Luckless nodded. “Everything I’ve read during my studies says pretty much the same thing.”
“Okay,” Titan said in a small voice. He fell silent, lost in his own thoughts, and was startled when Luckless spoke again.
“You know,” he said gently, “it’s possible not to be True Mates with someone and still be deeply tied to them. Being a True Mate is not the only way to be in love.”
“Right,” Titan mumbled, suddenly feeling sick. “Anyway, thank you. That’s… that’s all I wanted to know. I’ll let you get back to whatever it was you were doing. Sorry to bother you.”
“It’s no bother,” said Mercy.
“We’re happy to help,” affirmed Luckless.
Titan nodded noncommittally and gave a pathetic little wave before concluding the transmission. He then sat there, staring into the middle distance as he thought about what he had not been able to voice out loud: there might be other ways to love, but what were you supposed to do if the person you loved did not love you back?
14
Ezra
Sprawled across the leather couch of his best friend’s gigantic living room, a bag of cheddar and sour cream flavored chips balanced on his belly, lay a broody, dwelling Ezra. For the past week he’d been avoiding Titan like the plague, and it had been going surprisingly well… but while he’d mastered the art of dodging Titan in real life, he was having considerably more difficulty keeping him out of his mind, and it was driving him bonkers. It was almost as though sex with Titan had completely rewired his brain, and now he was programmed to think of nothing but the soft noises Titan made when he thrust inside him, or the heat of his tongue on his skin.
And that wasn’t even the worst of it.
That wasn’t what had melted Ezra into the couch like a pathetic loser.
He could have handled it if he was just in his head about some good—okay,great—sex, but something unexpected had happened.
Yesterday, Titan had made him laugh.
It’d been at the end of the work day when one of the silent, nameless government agents had dropped them off at home. Ezra’s regular routine was to mutter his thanks to the driver, then bolt into the mansion as quickly as possible before Titan could ambush him, but this time as he got out of the car, Titan had said to him in an extremely earnest tone of voice, “I will be seeing you later, alligator,” and stopped him in his tracks.
“What’d you just say?”
“I stated that I would be seeing you later, alligator,” he’d repeated with absolute sincerity. “I ascertained that you were going to disappear into your unconsciousness quarters, as you have done each night, so I thought it was appropriate to bid you farewell.”
“I… Where did you learn the phrase ‘see you later, alligator’?”
“It was on an entertainment program. It is a proper English way of saying goodbye, is it not? It is also a call and response. You are now meant to say, ‘In a while, crocodile.’”
“Do you… do you even know what an alligator or a crocodile are?”
Titan had thought about it.
“No,” he’d declared a moment later. He’d then turned bashful, his human disguise reddening in the cheeks. “Did I… I used the phrase correctly, did I not?”
And that was what had sealed the deal, because Ezra was so used to Titan insisting that he was right all the time that to see him actually doubt himself for a moment had been… well, it had been adorable. And endearing. And that was not a word Ezra had ever used to describe Titan before then.
He’d done his best to school his expression into something neutral and said, “Yeah, man, you said it right. In a while, crocodile,” then given him an awkward wave and scurried off to his room, where he had burst into laughter, frustratingly delighted at the whole exchange. He’d laughed until tears sprang to his eyes—until he was certain he was losing his marbles. But he hadn’t been able to help it. It was the only way he’d been ableto process Titan being sweet.
Except he hadn’treallyprocessed it, because here he was, still thinking about it, and not able to make heads or tails about why he should even care. It wasn’t like using a silly phrase absolved Titan of being an annoying prick… but it had donesomething,because now, whenever Ezra thought about the alien, all he could think was, “Yeah, he’s a dick, but… he also made me laugh.”
Sighing, Ezra cast his bag of chips onto the coffee table and pulled down the silky lap blanket that had been draped over the top of the couch. He wrapped himself up cocoon style, then rolled over to face the humongous television, hoping he’d be able to lose himself in some mindless entertainment. If one hundred and fifty inches of HiDef, crystal clear, top-of-the-line QLEDs couldn’t distract him from his woes, nothing could.
He extended an arm from his blanket cocoon for the remote, which was on the coffee table, but it was out of reach. He scrunched his nose and scooched toward the edge of the couch, but the leather was smooth, and he ended up falling face-first onto the floor while his lower half remained cozy on the couch cushions. “Goddamn it.”
He snatched the remote, pushed himself back onto the couch, and cuddled angrily into the blanket. Stupid remote. Stupid slippery couch. Stupid Titan.
There’d better be something amazing on TV.
He turned it on and boosted the volume until it was booming, making it hard to focus on anything else, but it wasn’t of much use, because today it seemed like everything on the air had some kind of horny, romantic subplot. Out of desperation he switched over to The Weather Channel only to discover they were airing the premiere of their newest program, a lovechild betweenSurvivorandThe Bachelorthat spanned the course of a year and was set in the wilds of Alaska, titledLove in All Seasons.
