Page 1 of All or Nothing
CHAPTER ONE
First Contact
JOSS
I SIGHED, snuggling deeper into my pile of warm and cozy blankets as I pulled upSilent Loveon my e-reader. I was pretty sure that the sexy but surgically muted alien assassin was about to bone down on the human woman he’d rescued from slavery, and I’d been waiting all day long to dive back into this juicy piece of sci-fi smut. It had been a long day too—we were approaching Valentine’s Day, and it meant my life was shittier for a couple of different reasons.
I worked as a cashier in a big box retail store, and so any time a gift-giving holiday approached I was treated to the absolute worst parts of humanity every time I clocked in. Valentine’s was better than Christmas at least, but there was still an awful lot of entitlement and screaming in my face. And themess—oh my god why did people have to leave shitliterallyanywhere but where it belonged? It meant my closing shifts took forever, and I’d been late to my nursing classes more than once in the last few weeks.
It wasn’t like I really minded though; I hated getting chewed out by my professors, but I wasn’t really interested in the classes, or the degree, and was really just taking them to keep my mom off my back. She and her sister, my aunt, were both nurses, and she was determined for me to follow in the family footsteps and enter the medical field as well. But whenever I had the energy I engaged in my true passion—writing.
The energy was definitely not there tonight, so I was consoling my aching body and soul with someone else’s words.
Just as I’d gotten comfortable I felt my phone buzz by my elbow. I glanced down at the screen and groaned when I saw it was my mom calling.Motherfucker. I set aside my e-reader with a longing glance at its screen and picked up the call.
“Hey, mom,” I answered, trying to sound chipper. If I let my fatigue leak into my voice she’d get snippy with me and accuse me of giving her attitude.
“Joslyn,” she sighed, and I wished I could let out a sigh of my own. I knew that tone: she was going to lecture me. “Have you talked to Alex recently?”
My heart sank. He’d broken up with me months ago, but my mom still asked about him like she didn’t even know we were done. “Nope!” I trilled, swallowing down the bitter grief creeping up my throat. “He hasn’t talked to me since he asked for that hoodie back.”
My mother tutted, fabric rustling on her end of the call. “Such a shame, I loved Alex. He was such a sweetheart. And sohandsome.”
Of course my mother had loved him—he was just like her. Putting on a kind face for the world, but as soon as the doors closed he’d been mean and hypercritical of me, tearing me down in the hopes that I’d rebuild myself just how he liked. Sure, hehadbeen handsome, and pretty fit thanks to being a gym bro, but even though it still hurt it was definitely good that he wasn’t in my life anymore.
But I didn’t say any of that. I’d been talking it over a lot with my therapist Dr. Jackson, and we agreed that it was time for me to start withdrawing from my mother. She wasn’t listening to me or respecting my boundaries, and I was working too hard on myself, on fixing the wounds that my mother had gifted me, to deal with her anymore. It wasn’t an easy decision by any means, and had been years in the making, but in moments like this it was obvious that it was the right choice.
“He really wasn’t nice at all,” I said for the millionth time, bracing myself for her to reject my words. “He was pretty emotionally abusive.”
My mom sighed, and I could practically hear her roll her eyes over the phone. “Well, Joslyn,” she insisted, and I rankled at that—not only did she invalidate my abuse, but she refused to call me Joss like I preferred. “I know how sensitive you are, and I can’t help thinking that maybe you just took his helpful advice the wrong way…”
She was still talking, but the blood was rushing too loudly in my ears for me to hear her. How fuckingdareshe?! This was one of her favorite attacks, and I knew it well, but in that moment it came crashing in on me, how awful it was that she kept doing this, and how muchmoreawful it was that I kept letting her do it.
I didn’t know if it was because I was so tired, or if I really was done and had reached my breaking point, but before I could stop it I was speaking again, interrupting her.
“Fuck you,” I spat, “just leave me alone.” I stabbed at my phone screen to end the call and blocked her number before she could call me back.
I stared at my phone, now dark and too heavy in my shaking hand, and felt a wave of tingling heat sweep all through my body as what I’d done hit me. My gut instinct was to unblock her and beg for forgiveness, the people-pleaser in me still so strong even after all the years I’d been in therapy. But I took a deep breath, then another, my eyes sliding closed, and tried to get control of my thoughts.
After several long minutes, my eyes started prickling, and then a laugh bubbled up into my throat, and I wasn’t sure how much of what my body was doing was crying and how much was laughing—all I knew was that it felt like a dam had broken inside me and all of the emotion that had been trapped behind it surged out into my chest with so much power it was squeezing my heart and lungs. I was gasping for breath, tears and snot dribbling down my face, but I realized I wasn’t regretting it—I was scared of having made such a big decision out of the blue, I was scared of her finding a way to punish me, but I didn’t regret telling her off and blocking her. It was way overdue, for a lot of reasons.
I didn’t know how long it was before I managed to calm down, but the tears and unhinged laughter did eventually die out, and I slipped out of my bed and into the bathroom to clean my face.
I was completely beat now, I realized bitterly, so when I flopped back into my blanket nest and saw my e-reader darkened to its lock screen I put it back on my nightstand and turned off the lamp, rolling onto my side and drifting off to sleep.
I woke up in an unfamiliar place, my bare skin shivering with cold. It felt like I was naked and lying on a slab of icy metal, but my body was so heavy I couldn’t seem to move it aside from opening my eyes. Blindingly bright lights seared into my tear-swollen eyes. I winced, squinting, and was surprised to realize I wasn’t alone. I was surrounded by weird sparkly jellomen, and said jellomen were hovering over me with some pretty intense tech clutched in their shiny, translucent hands. They seemed to be speaking, though not in English or even Spanish (which I didn’t actually know, anyway, since momwas white and my Puerto Rican dad died when I was two), and were gesturing at me. I found myself staring hard at them, entranced by the translucent brightness of their flesh, at the way it seemed to sparkle and shift as little lights blinked off and on from within their bodies like tiny fireflies. The jellomen were human-like in shape but had random spiky bits all over, and no faces I could see on their heads aside from their two big black eyes. One was bright red, one orange, and one yellow, and I found myself calling them Cherry, Orange, and Lemon in my head. Cherry seemed like he was in charge; he had the fanciest-looking tool and seemed to be doing the most talking. But without mouths, it was hard to tell who was saying what.
This is a weird fucking dream,I thought hazily, studying them as best I could while half-blind from the bright lights. But maybe it would get better and I’d get to have some saucy fun, like in my alien romances.
After a while of them gesturing and talking they seemed to realize I was watching them, and Cherry make a high whistling kind of noise that sounded surprised. They started jabbering louder and faster, almost like they were alarmed, and because I was certain I was dreaming I started laughing.
“Listen, guys, this is fun and all but you’re making me hungry and I’m getting pretty cold over here, so if you’re going to do something to me can we get on with it? I probably gotta get up soon so, y’know, let’s hurry this along already. Especially if it’s going to get sexy.”
All three fruity flavors froze, flinching back from me as I spoke. I laughed again, wiggling my eyebrows and winking at them. In real life I was still struggling with loving myself, with seeing my body for what it was instead of my enemy, but in my dreams I was free of that and able to be bold. I mean if you couldn’t be your authentic self in your dreams, then whencouldyou be?
My three new friends jabbered some more, and then Cherry took a gun-like implement from Lemon and twisted a dial on the barrel.
“Ah, so we’re not getting sexy, then. That’s a real shame, boys,” I sighed, though really I wasn’t all that disappointed by this development. I was into some weird shit, sure, but I wasn’t ready to find out I was into fucking food tonight.
