<The First Date>
February 16 2020
I glanced down at my phone and then back at the door to the restaurant.
I knew this was a bad idea. It had been a stressful week, the latest batch of samples in the lab had been contaminated by some idiotic intern so an entire week of research had to be thrown down the drain my car had a brand new scratch down the side of it from where some idiot had sideswiped me, and to top it off my phone had a new crack in the glass.
I had signed up for the dating site after I had broken up with Courtney months ago. Not that I had really expected much from it. Most responses I had gotten were poorly constructed if legible and quite a few of the women I was matched too had given off serious crazy vibes even in their pictures.
The only normal one had been a small lithe looking woman, with black hair and an angular face. A more classical type of beauty and not the overdone and artificial looks that seemed to be the preference at the moment. So despite the sucky week had asked her out through the chat program, thinking I might have one good thing.
We had agreed to meet here, and she was ten minutes late. So the week was still not looking like it was going to improve.
Getting ready to leave I started to stand.
“Jon?” asked a voice.
I looked up and my heart froze. The woman standing in front of me, wrapped in a thick black jacket was stunningly beautiful, the picture of her on the profile was an injustice to her actual features.
For a moment I gaped like a proper idiot at her.
“Yes,” I managed to choke out.
She smoothly sat down in the chair across from me, “I’m Rogue.”
She held her hand out to me, I quickly moved to shaker hers and promptly knocked over the large glass of water in front of me spilling it on the table.
“Ah sorry!” Quickly I threw my napkin onto the puddle and I felt myself blushing furiously. Two minutes into the first date since I had dumped Courtney and here I was acting like a complete bumbling idiot, in front of what had to be the most attractive woman I had ever met in my life.
She laughed, and immediately I felt my ears burn.
“Its fine!” she quickly shrugged off her jacket and put her hand on mine, “It’s nice to meet you.”
The fact that her hand was on mine and that underneath her coat she was wearing a very tight black dress short circuited my brain.
The foreign accent wherever it was from didn’t help much either, it was sexy as hell. Very inappropriate images began to run through my mind with wild abandon, not at all restrained by the part of my brain that would usually try to reign such fantasies in.
“Nice to meet you too!”
She nodded and looked down at the mess on the table, and took a deep breath. I quickly noticed that she was a little flushed, and her hair around her ears was sticking up slightly. Perhaps she was as frazzled as I was.
“So uh,” I paused, “Where you from?” I asked.
“Far away. I just moved here.”
“Ah, well what do you think?”
She frowned, “It’s nicer than where I came from. Lots of people.”
“That a good thing?”
“It is.”
Both of us fell silent, and a waiter finally getting to our table took the napkins and replaced the waters.
Rogue squirmed in her seat slightly like she was uncomfortable. I was hesitant to say anything, the rather inappropriate images gallivanting around the inside of my skull were only increasing in their complexity. I hadn’t felt like this since I had been a horny teenager who had just found internet porn.
“You want to get out of here?” asked Rogue.
“What?”
“I’m in a hotel right now while I sort some things out. You want to come back with me?” she asked.
I blinked, in the back of my mind a part of me was saying something was very wrong here. But looking into the woman’s eyes that small voice was quickly silenced. Her eyes held a great sadness inside of them, she was trying to hide it behind a smile but I could see it.
That sadness put everything else in her soul to bear in front of me. She was alone, desperately alone and afraid. She would never admit it, there was too much strength in her eyes and she could survive if she needed too. The simple fact was that she didn’t want to, like everyone else in the world she wanted someone she could be weak with. Someone with whom no barriers were needed, no masks put in place.
I had always been something of a coward when it came to love, and women in general. My last experience with Courtney and her trust issues were evidence enough of that. Seeing the strength in her eyes spurred me on, giving me a righteous kick in the ass to not let whatever this woman was in front of me drift away and out of my life.
For once in my life I said fuck it to the consequences and I took the risk.
“Sure.”
I stood up and the two of us walked out of the restaurant, and into a future that neither of us expected, but which we would embrace together.
<Forever Forward>
March 3 2021
Looking out at the night sky I stared up at the moon, ever since Rogue’s entrance into my life I’d had more appreciation for it. It was the closest celestial neighbor to Earth, and the only one we had visited so far so it held a certain charm. It represented what we could do and what we were destined to do. It was the gateway to the stars and the people living out among them.
Rogue’s ears perked up and she quickly straightened,
“What?” I asked recognizing the signs of alarm.
She bolted from my lap without a word out into the back yard. I doubted the squirrels were making a return considering how many she had caught, so I quickly followed her.
In the moonlight I had to keep my eyes focused on Rogue’s clothes, since her skin was phasing in and out of her camo. She favored darker toned clothes so it still wasn’t easy but I was by this point pick her out in the darkness.
“Hello!” said Rogue to something at her feet, in a tone I had never heard her use in the entire time we had been together.
She was speaking to something at her feet, and stooping down she quickly collected whatever it was.
Darting back toward me I blinked I stared at the small ball of fur in her hands, a little jet black kitten that couldn’t be more than five weeks old by the looks of it. Just old enough to have been weened. The little thing looked healthy enough but it was plainly not happy with its current predicament, telling us so with its little disgruntled growls.
“I found a kitten!” she held the small thing out to me, the kitten let out another pitiful meow.
“Yes you did, we’re not keeping it.”
“Yes we are! She’s named Nakja!”
I took me a moment to mentally switch gears and translate, “Darkness? Might be in your language but it’s still not a very original name, we’re not keeping a kitten!”
“Yes we are!” Said Rogue as she raised the small ball of fur and chaos to her cheek, the small thing had seemingly figured out that the alien was its best bet for affection and rubbed up against her purring. Rogue’s own purrs quickly joined in.
“No.”
“Yes!”
“We keep it for the night! Then we make sure it has a good home, we are not keeping it!” I said.
Both Rogue and the small kitten gave me a look that told me I was completely wrong.
May 26 2021
I woke to the contented purring of the two creatures that were effectively running my life. Rogue was from what I could tell hugging most of my lower body, her head resting on my stomach. Nakja was on my chest curled up into a ball of fur which I knew could in mere moments spout claws and attack me if I moved.
Slowly as to not to disturb either of the vicious creatures I picked up Rogue’s tablet and dutifully continued to read through everything. I was getting better with her language, and we were trying to speak it exclusively at home. Anthropological data and cultural analysis were not light reading even in English though so it was still slow going.
I had pieced most of what I would need together and at this point I was just trying to figure how to do everything. Some things would be impossible, the correct meal afterwards for example, but she would understand.
As I continued to read the sunlight slowly crept across the bed, and Rogue twitched away from it trying to stay in dreamland.
After several minutes avoiding the rising sun she finally opened her eyes.
“Good morning,” I said as I put the tablet down.
“Good morning!” said Rogue as she slowly moved up the bed so she was right next to me.
Reaching out she began to stroke Nakja, who realizing that it was Rogue petting her promptly uncurled and pushed her head into Rogue’s hand.
For several minutes we all just basked, moments like these were what had made me realize I was really in love with Rogue. To simply be with someone and not even feel the need to speak, to just enjoy being with that person. Her being an alien was something that didn’t even really play into it, that was just who she was like her skin color or hair.
“I have to go out and do some errands today, when will the two of you release me?”
Rogue smiled, and shifted slightly so that the sheet covering her body fell away exposing her skin to the sun and my eyes.
“Are you sure you want to leave?” she asked playing innocent.
It took me a moment to recover from her very obvious and not unappreciated distraction, “No, but I have to get them done at some point.”
“Later then,” Rogue pushed the kitten off of my chest, ever complacent to her demands it promptly hopped off of the bed and quickly walked out of the room no doubt to claw up another corner of the couch.
Rogue leaned forwards and planted a kiss on my lips, and I didn’t care what the cat was doing to the stupid couch for the next hours or so.
<Odd Requests>
“What is it you are looking for?” asked the jeweler.
I looked up from the display in front of me, he was dressed impeccably to the nines in suit a hard contrast to my jeans and t-shirt but I paid it no mind.
“Titanium, what do you have in titanium?” I asked.
The man frowned, “What specifically are you looking for?”
I pulled out the rough sketch I had made copied from Rogue’s tablet, “A cuff bracelet of sorts, fitted to go over the forearm.”
The man picked up my rough sketch, “And you said you wanted this made of titanium? That would make it quite expensive in raw material alone.”
“That’s fine, do you know where I can get a bracelet like it?”
The man considered me for a moment, “I would have to call our warehouse. If you’re willing to pay a stocking fee I can have a selection of bracelets like this in by tomorrow.”
I pulled out my credit card.
“So you want the meal to have meat that is hardly cooked?” asked the owner.
I nodded, “Two meals actually. I’ll need mine a little more on the well done, but my girlfriends foreign and her largest complaint about American cooking is that we burn our meat.”
The owner smiled and waved his hand, “That’s easy enough, we get these kinds of requests all of the time. She French?”
“Something like that,” I said.
The man chuckled, “Alright are there any other special considerations?”
“We’re going to need a heater up on the deck, it’s not supposed to be cold but she’s anemic so she gets chilled easily.”
“That’s easy enough.”
“Other than that I have no idea, what do people usually do?”
“I could try and upsell you a whole lot of other fluff, but neither of you are going to remember it. I’m also getting the impression it won’t matter.”
“What makes you say that?”
The man smiled, “This is not cheap, and if you don’t mind me saying so you don’t look like your flush with money. This will be special without any extra embellishment. The extra stuff is for the rich guys and their arm candy. I can’t charge the ones who are really in love that kinds of fee.”
“How can you tell we’re really in love?”
The old man leaned back in his chair, “I can tell, you look about as giddy as I felt back then. You at least love her, so I’m betting she loves you.”
Making it home for the night I found the house dark, like it had been when Rogue was at the peak of her cycle. Opening the door I found that the heat was cranked to the max despite the much warmer weather outside as well.
Stepping inside I slowly crept around the dark hallways of the house.
“Rogue?” I asked keeping my voice as low as possible not sure exactly what was going on.
There was a thud and a yowl looking down the hallway for the source of the noise I barely saw the black blur that was the cat as she shot down the hallway, claws scrabbling on the tile as she bolted.
Rogue was chasing after her, almost as impossible to see in the darkness.
Nakja bolted into the living room with Rogue right behind her and within moments I heard another crash. Tentatively I walked into the room and flipped on the light.
The couch was on its side and one of the cheaper side tables that usually held the remotes for the TV and everything else was crushed underneath Rogue who was squeezing the cat against her.
Nakja looked thoroughly displeased but held like she was she had no opportunity to scratch at Rogue.
“What’s going on?” I asked not sure I wanted to know.
Rogue smiled, “I’m teaching her how to hunt!”
She released the cat, which instead of turning on her leapt out of Rogue’s arm and streaked towards me. Backing away I tripped over something and fell on my ass, the devil of a cat hissed at me once and then shot away back into the dark depths of the house.
“What the hell did I do?” I asked.
The cat didn’t answer.
Slowly I got back to my feet.
“You finish all of those things you had to do?” asked Rogue.
I nodded, “Yep, I also made us dinner reservations for next Saturday.”
Rogue smiled, “Where are we going?” she asked.
“That Italian place down by the water.”
Her eyes lit up, “Oh, fancy!”
<Netflix IV>
“You mean this actually happened?” asked Rogue.
I nodded, “It’s based on true events, for once Hollywood had to cut some danger from the movie. They had so many things go wrong on Apollo 13 that it’s nothing short of a miracle.”
Rogue shook her head in amazement, “Humans are crazy! You did how many of these missions?”
“Six that landed, at least two more that didn’t actually land. Apollo 10 was a test run, and you’re watching what happened to 13.”
She looked back at the movie.
“Still crazy.”
“Most astronauts back then were crazy, they were military test pilots. The current breed are crazy but not in the same way.”
Rogue leaned back against me and smiled, “You think I’m crazy?” she asked.
I laughed, “Well I won’t deny I’m envious but from what you told me you never even turned the gravity off. So it was like an airplane ride.”
“True. Still, we never got to land on anything under our own power.”
“You sent probes out like us though, and from what I read you had people in orbit during the war like we did during our cold war.”
“Yeah, we never had a moon to land on though, so the first foray would have been to another planet. I guess humans were lucky.”
“I guess so, I look back on stuff like Apollo and its crazy. We went to the moon with less computational power than what’s in my pocket!”
“Still think about it, humans are going to do some crazy stuff in space!” said Rogue.
I sighed and looked over at the movie, the three astronauts were just beginning to re-enter the atmosphere. The music was cresting toward silence and for the next few minutes both of us watched in silence.
“That’s if we can get through the stupid bureaucracy,” I growled.
“That must be the one thing that’s consistent across every world. Everyone hates politicians.”