Page 84 of I Fell for an Alien Popstar

The crowd screamed.

And then she was there.

Zhari walked onto the stage as if she’d been born on it. The lights caught her jacket—dark rose and cropped, catching the beams—and her hair was down. Her aura glowed along her collarbones like bioluminescence.

She looked untouchable.

She looked like a star.

She looked like the woman I had let walk away.

The bond thrummed beneath my skin, loud and annoying.

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you,” I whispered to my chest.

She opened with one of her bigger hits, “Frequency.” I clutched the sign to my chest and watched her move across the stage, dancing and jumping around.

She always looked like she was having so much fun.

Three songs in, she hadn’t seen me. Or if she had, she hadn’t let on.

The fourth song started softly—just her and a synth, the band pulling back. The melody was sweet and bouncy, unmistakably that Y2K space-pop sound she loved. It was the kind of song that felt like it belonged on a mixtape someone had made for you in a school hallway.

Meet me at the Milky Way

We’ll dance until the stars go gray

You’re the signal in my stereo

Be my frequency, don’t let me go—

There it was, those totally glitchy butterflies in my chest again.

I loved how she made me feel, all giddy and excited.

This was the song. The one she’d been humming in the bus kitchen at two in the morning when she thought everyone was asleep. The one she’d played for me once, shyly, before any of this—before the bond, before the hotel, before I’d made her feel like a risk I wasn’t willing to take.

I turned the sign around and lifted it above my head, slowly waving it from side to side.

My arms shook. The board was heavier than I expected, or maybe my arms were just weak from how hard my heart was hammering.

I held it over my head, the letters facing the stage, the glitter catching the lights and scattering little prisms everywhere.

I WANT TO SOLAR CAR WITH YOU

For a second, nothing happened.

Then I saw it—the flicker. The tiny break in her posture. Her eyes, scanning the crowd out of habit, catching on the sign.

Catching on me.

She stopped singing.

The band kept going for two bars before they realized. The synth wavered, uncertain. Then silence, thick and electric, spread across the stage.

The crowd murmured. Holo-screens flickered, trying to figure out what was happening.

Zhari stood at the edge of the stage, her mic loose in her hand, staring at me.