He grins. His teeth are perfectly white, and they aren’t razor-sharp. I’m not sure who I overheard say that. Probably a guy who felt inadequate considering this alien guy could put our bodybuilders to shame without breaking a sweat.
“No, I wouldn’t tell you to smile more.”
"Yeah, good. Otherwise, we would've had to have words." I cross my arms and nod. "Go on. Go."
“Do you need anything?” he asks.
“For you to leave. Do you know what leave means? I thought you guys had chips so you can understand our language. You aren’t ignorant, are you?”
“You don’t care about upsetting me.”
“You’re smiling. I doubt I’m upsetting you, and what? You trying to say I should play nice because you’re a Novan, and Heaven forbid I should say or do anything that would upset the almighty Novans.” I scoff and shake my head. “You can just go ahead and leave and forget you ever saw me.”
“I appreciate that you feel that you can speak openly with me,” he says.
“Yeah? Well, fuck you, alien guy. Leave my property now.”
“Or else?”
“You’re really testing me?”
He grins and winks. “No. I just wanted to know what the rest of your threat is. I trust you have something to back it up. Your tongue is quite biting, and your privacy clearly means a lot to me. I—”
“So aliens are psychiatrists now, are they? I don’t need you to try to figure me out. I’m not a puzzle you can fix. Back off and leave. I’m not going to tell you again.”
The alien nods and turns around.
I watch as he leaves. He’s not wearing a shirt, and his back muscles flex and relax as he walks. Sweat glistens and rolls down the grooves and planes of his hard body. I’m sure most women would be drooling at the sight, but not me. Men are pigs. They’re assholes. Takers. They act as if women owe them something. Honestly, it doesn’t matter if the man comes from Earth or Kurian or any other planet. They’re all the same, and they all think they’re gods and that they deserve whatever and whoever they want.
Not true. Not on my watch. I might have a five-finger discount wherever I go, but that’s necessary. As far back as I can remember, I’ve been on my own. I don’t know who my mom is or was. Never knew my dad. My earliest memory is my grabbing a cookie out of someone’s hand and running away as fast as my short, stubby legs would take me. At least I think it was a cookie. It tasted delicious, but I was so hungry at that point that I would’ve eaten mud filled with worms. When you’re stomach hurts because you haven’t eaten, you’ll settle for just about anything.
Of course, the person I stole the cookie or whatever from chased after me, but I knew holes and places to hide, and he chased me for a good distance, but he didn’t get a crumb back. I even remember licking my palms. So good.
I lick my lips now, just remembering. It’s stupid and ridiculous for me to want to be an inventor, but I’ve always been a tinker. It’s how I’ve survived. One time, I swiped a sandwich. The guy pointed a gun at me. I noticed that the mechanism was jammed and told him so. He didn’t listen to me, fired… the gun misfired, and he lost two fingers. Even though he was an idiot who deserved what he got, I fixed his gun for him. The guy gave me a few other weapons to check over and gave me some food and then money and parts.
But he was a member of some kind of gang, and gangs have rivals, and he got shot up. I sold most of the parts he gave me, and the money’s long gone. Some might call it blood money, but a girl’s got to eat, and I do what I need to in order to survive. Just stay alive. Keep moving forward. Those are my goals, and the way to keep moving forward is to always think ahead. I don’t want some kind of boring nine-to-five job. Yes, there are schools, high schools, colleges, degrees… For a time, none of that matter, but we’re civilized now. The world is getting back to rights, getting back to the way it had been pre-Grots, before the war. That means money and education and all of that is a priority again, but that’s bullshit. We know aliens are out there. We aren’t alone, and our first brush with them had almost ended with all of us dying. Now more than ever, we need better technology. We need advancements, and yes, I might not be an engineer or a mechanic. I might not know all of the proper terms, and I might make more than my fair share of mistakes, but I learn. I grow, and I adapt, and one day, the people on Earth will thank me for saving their sorry hides.
Or else they’ll all just pay me a lot of money for my inventions. That works too.
Around these parts, I’m known as the Fix-It girl. That works for me now, but eventually, Ava Kyle will be a household name. I hope. My stomach and my wallet both hope so too. Not that I own a wallet…
3
Rix
It's been about an hour since I left that strange woman behind. I only approached her in the first place because she sounded so frustrated, and there's good frustration and bad frustration. When you're sexually frustrated, that's a very good thing. Or not, I suppose. If your partner in bed is shitty and isn't doing it for you, then your sexual frustration is a serious problem. If your partner is superb, she’ll get you to the brink, frustrating the fuck out of you, and then she’ll deliver. It’s all in the delivery.
But this
