Page 55 of Rizzed Up By My Alien Neighbor
The next day, we conduct simulations.
“Pretend you’re seeing her at the grocery store,” Sammy says, handing me a banana. “Say something casual, charming. Go.”
I hold the banana like a baton. “Greetings. I also consume potassium-based fruit matter.”
She smacks her forehead.
I try again. “Hi. You have lovely epidermal warmth today.”
“No! Try, ‘You always brighten the produce aisle.’”
“But she is not a source of luminescence.”
Sammy stares. “We’ve got work to do.”
And yet, beneath her endless corrections, something shifts. My language softens. My voice calibrates. I learn to control pitch, not just volume. I practice standing in relaxed stances. I study rom-coms with the ferocity of a Vakutan tactician reviewing enemy battle data.
I memorize Earth metaphors—“catching feelings,” “butterflies in the stomach,” “spark.” I understand none of them. And yet I want all of them. With her.
Because when I think of Nessa—her smile, her fire, the way she watches the stars when she thinks no one sees—I feel something ancient inside me loosen. Something that doesn’t belong to training manuals or bloodlines.
It belongs to her.
Sammy finds me later on the porch, staring at a bouquet of precisely clipped daisies.
“Don’t overthink it,” she says. “Just be nice. Be yourself.”
“But myself is a ten-thousand-hour-trained operative from a war-faring species genetically optimized for killing.”
She shrugs. “Then be the part that learned to like pie.”
I stare at her.
She shrugs again. “It’s working. She looks at you different now.”
I blink.
“She doesn’t flinch,” Sammy adds, quiet this time. “She watches. She waits. But she’s not afraid anymore.”
Something shudders inside me. Like the quiet groan of a starship hull under stress. Or the beginning of a new course.
And this is where I stop—because the next step belongs to her.
Later that week, I step back onto the porch after evening calibrations—hands still humming with nanotech residue—and there they are: wildflowers, gathered with visible care, tied together with a thin twist of copper wire. No vase, no fanfare, just the bouquet resting on the threshold.
Gently, I lift the metal-wrapped blossoms. Purple coneflower, golden yarrow, white Queen Anne’s lace… Earth flora unfettered, raw and familiar in scent and texture. I breathe deeply. Their aroma is damp soil and sunshine, whiskey warmth and pale sweetness.
Attached: a note.
“I collected these because their colors resemble your eyes when they’re reflecting solar rays.”
I blink, staring at the looping Earth characters—my attempt at silver handwriting. The words echo strangely in my chest. Absurd. Alien. Meaningful. My chest tightens.
I hover by the door. After a moment, I step back, because I heard the door open—light, tentative—and there she is. Nessa. She’s reading the note, the flowers pressed to her chest, lips curved into a smile I’ve seen only two times: once when Sammy called me “Alien MacGyver,” and now.
Time slows. My heartbeat races—not with tactical readiness, but with a softer pulse I barely recognize. The bond thrums. It’s close. Tethered. Real.
She glances my way, shoulders relaxing as she returns inside. I remain still, rooted to the porch boards, letting my chest fill with this quiet, holy victory.
