Chapter 8
SUSANNA
Today had been overwhelming. Everything was new here—the smells, the tastes, the textures. All I’d done was eat and talk, but as night fell, I felt exhausted.
Alone in my room, I stripped off my clothes, then finally sank into the bathtub carved from a solid slab of rock. The warm water caressed my skin, reaching up to my neck when I lay down. The tub was long. Stretching out, I could barely touch the other end of it with my toes.
Something poked at my ankle. I shifted my leg. Another slight poke came to my thigh.
Alarm jolted me, and I sat up.
Slick, silvery bodies slithered in the water. Their reflective shapes stood out against the dark rock of the tub. Two of them, each about the length of my hand, tapped against my leg with their heads, two more propelled from the wall of the tub toward my other leg.
With a screech of panic, I leaped out of the tub, splashing water all over the place.
Heavy footsteps, muted by the rubber cobblestones, thudded outside of my room.
“Susanna?” The lattice gate flew open, and the captain barged in.
I dashed for the exit, running into him. “Snakes!”
He grabbed me.
“Snakes? Where?”
“In the tub!” I gripped his shirt, shaking out my legs. The sensation of the creatures slithering against my skin wouldn’t leave me. “Long, silver things...”
“Do you mean nals? The fish?”
“I don’t know what they’re called. Ugh!” I kept shaking my legs. “Gross! So, so gross. Fish?” The word finally registered with me. “Why are there fish in the bathtub?”
“To clean it,” he said, matter of fact. “Nals are harmless. Probably just curious, since that tub hasn’t been used for a while.”
“You have fish living in the bathtub?” I just couldn’t wrap my mind around that. “You don’t take them out before taking a bath?”
“No. Why would we? They mostly keep to the walls and eat soap suds.”
His calm tone had soothed my panic.
“Is that a common thing on Aldrai?”
“Yes,” he assured me.
“Okay, well... They scared me.” I exhaled slowly, the tension and stress receding. “Sorry. I’ve been too jumpy lately.”
Lately? When did it all start? When my cheating husband left me for his receptionist after stealing millions? When the mafia guys got me on their radar, scaring the shit out of me on quite a few occasions? Or when I got my husband’s head delivered to me, along with the threat of me being next?
I dropped my shoulders and pressed my forehead to the captain’s chest, feeling drained and exhausted. I clung to his side, my hands fisted into the soft material of his shirt, his clothes getting soaking wet from my naked body.
Naked!
I froze. I was hugging my new boss while being completely naked.
And... He was hugging me back. His arm went around my shoulders. The other hand rested on my hip.
“Sorry...” I mumbled, prying my fingers open to release his shirt.
Instead of letting me go, however, he pulled me closer.
“It’s all right,” he murmured. “You’re safe.”
He meant I was safe from the fish, of course. But the word resonated with me.
Safe.
I didn’t think I’d ever known the true meaning of it until now, when I was wrapped securely in his burly arms.
Hugs weren’t common in my family. When something undesirable happened, my father would curse, my mother would purse her lips, then both would get on their phones and make things happen.
We dealt with it. That was the Takolsky way, the only way I knew. That was how I’d been trying to solve my situation. Alone. When all my friends had turned away from me after Tom’s investor scandal, I dealt with it completely on my own.
No one had hugged me and told me I was safe or that it’d be alright. No one comforted me.
I knew the captain’s words applied purely to the fish in the tub, but for me, they reached so much deeper. For the first time in a long time, I truly felt safe.
I pressed myself to him. He slid his large hand down my back. His palm was rough and warm. Strong but gentle, like he could hold my heart in it without breaking it.
The warmth of his big body seeped into me through his shirt. The strong, fast beating of his heart thudded against my cheek pressed to his chest. And it felt...intimate.
“What happened here?” My sister’s voice shrilled from behind the hedge. “Who yelled?”
The captain stiffened, and I jerked away from him.
“It was me.” I grabbed my skirt from the floor to cover myself up. “I yelled.”
Mara sleepily waddled into my room, dressed in her silk pajamas. The matching eye mask was on her forehead, a sheen of night cream spread evenly over her face.
“You’re just dead set on keeping me awake today, aren’t you?” she grumped at me, not sparing a glance at the captain. “All I want is to get some sleep.”
“Sorry. There’s fish in the tub—”
“So? They do that here. Didn’t you know?” She gave me a sleepy glare. “Maybe you should read something about Aldrai. Honestly.” Shaking her head, she left.
I clutched the skirt to my chest.
“How are you feeling?” the captain inquired in a neutral tone, and I kind of missed his rumbling murmur of earlier.
I gave him an apologetic smile. “I feel rather stupid for causing the commotion.”
“It's not your fault. You didn’t know.”
“No. Mara is right. I should learn more about this planet. Things just happened so quickly back on Earth. I had no chance to do any research. I need to catch up. Well... I...” I adjusted the skirt, trying to cover as much of my body as possible. “I’m sorry for waking you up.”
He had every right to be annoyed with me, just like Mara.
“I wasn’t sleeping.” He shook his head, shifting his weight to another foot. It was hard to tell whether he was eager to leave or lingered because he wanted to stay.
“I promise to learn everything there is to know about the fish and everything else that differs from Earth,” I assured him.
He opened his mouth, then closed it again, rubbing his left horn.
“Good night,” I said.
“Right. Sleep well.” He finally left my room.
Once the gate closed behind him, I tossed aside my skirt and climbed back into the tub. I kept an eye on the slithering shapes under the water. They swerved around me for a few moments, then spread out to the sides.
I inhaled deeply, leaning back against the warm rock of the tub. Its rough surface reminded me of the captain’s hands—warm and solid.
It finally settled in my mind that fear, stress, and paranoia were things of the past. I had a safe place to live now, a stable job that I could keep for years if I learned to do it well, which I was determined to accomplish.
For once, my future was looking up.
It was good.