By the end of her second drink, Jarmuk could tell that Maisie was starting to really feel the effects of her cocktails. He tried to discourage her from ordering a third one right away, but she insisted.

  “They’re so yummy,” she slurred in Universal. Jarmuk spoke excellent universal, but he still had trouble understanding what she’d said.

  “Fine, but let’s order some cheese sticks too, then.” Maybe if she got some food in her, she’d slow down a bit on the tipsiness scale.

  She ate hungrily when the cheese sticks arrived, remarking over and over that she couldn’t believe that even Zocrone had cheese sticks.

  “It’s like the one food that’s universally loved, on every planet, in every galaxy. Cheese sticks. Everyone loves cheese sticks. It’s like the greatest, most unifying food of all time.”

  While she waxed philosophical about the qualities of cheese sticks, she downed the rest of her third cocktail, and then hiccupped loudly before calling to the bartender for a fourth one.

  “Maisie, it’s getting late. Maybe it’s time to get home.” Jarmuk was starting to feel a bit badly that Maisie was out getting drunk because of him. If he hadn’t insisted on her spending time with him, she would have hidden out at home and not been tripping all over her words. But now that she was here, and rapidly consuming the strongest cocktail on the menu, she didn’t want to leave.

  “No way,” she slurred. “You haven’t even taught me galactic ball yet, like you promised.”

  Jarmuk didn’t remember promising to teach her galactic ball, but it sounded like a good idea to him nonetheless. Maybe if she stood up and realized how drunk she was, she’d slow her roll a bit. “Great idea. Let’s go play.”

  As they were leaving the barstools, Jarmuk flagged the bartender down and asked him to water down Maisie’s cocktails a bit. “There’s a couple extra credits’ worth of tips in it for you, man. This girl isn’t used to Zocronian drinks, and I’m afraid she’s going to wake up in the morning with a killer headache.”

  The bartender nodded, and Jarmuk took a secret sip of Maisie’s next drink to check on it. The drink was definitely watered down, but apparently not enough to slow down Maisie’s drunkenness. The girl was laughing and stumbling all over the place as Jarmuk tried to teach her how to play galactic ball.

  “Look, you take one of the neon colored balls, and you stand behind the line. Then you roll it across the board, trying to get it into one of the holes. Each hole represents a planet, and the smaller the hole the more points the planet is worth. So for example, Mognerth is only worth fifty points, but Xeynus is worth one hundred. And Vositurn is worth five hundred.”

  “It’s kind of like skee ball,” Maisie said with a hiccup and a giggle.

  “Skee ball?”

  “Yeah, skee ball. You know it. It’s at all the kids’ birthday party places.” She giggled again, like she’d just told some sort of funny joke.

  “Right. Must be an Earth thing. And apparently you’ve forgotten that we’re not on Earth at the moment. Anyway, you get six shots per round. Usually the game is played in rounds of three, and whoever has the most points at the end of the three rounds is the winner. Pretty straightforward.”

  “I need another drink before we start.”

  Jarmuk sighed. “Maisie, you’re gonna have a killer hangover tomorrow if you don’t stop. In fact it might already be too late for that.”

  “I’m invincinible. Inivincibubble. Invincincin.”

  “Invincible?”

  “Yeah. That.” Another giggle. Then she walked off to get another drink. Jarmuk let her go. She wasn’t exactly walking straight anymore, but she was still walking, at least. Maybe once she started playing, she’d get distracted by the game and not down drinks so fast. Jarmuk had never seen a Zocronian drink Absolute Zeros so quickly, let alone a human. The cocktails tasted deceptively sweet and mild, but most Zocronians knew enough to know that they needed to pace themselves with these cocktails. Maisie though? She was drinking the things like juice.

  A few minutes later, she stumbled back toward the galactic ball tables, holding a new cocktail glass. She must have lost half the cocktail to sloshing on her erratic walk back, but Jarmuk figured that was probably a good thing. He mouthed an “I’m sorry,” to the Zocronian waitress who was following behind Maisie with a dishrag, cleaning up the liquid mess Maisie was leaving in her wake. The waitress just laughed and waved at Jarmuk. Everyone was in too much of a good mood tonight to be angry over something like cleaning up after the famous Maisie Scotts.

  When Maisie got back to the galactic ball table Jarmuk had claimed, she wanted to start the game right away. Thankfully, this meant that she put her drink down. Jarmuk handed her a neon galactic ball and pointed at the board. She rolled the ball short, not even close to hitting any of the holes. But she only giggled and asked for another ball. This one, she accidentally threw behind her, narrowly missing a Zocronian woman who glared at both of them, then stood and made her way to a table across the room before Jarmuk could even apologize. When the third ball was thrown straight up toward the ceiling and came straight back down, narrowly missing hitting Maisie squarely on top of the head, Jarmuk decided it was time to go, whether Maisie wanted to or not.

  “Come on,” he said, grabbing her arm and pulling her away from the galactic ball game, and away from her drink. “Time to go.”

  To his surprise, she didn’t fight him all that much. “Is the bar closing?” she asked.

  “Um, for you it is.”

  She only giggled, and he led her out of the bar with a shout to the bartender. “Close my tab using the account I have on file. And give yourself a thirty percent tip.”

  The bartender saluted him, and Jarmuk grimaced thinking about how pricey all of those Absolute Zeros were going to be. Not that it really mattered. He’d been working so hard, and saving so carefully his whole life, that one night out at the bar wasn’t going to hurt him that much, no matter how many drinks he bought. But it was still hard to get past the mentality of never having enough money. He’d lived that way for so long that it was still hard for him to shake the feeling of being one missed paycheck away from financial disaster.

  Several pairs of curious eyes watched as Jarmuk made his way toward the door. Everyone here knew who Maisie and Jarmuk were, and he imagined that the gossip mill was going to be churning tonight. No one would be able to pass up the opportunity to talk about whether Jarmuk and Maisie were an item. Jarmuk had already seen a few people surreptitiously taking pictures on their e-assistants. Well, let them take pictures. He wasn’t ashamed of being seen with Maisie, and besides, a simple picture of them together didn’t prove anything. They were friends, after all. What was the big deal of them being at a bar together?

  Jarmuk had a feeling that Maisie might not be so easygoing about the gossip, though. She was sending him mixed signals—one minute acting like she would have loved nothing more than to head to a private room with him and make love all over again, and the next minute holding him at arm’s length, like they weren’t even close friends. If she herself wasn’t sure about where she wanted things with Jarmuk to stand, she certainly wasn’t going to be thrilled if she found out that the entire city dome was discussing the issue.

  But right now, Maisie was blissfully drunk. She didn’t seem to be able to tell where she was, and she hardly seemed to notice when they passed from the loud inside of the bar to the much quieter outside city streets.

  “Did the band stop playing?” she asked, then hiccupped. “I liked that song.”

  Jarmuk sighed. “Yeah, the band stopped. It’s time to go home now. Where do you live?”

  Another hiccup. “On Zocrone!” she dissolved into giggles.

  “Right. Well, care to elaborate a bit? If I have to search every square inch of this city dome, it’s going to be a long night.”

  “I live in an apartment!”

  “Okay, that’s progress. Can you tell me which apartment building?”

  Maisie frowned and appeared to be thinking really hard about this for several long moments. Finally, she shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

  Jarmuk chewed his lower lip so hard he was surprised he didn’t draw blood. “Okay. Well, can you try a little harder to remember? I’ve got to get you home, and I can’t do that unless I know where you live.”

  Maisie shrugged. “I forgot my address.”

  Another hiccup. Jarmuk heard the click of a camera, and he looked to his left to see someone behind a big fern taking pictures on their e-assistant. He frowned, and started pulling Maisie along. “Well, come on. Maybe if we start walking, you’ll remember.”

  He doubted she would, but he wanted to get away from the front of the bar, where he was certain more than one person was spying on them. Perhaps they didn’t mean any harm with their stalkerish behavior, but Jarmuk didn’t want any more pictures of drunken Maisie to be taken. And he definitely didn’t want a bunch of people to overhear Maisie talking about how she couldn’t remember where her apartment was, because this left him one final choice as far as he could see. He would just have to take Maisie to his place. He wasn’t going to spend an hour trying to figure out where she lived, while any bystander on the seat watched and fed the news to the gossip mill. Zocronians were mostly nice people, and they had left Maisie and Jarmuk alone at the bar tonight, as he’d known they would. But that didn’t change the fact that Zocronians loved to gossip. Something told Jarmuk that Maisie would not appreciate being at the center of all that gossip, and so he grabbed her hand and started walking quickly through the streets toward his place.

  Thankfully, the further away he got from the bar, the quieter the streets seemed to be. There weren’t as many people here, and he relaxed a bit. Maisie was as loud as ever, singing a song at the top of her lungs that he didn’t recognize at all. It was in Universal, not English, but he’d still never heard it before. Must have been from Earth, or at least from Galaxy Two.

  The walk to his house was a good forty-five minutes, though, especially at the drunken speed Maisie was walking. Eventually, she gave up singing and walked along in silence. Jarmuk hoped that meant she was sobering up a bit, but just when he thought the worst was over, she started giggling hysterically for no apparent reason.

  Jarmuk sighed. “You’re ridiculous, you know that?”

  He hadn’t expected an answer, but Maisie gave him one anyway. “I’ll have you know that I’m even more ridiculous than anyone on my crew.”

  He looked down at her and raised an amused eyebrow. “Is that so?”

  “Yes.” She nodded emphatically, her silky hair bouncing around her shoulders, she looked up at him and grinned, the light of Zocrone’s moon making her face glow in such a perfect way that it took all of Jarmuk’s energy not to lean down and kiss her. He didn’t want to take advantage of her right now. She obviously wasn’t even close to sober, and he wasn’t sure where things stood between them. He didn’t want to take advantage of her against her will, if she really wasn’t that into him. He cursed himself yet again for taking her to the bar instead of out to a nice dinner. He’d been trying to keep things laidback, but he hadn’t anticipated that she would decide she had to have the most alcoholic drink possible at Black Hole Brews. Sludge it, she should have stuck with beer. It was what the place was known for, and it didn’t knock you out nearly as fast. But too late for regrets now. Maisie had unintentionally gotten herself sloshed, and he felt responsible to at least get her somewhere she could safely sleep it off. On at least one positive note: he was enjoying the feeling of her leaning against him for balance. She had a tight hold on his elbow and had stumbled into him countless times. This wasn’t how he’d planned for the evening to go, but it wasn’t all bad, right?

  This was definitely not the worst walk home he’d ever had.

  Chapter Nine

  By the time they reached his house, a small but modern moonstone structure on the outskirts of the city dome, she was at least walking relatively straight. She was still going to have a killer headache in the morning, but maybe the alcohol was starting to slowly leave her system.

  “Where are we?” she asked, looking up at his house in wonder. “This place looks like a fairy cabin.”

  Jarmuk choked. He wasn’t sure how he felt about his house being called a fairy cabin. He also wasn’t sure what had made Maisie choose that description. It was a nice but fairly nondescript house by Zocronian standards. The backyard was bigger than average, which had been the one splurge Jarmuk had made when purchasing a place of his own. But Maisie wouldn’t have been able to see the backyard from here, and the front yard wasn’t that impressive.

  “Come on, banana,” he said. “You really are bananas. This is my house. Definitely not a fairy cabin.”

  She giggled and let him lead her into the house. He sat her down on the couch in the cozy living room and went to the kitchen to find something for her to drink that was not alcoholic. “Do you like plindu nectar?” he called out.

  “Never tried it,” she responded.

  Jarmuk decided to go for it. Plindu nectar was a sweet drink, and the humans all seemed to like sweet things. It was also a good choice for rehydrating after drinking too much alcohol. Something I’ve got a tiny bit of experience with, he thought wryly.

  He pushed a button on his drink dispenser which whirred to life and buzzed for a few moments. The door on the front of the machine opened, revealing a perfectly poured glass of plindu nectar. The neon juice glowed with a swirl of pink and orange colors, which Jarmuk knew always impressed non-Zocronians. Plindu nectar was an old Zocronian invention, and mixes for the stuff had sold well across Galaxy Four. Jarmuk wasn’t in the mood for plindu nectar right now, though. He frowned at the drink dispenser machine for a moment, trying to decide what to get for himself. He would have loved a sizzle juice right now, but he was all out of sizzle juice mix. The machine was well stocked on easnip mix, so he decided to settle for that. He pushed another button, and after a bit more whirring, a glass of easnip appeared.

  “That’s more like it.” The dark brown liquid was what those on Earth would have called soda. It was one of the few English words he knew, and he wasn’t sure where he’d even learned it, but it had always stuck in his mind. Perhaps because soda was one of his favorite drinks.

  When he got back to the living room, Maisie had managed to figure out how to work the digital photo album embedded into the top of his Zekkardite coffee table. She was flipping through pictures of his childhood, most of which also included Daxar, Toryx, and Kromin. The four of them had been inseparable back then. They were still inseparable now, but being adults didn’t allow them the luxury of hanging out in the treetops or at the city parks all day. Now they had to do adult things like go to work in the mines, or, in Daxar’s case, run the planet.

  “You guys have known each other a long time,” Maisie mused. She took the glass of plindu nectar that Jarmuk handed her, and thankfully managed not to spill any of it. Jarmuk took that as a good sign. She was sobering up quicker than he’d expected, especially for a human.

  “Yeah, Dax is like family to me. So are Toryx and Kromin. Which is really nice since everyone in my actual biological family has passed away by now.”

  “Hmm.” Maisie didn’t say much else for a few minutes, and Daxar wasn’t quite sure how to read her response. He let the silence linger as he drank his easnip, keeping a careful eye on Maisie. She got all the way to photos of his teenage years before she looked up at him again.

  “Why do you work in the mines? It’s so dangerous, and I’m sure Daxar would be willing to give you a job in the government.”

  Jarmuk laughed. “I’m sure he would. But the mines are in my blood. My father worked in them, and I knew from the day I was old enough to understand this sort of thing that I’d be working in the mines. Besides, Daxar works in the mines on a regular basis himself. He knows it’s dangerous, but we have lot of safety precautions in place. He thinks it’s important to know what’s going on down there. It’s the lifeblood of the Zocronian economy after all.”

  Maisie chewed her lower lip. “Still. There’s a difference between going down there to check on things, and being down there all day, every day. It’s so dangerous! Don’t you worry about your life?”

  Jarmuk laughed. “I don’t think about it that much, honestly. I can’t live every day as though I’m going to die that day. So I follow safety protocols as best I can, and get on with things. Unless I’m unlucky, things will be fine. And if I am unlucky, well…then I guess it was my time.”

  Maisie looked at him like he was crazy. “You’re insane. You’re a big deal in Zocrone. You know the Chief. You could have a cushy job and not have to come home with a face covered in grime every day.”

  “Says Grease Maisie.”

  “Yeah but that’s different. I’m only good at being a mechanic, and I know my place. I grew up so poor back on Earth. I’m lucky that I had a talent for machines and learned to use that talent, so that I had good work to do. I do alright now, but I still feel like an imposter. I still feel like people are going to figure out who I really am.”

  “Who you really are? Maisie, you can’t fake a talent like yours. You’re not an imposter. You’ve worked hard and you deserve your job and the money you make from it.”

 

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