Page 42 of Accidentally Abducted

I think of Jake, alone on Earth, clutching the communicator I should never have given him. I wonder if he has used it yet. I wonder if he feels the same hollow ache that has taken residence in my chest. I wonder if the empathic bond will fade completely with time and distance, leaving not even a ghost of our connection.

The thought is unbearable.

I stay submerged until my secondary respiratory system engages, my gills filtering oxygen from the water. The sensation is usually pleasant, a reminder of my species' evolutionary heritage. Now it feels like yet another difference between Jake and me, another barrier to the impossible future I cannot stop imagining.

When I finally surface, the ship has dimmed all lighting to simulate night cycle. I should sleep. Tomorrow brings a newset of duties, preparations for the Council presentation, perhaps even the beginning of the next phase of the program.

Instead, I float in the darkness, watching the faint reflection of my own diminished glow on the ceiling above, and allow myself to acknowledge what I have been avoiding since the moment the blue light took Jake away.

I am in love with a human who was never meant to be mine.

And I have absolutely no idea what to do about it.

Chapter Thirteen

Jake

Three days since I returned to Earth. Three days of staring at the communicator, willing it to do something, feeling the empathic bond grow fainter with each passing hour. Three days of trying to pretend I wasn't fundamentally changed by my time with Zeph.

I should be looking for a new job. I should be apologizing to friends who texted worried messages while I was gone. I should be doing anything other than sitting on my couch, scrolling through real estate listings I have no intention of pursuing, the container of alien gemstones open on the coffee table beside me.

"Four bedroom, three bath, private pool, only $650,000," I read aloud to my empty apartment. "What a steal."

My voice sounds hollow even to my own ears. It's become a bizarre ritual, looking at houses I could theoretically buy with my newfound alien wealth, imagining a life I have no desire to live. As if material possessions could somehow fill the Zeph-shaped hole in my chest.

I scroll to the next listing. A sleek downtown condo with floor-to-ceiling windows and a rooftop garden. "You could grow herbs," I tell myself without enthusiasm. "Maybe some tomatoes."

The truth is, I don't want a mansion or a condo or even a modest starter home. I don't want to be anywhere that Zeph couldn't find me if... if what? If he comes back? If he abandons his people, his duty, his entire world for someone he knew for three days?

The reasonable part of my brain knows how absurd that hope is. The rest of me doesn't care.

I've kept my phone charged but silent, responding to texts with vague excuses about food poisoning and a broken phone. I've ventured out only for necessities, unable to bear the thought of small talk with baristas or cashiers. How do you make conversation when you've seen the stars from an alien ship? How do you care about the weather when you've floated in bioluminescent pools with someone who glows when they're turned on?

I close the real estate app and pick up one of the gemstones, turning it in the light. It catches the afternoon sun streaming through my window, fracturing it into prismatic shards that dance across the wall. Beautiful, valuable, and completely meaningless.

A knock at the door startles me so badly I nearly drop the stone. I shove it and the others back into the container and tuck it under a couch cushion, heart racing with irrational panic. No one knows about the gemstones. No one knows about any of it.

The knock comes again, more insistent this time.

"Jake? You in there? It's Derek."

Of course it's Derek. The universe apparently hasn't finished with its cosmic joke.

I consider not answering, but knowing Derek, he'll just keep knocking. With a sigh, I haul myself off the couch and open the door, coming face to face with the man the aliens actually wanted.

"Hey," I say, aiming for casual and missing by a mile. "What's up?"

Derek looks exactly the same as he did three months ago when we broke up, annoyingly fit, perfectly groomed, and radiating that particular blend of confidence and cluelessness that I once found charming and now find exhausting.

"Dude, where have you been?" he asks, leaning against my doorframe. "I knocked on your door yesterday, and your neighbor said she hadn't seen you since Tuesday."

"I was out of town," I lie, keeping a firm grip on the door. "Friend emergency."

Derek raises an eyebrow. "Must have been some emergency. You look like shit."

"Thanks. Always nice to get your professional fitness assessment."

He shrugs, unperturbed by my sarcasm as always. "Just saying, you might want to hydrate. Your skin's got that dull thing going on."

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