Page 9 of How My Fake Alien Boyfriend Learned to Cook and Saved the Family Business

Exhale. The door swung open. I stepped over the threshold…and immediately stepped into thin air, tumbled forward, and hit the ground, barely catching myself before I hit my head.

Oof.

I rolled onto my back and stared up at the sky. The blue sky, peppered with tufts of fluffy white. My view was broken up by sprawling branches full of bright green leaves. They fluttered as I stared, waving gently in the breeze and making the full light of the sun dance across my face.

Beautiful—almost impossibly so. Enough to take my breath away.

“Self-destruct now commencing. Goodbye!”

The pod computer’s announcement trailed off in a garble, and the alarm went silent. I watched as the ship’s exterior began to dissolve, followed by the interior components melting into a viscous sludge and absorbing into the ground below.

Even in my shock, I recalled reading about this once. It was called rapid organic decomposition, a method our engineers used to ensure our spacecraft wouldn’t be discovered if they landed outside of station territory. I’d only ever seen a demonstration of it before, and it was incredibly cool. A bit disgusting to witness in person, but neat nonetheless.

I lifted my arms and let them fall to my side, landing with a crunch. Finally, I looked down, rather than up. I was surrounded by leaves, dead and brown, that crackled when touched. My fingers dug into the ground and felt the cool, wet dirt through the exterior of my suit. Something was poking into my back, and when I shifted to pull the object free, I was holding a small speckled rock, flecked with deep green moss.

It was, without exaggeration, the greatest moment of my life so far.

You don’t deserve it. You didn’t even earn it. You’re here because you’re a massive screwup.

The thought came ugly and unbidden, and settled so heavily in my mind that I had to shake my head to be free of it.

Yes, I’d made it to Earth completely by accident. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy it. It didn’t mean I wasn’t worthy of observing the beauty of another planet and feeling the soft ground yield beneath my body.

I knew these things to be true...in theory. I was worthy of good things. Yet it was often more common for me to believe the bad thoughts rather than the good.

Luckily, it was hard to wallow in negative thoughts as I lay in the bright light of Earth’s yellow sun, surrounded by a symphony of sound. Birds chirped, leaves rustled on creaking branches. The whoosh of a breeze as it moved through the trees, and the steady rhythm of my breathing as I tried to acclimate to Earth’s atmosphere.

I considered staying there under the blue sky and yellow sun and golden-green leaves. Possibly forever. But the strain in my bladder had reached critical mass and, despite vomiting right after landing, I was getting pretty hungry.

With sore muscles, I pushed myself up from the ground and looked around. I unfastened the hu-suit to relieve myself, then slipped it back over my head as quickly as possible. Though I hadn’t undergone official terranaut training, I knew enough from obsessing over space travel since childhood to understand the importance of keeping the suit on.

Rule number one for terranauts: Do not get caught out of your suit.

It was simple enough. Thousands of terranauts had successfully completed missions before me, with only a few coming close to being discovered.

I spun in a tight circle as I took in my surroundings. From what I could tell, I had landed in a copse of trees that bled into an open meadow of tall grass dappled with clusters of colorful flowers. Those, too, swayed with the air around them. Behind the meadow and below the sky, the swell of mountains was covered in a blanket of trees.

For the first time since I stepped into that pod, I smiled. Genuinely, dreamily smiled. The unfamiliar suit tightened uncomfortably over my skin, and I prodded and pulled to adjust the fit to my too-wide smile.

Being there in that moment was, after all, everything I had ever dreamed of and also...so much more. The images we had captured and shared back home simply didn’t do it justice.

With a forest of trees behind me, I decided the meadow would be the path of least resistance, and so, I began to walk. I pulled the comms deck from my pack and powered it on as I went. By my estimation, the charge would last a while, especially if I didn’t overuse the device. I still needed to be careful with saving power, but it wasn’t as urgent a need as figuring out where I was.

The grass tickled at my legs, and the flowers stained my fingers with yellow dust as I dragged them across the tops of delicate petals. I had just spotted a strip of black asphalt, an empty road, when the comms deck crackled to life.

“Kalexdyorn? Kalexdyorn Tirinn? Do you copy?”

Sel’s voice was distinct enough that I recognized it immediately, and angry enough that I briefly considered not responding. There was absolutely no chance that Sel hadn’t immediately reported me to everyone above our rank. She might have even reported me to the head of all Xaerean work units just for the fun of it. I would have been willing to bet my entire salary that I would be fired as soon as I returned home.

I held my breath and counted to three.

“Yes, I copy.”

“Do you know how much trouble you’re in, you numbskull? And how much trouble I’m in because of you?”

Sel’s admonishments continued for a while. I held the comms deck as far from my body as possible, willing the sounds of nature to drown out the sounds of my irate colleague as I tried to think of what I could say to alleviate that anger.

Knowing Sel the way I did, nothing would do.