How to Marry an Alien (19 page)

Lucy wrinkled her nose. "Would you seriously
want to pee on something you bought from some sleazy truck
stop?"

"Good point."

She came over and sat on the bed next to me.
"So what are you going to do, then?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I guess go talk to
Ace about it."

I looked down at my stomach. Could I possibly
be carrying a human and alien hybrid baby? What would that even
feel like? Would a baby be cold blooded like Ace or would I have
one of those experiences, like in the movies, and have a rapidly
growing baby that ate me alive like a parasite?

"Do you think you may be overreacting a bit?"
Lucy asked.

I looked over at her. "You are just saying
that because there is no way that Riley could knock you up."

Lucy rolled her eyes. "Don't try using the
you're-a-lesbian excuse on me. This is not about me. You seriously
just lost your virginity a few days ago; there is no way you would
know if you were PG by now."

I nodded. "You're right." I forced a
smile.

Maybe Lucy was right. It hadn't been that
long, so I wouldn't know if I was…unless of course I was carrying a
rapidly growing, half-alien parasite baby.

Since I couldn't get the whole MIA period out
of my head, I decided to call Jen and see if she'd take me to
Circe. I would have called Ace or my dad to pick me up, but that
would have been one awkward car ride. I wanted to prolong the talk
with Ace as long as I could.

Jen drove away from campus, and I watched the
dorm disappear out the back window as the landscape became more and
more mountainous the closer we got to Circe.

"So why is it again that you couldn't have
Ace pick you up?" Jen glanced at me out of the corner of her
obnoxiously large sunglasses. I swear those things probably had
one-hundred percent UV protection, and she would have a giant
sunburn around those things while her eye area stayed white.

I flinched, hoping she didn't notice. "I just
didn't want to bother him. It takes too long for him to have to ask
for a Circe vehicle, and I still feel bad about the fact that I
wrecked a car that was technically his." Good save, even though it
was technically true. I'd never had so much as a parking ticket and
I wrecked a car that wasn't even totally mine, stupid deer.

"I guess that makes sense. You're just lucky
I wasn't working on something important," she said.

"It's Saturday. Don't tell me you still spend
your Saturdays in the lab. I know you have to find some time to
spend with Malcolm."

She giggled like a little girl. It always
amazed me, ever since I first met Jen, how she was this blond
bombshell who laughed at every little thing, but was probably the
smartest person I'd ever met. She could recite the entire periodic
table from memory and graduated at the top of her class from UCLA.
I guess it goes to show the world that the blond stereotype is way
off. Jen told me she used to hate it when she would go in for job
interviews and they would pass her up because of her wavy, blond
hair, but was lucky that Circe saw pass that.

"Alex, I do find time to spend with Malcolm,
trust me. We just aren't hanging out until later because he and
Justin are paintballing with some new arrivals from Saturn," she
yelled over the wind rushing in from her open window.

"Paintballing, seriously?"

She shrugged, holding her arm out the window.
"It's a boy thing. Sometimes Ace even goes with them now."

"Ace? Paintballing with people?" I raised my
eyebrows.

When I first met Ace, he was a loner. He
barely talked to anyone around Circe. I knew he was at least
friendly with some of the other residents, but I never thought he
hung out with them outside of work unless I made him.

Jen laughed again. "Believe it or not, our
boys do have a life outside of us and Ace is really good. The other
day he and Malcolm went out and Ace didn't have a single mark, but
Malcolm and the other guys had giant welts all over."

I tried to hide my smile. It wasn't funny
that Malcolm got beaten up by paint bullets, but it was pretty cool
to have my guy be the one who came out victorious.

We pulled up to the Circe mountain range. Jen
pressed a button that looked like a garage door opener, and a small
pocket opened on the ground in front of one of the smaller
mountains. She maneuvered her car toward it and inside, down a ramp
that lead to the underground parking garage. The garage held every
Circe vehicle, but not the spaceships. Those were in the hangar
where Malcolm worked and on the other side was an area where all
the incoming ships from other planets went. Circe had restricted
air space so the only things that were ever in the sky for miles
were ships going into Circe. I was always surprised that there
weren't more alien sightings reported in the area, but I guess
people were too busy watching the skies around Area 51 to pay any
attention to a mountain range in Arizona.

Jen jumped out of the car. "So are you coming
to hang out in my room for a bit or are you going right to
Ace's?"

I felt like my feet were glued to the ground.
I would have loved to just hang out with Jen and pretend like my
giant red dot had arrived, but I had to suck it up and admit to Ace
that something was missing.

"If it's alright, I think I'm going to head
to Ace's room. Maybe we'll stop by later?"

Jen nodded, and I followed her to the
elevator. "That's cool. Just text me before you come by. Hopefully
Malcolm didn't get too beat up during paintball, and I won't have
to spend my night babysitting a wounded human."

As I walked down the long hallways toward
Ace's room, I silently prayed that he would actually be there. No
way did I want to go searching for him and run into every single
alien I knew on the way. It was hard enough not to tell Jen that I
was worried that I might be harboring a half-alien bun, and I
didn't want to have to worry about blurting it out to anyone
else.

Finally, once the temperature dropped so low
that I could see my breath, I knew I had made it to his wing. I got
to the large metal door that looked like the one in front of meat
lockers and knocked twice. He opened the door wearing just his
temperature control suit and grinned from ear to ear.

"Well this is a nice surprise," he said.

"I think I'm pregnant."

I couldn't believe I blurted it out! The
whole way to his room, I mentally rehearsed how I would bring it up
to Ace and exactly what I would say. But once I got there, it was
like word vomit, and I just spit it out.

"What did you just say?" Ace tilted his head,
staring me down while I walked into the room. He shut the door
behind me.

"I'm late!" I threw my hands in the air and
paced the short distance from the doorway to the window. "I could
be carrying the next prince or princess of Calta! If a half-human
could even hold the thrown. Oh God! What if this starts another
conflict?"

The ideas were racing back and forth in my
head. How would we tell my dad? What would this do to the contract
with Circe and Calta?

Ace grabbed my shoulders and pulled me to a
halt, forcing my arms down. He made me face him and finally I shut
my mouth. He stared at me with his eyes dark and serious. I guess
he should have a chance to talk as well.

"Alex, listen to me," he said, enunciating
every word. "There is no way that you can be pregnant."

"How do you know?" I snapped.

Ace sighed, dropping his hands and standing
upright. "Because we aren't genetically similar enough for me to
get you pregnant."

"What?" I asked, practically shouting. "We
had sex! You have a doohickey that you put in my doohickey and
stuff happened!" I threw my arms in the air, again.

Ace laughed, really laughed. How could he
laugh when I was freaking out? When his laughing fit was done he
took a deep breath, letting it out slowly before he spoke.

"We aren't genetically similar enough to make
an alien-human hybrid baby. There have been plenty of aliens that
have tried those sorts of things and there haven't been many to
succeed."

"But, but," I sputtered. "What about all of
those mammals that create hybrids like lions and tigers making
ligers? And you told me that humans and aliens weren't supposed to
be together, so how would anyone actually know?"

Ace shook his head. "I'm almost embarrassed
to say this, but there was a lot of experimentation done in the
seventies in which aliens would abduct humans to try and see if
they could procreate and none of them ever succeeded. After Circe
outlawed alien probing they did some research, like what Jen does,
and found that most aliens are such higher life forms that we
aren't compatible to make children. It is literally like an ape and
a human or even a dog and a human, not compatible."

I wrinkled my nose. "Did you just compare me
to a dog?"

Ace shook his head, pulling me toward him,
and I dropped my arms down. "I'm not calling you a dog. I'm saying
it's similar in that we are a different species; two things that
can't create children."

I looked up at him. "Is that another reason
the queen didn't want us together? Since we can't produce
heirs?"

Ace's smile returned. "I'm male, Alex. Only
women can rule on Calta, and I have two older sisters. I would only
get the chance to rule if something happened to both of my sisters,
their husbands, and their children."

He let go of me, sitting on the bed, and I
took the spot next to him. I usually only got tiny glimpses of life
on Calta and that was from my own research, what Jen and Malcolm
had told me, or when I was getting attacked by an alien.

"It's kind of like Earth's ancient Egypt in
which women did have the power. That is why the ancient Egyptians
built their empires as a matrilineal society, because of Calta.
It's also why they favored eyeliner so much."

"Wait." I held my hands up. "Are you saying
all those shows about aliens helping build the pyramids are
true?"

"Well, now we are really going off topic, but
yes. A lot of my ancestors did come to help build the pyramids.
That was back when Caltians really communicated with earthlings.
After the fall of ancient Egypt, a lot of Caltians lost faith in
the human world and it took hundreds of years for anyone to
return." Ace said it like it was common knowledge, which maybe it
was on Calta.

"So all Caltian women are leaders like
Cleopatra and such?" I asked.

Ace nodded slowly. "Yes, they usually only
marry to have a strong king by their side to aid them. When they
think the king has served his purpose of helping them rule and
produced enough heirs, they usually kill or eat him."

I widened my eyes. "You're joking, right? Is
that why you didn't want to marry Simone? So she wouldn't eat
you?"

Ace let out a small laugh. "I wish that were
the only reason. My former promised Caltian was a little crazy,
even before she hunted you down and tried to kill you. I just
didn't have any desire to stay on Calta once I found out about the
wonders of Earth, and I'm perfectly happy being here with my human
mate."

He took my hands in his and looked at me
until his dark eyes met mine. "I love you, Alex. Not because I want
to escape any Caltian women, but truly love you. I know that we
will never be able to produce children together, but I hope that
doesn't turn you away from me."

I swallowed hard. In all the turmoil of
thinking I was pregnant, I never thought about the opposite end.
How would I feel if I was never able to have children of my
own?

"I guess we could always adopt," I said. "If
we wanted to. Jen told me that women of Mars have, like, eighteen
kids at a time."

Ace arched an eyebrow. "You want to adopt a
Martian puppy?"

I let a mischievous grin plan on my lips. "If
I can't have a spiky-haired little Ace then I at least want a red
headed little one. Then we'll really get our future neighbors
talking."

"Neighbors?" Ace asked.

"Unless you plan on staying at Circe forever.
I hope that maybe we could move to a house someday. Even if it is
still in Arizona, I'd like to have a house with a yard and Martian
puppies."

Ace nodded slowly. "I think I would like
that, maybe minus the Martian puppies."

I leaned in and kissed him. Finally, I could
breathe a sigh of relief knowing there wasn't an alien hybrid baby
cooking in my stomach.

I got back to my dorm early Sunday. It was
nice to sleep alongside Ace, but I didn't want to run into my dad
at breakfast and have to tell him that I spent the night. After Ace
dropped me off, I quickly crept into my dorm room, hoping not to
wake Lucy.

Well, my roommate was sound asleep in her
bed, but Riley was awake, sitting on the bed next to her and
watching a game show on our TV.

"Morning, Alex!" She beamed.

I returned the smile and plopped down on my
bed. I was still wearing my clothes from the day before but Riley
was clad in a pink tank top and pair of shorts that I recognized as
Lucy's. Must be nice to be able to share clothes with her
significant other.

"Hey, Riley, good to see I didn't wake you
up."

I remembered how I used to have to tiptoe
around Riley when we were at Circe. Maybe there was something to
this new Riley.

"Yeah," she said with a slight laugh.
"Sleeping Beauty, here, might be able to doze the morning away, but
I just can't lie there and do nothing for as long as she can."

I peered over Riley's shoulder, wondering if
Lucy heard any of it, but Lucy just lay there on the pillow with
her mouth wide open, and her butt in the air like a baby.

"So you're one to talk about being up
early...er...or I guess coming home late." Riley continued to stare
at me, my wrinkled clothes, and obvious bed head.