Page 40 of I Fell for an Alien Popstar

“You love us, though,” Yuki sang under his breath.

There was teasing, but there was also something real underneath it—the kind of shorthand you only got from living on top of each other through a hundred shows and a thousand small crises.

These people knew each other’s bad days and good days. They knew the weird food habits and the sounds they made in their sleep. They were a family.

Not the kind you were born into, but the kind you built by showing up over and over until the showing up became the thing that held you together.

And I had just been dropped into the middle of it—this whole chaotic, orbiting pop star life—while also trying not to short-circuit over whatever was happening between me and Zhari.

Midway through my stew, Lyn pointed behind me with her chopsticks.

“Ah, look who decided to join us. Here comes your little girlfriend.”

She puckered her lips in an exaggerated kissy face over my shoulder.

I turned.

Zhari had appeared in the doorway of the mess. She’d changed into soft pants and a cropped top, her hair half pulled back, light threads braided down one side. She looked normal.

Or she would have, if you ignored the way the entire room shifted a degree toward her the second people noticed she was there, as if she had her own gravity and nobody was immune to it.

Her gaze moved across the room, found me, and stopped.

For a second, everything else went quiet. The way her face changed when she saw me—it wasn’t her stage face or her camera smile. It was a genuine smile, and it sent butterflies through my stomach.

As she walked over to us, her eyes locked onto mine. She stopped at my side and leaned her hip against the edge of the table. Her hand dropped to my shoulder and rested there.

“Uh,” Zhari groaned. “I am exhausted.”

“You’ve only been gone for, like, fifteen minutes?” Yuki scrunched up his eyes in confusion. “How are you exhausted?”

He rolled his eyes.

“Women.”

“Shut up, Yuki!” Lyn and Zhari snapped at the same time.

“Yeah, well, those fifteen-minute interviews and live streams add up. Anyway, I had to change back into something comfortable.”

She gave my shoulder a small squeeze.

“May I steal our cultural guest?” she asked Lyn.

Lyn made a show of thinking about it.

“Depends. Are you bringing her back in one piece?”

“I need all of the pieces,” Zhari said. “She has to explain many human things to me. Earth boy bands. Memes. Human dating rules.”

“Then sure,” Lyn said, smiling. “Go do whatever mysterious star stuff you do.”

“Hey!” Yuki shouted, startling us all. “Get down from there, Nova! How did you get out of your tank again?”

We all watched as Yuki jumped up and dashed across the mess hall. Nova had climbed onto the ceiling, trailing along just above the buffet laid out on a table conveniently below her.

“Don’t you dare drop down! You do not need this food!” Yuki yelled, cupping his hands above his head for her to fall into.

Zhari pushed lightly off the table, her bare feet quiet against the floor.