AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He nods. I close my eyes, bile coating my throat.
“I’m missing context here.” Arsène’s voice seeps into my body. “What’s significant about the date?”
I shake my head. It’s too personal. Besides, it has nothing to do with why we’re here.
“I need a minute.” I put my glass down, my drink sloshing everywhere. “Where’s the restroom?”
Silently, he points me in the direction. I make my way there in a daze. I lock myself in one of the cubicles, rip my vest off my chest, stuff it into my mouth, and scream into it until my vocal cords are raw. I bite down on the fabric until my gums are bleeding.
I want to torch the entire city of New York to the ground. To go back in time. To stay in Tennessee, in the comfort of my family. I could’ve had a good life. Yes, I wouldn’t be an actress on Broadway—but I’m not one now. At least I’d have Rhys—sweet, dependable, chivalrous Rhys—and a secure job at a high school, and people to lean on when things got tough.
Even through all this pain, all this heartache, I can’t find my tears. I blink fast, trying to produce moisture in my eyes, but to no avail.
“Oh, Paul!” I howl in the cubicle, punching the wall. “You asshole!”
Allowing myself a few minutes to recompose, I make my way back to the billiard room. Arsène waits where I left him, by the pool table, his posture imperial.
When I walk in, he frowns at me.
“What’re you looking at?” I lash out. “Never seen anyone have a nervous breakdown before?”
“I’ve seen plenty. And believe it or not, yours doesn’t even give me particular joy,” he says dryly. “But your hat’s off, and so is the vest. I take it you want to spend the night at the police station.”
I look down and realize that he is right. I stuffed the vest into a trash can after bleeding on it in the restroom, and now it is visible that under my cotton dress shirt, I have breasts. My blonde hair is spilling over my shoulders.
Still, I can’t muster enough energy to care.
I return to my whiskey glass, take another sip, and fall down into a leather recliner. “Tell me something nice about space.”
“What?” He lifts an eyebrow. I caught him off guard.
“Distract me!” I roar.
“All right. Close your eyes.”
Unbelievably, I do. I need a second to breathe, even if my designated therapist right now is Satan himself.
“About three billion years ago, Mars probably looked like a tranquil resort by the ocean. There’s some interesting fossils and craters on Mars that suggest a river ran through it. This means that, possibly, therewaslife on Mars. Maybe not as we know it, but life nonetheless.”
“Do you believe in aliens?” I murmur, eyes still closed.
“Believein them?” he asks, surprised. “I don’t know any, so it’s hard to say I put my faith in them. Do I believe in their existence? Certainly. The question is, Are they close enough to be discovered, and more importantly—do wewantto discover them?”
“Yeah,” I sigh. “Maybe not. Humans have let us down. Why try our luck with other species?”
He laughs, and I realize that he is oddly entertained by my humor.
“I do think it’s only a matter of time before we find biology somewhere that’s not on planet Earth. It’s extremely vain to think we’re alone in a billion-galaxy space, consisting of more stars than there are grains of sand, and billions of planets.”
“I don’t want to meet them,” I say.
“I don’t think you will. Not in our lifetime, anyway.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“For what?” he asks.
“For putting my mind off that thing I thought about when you said September thirteenth.”
