Chapter 13 #3
She didn't even know what I had been doing to earn money for the last two years, and she went and said that. It wasn’t even that I had to do that exactly.
It just was the only job I could hold down.
My emotional outbursts and the intense need to antagonize others made holding down a normal nine to five almost impossible.
It certainly made performing in more respectable settings difficult.
So instead I performed in the way that was easiest to make the money I needed.
Based on her words alone, she likely wouldn’t judge me if I told her. This was the reason I became friends with her in the first place. Within her awkward mannerisms and spaciness was a woman who ultimately didn't judge others for doing what they needed to do in the moment.
Unless, of course, her boyfriend told her to.
That thought struck a note of bitterness in my heart that was still festering.
I didn't know how much she had changed in the last couple of years.
I didn’t know if she would turn on me because of a guy again.
"Seriously though." I grabbed her hand again. "Don't do something that hurts your heart for my sake. We will figure this out together."
"I won't," Arnina squeezed my hand. "I mean, I would, but all joking aside, I don't think that is what this is. I don't think Makrus rescued us because he wants to use me. "
Her Boy Toy tilted his head as she said his name with full tonal inflection in his language.
"Maybe he wants to use me," I poked at her, my inner troublemaker rolling around in glee.
She didn't rise to the bait.
She shook her head at me and grinned.
"No way," Arnina said. "He is definitely into me, not you. He wouldn't be so considerate of us if he planned to harm us."
I frowned at her.
"You don't know that," I said. "You saw those kids streaming video of us while they were teaching us. What if that was for another reason than getting us seen as sentients? We can't even talk to him yet. How are we supposed to tell what his true intentions are? Also, did you notice that when they got Zale,” I forgot I hadn’t been talking about him as she frowned slightly at the comment.
“The midnight male, the dark haired brooding one, here in the background, he shut that shit down?
I think he was deleting photos and videos.
After that, they avoided getting him in the shots. "
"I don’t think they have bad intentions," she said. "That dark haired one, Zale you said? He could be the gentlest guy ever. We don’t know. He is likely doing what Makrus is asking and it is for our own good. Makrus’ actions towards us have spoken much louder than any words."
Zale being gentle?
He gave me heads in a box as a present.
I really couldn’t spill that detail right now or she might freak out. Now was not the time for freaking out. We were heading who knows where on an alien planet or moon that we had no idea where it was physically in space in relation to our home planet.
Panicking wasn’t going to get us anywhere.
Neither was trusting or falling for guys just because they gave us presents.
"Damn, Neen," I leaned back in my chair. "Are you falling in love with a guy you can't even talk to? You’ve been thinking he’s a janitor this whole time and he clearly isn’t. You don’t know anything about this guy at all."
“I know that he saved us,” she said, crossing her arms.
“For all you know he is the reason we were in the zoo in the first place,” I pointed out. “We don’t know shit.”
"I..." she trailed off into silence, her face going into that awkward, tense expression she got when she was thinking things over and forgetting that other people were there.
The vehicle came to a stop. We had landed on the roof of a large building. Something was growing: a golden ground cover that made up the landing strip. Radiating outward from around us was some of the first larger plant life I'd seen outside the zoo.
They glowed, veins of purple and turquoise illuminating the large fronds.
I unstrapped and hopped out of the vehicle.
I stepped out onto soft moss that sank down under my bare feet, tickling in between my toes. I followed the Boy Toy across the lush carpet of the roof. He stopped suddenly, and a circular hatch opened on the floor in front of him. Then he hopped into it and dropped abruptly out of sight.
I rushed forward and peered over the edge, Arnina beside me.
Instead of stairs or an elevator, there was a series of platforms covered with a glassy-looking white carpet.
The Boy Toy stood, looking up at Arnina from two platforms down, which looked like a drop of thirty feet.
Not that I was sure about that. It was as far as I could see down the shaft because each platform stuck out in a half circle taking up alternating sides of the shaft.
"There is no way I'm jumping that," I said as the Boy Toy gestured at us. I glanced up at the four guards who stood behind us, waiting for us to descend. It was an easy choice.
I pointed to Zale.
"You," I commanded. "Carry me."
Zale blinked at me and grinned.
A warmth spread through me at his smile and he sang something at me.
Like I could understand a word of it.
I strode over to him. This was a man who had seen me on a screen once and decided to murder the aliens who beat me. He'd fed me and taken care of me. Even if he had left me in that vet office for a bit, I bet once I was able to communicate with him I'd be able to find he had a good reason.
I'd literally punched him, and he didn't even react.
Instead he took care of my hand with magic alien space lotion.
At this point, I was feeling pretty safe with this guy.
It wasn’t entirely rational.
Like I had just badgered Lorelei about, now was not the time to be trusting someone just because they were a little kind.
Kindness could be used as a weapon if paired with confusion and deprivation.
I’d seen it plenty with the guys I’d work around.
The low level form of it was called negging, pairing insults with compliments as an attempt to knock the other person off balance so you could prey on them.
I knew never to trust someone who complimented and insulted me at the same time.
I'd been around a decent amount of skeevy characters.
My ability to trust men had hit an all-time low, and intuition had been developed to the knife edge of sharpness.
I'd seen all the tricks, the begging, the lying, the love bombing, and the attempts to use physical force to get what they wanted.
This guy had done none of it.
I didn't know much about these aliens other than a few bits of body language I'd been able to piece together with some help.
I didn't know their culture. I didn't even know why they didn't try to communicate with us or test our intelligence in even a basic way before they put us in a zoo of all places.
I was vulnerable, but not being able to talk wasn't the end of my ability to tell a thing or two about him.
What I did know was this guy, this enigmatic, strangely attractive, ripped alien male, had every opportunity to take advantage of or hurt me. Instead, he was just standing there, looking at me like I was some fascinating creature he could never have dreamed up into existence.
I stood up on the balls of my feet and stretched my arms up around the sides of his neck, digging my fingers into the thick mane back there. His eyes half fluttered for a moment, like the action had been pleasurable.
Good to know.
Time to see how far body language could take me.