Page 32 of I Fell for an Alien Popstar

I reached for the Nebs and took a slurp of broth.

She flinched slightly, like I’d poked something raw.

“Officially,” she said carefully, “you would be on the manifest as a cultural guest from Terra. Security likes tidy labels. It gives Sira something to say when the board asks questions.”

“And unofficially?” I pressed.

Her glow deepened, that soft radiance gathering around her like a blush made of light.

“Unofficially,” she said, “I want you there because you make me feel… normal. Because I have this immense feeling inside my chest when I am near you. When I listen to you talk or when I kiss you.”

Here came those butterflies again.

“That’s…” I swallowed. “That’s a lot, and super sweet of you to say.”

“I know,” she said quickly. “And I know this is not how humans choose partners. You have rituals. Coffee, shared media, and awkward dinners with parents. But it’s the only thing we know biologically. It’s like having a terrible itch on your back for hours and not being able to scratch it.”

“The parents come later, usually,” I muttered. “Also, if you have a scratch that lasts that long, I’d probably be concerned. But yes, I see your point. I normally would be all over this. But you make me nervous. I don’t want to mess this up, despite us being meant for one another.”

I gestured between us.

“I’m not asking you for all of that,” she said. “Not now. I’m not asking you to marry me, although Velans do marry one another a few months after their auras connect. I’m asking you to get on one more shuttle and have a longer sleepover. Come with us. See what this is when it is not just one night.”

She fished around in her Nebs and slurped back a long noodle, broth dripping from her bottom lip.

My brain tried to save me, flinging up everything at once—my spreadsheet job, my sad little flat, my overdraft, the plant I’d already killed, and my mum, always my mum, hovering at the edge of every choice like a siren.

“I have a life,” I said slowly. “A boring one, sure, but it exists. A job. I have a mother who panics if I cross two time zones. I can’t just—”

I mimed dropping everything off a cliff.

“You can say no,” she said softly. “Truly. I will be… quietly heartbroken, but I will survive. I will admit, I do not know what happens when you do not end up with your mate, but you do not owe me anything.”

“The quiet heartbreak is worse than the loud kind,” I muttered. “The loud kind at least lets you yell back.”

She smiled, quick and crooked.

“I am famously bad at yelling.”

The thing was, two weeks would pass whether I went with her or not. Back on Earth, my life would stay exactly the same.

The difference was that here, I’d be scared out of my mind and wildly, stupidly alive. And would her energy fade faster if I left?

“Okay,” I heard myself say.

Her eyes widened.

“Okay?”

“Yeah, let’s do it. I’ll come,” I said before I could wriggle out of it.

Panic fizzed through me. I grabbed it with both hands and wrestled it into something like resolve.

“On two conditions.”

She sat up straight and rested her hands in her lap.

“Okay. Go ahead. Tell me.”