Buck Read online

  It was a big deal, and Bea was determined to make sure she didn’t regret it.

  “Where’s Cecily?” Beatrix asked.

  “Out for coffee,” Kate replied. “I swear she has ten best friends to say goodbye to in every city.”

  Their other roommate, Cecily, was a special effects and make-up pro. Cecily had been in the business a long time and was a total extrovert to boot.

  “Is Solo with her?” Bea asked.

  Kirk smirked.

  Kate elbowed him.

  “Yes,” she said. “But I wouldn’t read anything into it.” She leaned her head against Kirk’s chest.

  For a moment, Beatrix envied their easy familiarity.

  Kate and Kirk had gotten together a few days ago, on the last night of the con, and they had been inseparable ever since. Kate had railed against mating with the big alien for a day or two, but from the outside their joining had seemed inevitable.

  Beatrix, on the other hand, had never really been in a serious relationship. High school had been a battlefield and the art school she attended afterward had mostly female students and was completely cutthroat. There had been no time to date.

  Now she was in her twenties and as inexperienced as she’d been in middle school. She’d learned to flirt like a champion to cover up her lack of experience, but she often wondered where on Earth she was supposed to find a guy who would put up with a woman who didn’t even know how a relationship was supposed to work.

  “Right here,” Buck said from the living room floor.

  Beatrix just about spit out her coffee.

  “This is where you were sitting when you lost your lucky pencil,” he said. “And look.”

  He held it aloft triumphantly.

  It was a simple but perfectly weighted metal mechanical pencil that Bea’s mom had bought her for her sixteenth birthday - a bright moment in an otherwise gloomy year.

  “Thank you so much,” Bea said, dashing over to retrieve it from him. “I couldn’t find it anywhere.”

  He smiled up at her.

  For a moment she was transfixed by his deep brown eyes.

  Then she remembered herself and snatched the pencil from him, relishing its solid weight in her hand.

  “Thank you,” she murmured, retreating back to the kitchen in a hurry.

  “My pleasure,” he said in a way that had shivers going down her spine.

  Damned sexy alien.

  Maybe where on Earth wasn’t exactly the right question anymore…

  But she had a mission to accomplish. There was no time to moon over him. And it was harder and harder to flirt with him the more she began to realize she might actually like him.

  “Well, let me know how I can help you get packed,” Kate offered. “We’ve got a movie to watch on the way that I think you’ll like.”

  “What movie?” Beatrix asked.

  “Oh, just wait and see,” Kate winked. “Cecily will be back in twenty minutes though, so we’d better boogie.”

  Bea downed her last sip of coffee and headed to her room to stuff her clothes in the graffiti-covered bag that passed for her luggage.

  4

  Buck

  Buck felt like a king.

  He was tucked into a double seat with Beatrix in a vehicle the women had described as a stretch SUV. To their right, Cecily and Solo were in a similar seat, and to their left, Kate and Kirk were snuggled into a double seat of their own.

  The gentle motion of the car and Bea’s nearness had lulled Buck into a sort of ecstatic stupor.

  “I can’t believe we’re going to Baltimore in this thing,” Cecily said with a smile.

  “Carol likes me to travel in style,” Kate said with a shrug. “Her theory is that if we insist on the best accommodations, we’ll also get the best pay.”

  “Does it work?” Beatrix asked.

  “I’m not complaining,” Kate said with a smile. “I get paid to stay in a fancy rental and sit in front of a crowd of people getting complimented for work I did when I was fifteen years old. They could literally pay me anything and it would feel like I was stealing it.”

  “Sounds like fun to me,” Beatrix said.

  “Well, if you think that sounds fun, wait until we get the movie going,” Cecily said.

  “Seriously, guys, I’m dying to see what the surprise is,” Beatrix said.

  “What else are you dying to see?” Cecily asked with a smile.

  “What are you talking about?” Bea asked.

  “We all know who the headliners are at the con in Baltimore,” Kate said. “Isn’t there one you’d like to spend some extra time with?”

  Bea rolled her eyes and slumped back in her seat.

  Kate and Cecily laughed.

  “I want to talk with Dirk Malcolm about the movie for professional reasons,” Bea said. “That’s all.”

  “Oh, okay,” Cecily said. “Then hopefully you’ll get some professional enjoyment out of this.”

  Cecily pressed the remote and an image filled the TV screen opposite their seats.

  It was a galaxy, but not one whose parameters Buck had studied. He didn’t see how that was possible. No one on Earth had more celestial knowledge than he did.

  Music began to play as names flashed across the screen.

  Credits. So it was a movie. Fiction. That explained it.

  Buck didn’t recognize the first name that popped up, but the second was Dirk Malcolm. This must be one of his movies.

  He looked over at Beatrix, trying to figure out what was going on and why she was embarrassed about talking to Dirk Malcolm about her own movie.

  She was smiling and shaking her head.

  On the screen, the camera panned over a rocky landscape.

  “That’s Greenfield Gorge,” Cecily informed them. “It was practically in my backyard.”

  “They filmed this in your hometown?” Kate asked. “That’s awesome. So you actually got to meet Dirk Malcolm when he looked like that?”

  “‘Fraid not,” Cecily chuckled. “This was shot before I was born. My Aunt Stacy, on the other hand…”

  “No way.”

  “If you believe her stories, she did a lot more than meet him.”

  “From what I’ve heard about Dirk Malcolm,” Kate said, “I don’t doubt it.”

  There was shared laughter at this, although Buck wasn’t exactly sure why.

  “So this movie was popular in your youth?” Buck asked, hoping to bring the conversation back to an area he understood.

  “It was on TV all the time when I was in elementary school,” Bea said. “I must’ve watched it a hundred times.”

  “I bet you did,” Kate teased.

  “I can turn it off if you want,” Cecily offered.

  “No,” Bea said quickly. “You started it up - now we have to see it through.”

  “Excellent,” Kirk said, wrapping his arm around Kate.

  Buck leaned back to watch as well, wondering if he dared stretch his arms and then lower one onto the back of Bea’s seat, as he had seen done in numerous movies.

  Buck and his brothers had watched many movies in preparation for their time on Earth. They were meant to be a cultural reference point and a model for their manners and behavior.

  But Dr. Bhimani had told the men that the films they had watched on Aerie were all from an era several decades ago, the 1980s, and that many things had changed on Earth since then.

  This movie wasn’t quite as old as the ones he’d seen, but it wasn’t current either, if it came from a time before the girls were even born. He was curious to see how the movie would differ from those he’d seen.

  As he watched the screen, Buck determined that movies had not changed much at all in the time between the eighties and the filming of this one.

  He was easily able to follow the plot, which told the story of a young woman, a spaceship mechanic from Earth, who was stranded on a strange planet where the only man who could help her was not human, yet somehow had all the basic human components -
two eyes, two arms, two legs, and a muscular abdomen. The main difference seemed to be his skin, which was the pleasing color of a ripe blueberry.

  At one point in the movie, the alien bent to repair something on the woman’s ship.

  “What the heck is he doing? She’s the actual mechanic of that ship,” Cecily yelled at the screen.

  “They have never adequately explained how the ship works,” Solo said disdainfully.

  “Nobody cares how the ship works,” Kate said. “We just want to see her fall in love with that big sexy alien.”

  “I feel like I’m getting déjà vu for some reason,” Bea teased, giving Kate and Kirk a significant look.

  “I’m not surprised,” Kate said, with a straight face. “How many times have you watched this one?”

  Bea covered her face with her hands.

  Something began to occur to Buck.

  He looked at Bea and then at the big blue man on the screen.

  Could she be… in love with him?

  Was this why her friends wanted to surprise her with the movie?

  He didn’t want to believe it.

  But it felt true.

  His stomach felt like it was dropping to the floor of the car.

  “Can you believe you’re about to meet Dirk Malcolm in real life?” Kate asked Bea.

  Bea shook her head slowly.

  Cecily laughed.

  “Shhh,” Kate shushed them, indicating the screen. “He’s going to kiss her.”

  They all watched as the alien on the screen grabbed the mechanic by the shoulders as they shared a lingering kiss.

  It was going to be a long ride.

  5

  Beatrix

  Beatrix took a sip of her wine, leaned back in the garden chair and looked up at the sky through the vines growing on the trellis overhead.

  It was hard to believe they were in Baltimore. The rooftop garden on this rental was so lush and isolated, she might have been a million miles away from anyone.

  Say what you wanted about Kate’s manager, Carol, she certainly came through when it came to five star accommodations.

  While the others unpacked, Beatrix and Cecily had come outside to get a little work done.

  Not that Bea was getting much accomplished.

  She frowned at the notepad perched on her legs.

  Instead of the letter she was supposed to be drafting it was covered in doodled butterflies. She couldn’t seem to stop drawing them lately, especially when her mind wandered.

  “You getting stuck with that?” Cecily asked, looking up from the scaled glove she was working on.

  “I’m a writer,” Bea said. “Putting together a letter to pitch the movie should be easy.”

  “It’s not the same thing,” Cecily said. “But you did write pitch letters to investors before. What’s different now?”

  Beatrix sighed. She hated to say it.

  “It’s Carson, isn’t it?” Cecily asked.

  “Yes,” Bea admitted. “He was my first successful pitch and it was in person. One of the people in his group introduced me. Once I had their backing, their participation was one of the main things I led with in these letters. Now that they aren’t part of this, it’s harder to know how to project confidence that the thing will be fully funded.”

  “Are you really worried about it?” Cecily asked.

  “I need a lot of money, really fast,” Beatrix said. “And I went to my most likely prospects first.”

  “I’ll talk to a few people tomorrow,” Cecily said. “See if I can find out who’s looking for a good project.”

  Beatrix watched her friend push the needle through the glove she was working on, connecting another iridescent scale to the leather with a stitch so tiny it was invisible. Watching Cecily sew was almost hypnotic.

  There was a knock.

  “Um, hello?” Bea called.

  “Hello,” Buck’s deep voice floated through the trees. “I didn’t want to interrupt your work. But I thought you might want something to eat.”

  There was a rustling of greenery and then he appeared with a tray in his hands.

  The setting sun put a halo around his head.

  He smiled down at her and she felt her heart stutter.

  Beatrix just stared up at him.

  “It’s only cheese and crackers,” he said, bending to place the tray on the table between Bea and Cecily. “But we’re going to order in as soon as you guys are finished.”

  “Thank you,” she managed.

  “Is there anything else I can do to help?” he asked.

  Images of him naked, helping her relieve stress in the most pleasant way, streaked through her head.

  Beatrix buttoned her lips and shook her head.

  “Thanks so much,” Cecily said. “This is really nice.”

  “My pleasure,” Buck said. But he was looking at Beatrix.

  He winked at her and then disappeared back into the garden in the direction of the apartment.

  “He really likes you,” Cecily mused.

  “Only because he doesn’t know any better,” Beatrix said.

  “Don’t joke,” Cecily said. “That’s one thing you can’t do with these guys, Bea. Falling in love is the whole world to them. It’s everything.”

  “I know,” Bea said.

  She did know. And she was beginning to think that her getting together with Buck might be inevitable. The physical attraction was too much for her to resist.

  And he shared her fascination with art, something she had never expected. He’d spent hours watching her sketch. It was odd that he would want to watch her arduous process, and stranger still that she could bear to let him. She generally hid her work from view until it was complete.

  Besides the pull of his unbearably hot body, and their shared interest in art, he was also genuinely a nice guy.

  And Cecily was right - he really did like her.

  If she thought she was going to hang onto her heart in the face of that onslaught, she really was crazy.

  She just hoped they could take their time. There was a lot going on in her life with the movie. And Buck had to learn literally everything about being human.

  But maybe they could go slowly.

  Maybe they could even start tonight…

  Cecily began to sew again, her needle dancing between the shimmering scales.

  Bea munched on a piece of cheese and watched, mesmerized.

  “You know what’s funny?” Cecily asked dreamily as if she were hypnotized by her own stitches too.

  “Hm?” Bea asked.

  “If you got together with him, your funding problem would go away,” Cecily said. “As soon as the media got wind that you were with an alien literally everyone would want to make your movie.”

  She looked over at Bea, eyes dancing.

  And Bea realized, with a sinking feeling, that her friend was right.

  If she were dating an alien, then she could write her ticket.

  And just like that, the door that had opened to the idea of getting together with Buck slammed shut again.

  Bea was going to be a self-made woman. She had no interest in riding on anyone’s coattails.

  If her friends could help her get meetings that was one thing. She would still have to land the funding on the merits of her own proposal, based on the strength of her creation.

  But utilizing Buck in that way was unacceptable. First of all because she respected him and didn’t want to use him. Secondly because she wanted to protect him from the media circus that would surely descend with that kind of publicity.

  But the real reason was that she didn’t want to use anyone at all.

  If she made the film because of alien star power, it would be a spectacle and nothing more. None of the great minds she had dreamed of collaborating with would give her honest feedback to make it a great movie. They would all be kissing up because they wouldn’t want to offend the woman with the bona fide alien.

  It was going to be hard, but Bea needed to
back off from whatever was happening between herself and Buck, at least a little.

  At least until she had the film underway.

  A little voice in the back of her head screamed that feelings couldn’t be put in a schedule.

  But, as she often did, Bea ignored the little voice.

  She knew what she wanted. And being with Buck wasn’t the right way to get it.

  6

  Buck

  Buck looked around the immense convention hall.

  Though he knew this was another city and another comic convention, it was very similar to the Philadelphia Comic Con in appearance, sounds and even smells.

  Attendees waited outside in a rainbow of costumes and make-up, talking and laughing excitedly.

  He watched from inside the main hall as the vendors prepared for the con to begin. He took in the smell of the popcorn machine and the fluttering of comics and posters being paged through and placed on the tables. And there were the familiar faces of the artists and actors, many of whom were on the convention circuit along with Beatrix and her friends.

  “Hey, Beatrix,” another artist called. She had pink hair and purple eyeglasses, so Buck had to look at her twice to recognize her. In Philadelphia, she’d had purple hair and pink glasses.

  “Hey Q,” Bea called back to her.

  The woman continued affixing posters to the board behind her table. Each depicted a small horse with a different logo on its haunches. Bea had explained to Buck that these little horses had been popular a long time ago, but he had already recognized the little ponies from the advertising in some of the films in the time capsule he’d watched to learn about Earth.

  He found it comforting to have a frame of reference for some of the things here. There were star fighters from a movie war that he recognized, and familiar superheroes too.

  If only this amount of 1980s culture were still relevant in the outside world, he would be much better prepared.

  “Are you coming?” Bea asked.