How to Marry an Alien (23 page)

"Let her go, Simone. This doesn't concern any
of them. Leave the humans alone." Ace stepped to my side.

Simone clutched her free hand to her heart.
"Oh, look, what a sweet couple!" She rolled her eyes. "Just what I
want to see, the human maggot in a dress and my future king."

"Disgusting, isn't it?" Gavin added.

Ace shook his head, taking another step
forward. "Simone, you don't need to do this. What is this fighting
going to do for you? You know I love Alex."

"What will this do for me?" She arched a thin
eyebrow. "Once the human is gone, then you will finally come to
your senses and we can rule Calta together. You need me. You know
they will never let a male rule, but once we get rid of the humans
and your sisters it will be all of us!"

"My sisters? What have you done with Tullia
and Arête?" Ace crouched down, a low growl escaping his lips.

Simone tipped her head back, laughing like a
witch before looking back at Ace. "Nothing…yet."

Ace launched himself at Simone, but was
stopped by her hand, shoving him backward and tumbling over a
cream-colored couch.

"Ace!" I yelled, trying to run to him, but
tripped over the giant train of the dress.

Gavin and Simone both laughed behind me.

I stood back up, holding the dress up so only
my bare feet showed. "This is ridiculous Simone! You know that Ace
will never be with you, so why bother?"

Simone narrowed her eyes and walked toward me
with Riley still shaking in her clutches. "Once I stop this silly
engagement arrangement you two have, there will be no reason that
Ace needs to stay with you. We will go back to Calta and be
married."

"That's not possible, Simone," Ace said
weakly, crawling up from the fallen couch. "I'm already
married."

"WHAT?" Simone threw Riley down to the ground
where she curled up in the fetal position at Simone's feet.

"What are they talking about?" Gavin asked,
frantically looking between me and Simone.

I held up my hands, hoping she wouldn't get
too close. "He's right. We eloped, in the Caltian sense."

"This can't be happening. This can't be
happening!" Simone put her hand to her head.

"Hey, wait." Gavin removed Simone's hand and
caught her waist with his other hand. "Look, we can still stop
this. They may already be married, but if there is no Alex, then
there is no marriage."

Simone looked at Gavin and then over at me. A
sly smile crossed her lips. "You're right. If I can't have
Machiavelli, then no one can."

Gavin grinned like a cheesy villain. "Good,
now give Riley back her memory and let's launch her forward."

I jumped on Simone's back and pulled at her
knots of hair. "You will do no such thing!"

She shrieked. "Get the human off me!"

I pulled as hard as I could. "Ace, call Circe
for back-up!"

Ace pulled out his phone, but Simone moved
her hand forward and the phone shot out of his hands and shattered
against the back wall. Then Simone shook me off and to the ground
as if I were nothing more than a piece of lint.

The dress got caught and tangled in my legs,
and I struggled trying to get up. Ace rushed to my side and ripped
the fabric completely off, so it looked like I had some retro
mini-dress when he stood me up.

"This is ridiculous, Simone. Can we just stop
all of this?" Ace asked, pulling me close.

"If only it were that simple," Gavin said,
shaking his head. "If only you two weren't so unnatural, we
wouldn't have to do this."

Simone picked up Riley and put her hands on
either side of her face. Riley's body convulsed underneath her
hands and then her eyes popped open like a dolls.

"What the hell?" Riley's voice came out in a
scratchy whisper.

Simone moved her hands from her face and
smiled at the battered girl. "Hello, Riley."

"Who are you? What the hell is going on?"

Gavin looked over Simone's shoulder. "Quick,
Riley, what is the main plant life on Ranga?"

"Gavin, shut up, you know the answer to that
is quioete root. Don't be an idiot."

I recognized it. That was the old Riley's
voice. She was back.

Gavin grinned. "Glad to have you here, Riley.
Now I'm sure you remember this lovely couple." He motioned toward
me and Ace. "And how much you hated them. How they took away your
memory, your life in Philly, and the awesome internship that could
have been on your applications for grad school."

"They did all this?" Riley asked, tilting her
head.

"Yes, they did, my dear," Simone said,
placing a small, blue revolver in Riley's hand that she removed
from her knotted head. "And you can destroy them just as easily as
they destroyed you."

"Stop, Riley, you don't have to do this!" I
yelled.

Riley gulped. "You did destroy my life. You
took my memory, my friends, and…" Riley looked in the direction of
the three-way mirror where Lucy still lay unconscious. "My
Lucy…"

"We didn't do that, Riley. You made the
choice to not like us," I yelled.

But she didn't look at me, just stared at
Lucy.

"Am I going to have to do this myself?" Gavin
grabbed the revolver from Riley's hand and pointed it straight at
me. "Laters, Alex. It was fun knowing you."

The gun clicked and the world moved in slow
motion. A brilliant blue blast of light shot from the gun and went
straight for my open mouth. Before the beam could make contact with
me a brown streak swept in front of me. It was too fast for me to
know what hit me, just like the brown streak in the accident. I was
knocked off balance and fell onto Ace and we tumbled on the couch.
A rumble, like an earthquake, shook around us and dozens of
mannequins and dresses fell on top of us.

I cold hand pressed against mine and pulled
me out of the rubble. I found myself face to face with Riley. The
brown streak.

"Are you okay?" Riley looked at me, blinking
rapidly.

I nodded. "Yeah, you saved me, why?"

Ace crawled out from under the mound of
dresses and stood beside me.

Riley looked at him and sighed before looking
back at me. "Because you all are my friends. When Simone gave me
back my memory, I did see all the reasons we didn't get along last
summer, but that isn't the same now. You and Ace, me and Lucy, we
are the same. People don't agree with our relationships, but we
will always fight to keep them."

I heard a cough and sputter near the other
end of the sofa. I grabbed Ace and Riley's hands, and we turned
toward the sound. Gavin pulled a limp Simone out from underneath a
pile of lace.

"No, this can't be happening. Simone, wake
up!" he yelled.

He stared down at her, his words like a cry
while he ran his fingers through her hair. It looked like I wasn't
the only one in love with an alien in the room.

Simone’s eyelids fluttered, her body coming
to life in Gavin’s arms. Her black eyes finally opened and she
looked at him in the same loving way he looked at her. Oh
bother.

“Can someone tell me what the heck is going
on?”

I turned toward the three-way mirror where
Lucy leaned against it, holding onto the back of her head.

“Lucy!” Riley ran to her and knelt down. “Are
you okay?”

“I don’t know. I cut my back up on the glass,
and I may have a concussion because I swore I heard you all talking
about Caltians and Circe and that you knew Alex before she was my
roommate?” Lucy blinked, and then scanned the room until her eyes
landed on me.

“I think I can explain all that,” Gavin said,
standing up with his arm around Simone.

I looked at Ace who was staring at Gavin and
Simone as if they were some sort of a science experiment.

“I interned with Alex and Riley last summer
at Circe, which as you’ve figured out is sort of a way point for
aliens coming to this planet,” Gavin said.

Lucy stared at him wide eyed. “You mean to
tell me that you all interned for some sort of an alien operations
center and kept this from me?”

Riley shook her head, squeezing Lucy’s hand.
“No, no. I didn’t keep it from you. I sort of, well I wasn’t a very
good person back then, and since I tried to fight Ace and Alex’s
relationship I had my memory wiped. Obviously, the tall
crazy-haired lady somehow gave it back to me.”

“Watch it, human,” Simone snapped.

Gavin squeezed Simone’s shoulder. “Calm down;
she didn’t mean it.”

“And what is this all about, anyway?” I asked
pointing at Gavin’s arm.

Simone looked at me; her eyes looked like
that of a sad puppy. “I thought I was against human and aliens
being together. I didn’t think I was falling for him.” She looked
up at Gavin. “I was wrong.”

"Then why do all of this in the first place?"
I asked.

Simone sighed, shaking her head. "I guess I
didn't want to admit it to myself what was happening between me and
Gavin. I thought if I had Ace, all those feelings would just go
away."

Gavin interjected, "The plan was to keep
Riley under watch with sleep creep and then turn her on Alex. That
way Circe wouldn’t figure anything out if we kept Riley out of the
loop. Then something strange happened. The more we talked, the more
I realized how it wasn't as weird as I thought for an alien and a
human to be together."

Ace took my hand in his, squeezing it gently
while Lucy and Riley got up and stepped toward us. The battered
bride and her two bloody bridesmaids.

“Does this mean this fight is over, Simone?
Can we just live in peace?” Ace asked.

Simone swallowed and then gave a small nod.
“I think we can try. It may not be perfect and I don’t know how any
of our relationships will be accepted, but I’m sure we can
try.”

Riley kissed Lucy’s hand. “I now understand
the scrutiny one goes through with a relationship that doesn’t
follow the norms of society. Sometimes you just have to learn to
live with it.”

Simone looked at Ace. “And will you be
telling the queen of your elopement?”

Ace smiled. “If you tell her about your new
relationship.”

Three years to do the day I started at
Northern Arizona, Ace and I were married. Well married in the human
sense, at least. Thank God for summer classes to graduate early
because I thought the day would never come.

As the sun set over the mountain peaks as I
walked down the aisle in a lace gown that wasn't torn to shreds in
a battle, and didn't make me look like a beached whale. Every white
flower was in place, with blue accents because a girl couldn't go
without a little bit of the colors of the night sky to represent an
alien and human wedding.

The human guests had no idea that they were
sitting next to aliens, not even my mom who met my dad’s new
fiancée, Nerses. Ace and I were trailblazers, the first of our kind
to have a human wedding between a Caltian and a human. The aliens
of Calta still weren’t thrilled about the elopement, and I refused
to make a video of the next time we got married. No need to have an
alien sex tape floating around.

But at the end of the aisle, behind all the
different aliens sitting in pews, stood my alien, looking
incredibly uncomfortable in a tuxedo. To his side stood Monte,
Malcolm, Justin and Gavin. On the other side were my bridesmaids,
an eclectic mix of an alien, two lesbians, and Jen. I couldn’t have
gotten as far as I did without the help of Lucy, Simone, and Riley,
so I figured they deserved it. I even let them help pick out their
own, navy blue bridesmaid dresses. They were tea-length and
strapless, and I even let the girls wear flats because you never
know when an alien battle could start and you would need to throw
off your heels.

I once read somewhere that it takes a village
to raise a child. You could say I was raised by the alien
community, and without them by my side I wouldn’t be staring into
the dark eyes of my alien husband and knowing that through all the
intergalactic battles, I was exactly where I was supposed to
be.

Lucy used to always ask me, “So how do you
marry an alien? Or how to you date an alien? Even once asking, how
to break up with an alien?” And every time I would give her the
same answer. “Patience, a sense of understanding, and learning to
get along with all of his female ex-girlfriends and relatives.”

All those years after first meeting Ace and
now I was finally married to him in both the human and alien sense.
My mom got to help plan the human wedding, complete with cake
tastings and dress shopping. Everything came together perfectly,
even the Martian string quartet and Neptunian preacher. None of the
humans suspected anything.

Dancing under the stars to a Frank Sinatra
tune, I finally got to breath and have my first dance with my
husband.

"Was it everything you hoped this day would
be, Princess?"

I looked into his dark eyes. The eyes that I
first saw the day he saved me from a rogue alien attacking me and
the ones I now got to see every morning. "I think it was more
perfect than any Caltian sunset."

Magan is a self-proclaimed geek-to-glam
poster child who channels her inner geek by writing science fiction
for teens. Even though she slept with a nightlight until middle
school for fear of alien attacks. She now lives with her husband,
daughter, and dog in central Illinois where she still sleeps with a
nightlight…just in case.

You can find her online at
www.MaganVernon.com
.

How to Date an Alien

How to Break up with an Alien

How to Marry an Alien

My Paper Heart