Page 15 of Kien's Kindred

“I don’t want to play this game anymore.”

Kien was good at I Spy. Like, really good. How could he not be with that freakishly perfect vision of his? Most of the things he spotted she couldn’t even verify. How was she supposed to see a bee on the windshield of the car in front of them?

Kien gave her one of his throaty laughs. He was just so full of them today. “Don’t be a sore loser. You’re the one who suggested we play this game.”

“Yeah, because I thought it would give us something to do and it would help to keep my mind off of...” Riding in the car with him and his delicious smell.

“I spy with my little eye, a black cat.”

There was no point in trying to spot where a cat might be. Kien could’ve saw one deep in the cornfield or walking across the street six miles ahead. She yawned and freed one hand from the steering wheel to rub her tired eyes.

“You could teach me how to drive and I can take over for you.” His voice had lost the laughter and was now filled with sincerity.

“So, you can kill us both?” Nisha let out a very unlady like snort. “LOL. I think not.”

As Kien straightened, the leather seat creaked under his weight. “I was piloting spaceships while you were learning how to tap dance.”

Nisha held back the retort on the tip of her tongue. “Wait. How did you know I used to tap?”

When she was in grade school, she’d wanted to do ballet, but her mother thought tap was a better option because she had a thing for Shirley Temple. It was one of the pitfalls of having older parents.

Kien didn’t answer right away. His eyes were on the road and when they passed a big red barn, he pointed at the house next to it. “Black cat.”

She didn’t bother to look over because she knew a cat would be somewhere near, whether she could see it or not. “You won. Now tell me how you know I used to tap.”

Kien leaned over to rummage through the snack bag she’d gotten him from the gas station. “I saw pictures posted on the social media app.”

Nisha searched her brain for what he could be talking about. She would never post any pictures of her tap-dancing days. She’d hated every minute of her two-year stint. It was only after that her mother had finally enrolled her in ballet. That was the deal they’d had.

“Wait. My mom posted some throwback pictures a while back.”

The noise of bags of chips and candy bars were the only sounds coming from his side of the car.

“Were you stalking me on social media?”

“Stalking,” he said in an indignant tone. “That’s a stretch. I merely did my research on who you were before taking you to our spaceship. You would want to know who I was if the circumstances were different.”

She would. In fact, before their ill-fated date, she’d tried to look him up and couldn’t find anything about him. After she found out he was an alien, his lack of presence on social media had made sense.

“Incoming call from The Kidnapper.”

Nisha declined the call quickly.

“Why don’t you answer your mother?”

“Because she only wants to ask me questions about you, and I’ve already told her too much as it is.”

* * *

“WE NEED GAS,” NISHAsaid.

They had been quiet for the past hour. He’d gawked at everything they’d passed while she’d hummed softly to the music. Earth was so different than many of the other planets he’d visited. It was rustic and new at the same time.

They were on the verge of technological breakthroughs, but humans didn’t have the wherewithal to make the next logical leap, and it was because to them, the leap wasn’t so logical.

What amazed him more than anything was despite the sheer number of humans that occupied Earth, there were still wide-open spaces of land everywhere.

He tried his best to memorize everything about this moment, even Nisha’s humming. Kien hadn’t engaged her in conversation just so he could listen to her. She knew every song that played. He even knew when a particular song was her favorite because she would perk up and tap the steering wheel with her slender fingers as she did now.

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