Chapter 2 NOT ‘CHO ALIEN DATING PROFILE #2
“Oh dear Lord! Twins in your family?! I’ll send a prayer to Jesus for her,” Tracy kissed the little silver cross she always wore and made an ‘up there’ gesture with hands and eyes. She handed the laptop back to Llewellyn before adding with a wink to Sally, “I made it a little classier for you.”
“Hey, mine was classy!” Lou complained.
Tracy snorted. “Yours was a good start if you were lookin’ to pimp her out to ET, darlin’.”
Lou grinned, “I mean, kinda…”
Sally rolled her eyes, “I’m not lookin’ for the U-F-HO experience, Lou.”
“No? You sure? Cuz I remember you tellin’ me you’d be interested a U-F-Whole-lotta-fuckin’!”
Chet choked on his drink, but wisely said nothing as shrieking laughter erupted around him. He did, however, reach down and fish out a couple of dvd cases from his satchel.
“Well now, I don’t know how serious Sally is about movin’ to outer space, but I did bring on-theme entertainment for the evening.” He fanned out his dvd choices like playing cards, holding them up for all to see. “What do y’all think? Fifth Element, Aliens, John Carter, or Stupider Ascending?”
“OH MAH GAHD, DON’T YOU DARE! THAT’S JUPITER ASCENDING AND IT IS A GOD’S DAMNED MASTERPIECE!
” Llewellyn's offended holler filled the trailer as she snatched the case out of his hands, ignoring his laughter as he teased her.
She sniffed in disdain, hugging the movie to her chest and defending herself to the group with a pouty, “I LIKE DOGS, TOO, OKAY?!”
Tracy snickered quietly, but snagged the case for Fifth Element, flipping it over to read the back. Sally noticed and froze, drink halfway to her mouth.
“Oh dear lord in heaven! Tracy? ‘Fess up! Have you not seen Fifth Element?!”
Tracy flushed, shifting uncomfortably as she cleared her throat. “I, ah, I ain’t seen any o’ these.”
“WHAT?!”
“WHAT?!”
“WHAT?!”
Even Chet joined in with the 3-way cry of shock at Tracy’s lack of sci-fi romantical viewings. He reached down and plopped his bulging satchel on his lap with purpose.
“I have more!” he declared, pulling out Earth Girls Are Easy, In Time, Divergent, Gattaca, and Aeon Flux. Llewellyn reached out and put a hand on his arm, pausing his rummage.
“Whoa, whoa! Baby, calm down!” She patted his forearm reassuringly. “I know Sci-Fi is your happy place, but we ain’t gonna get through all of these in one night! And obviously we’ve gonna start with the best one, right?”
Chet looked up at her a little wide-eyed. “O’ course! Yer right, Lou. Sorry, I got, uh, excited is all!”
Lou looked around a little wickedly. “Didja all hear that?? He said I was right! Which means obviously we’re startin’ with JUPITER ASCENDING!”
Chet burst out laughing, but held his hands up in surrender. “I know when I’m beat!”
“I think you mean ‘whipped’,” Sally snickered, making a whuTISCH!, sound along with a little whip-crack gesture.
“Hey!” Llewellyn pouted, before grinning brightly. “That is what attracted him to me in the first place!”
Tracy rolled her eyes, but laughed. “Speakin’ of which, I know I’ve got t’be in the ring by 11:00 tomorrow, and I’m pretty sure all y’all do, too…”
“Don’t remind me…” Sally griped.
“…So whichever one we watch, we should get it on ASAP so we can all fall asleep to it before we go to bed!”
The other three ‘boo’d Tracy good-naturedly, but admitted she wasn’t wrong.
Sally rescued the dvd from Llewellyn's white-knuckled grip while Tracy made them snack bowls for the couch.
Llewellyn reached for the broom to sweep up the spilled popcorn, but stopped Chet with a hand to his thoroughly muscled, if quite-skinny chest before he could escape into the living room.
“And where do you think you’re going, Hot Lips?” She placed the broom in his hands. “You’re helping me clean up after that crack on my favorite movie!”
Chet grinned, but took the broom. “And here I thought you liked my lips.”
Lou shrieked as he pulled her suddenly up against him and planted one on her.
Her shrieking stopped and she leaned into the kiss, wrapping her arms around his neck.
She paused their kiss only momentarily to inform him that his ‘hot lips’ were gonna be put to use later.
Chet made an mmm sound in agreement, before capturing her feisty mouth again.
He loved her fire. She kept him on his toes.
“Quit makin’ out in my kitchen and finish cleanin’ up!” Sally hollered at them, knowing full well they would just make out on the couch instead.
The escaped popcorn was wrangled and Lou refreshed everyone’s drinks as they settled in for the show. She looked askance at Sally’s cup.
“Sal, how many of these have you had so far?” she asked with narrowed eyes in her best friend’s direction.
“I’m bein’ good!” Sally protested. “I just switched to juice! You know I don’t drink heavy on performance nights…”
“Mmmhm,” Lou tasted, making sure Sally had switched out the Boon’s Farm for sparkling cranberry. Her friend had a three-drink limit for reasons. “Just checkin’. I ain’t ready to put up with hungover Sally this week.”
Sally rolled her eyes, but flushed in embarrassment. She knew she was a menace the day after more than a few drinks. Her body tended to rebel in a truly astonishing fashion.
“WAIT!” Sally hollered as they all went to sit down. The four friends froze mid-sit. “Everyone’s wearin’ clean pants, right??”
Everyone nodded.
“We showered’n changed—why d’ya think it took us so long to get here?” Tracy said, bent over from where she was using the boot jack to pull off her hand-painted Tecovas. She gave a little grunt and staggered back as her foot finally came free.
Chet caught her with a steadying hand as she blew a blonde curl out of her frazzled expression.
“I’ve seriously got to get you to paint me a set,” he told her, admiring the artwork on her boots. She grinned as he took his turn at the boot jack.
“You know where to find me!”
“Are you two done flirtin’ over footwear?” Lou called from the couch. “Come snuggle!”
As the movie started, Sally looked over at the dog-pile of her dearest people. It was a rare moment of quiet for the four of them, these late-night movies. Their days were so full, even when they came to a stop, it was hard to shut down unless they were sleeping.
Sitting still meant something wasn’t getting done, hadn’t gotten crossed off the list. Sally appreciated that the four of them had come to the conclusion that they needed to force each other to relax, and that if they did it together, all at once, nobody could feel guilty about it.
She surreptitiously glanced at the dimmed screen of her laptop, smuggled into her usual corner so they couldn’t yell at her for doing work during their down-time.
In between dramatic movie moments, she picked away at her dating profile. A word here, a word there. Sally hadn’t told Lou, but she’d been thinking about signing up ever since the Human-Extraterrestrial Liaison Program was announced months ago.
Like everyone, she’d thought HELP was a hoax at first, but after the government had confirmed it and it turned out to be real… The thought of going to space had lodged itself in Sally’s brain and wouldn’t shake free.
But it was more than just the excitement of going to another planet.
Sally was lonely.
It was a fact she hid from herself as best she could.
She felt guilty for those late-night urges that tempted her to leave her friends and go to a galaxy far, far away.
She was grateful for the friends and family and stability she had in her life.
Truly, she was. But that only went so far in the dead of night, spiraling away in the vast web of her own thoughts, wondering what was so wrong with her that the men she dated never stuck around for more then a few months at the most.
It had taken her a long time to accept that she was allowed to want more, that she didn’t need to settle for pretending to have a good lay every once in a blue moon.
Once she’d reconciled that riding broncos for the rodeo was more satisfying than riding her way through the local dating pool, Sally had come to the realization that whatever it was keeping her from finding her match probably wasn’t going to be remedied in wide expanse of rural Texas.
The Andromeda Galaxy was, admittedly, still a bit far out…
Sally hovered over the ‘submit’ button for a moment longer, staring at the screen.
I don’t have to go anywhere I don’t want to, she told herself. But she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t curious to see if dating an alien—or even just messaging with one—wasn’t a sight better than being disappointed by yet another human fella.
“OH MAH GAHD!”
Sally jumped as Tracy yelled at the television, thinking Tracy had busted her for ‘working’ on her laptop.
“GIRL, WHAT IN TARNATION ARE YOU DOIN’?! DON’T MARRY HIM! HE’S OBVIOUSLY LYIN’!—Lou, what the hell kinda bullshit movie is this?! I thought she was gonna fall in love with Wolf Tatum?!”
Lou left off from her liplock with Chet long enough to reply with a, “Shush, you! Just watch the dang movie! I ain’t givin’ you no spoilers!”
“Well at least the dress is excellent!” Tracy griped, but piped down to watch the drama play out on-screen.
Sally chortled quietly to herself, appreciating her friends’ ridiculous cinematic enthusiasm. Turning her own attention to the movie for a few minutes, the rodeo queen decided it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if she found herself her own ‘Wolf Tatum’.
She hit the button.
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