Page 19 of Topping Off the Alien

The words circle in my head, and for a few breaths I let them live in some imagined universe where there is a next time, where tonight is the first of many instead of the only one.

Then the cold truth settles back over me. There is no next time. When morning comes, I’ll be long gone, and the distance between us will be measured in light-years.

Who knows when Prasinus will decide to open another wormhole to Earth? It might be fifty years, or a hundred. Opening one requires an enormous amount of energy, and it must be justified.

Tomorrow, Wes will sleep in his own bed, and I’ll be just a story he cannot tell anyone.

His breathing evens out behind me, his arm heavy and warm across my ribs. I cover his hand with mine, thread our fingers together, and hold on.

The hours between now and morning are all we have. I plan to spend every one of them awake.

9

Weston

“Be right with you,” I call to the guy in the quarter-zip who’s waving his card at me from the far end of the bar, then go refill the lime wedges.

It’s a regular Thursday at the bar, busier than usual, and I’m grateful for it.

It’s been a week since Halloween. A week of cutting limes and pouring vodka sodas for people who won’t remember my face tomorrow. I couldn’t tell you one thing that happened in it.

I close out the quarter-zip guy’s tab and make the next few drinks. A woman at the corner orders an espresso martini, and I give her my standard line about how we don’t do those here, and she settles for a whiskey sour, and her friend asks what’s good, and I say, “The whiskey sour, apparently,” and they laugh. It’s easy. Bartending is ninety percent saying small, warm things you don’t mean to people you’ll never see again, and I’m usually great at it.

“You’re doing the thing again,” Melissa, the other bartender, says as she slides past me.

“What thing?”

“The sad-eyes thing. It’s spreading to the rest of your face.” She bumps my hip with hers on her way to the register. “You’ve been doing it all week.”

“I’m fine.”

“Uh-huh.” She rings someone out, then comes back and leans on the bar next to me, talking over the music. “Look. I get it. Breakups are brutal. But you can’t just mope behind the bar forever. It’s bad for your tips.”

For a second, I have no idea what she’s talking about. Then I remember that I broke up with my girlfriend on Halloween. I’ve barely thought about it since.

But Melissa has watched me drag myself through shifts all week, so of course she’s pinned my mood on the breakup. It’s not like I can tell her the truth. I can’t admit that I spent one night with a seven-foot alien prince who fed off my desire like it was air, that it was the single best night of my life, and that afterward he opened a door in the fabric of space and left forever. I’ve been gutted ever since.

“You’re right,” I say instead. “I’ll work on the face.”

She gives me a look that says she knows I’m blowing her off, but a server comes up with a ticket full of cocktails, and the conversation thankfully dies. We fall into the rhythm of the rush, me on bottles, Melissa on taps, and for a while there’s no room in my skull for anything but pour counts and glassware.

The rush thins out around eleven. The bar settles into its late-night shape: a few couples and the pool-table crowd in the back. I run through closing sidework in my head and start on what I can knock out early.

I head to the back to restock, grabbing fresh bottles of the two bourbons we burn through fastest and a new jar of cherries. I come back out with my arms full, set everything on the back counter, and start slotting the new bottles into place.

Behind me, a barstool scrapes against the wooden floor as someone sits down.

“Just a sec,” I call over my shoulder without looking. I grab a rag and wipe down the bar top, working from the far end back toward the taps, clearing the wet rings and spills off the wood. The new customer waits without a word, which already makes them my favorite person of the night.

I toss the rag in the bucket, pull a fresh coaster, and turn around. “What can I...” The words die in my throat.

Solverian is sitting at my bar.

I blink, waiting for him to vanish. Instead, he stays exactly where he is, folded onto a stool built for normal-sized people, knees jutting high, making the guy two stools down look like a child. He’s in plain clothes: dark jeans, a charcoal sweater stretched tight across his chest, a jacket hanging open over it. His hair is loose, falling over his forehead. In the low amber light of the bar, his skin just looks tan, and if you didn’t know what you were looking at, you’d never guess he isn’t human.

I blink again. He’s still there.

This is it, I think distantly. I’ve finally lost it. Too much time looping that night in my head, and now my brain is projecting him onto some poor stranger.