Chapter 13

“Thank you,” Ghok says as he exchanges cash for the two heavy plastic bags the deliveryman has brought to the front door. “Keep the change,” he smiles.

“No problem, alien dude!” the young man replies, turning on his heels the second the bag is clear of his fingers and bounding back toward the street without really looking at Ghok.

The guy’s arrival is a welcome relief. Ghok still doesn’t have much of an appetite, but dinner will put an end to the painfully awkward wait he has been enduring for the past hour and a half. After they had given each other some much needed physical release, Ghok had relaxed on Rachele’s bed for a good long while, even after she had finished her shower. Eventually, he grabbed a shower himself.

When he emerged from the bathroom, Rachele suggested ordering something for dinner as she can’t be bothered with cooking. Ghok had no objections, and was surprised that a small town like this had anything like the big cities. By this point it was still only late afternoon and felt far too early to sit down to dinner. Earlier, she had been typically candid about her intentions to fuck him again. But he got the distinct impression that she has no interest in working up another sweat so soon after freshening up. This left him with the glaring question of what he was supposed to do in the meantime.

He perused several of the restaurants in the town that offered delivery service. He took his time, carefully inspecting every single item on the various menus for no reason other than to eat up some time. But all too soon he had to conclude this ruse before his fixation with the menus began to seem absurd. The tension over the next hour or so was intense, as he shared the small house with the pregnant woman in cold silence. He tried to occupy himself by watching television—something he never quite has gotten the hang of—while Rachele sat on the opposite end of the couch for a while, seemingly engrossed in it. But the monotonous yammer of the television bought no comfort to the alien’s racing, anxious mind. It was only another pretense for him to retreat in to. Then her declaration of, “I guess we should probably order dinner now. Do you know what you want?” had been encouraging, but only when he finally heard the knock of the deliveryman on the door was the ordeal truly over.

Closing the door behind the deliveryman, Ghok carries the hot bags in to the modest kitchen and places them on the table, where Rachele is just in the process of sitting down. Sorting out whose boxes are whose has the jarring effect of emphasizing to Ghok just how massive the woman’s order is compared to his own. It seems like he cannot escape the constant reminders of her pregnancy.

“Well ... dig in,” she instructs, as she enthusiastically opens one of her containers and attacks its contents. Her voice is soft, not so much that she is difficult to hear, but just enough to suggest she has shared his sense of discomfort over the past hour or so.

This isn’t so surprising, all things considered. The sudden reappearance of the alien who got her pregnant and having her secret discovered must have surely been almost as big a shock for her as the discovery had been for him. It takes a long time for a person to completely compose themselves after a shock like that, even someone like Rachele. Nonetheless, it is abundantly clear that she is once again trying to gain control over the situation in her typical manipulative style. For the most part, she is succeeding, too.

Following her shower, she had changed in to a sleeveless blouse that had been buttoned sparingly to offer an amazingly low neckline. The air around her was thick with a fragrance. Though it seemed more a casual deodorant than a perfume, the sporty aroma was undeniably attractive. It was obvious that she was deliberately teasing him. For one thing, the evening was just a little too cool for such an airy garment to be a natural choice.

It pleases him that she is making an effort to arouse him. Once upon a time these seductive little mind games of hers infuriated him. More to the point, he hates the fact that he is indeed so incapable of resisting her seductions. But these things are well in the past. Too much ground has been lost for him to concern himself with luxuries like control anymore. The blunt truth is that he is here because he was desperate to fuck her once more and maybe have her as his mate finally. But everything about her behavior says loud and clear that his appetite will be well and truly satisfied before the sun rises. But that is all. There is no chance in hell she will be his.

With everything that has happened over the past couple hours there is still far too much going on in his head for him to be focused on dinner. But eventually, he gets around to prying open his box and eating.

“Good?” the woman inquires with an expression of seemingly genuine interest.

“Hmm?” he snaps out of his daze, barely aware that he is even eating. “Oh yeah, it’s nice,” he replies.

“That’s good,” Rachele nods with a satisfied smile. “I don’t order out very often. When I do buy dinner, I normally go out to a place across town. They don’t have delivery, but I have these days where I’m really looking for something that I can’t cook myself. But for some reason, tonight I’m just not feeling it. Fucking hormones, they’re driving me insane,” she remarks, shaking her head in frustration.

Ghok forces a sympathetic chuckle. The level of detail she has gone into doesn’t feel natural. It is an obvious effort to break through the silence between them and make the atmosphere more casual. To a point, she has succeeded, but there is still some way to go before either of them will feel comfortable.

“So,” she begins a moment later, after swallowing a mouthful. “Where are you off to tomorrow?”

“I don’t know,” he replies. Rachele nods. “I think maybe I’ll head south.”

“Not heading anywhere in particular?” she asks.

“Not really,” he says with a sigh, indicating that he isn’t looking forward to the drive. “I’ve finally got the freedom to go wherever I please. I may as well use my time wisely.”

Again, she simply nods in response. “So what will you do for work?” she asks with a hint of hesitation, as if she is concerned that it might be a sensitive topic.

Something about the way she asked the question makes him wary. Is she trying to assess his financial wellbeing? “Technically as an alien resident to Earth, I have been given a modest income. I just need to report in every so often or answer questions when they arise. Oh ... and if the Nehrezl happen to show up, be on Earth’s side.” He chuckles at the last part. “With my people wanting me dead, it’s a no brainer.” He watches the woman’s face carefully for any sign that she might be disappointed with his answer. If she is unhappy to hear about his situation, she conceals her true feelings flawlessly. As far as he can tell, she can’t give a shit less.

“Oh, cool,” she responds. “And you figured that you might as well drop in and say hi,” she suggests in a light-hearted tone.

“Yeah,” he chuckles with a snort and an ironic smile. Of course, a more honest explanation for his visit would have been: I figured I might as well drop in and try to get you to fuck me again, and then run off and spend the rest of your life with me. But it is obvious that the last thing he had expected this afternoon was to discover her pregnant with his offspring.

She matches his false amusement with a false smile of her own, before a look of concern suddenly washes over her face. “Did you tell anyone else about ... coming to visit me?” she asks in a calm but serious voice.

“Hmm?” the alien raises an eyebrow. It takes him a second to understand the question and the apprehension behind it. “No,” he emphatically assures her. “I did not tell anyone where I was going or what I had planned.”

“Good,” she nods, seemingly relieved. “The fewer people who know where I am, the better. How the hell did you find out where I was, anyway?” she inquires, before devouring more of the food. There is displeasure in her voice, but no accusation. It is more like she is just generally angry that her attempt to hide herself away has failed than she is at him for finding her.

“The transfer of this property to you from your grandparents in on file,” he answers and then explains, “I paid someone to tell me if they could find anything attached to you. This and the post office box came up, but that is all.”

“I guess I should have been more careful,” she murmurs more to herself than him. “After this is done, I won’t have to worry anymore.”

He continues as if she didn’t say anything. “When you did not come back, after a while I started wondering what had happened to you, so I guess I started seeking answers.” He can appreciate her discomfort with the idea of her location being so easily traceable. Or to be more precise, he can appreciate her discomfort with the prospect of being discovered in her present state. That bulge in her belly could have a profound effect on what could happen to them, or if nothing did then what people would think about her and how they treat her. The story behind how that bulge was made would tarnish her image even more, if it ever came out or was deduced. Yet at the same time, Ghok can’t help but pity her for her self-imposed exile. Here she is, all alone in a town of strangers. She is still bearing raw scars from all the terrible things that had happened on Vulta nearly a year ago. She is probably still privately mourning her friends and the people she was responsible for. Perhaps she is also nursing a broken heart from having abandoned him? On top of all this, she is carrying an alien baby inside her. She carries all these heavy burdens more or less alone, cut off from the friends and family who care about her. It’s not that Ghok doesn’t understand her isolation, he understands it very well. It just doesn’t seem right that this is the best choice she has.

“You really haven’t told anyone else where you are?” he gently pries. Rachele looks at him and shrugs. She seems to be deciding which details she is and isn’t prepared to reveal to him, as she continues to chew her food. But before she can give a proper answer, he interrupts. “Does your family know about...” he begins, stalling as he considers the most tactful way to refer to her pregnancy.

She stares at him in bewilderment for a silent second before a brief chuckle escapes her lips, ejecting a single particle of food that lands on the table. “My family thinks I’m still working for the college, Rachele explains. Her expression of subdued amusement and polite tone of voice are the manners people display when they try to answer extremely stupid questions without embarrassing the person asking them. “Right now, I’m in my lab or on a research trip,” she elaborated as she tucks in more food. “I can be wherever I wish and none of them ask any questions to place doubt on me.”

“Well...” he sighs, genuinely impressed with the speed at which she has delivered the details to him.

“Yeah, well, you have to be fast with the lies in order to make it all work out in the long run,” she tells him.

Earlier he had noticed the clock in her house running behind by several hours. At the time he didn’t think much about it and didn’t want to pry, but now he realizes that they are probably set to the time back at home to help keep her on track with her lies. A moment passes without any reply, and then Rachele makes eye contact with him. She can’t read the expression on his face.

“My family would ... they wouldn’t be able to handle ... this,” she tells him, gesturing to her fruitful belly as she tries to justify her actions. “Hell, I think my mother still tries to convince herself that I’m a fucking virgin,” she chuckles.

Ghok chuckles sympathetically. “So you keep in touch with them?” he inquires, shifting the precarious direction of the topic.

“Of course,” she replies. “I have to in order to keep up with the façade. I can’t have anything going to shit before it’s done. I call about once a month,” she chuckles awkwardly. “I even buy postcards from different places here on Earth on from the outlying colonies to send home so they believe I’m really telling the truth. I write messages on them and send them back to the company and they send them out so they arrive at home with the proper postmarks,” she says, her voice reflecting her pride in her own brilliance.

“There are companies that do that?” he asks, completely astonished by the fact.

“You’ll be surprised what we humans are capable of or willing to do,” she says.

This comment catches his full attention. He simply nods his understanding because it is all starting to really make sense now. “So not even your family knows that you are pregnant?”

“Not even they know,” she concurs. “And when it is all over and done with, only you and the company will ever know.”

“I understand,” he says with evident gratitude.

“Hey, I look just look at it as a bad story,” she casually dismisses his sentiment.

The room falls silent for more than a minute as they both continue with their meals.

“Do you mind if I ask you something?” Ghok eventually asks in a dead serious tone.

“Hmm?” she answers with a shrug, implying that nothing he can say will phase her. Though privately, the fact that he feels his question requires a forewarning makes her nervous.

“Back in the restaurant, you told me that when we were together after the funeral, you were thinking about having an abortion. Obviously you decided not to. But you are giving the baby away. You are not going to keep it. So why have the baby at all?” he asks, in a tone that isn’t judgmental in the slightest, just profoundly curious.

Rachele sighs deeply as she leans back in her chair and stares off in to space. The question hasn’t struck a nerve as she feared it might, but it is extremely difficult to answer all the same.

“If you don’t want to talk about it...” Ghok begins after several seconds without a response.

“No, no,” she cuts him off, “I don’t mind trying explaining it. It’s just ... I don’t know if I can.” She takes a deep breath in. “A lot of bad shit happened after our first time. The all the crew and team died except me. Everything was fucked up, but it really wasn’t when we got back. I mean the government didn’t press and we didn’t offer.” She meets his gaze with this last remark as if telling him thank you for lying. “I suppose when it turns out that I had gotten pregnant, I just wanted something good to come out of it all. I wanted to believe that something good could come out of it. And I guess I wanted to believe it so badly that I had to see this thing through,” she explains. “Maybe I figured it would balance out the bad.”

Ghok can’t help notice that she begins to subconsciously caress her belly with a tenderness he hasn’t yet seen her express toward the baby thus far. “I think I get it. You go through something like you did and you cannot help but ask yourself why it happened. You cannot help but try and look for a reason for it all.”

“Fuck ... it’s been on my mind all the time since that day, and I still haven’t made sense out of it all,” she admits. When she speaks again after a brief, yet powerful moment of silence, her business-like tone instantly changes the atmosphere of the room. ““Listen, back in the restaurant, I think we came to an understanding. But all the same, I know I’ll sleep a lot easier if I actually hear you say the words.”