TAMMY
Crazyyyyyy, for thinking three aliens would love meeeeeee.
Isat alone on my porch steps, the wooden edge of one riser digging into my thighs through thin cotton shorts as I tipped the whiskey bottle to my lips for the umpteenth time that evening.
Patsy Cline’s heartbreak spilled from my ancient radio, her voice carrying across the empty Kansas night like it was made specifically for abandoned women like me.
The burn of alcohol couldn’t match the searing pain in my chest—that special kind of hollow that forms when something that was never supposed to be yours in the first place slips through your fingers and shoots off into the stars, taking pieces of your heart along for the ride.
“Crazyyyyyyyyyy,” I warbled along with Patsy, my voice cracking on the high notes. I sobbed, missing a few words, before singing off-key again. “My stupid human love could—” I hiccuped, made a pitiful, whimpering sound. When I tried to keep singing, my voice failed me.
Three empty bottles of Jack lined up beside me like fallen soldiers, testament to the battle I was fighting against the memory of tentacles wrapped around my waist, silver eyes watching me with wonder, and the scents of ocean depths and forest floors that had become as familiar to me as my own skin.
One night since they'd left. One endless night of pretending I could function, could breathe, could exist in a world that suddenly felt two-dimensional and colorless.
The porch light cast sickly yellow patterns across the yard, illuminating the newly repaired barn that Kalith had fixed with such care.
Every inch of this ranch held their fingerprints now—the straightened fence posts Vantor had reinforced, the thriving pasture grass enhanced by Cyro’s alien compounds, the horses that now grazed peacefully side by side because of their intervention.
I’d spent my entire adult life being left.
My parents died when I was twenty-two. College friends moved on to bigger cities.
Derek had kept me around only as long as I was willing to be his pretty, silent accessory.
I should have built up immunity by now, developed some kind of emotional callus against abandonment.
But this—this was different. This was three beings who had seen me—really seen me—and chosen me anyway. They had known my flaws, my fears, my failures, and still looked at me like I was the most fascinating creature in the universe.
And then they’d left.
Because of course they had. They had a mission. They had a dying planet. They had millions of their own kind depending on them. What was one heartbroken human woman compared to all that?
My throat burned raw from hours of singing along to sad country songs, each lyric feeling like it had been written specifically about loving and losing alien cephalopods.
I swallowed another mouthful of whiskey, feeling the gulp slide down to join the lake of alcohol already sloshing in my empty stomach.
“You think I don’t miss them?” I slurred at Mystery, who watched me judgmentally from the fence line. “You think this is pathetic? Fuck you, horse. You got your happy ending.”
Mystery snorted and turned away, as if he couldn’t bear to witness my breakdown anymore. Even my horses were disappointed in me.
I stumbled to my feet, the world tilting dangerously as I found my balance.
The whiskey bottle dangled from my fingertips, nearly empty now, a single golden swallow clinging to the bottom.
Above me stretched the vast Kansas sky, stars scattered across black velvet like diamonds on display—cold, distant, and completely indifferent to my pain.
“You are cruel assholes!” I screamed upward, my voice cracking as tears streamed down my face. “You’re worse than Derek! At least he never made me love him first!”
My words echoed across the empty ranch, bouncing back to me and making me flinch at their harshness.
I didn’t mean it. Not really. Derek had been controlling, belittling, undermining my every attempt at independence.
My aliens had been... everything opposite.
Supportive. Kind. Amazed by my capabilities.
That’s what made it so much worse. They hadn’t left because they didn’t care. They’d left because they had to. Because duty and responsibility and the fate of an entire civilization outweighed whatever we’d found together in these precious months.
I tipped my head back and drained the last drops from the bottle, tilting it so dramatically that whiskey dribbled down my chin and neck.
When nothing more would come, I ran my tongue desperately around the rim, chasing the burn, seeking oblivion in the last molecules of alcohol clinging to the glass.
“I hate that I love you,” I whispered to the stars, my voice so hoarse it was barely audible even to my own ears. “I hate that I’ll never stop loving you.”
My reflection in the window caught my eye—tangled copper hair sticking out in all directions, mascara streaked down flushed cheeks, eyes swollen and red-rimmed from hours of crying. I looked like a woman undone, unmade by grief. I looked exactly how I felt.
I raised the empty bottle in a mocking toast to the universe, to three aliens who were likely already light years away, to the fucking unfairness of falling in love with beings who belonged among those distant stars rather than here in the Kansas dirt with me.
“To Cyro and his annoying analysis of everything,” I croaked, my voice barely functioning. “To Vantor and his stupid protective instincts. To Kalith and his—” My voice broke completely, the words dissolving into silent tears— “infuriating dismantling of everything I own.”
And that’s when I heard it. At first, I thought it was just the blood rushing in my ears, the sound of too much alcohol sloshing through my veins. But it grew louder—a familiar rumbling that vibrated through my bones and made the porch boards tremble beneath my bare feet.
I froze, bottle still raised in mid-toast, my breath caught in my throat. The rumbling intensified, a mechanical groaning that I recognized with every cell in my body. My head snapped up, eyes searching the star-strewn sky with desperate hope.
Materializing against the backdrop of stars like a mirage, was a dark shape with pulsing lights that I’d only seen once before.
The aliens’ spacecraft, its outline shifting and rippling as if struggling to maintain form.
But something was wrong. The ship wasn’t moving with the smooth precision I remembered.
It listed to one side, engines sputtering and flaring erratically.
“No,” I breathed, sobering instantly as adrenaline flooded my system. “No, no, no...”
The ship plummeted toward the ground, its descent too fast, too uncontrolled.
I watched in horror as it fell directly toward the newly repaired supply barn—the same structure it had crashed into the first time.
The collision was catastrophic. Wood splintered, metal shrieked, and a cloud of dust erupted into the night air as the spacecraft tore through the roof and buried itself in the heart of the building.
The whiskey bottle slipped from my fingers, shattering on the porch steps. I didn’t even flinch at the explosion of glass around my bare feet. All I could focus on was the settling dust cloud surrounding what remained of my barn.
They came back. They came back.
My legs moved before my brain could catch up, propelling me forward across the yard. Gravel bit into my bare feet, but the pain barely registered. My heart kept ragged time with each pounding step, a desperate rhythm of hope and terror and disbelief.
“Please be alive,” I gasped between heaving breaths as I sprinted toward the wreckage. “Please, please, please be alive.”
Part of me knew my terror was unfounded. They’d survived a much harsher crash already. But for some reason I was scared to death.
Scared I was dreaming this. Scared I was so drunk I was making it all up. Scared the supply barn was undamaged and no UFO rested at its ruined center.
The barn door hung crooked on its hinges, moonlight streaming through the massive hole in the roof. I reached it in seconds that felt like centuries, my hand connecting with the splintered wood and shoving it open with strength born of desperation.
Dust swirled in the air, illuminated by strange lights pulsing from within the crashed ship. And through that hazy curtain, I saw three silhouettes emerge.
I stumbled through the barn door, dust particles dancing in the moonlight that streamed through the gaping hole in the roof.
My lungs seized, refusing to draw breath as three silhouettes materialized through the swirling debris cloud.
Not human silhouettes—not entirely. Tentacles unfurled from torsos, rippling with colors that pulsed like heartbeats in the semi-darkness.
Colors I’d memorized, dreamed about, cried over for days.
My aliens. My impossible, beautiful aliens had returned.
My heart stuttered in my chest, unable to process the reality of what I was seeing. Was this a whiskey-induced hallucination? Had grief finally broken my mind completely?
“You came back,” I managed, my voice a strangled whisper. My vocal cords, already raw from hours of drunken crying, could barely form the words. They sounded like an accusation and a prayer simultaneously.
“We came back,” Vantor agreed, his voice steady despite the way his body trembled, his skin pulsing with beautiful hues.
I still understood his language, just as I had after losing the translator in the water trough.
I’d never put it back on; I hadn’t needed to.
Our beautiful, improbable pack bond transcended barriers.