Chapter 24: Danièle’s Research

“Do it again!” she commanded. So I kissed her again as I poured all my emotions into the kiss. Suddenly she broke off the kiss and lunged for her smartphone she had set up on the table to record our kiss. We were in the salon and we still had all our clothes on.

“I can’t believe this! I just cannot believe it. But it’s true. I have proof!” she squealed.

The first time, she hadn’t believed me. The second time she set the timer on her phone and took a picture. This time, she just set it on video and pushed record before we started. She must have gotten the whole thing on video.

“How? Alex! Tell me how!” she demanded. “You must tell me right now!”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “That’s why the Admiral said I should speak to you.”

“But how did he know about this? Did you kiss him as well?”

“Oh, I dare say he doesn’t know about the kissing - time/space continuum stuff yet,” I replied. “He was referring to some of my other gifts.

“There’s more?” she asked incredulously. “You can do more amazing things?”

“Yeah. But unfortunately, you’d have to be naked with me to show you more,” I teased.

“Seriously?” she asked.

I just nodded my head. “It’s up to you,” I replied. “I mean if you really want to know more...”

“Do you have a cabin or somewhere that’s a little more private?” she asked as she began unbuttoning her blouse. “After all, your family should be returning at any time.”

“Wait!” I told her, surprised that she would take me seriously. “We can’t do this!”

“Why?” she asked.

“In order to show you more of what you just experienced, you would have to feel something for me,” I said. “And I just don’t think you can, yet!”

Uh-oh! I suddenly realized immediately that I might have made a mistake! Suddenly rejecting this girl was like waving a red flag in the face of a bull.

“How can you know what I feel?” she challenged.

“Alex has some amazing powers,” Carina told her. “I’d listen to him, if I were you.”

“Oh! We didn’t hear you come in,” she stammered. Then she rattled off something in French that I could not follow. Carina answered her in French as well. Eventually, seeing the look of confusion on my face, Carina said, “We’re confusing Alex. He does not understand very much of our language. Why don’t we use English and I’ll tell you about his first time.”

“Oui,” she replied automatically. Then her eyes grew wide as she translated what Carina had said in her mind. “Oh, yes! Do tell me!”

I knew they didn’t need me for this and as soon as the others heard Carina telling ‘Alex’ stories, they were in the thick of it. So excusing myself to go to the head, I found an empty berth and curled up for a nap.

“Alex, honey. It’s almost time for supper,” Carina whispered in my ear. “Why don’t you hop in the shower and put on some clean clothes. The Admiral and Danièle are joining us.”

“Okay,” I mumbled, not yet awake. Forcing my legs over the edge of the berth, I just sat there for a moment as I slowly tried to wake up.

“Did you really kiss her and disappear?” she asked.

“Yeah. She even taped it on her phone,” I said.

“Well, something happened because her phone is completely ruined,” she said. “She was going to show us, but her phone would not function at all.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

“Why did you tell her she had to get naked?” Carina asked.

“Just horsing around,” I replied. “I didn’t think that she’d really do it.”

“Horsing around? I do not understand,” she replied.

“When she walked in the restaurant, I thought she was one of the prettiest girls I’ve seen. But when the Admiral said she should talk to me, she got this look on her face like she had just eaten leftover boiled possum. She did not want to talk to me, nor did she appreciate her boss saying she had to. So I was just messing with her mind because she had rejected me.”

“Oh, Alex! Will I ever understand how a teenaged boy’s mind really works?” Carina asked.

“Well, you still have Phillipe to practice on for the next five years,” I reminded her with a laugh.

“Alex?” she said. I immediately detected the change in her tone.

“We talked to Danièle for most of the afternoon, and I discovered that she has never been in a serious relationship. I have no idea if she’s still a virgin, it didn’t come up. But she spent most of her formative years with her super-intellectual parents in a university environment and didn’t do much dating or interacting with her peers,” Carina explained. “So please, for me, be gentle with her. She is very smart, but I do not think she has had much experience with matters of the heart. When we talked about your disappearing while kissing her, all she wanted to talk about was the kiss. I think she may have thought the time-travel stuff was normal.”

“Oh,” I replied. “I didn’t know.”

“And you wouldn’t unless you had spent as much time as we did just talking. However, I think that Roland is right and you must be emitting some sort of pheromones that effect the women you spend time with. “When we get to Switzerland, we may have to arrange some tests,” she said as she looked at the frown forming on my face.

“If that’s okay with you?” Carina quickly added.

“I’ll do as you wish because I love you and you are going to be the mother of my child one day. But sometimes, you may have to remind me to do so gracefully.”

“I just love you!” she said as she moved to straddle my lap and kiss me. I guess she forgot that I sleep in the nude, but she remembered when she felt my salute touch her panties under the sundress she was wearing.

“Oooooh!” she cried in anguish. “If only we had time!”

“By-the-way, my love, did you happen to promise a young girl she could come sailing with us this spring?” Carina asked as she stepped from the shower drying her sexy body.

“Uh, oh!” I told her. “I forgot. I was going to ask, but everything got really busy and I forgot.”

“Well, she didn’t forget. You may have a permanent roommate for that cruise,” she laughed.

We got dressed and were only a few minutes late for supper. I’d call it fashionably late, but I’m not really sure what that is.

I think I was becoming truly French as I just sat back and enjoyed talking with family and friends throughout the unhurried meal. Craig, who insisted we NOT call him Admiral tonight, was full of stories and he and Captain Alfred started swapping war stories. Not really about war, per se. But about their experiences in the French Navy and some of the characters they had encountered.

Finally Craig asked me, “Did you get to tell Danièle about your experiences?”

“Ah ... no, sir,” I replied. “We got sidetracked and then she started talking with the women so I went and took a nap.”

“Well, then, I think you should tell her all about what happened to you,” he replied.

“Uh ... now, sir?” I asked.

“Well, I think most everyone here already knows except for Danièle and I can vouch that she will not share your story without permission. Right, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir,” she said meekly.

“Well ... last March, I was playing golf on my home course when I was struck by lightning. I woke up ten days later and was having all sorts of crazy problems, frying hospital equipment and destroying every nearby cellphone. So they put me back in a coma and sent me to the south of France to live with Roland and Carina while he helped me sort through my problems.”

“Go on, son,” Captain Alfred said. I think this was his first time hearing the story as well.

“Anyway, Roland and I conducted hundreds of experiments as he taught me how to control my emotions and my energy. At first, we thought it was because of the altered EMF’s surrounding my body. But lately, we have begun to think that it’s something more.”

“What do you mean?” Danièle asked.

“Well, we knew that if I became angry, I could destroy many naval ships in less than a nanosecond. But last week, we discovered that if I let my positive emotions loose, just like with my anger, it caused me and whoever was with me to ... I guess time-travel would be the best way to describe it.”

Danièle’s next statements were all in French, so at the time, I had no idea what she was saying. Very soon, Archara and Carina had jumped into the excited girls’ shit, letting her have it with both barrels. I never did get around to getting one of them to interpret it all for me.

“Lieutenant Le Cloierec!” Admiral Bouchard’s voice boomed. “Atten-tion!”

Danièle immediately stopped yelling and jumped to her feet, knocking her chair over as she did.

“Lieutenant,” the Admiral barked. “You will explain yourself now! And in English, this time.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. I just got caught up in the moment, sir. It won’t happen again, sir!” she replied.

“Danièle?” he said softly, using her name instead of her rank. “Can you tell me why you said all those things? Is there a problem with Alex that I need to know about?”

“No, sir,” she said meekly. “I over-reacted to something Alex said and felt that he had deceived me. That is until Mrs. Rappeneau and Mrs. Fourreau straightened me out.”

Then turning to Archara and Carina she asked, “I am so sorry. Can you please forgive me for thinking poorly of Alex in error?”

Both ladies were out of their chairs and hugging the young lieutenant in an instant.

“Ladies?” Craig asked. “I’d still like to hear the rest of the story, if you please.”

“There’s not that much more to tell. I’m sure I could do more things, but I haven’t discovered them yet.”

“What’s this about time-travel?” Craig asked.

“It’s only happened a few times and I’m still learning about it. But I know that it responds to positive emotions and love is a very powerful positive emotion, so whenever I kiss a girl that I really like, and I let my inhibitions go, while I cannot see it happening, anyone who is watching would see us disappear and a bright shimmering light take our place. Once, on the beach, I was told that the shimmering light grew to over one hundred feet high and lasted for over two hours. And another time, up on the bridge, my mom actually walked through the light and said that we were not there.”

“Amazing!” Craig exclaimed. “And as I told Joc earlier, this is now Top Secret, Lieutenant. You will tell no one without specific orders, understood?”

“Understood, sir!” she replied stiffly. “Since I’m here, may I ask Alex some questions?”

Craig looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

“Sure,” I told her. “I’m not sure how much more I can tell you though.”

“Earlier today, when you kissed me, I took a video on my phone of this bright light. But when I went to show it to the other women, my phone had melted on the inside. Do you know why?”