Page 10 of My Christmas Alien Mate

He was a freaking alien.

An alien who came to do God knows what to our world, and I was thinking about flirting with him?

After I just had a near-death experience?

With a sigh and a scold toward my vainer self, I returned to the family room/kitchen and found him staring at our picture wall.

Since it had always been just Grampa and me, we might have overdone our picture wall slightly. At least fifty photos of us were plastered in sometimes tacky frames all over the wall.

Grampa and I by the Grand Canyon when I was seven, several Christmas shots of us, me, photos from my graduation days—kindergarten, eighth grade, high school, and several from college. Grampa had been so proud of me that day.

And in the center of it all were my parents, holding a baby, me, and smiling joyfully into the camera. Full of hopes and dreams of having a big family, which all came crashing down one night when they celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary and a drunk driver hit them.

"I like this," Galexor said when he noticed me watching him. "It's like snapshots of your life."

"Yeah." I joined him and stared at the pictures that had become so much a part of my surroundings that I had barely looked at them in years. They were like the old cabinet holding Grandma's valuable china or an unused footstool. There, but barely ever acknowledged.

"What is this?" he asked, pointing at a shot of Grampa and me proudly holding up an array of trout hung from a string, smiling brightly at the camera.

"That was a good fishing day," I said with nostalgia rising inside me. Grampa had loved to go fishing, but something about the slimy creatures and their death fights had turned me off from it, and I had seldom joined him on his fishing trips.

"Fishing?"

"Fish live in the water; some people catch and eat them," I explained badly.

"This tree?" he pointed at a picture of Grampa and me standing in front of a decorated Christmas tree, similar to the one I put up yesterday but hadn't managed to fully decorate yet.

"Is that the same?" Galexor nodded at the still half-decorated fir.

"No, we used to cut one down every year. Once they're cut down, they die after a few weeks, but they make the air smell incredibly nice when you burn them," I told him.

He wrinkled his forehead. "I don't see the sense in that."

"It's a Christmas tree," I tried to explain. "It's a holiday many people on Earth observe every year. It's to honor the birth of our God's son."

"Oh," that seemed to make sense to him. "And these boxes?" He tapped his finger against the many wrapped presents underneath the tree in the picture. Most of them had been for me. Grampa had always overdone it on Christmas and my birthdays, buying me presents from him and even more from my parents, because he said he knew how much they would have wanted to spoil me.

"They're wrapped presents we open on Christmas Day; well, most people do. Some open them the night before."

"And this guy? That's not your grampa?" His finger circled a picture of five-year-old me sitting on Santa's lap.

"No, that's Santa Claus."

"Santa Claus?"

I snickered. "It's a tale we tell children. Santa Claus comes every year for Christmas and leaves presents under the tree for them."

"Why?"

I wasn't sure if he was asking why Santa would do that or why we told this story to our children. "It's based on an old legend, and it makes the kids happy."

"Oh," he said, and stared at the red-clothed man, deep in thought. "That's kind of nice."

"You don't do that for your children? Or something similar?"

"We don't have Christmas."

"Do you have any other holidays? Birthdays?"

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