How to Date an Alien (5 page)

Outside of the security office, I would catch
him with a protective gaze locked on me while we were in the
cafeteria, library, or anywhere else humans and aliens gathered.
There were times that his stare would frighten me because I didn't
know what he was really thinking. But there were also times when he
just made me curious. He could be so aloof that I wanted to dig
deeper and know what he was really thinking.

“Are you wearing guyliner?" I tilted my head,
scooting my chair closer so that my face was only inches from his.
He had a face and body like a Greek god and I started to wonder if
maybe the gods were actually just aliens and had the ancient Greeks
confused. Staring at the contours of his face made me notice that
charcoal lines formed perfect circles around his eyelids. It was
the Greeks that created eyeliner, wasn't it? Or was it the
Egyptians?

“Am I what?” He blinked, not taking his eyes
off the screen.

“You know, eyeliner for guys? All the rock
stars wear it and with those black smudges around your eyes, I
think that you do too." Okay, so I wasn't the best at talking to
guys, or just talking in general. Sometimes I just blurted things
out when I was nervous and when I had a very attractive alien
sitting next to me, I had to be creative.

He finally turned his face toward mine, his
dark eyes illuminated by the light glaring off the computer screen.
I stared at the smoky black lines that encircled his eyes.

“No, I’m not wearing guyliner, or whatever it
is you call it.” His voice rang with annoyance, but a small smile
crept onto his lips.

“Really?” I leaned closer, tilting my
head.

He lifted his perfectly arched eyebrows.
“Really, Alex? Don’t you have anything else to do then wonder what
kind of earthly cosmetics I’m wearing?”

“I do, but…" I didn’t stop staring in his
direction as I licked one of my fingertips. “If you really aren’t
wearing guyliner, then go like this." I lifted the wet fingertip to
my eyelid and started rubbing.

Ace glanced in my direction, before doing a
double take and full on staring at me. His full lips curved in at
the corners in a confused smirk. “What are you doing?”

I lifted my fingertip from my eyelid, facing
it in his direction. “See when I rub my eye, you can see the beige
smears from my eye shadow on my finger." I waved my finger in his
direction. “So if you aren’t wearing eyeliner, then when you wipe
your eye nothing should come off on your fingertip.”

Ace shook his head. A large, gleaming white
smile spread across his face. “You are a very interesting human, do
you know that?”

I pointed my smudged finger at him. “And you
are an alien that is trying to hide his love of cosmetics.”

His shadowy eyes locked on mine. I couldn’t
tell if there was anger behind them, the way his brows furrowed
into a point, but I tried to stay defiant as he leaned his face
closer. I could feel the cold air radiating from his body, and I
swore that it shivered all the way through my suit and onto my
skin. He lifted his fingertips to his eyelids, rubbing them
feverishly before facing his still clean fingertips back in my
direction, with the black smudges around his eyes still in
place.

“You’re wrong." He laughed, leaning back in
his chair. His expression softened, while his smile spread even
farther across his face. He had the greatest laugh I had ever
heard. It was even more melodious than Jen’s giggle and reminded me
of church bells.

I crossed my arms over my stomach, trying to
hide the girlish grin that was threatening to make its way to my
face if I kept staring at the dimples that had formed at the
corners of Ace's mouth. “Well it wouldn’t be the first time I was
wrong about you."

I bit my lip, immediately wishing I could
take back the words. “I mean…”

He arched an eyebrow. “Do you often make
assumptions about Caltians?”

I shrugged. “I actually didn’t even know any
kind of an alien existed until I arrived at Circe, and even then it
wasn’t until one attacked me that I realized what was going
on.”

“It's still hard for me to believe that
someone with your IQ and vast expanse of knowledge didn’t suspect
there was more to the universe than just humans.”

I shrugged, looking down at the floor and
trying to avoid his stare. “I’m really not as smart as you’re
trying to make me out to be. I was the girl who gave the thumbs up
to a room full of aliens after all.”

He leaned forward, shifting his head down so
that I was forced to look at him. “Do you seriously believe
that?”

I looked back up to meet his eyes, adjusting
my glasses to have something to do with my hands. “Believe what?
That I’m not that smart?”

He leaned in closer so that I could see every
feature of his chiseled face against the glow of the computer
screen. “Alex, I wouldn’t have picked you for this position if,
after reading your blog and looking through your school records, I
didn’t think that you were smart.”

I cocked my chin forward. “You looked through
my school records?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, it’s really not that hard
to do when you have the power to access anything right at your
fingertips.” He wiggled his fingers before turning his chair back
in the direction of the computer screen. “Oh and by the way." He
looked over at me.

“Yeah?" I scooted my chair closer to the
computers, shifting it back toward the screens.

“You really don’t need to wear the eye
shadow. I think you look fine without trying.”

He didn’t look at me as he spoke. I was
hoping to catch some sort of a smile or a reaction in his eyes, but
I caught nothing.

“Are you trying to seduce me, Mrs. Robinson?"
I leaned in closer, trying to speak with a boyish tone.

He let out a single laugh. “Did you just use
some lame movie quote on me?”

“That is definitely not a lame movie quote,"
I said matter-of-factly. “It’s a classic and probably one of my
all-time favorite movies.”

“Maybe I did underestimate that high IQ." He
glanced over at me. “If you are into such stupid movies, you really
can’t be that smart.”

“Look at me! I’m Ace, I wear guyliner and
think I know good cinema, but really I’m a closet classic movie
junkie,” I mocked, waving my fingers in the air.

“Are you trying to make a joke?” He twisted
his chair back toward me. His eyes narrowed into tiny slits, making
his face look even more like a Grecian statue.

I put my hands down and faced my chair toward
his. The gravity to his tone made me wonder if he was upset and I
tried not to appear frightened as I took a big swallow before
answering. “What if I am?”

“My name is Alex and I love to make stupid
jokes and watch terrible movies about infidelity,” he mocked in a
voice that sounded exactly like mine.

I inched my chair closer. My curiosity had
overpowered my fear, and I wanted to know what else he could do.
“How did you do that?”

“Do what?" His voice had returned to his
normal silvery tone.

I put my hands on my hips. “Do you have any
other super powers? Like, can you fly or something?”

He laughed, shaking his head. “Alex, you seem
to think I’m a superhero or something.”

“Well you never said that you weren’t." I
wiggled my eyebrows.

He shook his head. “No I can’t fly without a
ship, but there are a few things I could do that might impress
you.”

I tilted my head toward his. “Are you trying
to impress me now?”

He let out a deep breath. “Everything isn’t
about trying to get into your pants.”

I stammered, “That’s, uh, not what I
meant.”

His eyes met mine as I tried not to gasp from
the way they seemed to drink in all of me. With one look my body
ran the gamut of emotions from the fear that caused my heart to
beat like a drum in my chest to the way my breath would get caught
in my throat at the mere sight of his glowing eyes.

“Then what did you mean?”

“Well, we are friends, right? Friends can try
to impress each other." I saved myself by blurting it out as
quickly as I could.

He nodded, looking back to the screen.
“Right, friends. We can do that.”

I looked back at my own screen, trying to
avoid the lingering feeling that his eyes left on me. Sure we were
friends. But part of me couldn’t deny—after sitting next to him all
day long and staring at the curve of his jawline—that maybe I was
losing my breath because of something other than fear of the
unknown.

“You ready for movie night?”

Jen knocked me out of my daydream. Whatever
kind of weird alien crush I had on Ace was really getting to my
psyche. I would try to flirt with him at work and sometimes he
would reciprocate, but most of the time he would give me the cold
shoulder with one-word answers and groans. When I wasn’t at work, I
was constantly thinking of how I could get his attention or try to
get him to lower his guard.

“Yeah.” I shook the lingering thoughts of
Ace’s dark eyes out of my head as I looked up at Jen. “Doing
something human and normal definitely wouldn’t hurt me.”

“I’m sure you’ll get used to it, eventually,
or you’ll just go crazy and end up in the supermarket tabloids."
She beamed.

I rolled my eyes. “So where are we going for
this movie night, anyway?”

“We usually go to the boys' room since
somehow they manage to have less stuff than us and can fit in an
entertainment center,” she remarked as she opened one of her
drawers. “But as the new girl, you get to do the honor of popping
the popcorn before meeting us there.”

She grabbed a few bags of buttered microwave
popcorn from her drawer and handed them over to me.

“Where am I supposed to pop this? Some alien
lab that zaps them in a minute?" I arched an eyebrow.

Jen grabbed a plastic bowl from her closet.
“You still have so much to learn. There is a microwave in the
cafeteria. Just don’t get lost on your way there or to the boys'
room, which is just down the hall from ours.”

“Aye, aye, captain.” I mock saluted her
before grabbing the bowl and turning out the door toward the
cafeteria.

Usually I had someone with me to walk to the
cafeteria, and since all the halls looked the same with their
blinding white walls and floors, it was pretty easy to get lost. I
ended up running into a few different rooms, one with balls of
light bouncing off the wall and another with the spider aliens
lounging on recliners and smoking from a giant hookah. I quickly
ran from both of those rooms and was eager to find my way.

Finally, I made it to the cafeteria and
spotted the microwave. I approached the stand, expecting to see
some high-tech device, but it looked just like the one my mom had
in her kitchen. Just a plain, ordinary microwave.

“Okay, I guess this will do." I peeled the
wrapper off the bag and plopped it into the microwave.

“You know people are going to really start to
question your sanity if you keep talking to yourself like that," a
low voice came over my shoulder.

I gasped, leaping a few inches in the air
before Ace slid in beside me, a tight-lipped smile forming on his
face.

“You scared me." I placed my hand to my
heart, which seemed to be beating faster than normal. Of course, it
tended to do that when Ace was around.

He shrugged as he opened up the other
microwave, placing a mug in it, and pressing a few buttons to set
the timer. “You shouldn’t expect to be alone when you’re in a big
operations center.”

“Ha-ha, very funny." I turned toward the
microwave pushing the buttons to get the popcorn going.

“Do you always spend late nights eating
popcorn?”

I looked over to see that Ace hadn’t taken
his attention away from me. His eyes were still locked on my face
like he couldn't pry them away. I tried to hide my smile and suck
in my stomach.

“Some of the interns are just getting
together for a movie night.”

“And what are you adding to the movie
collection?" He leaned in on the microwave stand. “Something about
infidelity or star-crossed lovers?”

Star-crossed lovers? Where did he come up
with that one? Was that some sort of a reference to him having
feelings for me? I was hoping my face wasn’t as red as it felt. I
turned back toward the microwave, trying to hide it. “Maybe…”

“Well, you claim to want to be a writer, so I
just figured you’d be into all those Shakespeare movie remakes. You
know,
Romeo & Juliet
,
The Taming of the Shrew
, or
Othello
."

“Uh-huh, sure. That’s what you meant." I
couldn’t hide my smile as it spread, all too large, across my face.
He led into the opening, so I had to try flirting and hope that he
wouldn’t just go cold. Not that I was ever the best at flirting. I
watched men flirt with my mom all the time. Whether it was because
she was a romance novelist or because she had dyed blond hair and a
chest that defied gravity, I didn't know, but she didn't seem to
mind it.

The timer went off on Ace’s microwave. He let
his gaze linger on mine as he removed the mug. “If I meant
something other than what I said." He stepped closer, walking to
the other side of me as he leaned his lips so close to my ear that
I could feel every part of his icy cold skin searing into me. “You
would know it.” He turned on his heel and walked down the hallway,
not even looking back in my direction.

“How could you burn the popcorn? There’s a
button you press that says 'popcorn' and poof, perfect every time."
Riley curled her lip in disgust as she plopped down on the
futon.

The boys' room was the same size as ours, but
somehow they were able to utilize their space better. Two of the
beds were bunked in one corner, with the other one closely
flanking, which made enough room for a futon in the middle. They
even had a spare wall for their big TV and game systems. The boys
had to have gotten along better than me and Riley. If I even
suggested she move her dresser or maybe not take up as much space
for all of her stuff, she would probably just huff and tell me
off.