Page 53 of I Fell for an Alien Popstar

You did not want to meet one after dark.

“Yes, this is true. I have never been here before,” I told Zhari as I sat up and stretched. “I had no idea what to expect, and nothing could have prepared me for the fact that the trees are basically glass with sap.”

“They are super easy to climb,” she said. “If you are not afraid of heights.”

“I’m not afraid of heights,” I scoffed. “I’m afraid of falling off the weird alien glass trees and dying in front of you.”

I rolled my eyes.

“This is a reasonable fear,” she said solemnly, then ruined it by picking up a nearby pillow and throwing it at me.

I caught it, laughing, and swung my legs off the bed.

“Stop looking at me like that,” I said as I tucked my hair behind my ear.

“Like what?”

“Like you want to eat me up.” I raised my eyebrows playfully and smirked.

“I am always thinking about eating you up,” she said, leaning over and giving me a quick forehead kiss. “Get dressed. I want to take you to the market.”

“Oh, I love markets. I haven’t been to one in a few years. There’s this cute one in London that sells the best cherry cheesecake and—”

“You like cake made out of cheese?” she interrupted.

“We have a thing called cheesecake,” I said. “It’s not just a brick of cheese. It’s made from a bunch of ingredients. You’ll have to come to Earth to try it.”

She tilted her head, smiling.

“I would love that.”

As we talked, she swung her legs over the side of the bed, stretched, and bounced to her feet. She walked over to the dresser and grabbed a pair of soft lavender track pants and a matching hoodie that had clearly seen a lot of laundry cycles.

She tied her hair back in a low ponytail at the nape of her neck, then tugged the hood up over it so only a few glowing strands poked out around her cheeks.

The casual, half-hidden look made her seem less like Zhari Lumis, pop star, and more like some girl I was sneaking out with between classes when I was in high school.

“We have moon cheese,” she added as she rummaged through the nightstand until she found a pair of sunglasses. “Obviously not from an actual moon.”

She rolled her eyes as if that were a common mistake.

The sunglasses were thin and iridescent, their frames shifting from blue to rose depending on the angle. They were totally out of orbit.

I was halfway to the small wardrobe when the other thing—that quiet, anxious part of me that hadn’t shut up since the dressing room—suddenly got even louder.

“Question,” I said, turning back to her. “Yesterday. Last night. That wasn’t—”

“Bad?” she said. “Regrettable? Something you wish to erase from the timeline?”

She laughed.

Her smile faltered on the last one, and it made my chest pinch.

“No,” I said quickly. “God, no. It was—”

I flailed my hands, searching for a word that wasn’t just feral screaming as I walked closer to her.

“It was… a lot. In a good way, though.” I laughed.