How to Marry an Alien (11 page)

"Whoa, calm down there, buddy." I sat back
up, his hand still cupped on my chest.

"Sorry, I've just never seen anything like
this before." His eyes went as wide as they could go.

"Are Caltian girls just naturally buoyant or
something?"

He shook his head, not looking up from my
bra. "No, I've never seen this much of a Caltian girl. Or any girl
for that matter. You're the first."

"Oh." It was all I could muster. He hadn't
done any of this either. It was probably why he was so reluctant as
well. But with him playing with my bra like a cat toy there was no
way I was going to try anything more.

"Hey guys! WHOA."

I hopped off Ace and the bed, turning toward
the door to see Lucy standing in the doorway with her arm raised
and over her eyes.

"I told you to put a sock on the door," she
yelled.

"Sorry, Lucy." I could feel a blush creep up
my neck and to my cheeks while I picked my shirt up off the floor
and quickly put it back on. "You can look now."

Lucy pulled her arm down and walked to her
bed, throwing her purse down. "I'm cool with the boom-boom and all,
but Alex…"

"We weren't doing anything," I snapped,
harsher than I intended. Maybe the cat and mouse chase was getting
to me.

"I think that nothing at least requires the
wearing of a shirt." Lucy plopped down on her bed, kicking off her
Birkenstocks.

The flush was back and made its way through
my cheeks and my whole face.

Ace sat up behind me. "Sorry about that. It
won't happen again, I assure you."

Won't happen again? Did he mean Lucy walking
in on us? Or did he just never want to see me sans shirt again? He
seemed pretty excited by my bra, or so I thought.

"Don't worry about it. I understand.
Sometimes you just get in the heat of the moment and forget to put
the sock on the door. I get it," Lucy said.

"Okay, Alex, I guess I should be off and let
you finish your homework. Shall I come by tomorrow?" Ace stood up,
straightening out his pants. I wondered if aliens got excited like
human boys. He once told me he was anatomically correct, but I'd
never really thought about the functioning operation of his anatomy
until I really thought about wanting to do it. Maybe he couldn't do
it and that was why he kept refusing it?

"That sounds good. I can text you later
tonight," I said, walking with him to the door. He beamed into my
bedroom, so I guessed that he would have to find somewhere secluded
to beam back to Circe.

His eyes quickly flitted to Lucy, and then he
tilted his head down to mine. His words were a whisper on my lips.
"I love you, Princess. I will be eagerly waiting to see you and
your bra again."

His finger briefly grazed the front of my
shirt, letting a slow quiver travel through my chest. He then
lightly kissed my lips and walked out the door.

Maybe there would be some boom-boom in my
future.

Whose stupid idea was it to do a speech on
Dustin Hoffman's career? Oh, yeah that was me. Even though Ace left
pretty early I just couldn't wrap my head around the speech and
still had to have my note cards and outline finished to turn in the
next morning with it.

It could have been because every time I tried
to write about Mr. Hoffman's time working on
The Graduate
all I could think about was the time Ace leaned into me and
whispered "Are you trying to seduce me, Mrs. Robinson?" He was
never a Dustin Hoffman fan, but the first time I heard him quote
one of my movies and do it in a low, husky voice it sent tingles to
all the right places. It was enough to make me forget all about my
favorite actor standing in the hotel room and staring at his
married mistress, and think about what it would be like to be with
my alien in that same situation.

The alarm went off way too early the next
morning. Maybe I did spend too much time thinking about Ace. My
outline was only half-finished, but I could easily fill that in
during the other speeches. There were at least three or four of us
going plus evaluators, so I had a good chance to get it done before
it was my turn. The bad part was that we had to dress business
casual for our speeches. Instead of working on finishing my note
cards or even practicing my speech, for the first time, I was busy
curling my hair and forcing myself into a pencil skirt and heels.
Hopefully, whenever I became an alien princess, I would never have
to worry about heels again.

"Looking hot there, roomie." Lucy walked into
the room with a mug of tea in her hand. She usually wasn't up
early, but she just came home, so technically she probably hadn't
gone to bed yet.

"Hot enough to give a speech about Dustin
Hoffman and his acting career?" I buttoned the last button on my
blouse, praying I didn't sweat through it on the way to class.
Whoever said that Arizona was a dry heat underestimated the power
of an Italian girl's armpits.

"That's what your speech is about?" Lucy
coughed, setting her tea down and tapping her chest with a fist
like it went down the wrong pipe.

"Yeah, I had to think of something quickly
and that was the first thing I thought of." I shrugged.

Lucy shook her head. "After getting a good
look at Ace, I thought you would be more into the male model
rockers than the likes of Mr. Hoffman."

"Every girl has a little bit of a soft side
for the classic male actors and Dustin Hoffman is no exception. I'm
sure even you can't deny that one."

Lucy rolled her eyes and set her mug down on
her desk. "Don't tell me you are like my dad and think this lesbian
thing is just a phase?"

"What?" I snapped my head up. "No, I never
said that. I was just saying that Dustin Hoffman is a great actor
and rocks the silver fox look."

"As long as you aren't trying to swing me in
the direction of team boy, we're good." She sat down on her bed,
folding her legs underneath her. "My dad tried to do that."

"What do you mean by that?" I asked.

"I realized I was more attracted to girls
around freshman year of high school. My dad just thought it was a
phase and grounded me from watching any more reality TV shows, like
somehow that would work."

She ran a hand through her hair, tousling it.
"I actually dated guys all through high school just to please him.
I thought maybe if I forced myself to spend time with people of the
opposite sex, then it would magically cure me of lesbianism. Except
lesbianism isn't some sort of a disease that needs a cure. It's who
I am and if I never met Riley I don't think I'd be as happy as I am
now, or realize that there is nothing wrong with me. I'm just a
girl in love with another girl."

I smiled. Lucy and I were more alike than I
thought. Both of us tried so-called normal relationships, but the
only kind that made us happy were the ones that everyone else saw
as strange. Maybe I was wrong about her and Riley, and now there
was definitely no way I was going to try and force her on a date
with Monte.

I got caught up talking about awful date
stories with Lucy and had to run across campus, in heels, to make
it to class on time. I told her all about Brody, leaving out of
course that an evil alien was invading his dreams, and she told me
about some jock she dated who was more into the other guys on his
team than he was into her.

I took my usual seat, glancing at everyone
else in the room. There were two other students in dress clothes.
If I was lucky, I would, hopefully, draw last in order of speeches
and second to last for evaluations. That would give me enough time
to finish my outline and go over my notes.

Professor Johnson passed around two small
Tupperware containers with folded up squares of paper. "Pick from
this box first for your speech order, and this next one will be the
order in which you will evaluate."

By the time the containers got to me there
were only two scraps of paper left, one in each box. I picked the
first one out for my speech. Number three. Okay, I could work with
that. I could still work on my outline between now and then. Then I
reached into the container for the evaluator scrap. Number one.
Oh crap
.

"Okay, who do I have giving speech number
one?" Professor Johnson clasped her hands together.

A girl on the other side of the room raised
her hand. She looked so poised and put together with her hair in a
tight brown bun, and she wore a dark brown pantsuit. No giant pit
stains on her.

The professor nodded in her direction. "And
who will be evaluating Melanie?"

Weakly, I raised my hand and saw the class
stare in my direction.

"Very good, Alex. Now, let's get
started."

Melanie stood up from her desk and walked to
the front podium. She handed her nicely typed up outline to
Professor Johnson and then stood in front of the class with her
note cards in hand.

Crap, crap, crap
. I would have to
evaluate her and my outline was still half filled out in pencil. I
didn't even fully read the directions to see if I actually needed
to type it out or use a pen. I quickly grabbed my workbook from my
bag and flipped to the evaluation portion. There were five
questions that I would somehow have to fill out and put my answers
into a two-minute speech to evaluate Melanie's speech. Okay, I
could do it. I could definitely do it. Maybe…

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that
stereotypes are prominent in modern literature," Melanie
proclaimed. Dang she had a good opening, quoting Jane Austen and
all.

There was nothing bad I could say about her
speech. I trudged to the front of the room when her speech was done
and rattled off the notes I took. I barely looked up from my
workbook, a big no-no in speeches, and just wanted to get back to
my desk and hope I could salvage my outline. That still didn't stop
Professor Johnson from clapping louder than any of the students. I
swear I even saw some students glare at me. Great, now I was going
to be known as the teacher's pet.

While Mila gave her super awesome speech on
the dangers of plastic toys, I hurriedly scribbled down my outline
and filled out the rest of my note cards. We had to have at least
seven, and I had exactly two and a half filled out before I got to
class.

"And now it's time for Alex to give her
speech on the wonderful topic of Dustin Hoffman!" Professor Johnson
exclaimed loudly as if I were some sort of celebrity. I guess to
her I was.

There was only silence from the class while I
walked to the podium. I handed the professor my poorly written
outline and took my spot at the front of the room.

"Today, I am here to seduce you on the acting
career of Dustin Hoffman from his early roles in the 1960s to his
iconic roles that earned him Academy Awards, and how his career has
shaped those of other actors."

I tried to make eye contact with everyone in
the room, but everyone's eyes were already drooping just from my
intro. The only one who was actually paying attention was Professor
Johnson. She stared at me like I was a rock star walking around the
gray tiled floor.

I tripped over a few of my words and
basically made up the last half of my speech as I went. My
evaluator, Mila, caught all of those things. In the nicest way she
tried to tell me that it sounded like I just put my speech together
the night before, which I did.

When she went back to her seat, Professor
Johnson went back to the front of the room. "Now, remember
students, it is great that everyone has their own opinion, but try
not to let the judgment of making ourselves look good cloud a great
speech. We all can't be as poised of speakers as Alex."

Gulp. Did she seriously just say that? I
slunk down in my seat, really wishing I could just disappear. The
only time I ever got special treatment in school was when I
actually deserved it. I could write the heck out of a term paper,
but usually I didn't get pointed out by the teacher like that. The
only time I could remember that happening was in advanced senior
English, and I still liked to forget about my whole time in that
class and the heavy influence of sleep creep on my English
teacher.

Finally, my first week of accelerated classes
was over. Only four more weeks to go and I would be done with
summer classes and maybe the next semester would be better. I did
fine in high school, so why was I struggling so much in college
classes?

Papa Don't Preach
sang from my phone.
I pulled it out of my messenger bag while I walked from the library
back to my dorm.

"Hey, Dad."

I spent my afternoons going over homework for
my online class in the library. That way I actually followed the
class instead of thinking about how many more aliens I could run
into on campus.

"Hey, Alex, how was your first official week
as a college student?"

"You know, the same as everyone else's I'm
sure. There were long classes, lots of homework, oh and alien
teachers giving me special treatment." I made sure no one else was
around when I said the last part. Not that there were a lot of
people on campus in the summer, but all it took was one person to
hear it.

"I did hear something about Proji teaching
there. She isn't bothering you too much, is she?" dad asked.

I sighed, moving my phone to the other ear.
"No, it's just all the other beings around here are treating me
like I'm sort of a celebrity. I'm not. I'm just a regular student
like anyone else around."

"I hate to break it to you, but to them you
are much more. This is the first time in almost a century that
there has been a royal alien engagement and probably even longer
since it has been a Caltian prince," dad said matter-of-factly.

"So now I'm, like, the Princess Diana of the
alien world?"