The alarm on my phone rings, and I check the test.
Two lines. That’s what I want. Is that two lines?
I find myself squinting at the stick, almost willing the second line into existence. But it’s not there. I can’t even get an evaporation line that I can pretend is a second line.
“Fucking hell,” I curse. “Fucking god fucking hell fuckety fuck fucking fuck.”
That’s still somehow not enough swearing. I could swear for the rest of my life and still not curse enough to give full expression to the situation I’ve found myself in.
I have nothing to hold onto from my experience with Tyrant. Obviously, an alien baby would be a unique kind of disaster, but I guess I’d hoped against hope that something remained. Nothing does. It’s like I never met Tyrant at all. It’s like I was never part of his life, or in his bed. It’s like I didn’t matter to him at all.
I flush the test, which you're not supposed to do, but I guess I’m an asshole now, and head back to my desk. I sit there and I stare at nothing, just feeling a general sense of hollowness.
“You’re still here?”
“Yes.”
“It’s seven o’clock, Tania. It’s long past quitting time.”
“Oh! I must have gotten carried away with these reviews.”
I hope I sound professional. I hope I don’t sound like a loony who just spent the last five minutes hoping she was knocked up with an alien baby. That’s good. Mr. Rogers doesn’t actually understand. I can tell by the way he is looking at me. He looks concerned.
“Go home and get some rest.”
“Sure. Sounds good. Uh….”
“Yes?”
“I was wondering, it’s just occurred to me that I may need to follow up a few things on the Tyrant case. Could I have his contact details?”
Mr. Rogers purses his lips, and I know my chill ruse doesn’t sound chill at all.
“I’m afraid our clients have absolute privacy, as you can imagine, the possibility of alien intelligence using our accounting services becoming public is completely untenable.”
“Uh huh. Sure. That makes complete sense. Of course.”
“You will not have contact with the client again,” Mr. Rogers clarifies. Those words crush me, even as he keeps speaking. “I know sometimes it is easy to get attached. We don’t allow that.”
“What if the client gets in contact?”
“He’s not going to get in contact, Tania. You did your job very well. You should be exceedingly proud of yourself.”
His words ring hollow. The first time I heard them, they meant something, but that was when I was still on the ship, and I was still in Tyrant’s presence. Now Mr. Rogers’ praise means nothing. It’s just sound that doesn’t deliver what I want to hear.
“Go home,” he repeats. “Look for a new place to live. You can afford it now. There are exciting times ahead for you, Tania. You just need to get over this first little hump.”
He’s talking about being forever separated from the alien I fell in love with as if it is a minor inconvenience. He doesn’t know that every word he’s saying feels like it’s cutting me deep.
I force a smile to my face and I nod. “I’m looking forward to all the challenges the future brings.”
“Alright, then let’s get you home.”
I notice that Mr. Rogers escorts me out of the office. He doesn’t want me there on my own. I am guessing that his office contains details for Tyrant. There’s no way Mr. Rogers doesn’t know how to get in touch with his clients. He has to send the bill, after all.
I go home, but somehow the apartment is actually more depressing today than it was yesterday. I don’t know how that’s possible, but it is.
I clean, again.
But I know it is futile. There’s no way I can clean enough to make this dingy little apartment anything like Tyrant's ship. And there’s no way I can find some other apartment that will make me feel at home the way his ship did.
When everything is so clean I can see how irreparably filthy it is, I sit down on the couch and I let the television babble at me as if that’s going to help.
It doesn’t help.
I order some food in. Pizza. It doesn’t taste good. Nothing tastes good. Nothing really tastes like anything. Like oily cardboard, at best. Water has always tasted like nothing, but now it tastes like nothing, now with extra zero.
The colors of the world, from the sky to the grass are bland. Was the grass always this tedious? Silly little blades of plant just sitting there all smug. And then the concrete. Ugh. So gross. It’s so bland and so stoic and it doesn’t move at all. And don’t even get me started on wood.
Did I ever actually like the Earth? Or was I just born here and therefore felt obligated to stay, like a bad relationship. With a planet.