I’m sorry, babe. Are you okay?”

  His eyes water and he swallows hard, his features still contorted in disgust. “Why do humans eat that?” He scrapes again at his tongue. “I cannot get it off. It has the most abhorrent flavor!”

  “Here, eat another chocolate bonbon.” I offer him one from my plate since he gobbled all of his down.

  He nods and stuffs it in his mouth. But then he spits it back out on his plate, shaking his head furiously. “No, it only ruins the flavor of the chocolate. I cannot.”

  It would be wrong to laugh right now, right? But he’s just so damn cute.

  “Ana, you made it!”

  My shoulders automatically scrunch at the sound of my sister’s syrupy sweet voice.

  I turn slowly to see Alicia and Brian heading our way. Awesome. I get to deal with them both at the same time.

  But no, it’s better this way. I’ll say hi, make nice, show how mature I am, and then Ezo and I can get the hell out of here and be done with this.

  “And who is this?” Alicia looks Ezo up and down. He’s abandoned the napkin and is swiping at his tongue repeatedly with the side of his hand. I cringe a little inside. Here for the first time in my life I have a big, gorgeous boyfriend but he looks a little like a gorilla trying to groom himself.

  I feel immediately guilty for the thought. God, I suck. He doesn’t know any better and his tongue is his most sensitive sense organ. Caviar really is the worst and I should’ve warned him.

  “This is my boyfriend, Ezo. Ezo, this is my sister, Alicia. And her fiancé, Brian.”

  Ezo immediately drops his hand and perks up. He’s still got the bad taste in his mouth, though, and I can see him struggling to hide it.

  “Hello,” he says to my sister, face scrunched like she smells bad. She seems a little taken aback because usually she charms every single person she meets.

  I have to say, now I’m enjoying this. Probably a little too much.

  “Great party, sis.” And then I force the next words out of my mouth, though I can’t quite bring myself to look at the man standing beside her. “Congratulations, you two. I wish you all the happiness in the world.”

  Alicia smiles at me, her fake patronizing smile. “Isn’t the ring he got me just gorgeous?”

  She shoves her hand in Ezo’s face. It’s gaudy, with a big central diamond and about fifty more tiny ones all over the sparkling band. No way Brian afforded that on his post doctorate salary. I bet she had daddy buy it for her. ‘Cause that’s not creepy.

  Ezo eyes her ring curiously and pokes the big diamond with his forefinger.

  Alicia finally drops it when neither of us comment or look sufficiently awed. “So, what are you up to lately, Ana? Still working as a waitress at that quaint little diner? Or have you moved on to being a cashier at the Gap?” Then she leans in. “Hey, it’s a step up from just being that person who walks around folding the clothes, right? Every little step is a victory. That’s what you have to remember.”

  What. A. Bitch. Before I can snap out a biting reply, she looks to Ezo. “And what do you do?”

  He tilts his head, a little surprised by the question. Shit. We should have prepared ahead of time what we would tell people if they asked us this.

  But I should have known that Ezo would be cool under pressure. “I am in the military.”

  “Oh.” Alicia looks taken aback for a second and she exchanges a glance with Brian, who looks bored.

  I finally give myself permission to look at him. He’s tall—though not nearly as tall as Ezo—and skinny with curly hair and thick framed glasses. He has a nerdy, sophisticated look. I always thought that meant he was deep and sensitive.

  I was wrong. He wasn’t either of those things.

  After he broke up with me, I suspected he stuck it out with me for so long because being with me made him feel superior. He was finishing up his PhD in a philosophy but his papers were rarely if ever accepted into conferences and his prospects for a future teaching gig were pretty bleak. And what the hell else was he going to do with a philosophy degree if he couldn’t teach?

  I believed in him, though. I supported him and was a cheerleader every time he got depressed about the future. I’d bake him cupcakes and offered to proofread his papers and helped him grade for the classes he TA’d for… But it was never enough.


  My sister visited one weekend and two weeks later I came back from a coffee run to find them in bed together. That was all it took. He didn’t apologize or anything. He just pulled his pants on long enough to say, “Come on, your sister is so beautiful. She’s like an angel. I couldn’t help myself. I’m in love with her.”

  “I thought you loved me,” I cried.

  He just shrugged. “I didn’t really know what I wanted. But she’s like a dream girl, and she wants me. Besides, I thought you knew that this was just casual.” He gestured between us. “That we were just kind of hanging out, ya know? You aren’t even really my type.”

  I packed my bags, left, and haven’t seen him since.

  But looking at him now… I don’t really feel anything other than a sadness that I wasted a year of my life on him. He treated me like shit. I always felt like I had to keep doing things to earn my place in the relationship. After all, he was getting his PhD and who was I? Just some loser who’d failed at everything I ever tried.

  “Where did you serve?” my sister asks, leaning in towards Ezo and curling a lock of her hair on the tip of her finger.

  Ezo frowns at her and moves closer to me, putting an arm around my shoulder. “I don’t like telling war stories. They are very sad.”

  “Oh. Of course!” My sister’s cheeks go red at making a social gaffe. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—” And she laughs and puts a hand on her chest, drawing attention to her cleavage. “You must find all of this very banal after being in war.”

  “I am glad to meet my Ana’s family. You are now my family.”

  Alicia’s eyes go so wide I think they’ll pop out of her head. “You two aren’t—”

  But I interlace my fingers with Ezo’s and smile up at him. “Yes, we’re going to be married.” Being mated is basically the same thing in his culture. I hope I’m not overstepping but his answering grin says that I’m not.

  “Yes,” he says, eyes bright and happy. “Married.”

  “Sorry,” I immediately say to Alicia. “I haven’t told Mom or Dad. I don’t want to take away from your big day.” And I don’t. She can have this day and these people and all this fakery.