Page 14 of Alien on the Moon

He took a sip of his Jolt and tapped his fingers on the cafeteria table. “So, for our next steps, we should take more samples and pinpoint what the soil is missing. Then, we can find plants that will replenish these nutrients.”

She forced herself to focus on the words coming out of his stupidly handsome face rather than the easy grace of him tapping his elegant fingers on the table. She was never going to make fun of her sisters for being easily distracted by the little things their husbands did ever again.

Okay, that may have been a lie. She was definitely still going to tease them about it. But she would be doing it knowing full well that she was a hypocrite.

“Elena?” Rylan waved a hand in front of her face. “Elena? Are you okay?”

She blinked, coming back to herself. Her cheeks burned a bright red. “Sorry. Must’ve zoned out for a second there.”

He smirked. “Daydreaming about Milkas?”

“Milpas,” she replied, but now that he mentioned it, she could go for a bite of her chocolate stash, too.Hmm…She arched an eyebrow. “That is, unless you’re trying to trick me into craving a chocolate bar so I’ll share.”

He pressed a hand over his heart in mock offense. “You wound me.”

“But…” She leaned in closer, looking up at him from under her lashes.

“But if you were to offer to share, I wouldn’t object.”

Sitting back, she barked out a laugh. “Knew it. You have a sweet tooth.”

“That’s an interesting hypothesis. The scientific method requires the repetition of an experiment,” he said, straightfaced. “I tried the dessert you call chocolate once and liked it. But to conclude that I have a sweet tooth, I would have to try it at least two more times to see if the hypothesis is correct.”

She rolled her eyes, playing the role of the begrudging assistant. “Well, if you insist for the sake of science… I may be able to find some for experimentation.”

Once they had finished their meal, she headed to her room for her stash of Earth-made processed junk food. As much as she liked the food on Thryal, something was comforting about the familiarity of food from her home planet, a reminder that no matter how far away she was, Earth was still there.

People at home still went about their business. They continued living, working, loving, and dying. And they all looked up at the sky and wondered if the little blue planet so full of life was alone in the universe. She was one of the privileged few who could say for certain that it wasn’t.

She fished a chocolate bar from her stash and opened it, taking half for herself and giving the other half to Rylan.

Grinning, he took a bite. “Trial two supports your hypothesis.” Craning his head over her shoulder, he studied the rest of the food in her stash. “Is all of this chocolate?”

“No, not all of it. I call this my homesickness stash. Because when you’re far from home, you miss the little things, like the food you eat that isn’t good for you but still tastes good and reminds you of road trips when you were a kid.” Scooting aside, she made a space for him on her bunk and patted it as an invitation for him to sit down.

Compared to Thryal, Earth seemed primitive and mundane, but Rylan always listened to her describe her home planet with rapt attention. He was brilliant, and she found that incredibly attractive.

She’d met plenty of smart guys so high off their own intelligence that they assumed they were the smartest people in any room and condescended to anyone who disagreed. Rylan wasn’t like that.

When she spoke, he listened. He never dismissed her, instead absorbing whatever she said and thinking through her ideas instead of opening his mouth and saying the first thing that popped into his head. And when it came to discussions of Earth, every little thing sounded like magic to him, making her see her home planet in a new light.

“What do you want to know?” she asked.

He picked up a bag of cheese puffs. “What are these? Is everything in this box edible?”

Laughing, she shook her head. She was glad she’d gone through that phase where she was fascinated by manufacturing products. “Of course, you would pick the hardest food for me to explain first. Do you remember the plant I talked about earlier as a part of the three sisters? Corn?”

He nodded.

“Well, these are made with that plant. Corn is a staple food in my world. You heat a dough made from it and extrude it through a machine. Then, you coat it in the curdled milk from an animal called a cow.”

He hummed thoughtfully. “It sounds complicated.”

“It is. But it’s also what we humans call junk food because it may not be healthy, but it tastes great.”

“I’ll have to try it sometime.” He picked up a bag of potato chips. “What about this one?”

And the world fell away from her. It had a habit of doing that when she was on the verge of a revelation. The potato chips set off a faint resonance, like hearing a familiar musical tune from across the house and trying to recall the name of the song.

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