Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Khesan
That idiot Shathar. But at least our tree escapade didn’t turn into quite the disaster I had feared.
Fiona has the day off work today, so we won’t have to occupy ourselves for many hours while she’s busy. In the morning, she tells us that we’re going shopping.
“I need something cute to wear for the Christmas party, and so do you two!” She is full of energy, which makes me feel eager and alive, too.
“I look forward to being ‘cute,’” I say, tilting my head down to kiss the top of her head. Shathar scowls at the table, but doesn’t say his piece.
We’re meeting Fiona’s friend Amara once again, but this time her husband, Roth’kar, is coming along. I look forward to discussing the anomalies of Earth with another intergalactic foreigner.
We all pile into Fiona’s car and head toward the high rooftops of the city.
Buildings rise into the sky all around us, slicing off the sunlight.
It is a sight to behold when on our world, the tallest building was a two-floor home.
I have never seen any construction quite so…
immense, straight and silver and reflective.
I can’t help wondering if one of them might fall in a windstorm and crush us.
Fiona parks in a huge lot of other cars, and then we head inside one of the enormous buildings. There are many shops here, all indoors, with moving staircases connecting different floors.
“Shopping can be overwhelming,” she says, gesturing at the lit signs around us. “But I know the places to go.”
Suddenly she calls out, “Amara!” and starts waving wildly. The woman we met before approaches us, her arm linked with her husband’s. His skin is a purplish-blue hue, with two antennae on top of his head. Most arresting, though, are his four arms.
We are all introduced, and I find Roth’kar to be a bit stoic and quiet, but clearly in love with Amara. Then it’s time to shop.
First, we are shown into a store that appears to only contain women’s underclothes. I saw Fiona’s underwear the other night, but these are… something else entirely, made of red and black lace, and covering very little.
“What is the point?” asks Shathar, lifting one of the pairs of lacy underwear from a display. “These would not protect your private parts.”
I must agree.
“The point is to be sexy!” says Amara. “Seductive. You know. To build anticipation.”
I would very much like to see Fiona in something like this, though I don’t think I need to foster any more anticipation. I have so much anticipation it feels like my balls are going to explode.
Amara and Fiona chat eagerly as they search through the “bras.”
“What size are you?” Amara asks, picking up a pink lacy bra that I certainly wouldn’t mind removing from Fiona.
“Thirty-four, B-cup.”
“These are measured in cups?” I ask. “Why?”
She taps her chin. “Hm, not sure. It’s how you measure bras, I guess.”
Roth’kar crosses one set of arms. “Perhaps for the milk.”
“The milk?” asks Shathar.
Roth’kar nods knowingly. “Human breasts carry the milk they use to nurse their young.”
“So breasts are measured in cups because of how much milk they carry?” I ask, tapping my chin. “That makes sense.”
While the three of us nod in agreement at the sensibility of this theory, a saleswoman adjusting clothes on a life-size human doll stares at us with her mouth open. Amara and Fiona burst into laughter as they move on to the next rack.
I get to know Roth’kar fairly well during this endeavor. He knows many things about Earth, though he has only been here for a few months more.
“You’ll learn quickly,” he says. “Most importantly, the trees are much prettier when they have leaves on them.”
I hope I get to stay long enough to see the leaves on the trees.
Once the women have found what they were after, we check out and go on to the next store. But all I can think about are the items that Fiona chose, and what they might look like on her. I wonder if she purchased them thinking about me, how I licked her until she reached her finish.
Or perhaps Shathar. I don’t know what the two of them have done. Maybe she is thinking of him as she buys them.
I shake away my uncertainty. I have the nalopo, and I can rely on that to see me through.
Both Shathar and I pick out colorful, interesting sweatshirts for the Christmas party, but Roth’kar abstains. His wife has made one for him by hand, he tells us proudly. It’s his first Christmas, as well, and he has planned a gift for Amara.
“A gift?” I ask, horrified. “Is that a tradition?”
Roth’kar gawks at us. “Yes. You are supposed to give gifts to each other on Christmas.”
“Fiona didn’t mention that!” groans Shathar. “She told us everything else!”
“It’s not too late.” I stand up straight. “We are here where there are many stores. Surely we can buy something.”
Roth’kar shoos us off. “I will keep Amara and Fiona occupied.”
Shathar and I nod, then take off together.
“What sort of store?” I wonder aloud as we walk among the throng of humans, many of whom stop and stare at us. “What sort of gift?”
“I am getting my own gift,” says Shathar. “One that speaks to my relationship with Fiona.”
“With what money?” I ask, laughing. “You don’t have any.”
He grits his teeth. “I hate that you’re right, youngling.”
And I hate when he calls me that.
“I don’t know what to get, and you have no money,” I say. “So we should, perhaps, try to find something together. If you can pick it out, I will pay for it.”
There, that’s a reasonable compromise. I suppose I should have left Shathar out in the cold to find his own way, but neither do I know what Fiona would want.
“Fine.” Shathar snaps his claws, so I snap mine back. “I will find something good.”
We pass windows for clothing stores, deciding that Fiona would probably prefer to pick out her garments herself. Then we stop at a shop full of trinkets.
“Perhaps here,” says Shathar, leading us inside. “This is just the sort of thing she likes.”
He’s right—Fiona has many, many trinkets in her home.
We peruse the aisles, but I can’t identify most of what we find. There are many pretty objects, of course, ones that Fiona might like, but nothing jumps out.
After spending too much time looking at tiny wooden animals, we move on. The next shop appears to be a place to play games, as children are interacting with screens and shooting fake weapons. I move to pass by, when Shathar catches sight of something inside.
“Look,” he says, pointing. There are reels of pictures along the side of a booth. “Fiona only wants us to get along, doesn’t she?”
I nod. She has expressed this before.
“Then what if we posed in a photo together, to show her we can get along?”
This is an interesting proposition. And then she would have a photo of us, as she has photos of her mother around the house.
“All right.” I nod. “Let’s take one.”
We find our way into the booth, but it’s very small.
I am forced to nearly sit atop Shathar’s leg as we both navigate our way inside, grunting and growling as we get in each other’s way.
Finally, we settle—still far too close together—and figure out the instructions on the screen.
All the while, I can feel Shathar’s leg under mine, how he stiffens when I touch him.
Then the machine starts snapping pictures.
At first, we are far apart, but the picture looks awkward and we’re not inside the frame.
So I lean in closer and Shathar does, too, until our faces are touching.
Then we’re both in the frame as the camera keeps snapping.
Shathar’s cheek is fiercely warm, and for a moment, I smell something strange.
It reminds me of Fiona’s scent, the scent that wafted off her when she stepped into the room back at the spaceport.
But before I can really register it, the camera has stopped, and the machine starts printing out our photos.
We draw apart quickly, then when the photos have finished, Shathar pulls them out of the slot.
He shows them to me, and I am surprised by… how much I like them.
We are a handsome pair, I think.
“We had better get back,” I say after we have our photos in hand. We hurry to where we left Roth’kar, but he’s still sitting on the bench waiting for Fiona and Amara. He grins when he sees us.
“You found something?”
We nod in unison and show him the photos.
“You need a frame,” he says with a powerful certainty. “There’s a store on the first floor that has them. I’ll tell the women you went to get Cinnabon.”
I don’t know what Cinnabon is, but I’m grateful to him for giving us the distraction as we head off to the first floor to find a frame for our new photo.
“This was a good idea,” I say to Shathar.
He grunts and nods. “I have those sometimes.”
We keep our gift hidden on our way home, and I stash it in my room in one of my drawers where Fiona won’t find it.
Then, it’s time to go out for “drinks.” We dress up again, and I’m surprised to see Shathar in a long-sleeved shirt that compliments his smaller figure well.
We wait in silence for some time for Fiona to come down.
When she does, though, she is a vision. She’s wearing a tiny dress, blue as her eyes, that flashes in the light as she walks down the steps.
Both Shathar and I are silent as she glances from his face to mine.
“Do you like it?” she asks.
“I love it,” I say, rising to my feet before Shathar can. I take her hand in mine, bring it to my lips, and kiss the back of it, as I saw in the movies. “You are radiant.”
She giggles. “Thank you. You both look handsome, too.”
Shathar does look sharp. I hate that even though he is smaller and slimmer, he has a grace to him that I lack. He gets to his feet as well and offers Fiona his arm.
“Shall we go?”
Fiona says she is “requesting a car” on her phone, and one appears only a few minutes later. It carries us into the city, but a different part this time, one where all the buildings have glowing neon signs hanging above them and loud music pounds behind tinted windows.
“You have your visas?” she asks as we get into a line of people waiting to go inside.
I pull mine out of my pocket, and so does Shathar. When we reach the big woman standing guard at the door, Fiona presents her identification, and then our visas. The woman granting us admission eyes Shathar and me from head to toe.
“Wow, aliens.” She cocks her head. “Don’t drink too much. Last alien that came in here didn’t know what he was getting into.”
Then she returns our identification and we’re ushered inside.
Immediately, we’re met with a wall of noise—heavy, throbbing music so loud that it rattles my very bones.
The light is dim except for where bright spotlights in various colors shine down from the ceiling, illuminating the mass of people filling the space.
I’ve never seen anything like it. We hold some large gatherings on Arshur, but they are typically outdoors, never crammed into a small space like this one.
“Hold onto me!” Fiona calls to us. Shathar and I each take one of her hands as she winds through the crowd, and we have to push others out of our way to stay behind her.
But I will never let her go.