when Bash plucks my wrapper from my fingers and stuffs it in his pocket.
I wave to the recycling receptacle. “You don’t have to keep it in your pants. I could just—”
“Eavesdropping is AWESOME,” Gracie teases from the next table over.
“It is entertaining,” Dohrein agrees.
“Ditttto,” Angie sings from not far enough away.
I laugh. “Buzz off, all of you. I’m trying to help my alien,” I say, gesturing to Bash.
Bash’s body snaps taut. “‘My?’”
I hold up my hands. “Don’t freak out. You don’t have to worry about a horrible human tying you down.” Sadly.
Everyone is staring at us, and it’s making Bash bare his teeth, so I tell him, “Come on. Let’s work over there. I think I see a freshly emptied wagon, just waiting to be refilled.”
Bash nods down to me and shadows me like if he doesn’t stick close, I’ll get mugged. I don’t know why he’s acting clingy, but I like it.
I fill his ears with all sorts of useful babble, like the fact that leopard frogs from Earth shove food down their throat with their eyes.
Bash tosses a boulder into the cart. “By blinking?”
“Yeah!” I smile back at him, adding my own pebbles to the cart. “You don’t sound surprised.”
“Nothing at this point would surprise me about that backwards hovel you came from, but that trait is not so strange. The Aneark eats the same way.”
“You mean Pasutha? Ella’s mate, right?” I lean around the wagon hoping to catch a glimpse of the semi-aquatic alien at one of the lunch tables, but I don’t see him.
“You won’t find him eating. He sits with his mate while she eats, but he consumes his food in private. His species is very shy. He feels too much the spectacle among land dwellers.”
“Crazy that an alien feels like an alien here.”
“You should know,” Bash murmurs. “You are the strangest alien of them all.”
“Hey now, you’re lucky I’m not offended by that.”
Bash scoffs. “As if I’d care if you were.”
I smile, because he so would care. If my feelings were hurt, it would matter to him. We drift a little apart as more people join our area, returning to work now that the lunch break is ending. I dump my handful of stone pebbles into the cart and swing around to find my next rock—when out of the corner of my eye, I see Bash approach the cart. If it were anyone else, I’d have stopped watching and gone back to collecting my next haul. But it’s Bash, and sadly these days all of my attention goes straight to this alien without my conscious consent and I don’t have the wherewithal to stop.
As I’m searching for my next pebble, Bash is reaching over the side of the wagon, where he wraps his hand around a stone—mine, the one I just put in there… and he lifts it and starts to carry it away.
I stop searching for a new rock. I turn around fully. I call the crazy alien’s name. “BASH!”
His ears swing back so I know he hears me, but that’s all the reaction I get.
“Did you just take my rock out?” I shout to his retreating back.
Bash freezes.
I trot up to him, rounding him because he still hasn’t turned. “Why? Do you have a problem with the size I grab?”
“No,” Bash answers, his eyes locked on mine. And he’s looking… weird.
Almost… uncomfortable. Like a little guilty and a little contrite.
“I’m picking them too small, aren’t I?” I blow out a breath and shove my overgrown bangs behind my ears. “You won’t hurt my feelings if you tell me when I’m not measuring up to a two-handed person’s abilities.” I meet his gaze. “But it does make me feel bad when people tiptoe around me and don’t tell me when I need to improve.” I swallow, my glance swinging around the quarry. “If nothing else, maybe put me at a station where you know I can meet the standard. What about the tile—”
“Isla, it isn’t you. You’re perfect,” Bash rumbles.
It makes me feel a little better to have him say it, but only a little. Everything feels dimmer now that I know I can’t keep up with everyone. And to think that I’ve been at this job for how long and he never said anything… It feels good, and it feels bad. For Bash, that’s really nice of him not to point it out. But… I hate, hate feeling like someone is making concessions for me because of my situation. Here I thought