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She didn’t doubt that the traveler kept his eyes locked on every single customer who came through those doors. It made her feel like she had some kind of guardian angel with her while she worked. Since she worked alone most nights, she’d never felt that safe.
Scarlett filled his glass up to the brim, spilling out some of the foam before pulling it away and walking back around the bar to deliver it to him. She wished that there was some way she could get him to stay on Xoyosis, but that was stupid and too wishful to be hoping for. It wasn’t like this planet had anything to offer anyone.
Since it wasn’t much more than a convenient stopping point for travelers to more desirable parts of the galaxy, few residents came here and stayed willingly. You either were born here and died on this planet, or you came here to stay because you had nowhere else to go.
She was in the latter half of that, unfortunately.
She had to come to terms with that piece of her past, wrestling with the idea that getting off this planet and going somewhere else wouldn’t be because she wanted to. The desire would be born out of self-preservation and the need to survive.
She’d be damned if she was forced to go back to the hellhole that she’d just barely gotten out of. She’d rather exile herself to planet X8-9009, where literal hellfire rained from the skies daily.
When she walked back across the bar, Scarlett set Grux’s beer down on his table and slid it over to him. “Can I get you anything else?”
He looked down at the glass, inspecting it for a long moment. After an inordinately long pause, he said his usual thanks and nodded for her to head off back to the bar.
It made her tilt her head. “Something wrong?”
He didn’t say anything again, just breathed out slowly through his nose and tapped his fingers along the table in a strange beat that she couldn’t exactly place but sounded familiar, nonetheless. A march of some kind, a national anthem.
Finally, when he looked up, he spoke in that delicious rasp of his. “What are you doing after your shift?”
It hadn’t been Grux’s intention to ask Scarlett out on a date, but now that they were walking side by side to the nearest open diner, something in him struggled to justify his decision. He wanted to pretend that this had given him a convenient excuse to get her to open up to him more and to trust him enough so that taking her back to her owners would be less stressful for both of them.
Because if he could convince her somehow that he’d been hired because the family was worried for her safety and wanted her back before she could get hurt… it would make for the perfect excuse as to why he was doing any of this in the first place and not simply throwing her over his shoulder kicking and screaming.
However, the more he spent time with Scarlett—in the little side glances and small interactions they had talking in between her needy customers—the worse it made his guilt over the inevitability that he was only doing this because he’d been hired to return her.
She seemed sweet and—for the most part—happy. He had no idea what she’d done to get herself into being an indentured servant, but whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. Terrans weren’t typically seen off their home planet. The galaxy was much too difficult of a system for them to handle.
But here Scarlett was, millions of lightyears away from her home planet and thriving despite her living conditions.
“This is the place.” She pointed to the corner diner at the end of the street.
Grux moved in front of her, grabbing the door and holding it open for her to sneak through. She gave him a sheepish smile and headed inside with him following right behind.
The diner was pretty much empty save for a single Xoyosan sitting at the front counter eating some kind of pile of mush on the plate in front of him. They both headed over to one of the booths by the windows, taking a seat on opposite sides.
Grux looked around, spotting a single cook through the service window. “You come here often?”
Scarlett shrugged at him and grabbed one of the menus already sitting on the booth. “Sometimes when I’m feeling like greasy diner food. It reminds me of home. Or… well, the closest thing to it.”
He nodded, grabbed a menu of his own, and flipped it open. “Where’s home for you?”
He glanced up from his menu, taking in her pinched expression. “You heard of Earth?”
He tilted his head, remembering that’s what the Terrans called their home planet. “I have, yes.”
“You ever go there?”
“Can’t say I have, no.”
“Hm.” Scarlett flipped the page of her menu, her eyes scanning over the rows of food listed. “I guess that’s fair. It’s pretty far from here.”
Setting the menu down on the table, Grux laced his fingers over it. Even though getting attached to her wasn’t the brightest idea, he couldn’t help but want to know more about what had happened to her before she’d been placed under the Xoyosan family who’d bought her.
“Were you born on Earth?”
Glancing up, Scarlett raised her eyebrow. “I mean… Iamhuman.”
