Earlier, they’d taken the four-wheeler back to the Big Bang Truck Stop so she could retrieve her car. In the trunk she had that small overnight bag she’d packed, which she left on his living room sofa during the initial tour.
Diesel kissed her again, dancing her toward his large bed. He kissed her cheeks, he kissed her chin. He trailed kisses from her jawline to the tickly place on her neck right beneath her ear. He knew she liked being kissed there from the last time they’d been in a bedroom together.
She was lost to his intimate attention. She never wanted to leave his warm company. Juliana expected it would be another completely magical evening.
By morning’s first light, she was proven correct. The previous evening together had been even more magical than the first.
Spending the night in Diesel’s home had been fairy-tale-like all the way down to having a charming prince keeping her up most of the night. But that was perfectly fine. Her only disappointment was when he had to leave early to go to work, as it was Monday. He expected a very busy coming week at the truck stop and told her not to freak out if he wasn’t able to call or talk to her for the next few days.
The night before she’d told him she had to head home and spend the week writing her article, as the submission date was fast approaching. He kissed her forehead, told her he’d do his best to call her before the end of the week to check up on her, and left her sleepy and dozing.
Juliana slid out of Diesel’s bed a couple of hours later, found the coffee pot he’d left on warm for her and downed two cups to wake up. She fetched her overnight bag from the sofa, showered in his massive bathroom and then strolled around his house looking at various things that made her delighted to be in his company.
She was upstairs when she was startled by the sound of a loud noise from somewhere on the lower floor. It sounded liked a door slamming. Had Diesel come back? Juliana went downstairs and carefully and quietly explored the lower floor, calling his name and desperately hoping no one jumped out at her. She’d probably drop into a dead faint if she saw a boogieman. Whatever they looked like.
She noticed the door to his home office was ajar. Hadn’t Diesel closed it last night? She’d only poked her head inside for a quick glance during his nickel tour. He hadn’t wanted her to look too closely, telling her it was sort of a mess. She’d seen a desk strewn with paper and not much else.
Juliana pushed the door open wider and hoped again that no one would jump out at her, but wanting to check every room to ensure no one lingered waiting to get her.
She noticed a picture of Maxwell the Martian on the wall behind his desk and smiled, not only because she found it endearing, but also because the frame wasn’t straight.
Juliana walked over to the wall intent on leveling the frame. As soon as she twisted the frame back into place, an invisible door appeared in the otherwise empty wall, opening into a hidden space about the same size as his office.
Awesome. A secret door.
Maybe this was why he hadn’t wanted her to see the room too closely. Last night, he’d said he hadn’t spent much time in his office lately, but mostly it was a mess.
She hesitated only briefly before stepping inside the hidden room. The lights in the ceiling came on automatically. She saw several outer space pictures on the wall. Along one low shelf were eight-by-ten picture frames showing Diesel and what looked like his large family in a barren and alien-looking environment. Arizona, maybe?
She recognized Cam and Axel in a candid group photo. The others in the family photo certainly looked related. The caption on the frame read, “Family trip, Alpha-Prime,” with a date from a few years ago.
What? Alpha-Prime?That sounded very familiar. Where had she heard that name before?
Wasn’t that what the strange man in the even stranger suit had said? That his coat was made with standard Alpha-Prime material or something like that. She’d been sleepy and had totally forgotten about it during the rest of her Sunday with Diesel.
She turned to the desk, not wanting to snoop, exactly, but hoping to understand the growing suspicion that perhaps aliens did run loose here, living in plain sight. Could it be true? Really true?
The memory of the creature she’d seen in her dream rose in her mind with even more specific detail. Diesel, hand lovingly on her back, had led her out the employee door. And they’d seen the creature about to enter what looked like a basement bomb shelter. Odd, since basements of any kind were rare in this part of the country. An Arkansas basement was an invitation for flooding or at the very least water seepage on a regular basis.
Next, his brother Cam had raced onto the shocking scene. He’d pointed a small bullhorn at Juliana and she’d woken up in her car with a lack of memories.
Juliana felt a wave of dizziness hit her, hard. She sat down at the messy, paper-strewn desk as memories of going back into the convenience store for a second time and starting the conversation with Diesel all over again filled in a more realistic timeline. She hadn’t been asleep. Her memories had been erased and she’d gone back inside a second time.
Juliana remembered both times she’d met Diesel. But the second time, Diesel pretended not to remember the first time they’d met. Why would he do that? Why would he pretend they didn’t know each other? That they hadn’t kissed that first glorious time?
She closed her eyes and remembered clearly kissing him for the very first time. Magical—just like sleeping with him—was the best word to describe the experience. She’d asked a question he didn’t want to answer. He’d been trying to kiss her to distraction. It had worked, sort of.
Elbows on the surface of this desk, head resting on her fists, Juliana allowed the dream-like memories to repopulate in her mind, staring at the surface of this cluttered desk, but not really seeing what was there.
At least not at first. Her mind started working to fill in the blanks. As the dream-like memories coalesced, she registered what was on Diesel’s secret desk, in his secret office, filled with a multitude of secret odd pictures showcasing him and his family in secret odd places, or rather secret places not of this world.
The papers on his desk were varying colors, but primarily gray. Many had a heading that indicated they were from the Alpha-Prime place. She studied a few documents on top of one pile, but didn’t recognize the language. In fact, whatever this was it didn’t look like anything she’d ever seen before.
Juliana’s college degree was in communication. On her own time, she’d studied several languages enough to identify them, though not well enough to speak them. The letters, words and symbols on these pages were something she’d never seen before. They were strange, unidentifiable and even holographic in some places. Definitely alien.
There were also several more pictures with the words Alpha-Prime written in the description. One showed what looked to be an alien spacecraft getting ready to depart into space. It looked like something out of a science-fiction movie.
A small stack of white paper caught her eye, since it was handwritten in English and looked like a personal letter. She picked it up from the center of the blotter and saw that there were actually three letters. It was as if Diesel had opened them, scanned through them and dropped them in a pile as if they held no further significance.
