Page 2 of Love at First Sighting
The things no one ever offers are love and care.
Yet I keep trying, in hopes someone might prove me wrong.
El (7:43 pm):Of course, send me the invoice.
I seal it with a heart emoji. In return, I get a thumbs-up reaction. Instead of letting it get to me, I keep trucking forward until the sounds of traffic and waves are punctuated by a gentle whirring. It’s not the thunderous staccato of a helicopter or the deafening drone of a landing plane. This, I feel instinctively, is something that doesn’t want to be heard.
I peer over my shoulder and catch sight of a faint shimmer over the deep blues and sandy browns of the mountainside. I blink and wonder if it’s a trick of the light, but it can’t be. There’s somethingthere. The backdrop ripples around it like a fun-house mirror as it inches closer to me.
I pick up my pace and begin to move quicker through theravine to reach my car. I’m a sitting duck out here, and the inevitable murder podcast plays in my head.
Because it took so long to find Ms. Martin, her body had fully decomposed and a small family of rabbits had made a home in the tented sanctuary of her blue yoga pants.
I don’t get far before a blinding white light floods behind me. I panic for a split second before I run. Whatever this thing is, it might be afterme.
It whirs faster as I dash away, stumbling over rocks and downed bramble as I try to remember the path back to my car. I pass the sameNo Asssign and trip over a shrub. A scrape bleeds through my poor Spinx yoga pants.
“Fuck,” I mutter, rubbing at the wound. I use my tripod to climb back to my feet, but my stalker is still breathing down my neck with its floodlights.
This is far from the fake problems I solve with my sponsorships, like greasy hair or a wine-stained shirt emergency. This isreal. I mentally run down my contacts list, follower lists. Since I’m really in danger, who would come? Certainly not my roommates. Not Alaka-Sam. Maybe my random fans who’d ask me for an autograph midmurder. Then they’d claim I was rude for not paying enough attention to them as I bled out.
I genuinely don’t know if anyone would try to help me.
What I do know is that if these are my last moments, I’m sure as hell not going to go quietly.
I pull out my phone, flip the camera on myself, and go live.
“Hi, guys,” I start, squinting and still trying to focus on fleeing. “So, I was out shooting some really great Spinx content that should be coming in a few days, and I’m on my way back to the car, but there is somethingfollowingme. I can’tsee what it is, but it looks like a ship or something. I don’t know, but look, it’s just behind me.”
Thatmakes it mad. The lights flash from white to red to blue and it picks up speed. So do I. Then a horrible thought crosses my mind: Am I getting abducted by aliens?
Like actual, for real aliens?
Aliens aresonot my brand. I believe they’re real because the universe is too big for us to be the smartest things out there, but I did not expect them to come to Earth. I did not expect them to follow me home from my photo shoot. I know I’m hot and might be hearty stock for their intergalactic babies, but I didn’t think they’dpickme. My brain plays an Instagram carousel of photos of what’s to come—little green men standing over my bed, probing,waytoo much chrome.
I have a meal delivery service and a snail face mask to promote by the end of the week.
I do not havetimeto get abducted by aliens right now.
“Holy shit,” I gasp as I stumble again. Dirt and rock shards dig into my palms. I scramble for the phone, the tripod, and the water bottle I’ve dropped. As I grasp the bottle and the craft nears, I get an idea. I hurl the aluminum water bottle into the air at full speed and hope my one season of softball in fifth grade prepared me for this. It clangs hard against the metal, and I anticipate that maybe a laser beam will sear me in half, but instead, the craft wobbles.
Then it spins.
Then it crashes.
Then I realize that this Well bottle could definitely be used as a murder weapon.
The lights along the front flicker as they die, and sparkspop from the pile of sheer dark metal. It looks liketranslucentscrap metal, but far thinner, far silkier. It actually looks like the dress I wore to Corbin Bleu’s fragrance release party a few years ago. The craft isn’t nearly as large as it first seemed. The flashing lights and shimmering iridescence made it seem massive and unknowable. I reckonmaybeit’s the size of a golf cart, but lying crumpled and destroyed, it feels like much less of a threat.
I grab my phone and turn the camera back on myself as I move toward the crash.
In California, fire season has become a yearlong event, so I role-play my best Smokey Bear and scuttle down the side of the hill to the wreckage. Thankfully, the smoke has dissipated by the time I reach it.
“I don’t know what I just saw, you guys.” I’m out of breath and my fitness watch tells me my heart is racing, as if I didn’t already know. “I have no idea what just happened, but I hit it with my Well bottle and it crashed. It’s like…busted, oh my god. Not only was it a lifesaver, but I’m glad I have my Well bottle here to…”
I sprinkle water over the few sparking embers, to make it clear I am preventing a forest fire like a true friend of the environment. There’s been debate after I almost got canceled for taking a private jet from LA to Coachella. But that’s when I realize that even with the flash on, it’s near impossible toreallysee the iridescent, reflective sheet metal on camera.
I kick aside another piece of metal and it flips over. This time, it displays a serial number and product info. It’s stamped on, mostly smudged, but it could be enough to find the culprit.
