She came to stand behind Joe, and her strong eyebrows shotto her hairline at the sight of them all standing in the doorway.
“Wait, what the fuck?” Ezra said in a squeak, eyes blown wide and eyebrows mimicking hers in more ways than one. “Mom?”
23
Ezra
There, standing behind interspecies fertility expert Joe in nothing but a fluffy bathrobe, was none other than Ezra’s mother, Martha Miller.
“Ezra?” she gasped, clutching her robe to hide her cleavage—but it was too little, too late. Ezra had seen enough to know that she was one hundred percent naked under that robe, and with Joe in the smallest Speedo known to man, that had to mean…
Nope.
No way.
He wasnotgoing there.
Desperate to be proven wrong, he finally choked out, “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Language!” she admonished.
Ezra rolled his eyes. “Okay, what theheckare you doing here?” His mother and Joe exchanged a loaded glance, and he had to hold back a gag. “Look, I can read context clues just as well as anyone else, but, just… out of all the guys in New Mexico, how’d you end up with this one?”
He tried to pretend that Titan’s and Kyle’s questioninglooks weren’t boring into his skull from behind. He didn’t have answers for them—he was just as confused and, frankly, more than a little mortified. Finding out that he had been impregnated by an alien should have been the most unnerving thing to happen to him this week, and yet…
“Well?” he prompted when his mother still hadn’t answered.
She exchanged another significant look with Joe that Ezra couldn’t make heads or tails of. “We should probably talk, hon,” she said to him slowly, not turning her attention from Joe’s face, as though waiting for his agreement.
Joe brightened like a sunbeam.
“Yes!” he said enthusiastically. “Everybody come into my rad crib and we can have a chat.”
Ezra had no earthly idea what was happening, but he did know one thing for certain, and it was that he needed something before he set foot in that house.
“Fine,” he said. “We’ll come in and chat—but could you please put some clothes on first?”
Once Joe and Ezra’s mother were presentable, the five of them congregated in Joe’s batshit insane living room. There were more wind chimes inside as well, along with apparently every kitschy knickknack Joe had been able to get his hands on. The place looked like he’d raided several antique stores and bought only the strangest items he could find, including, but not limited to, a unicorn rocking horse covered in cracked mustard-yellow paint, at least seven creepy dolls placed haphazardly around the room—all of them facing the couch so they watched you as you sat—and a giant rug with a clown’s face embroidered into it. It was, to put it mildly, unsettling.
Joe insisted on getting everyone a “hot beverage,” stating that he knew it was human custom to offer drinks to guests. He brought them all what was supposed to be tea, but what was actually just leaves he’d gathered from outside dropped into mugs of hot water. Ezra’s mother and Ezra politely set theirs aside. Kyle and Titan drank theirs with gratitude.
“Anytime you’d like to give an explanation, I’d love to hear it,” Ezra said once he, Kyle, and Titan were settled on the couch. His mother and Joe sat in recliners across from them. None of the furniture matched, and some of it was inflatable.
“Watch your attitude, young man,” Ezra’s mother said in a warning tone. “You want to know what I’m doing here—well, I could ask you the same question, couldn’t I? How do you know Joe?”
“Don’t worry about it, it’s a work thing,” he said evasively. He’d told his mother that he had gotten a job with the government, but as far as he knew, she wasn’t privy to what exactly it was he did. He’d avoided telling her any details, wanting to keep the whole “aliens have come to Earth” thing under wraps, but it seemed that he needn’t have bothered. There was no way his mother could be hooking up with Joe and not know that he was an alien. The guy might as well have worn a sign around his neck advertising the fact.
“So you must know the truth about Joe as well,” she said with a sigh. “I wondered why you were so vague about your new job.” She surveyed Kyle and Titan, who were on either side of him, sandwiching him in on the couch. “Are you two, ahem, not from here as well?”
The two aliens looked to him for guidance. With a sigh, he said, “Go ahead,” and they both nodded at his mother, confirming her suspicions.
“Well well,” she said with a chuckle. “Like mother, like son.”
“What does that even mean?” Ezra asked, bordering on hysteria. He was once again finding it impossible to go with the flow, and it bothered him to the extreme. “Seriously, can one of you please tell me what you’re doing here, because this is weirding me the fuck out.”
“Language!”
“Mom.”
