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Page 13 of Kranow (Brides of the Mylos #4)

“ Okay, ” Marley said. “ Just let me go brush my hair and put my shoes on. Umm, wait. I don ’ t have any money. ”

“ Oh, honey, you don ’ t need any! Up here we just sign our names. It ’ s just to keep track of what ’ s being used and all that. ” Darla had the determined look on her face that Melissa and Steven both knew all too well by now. It was the one that said she ’ d made her mind up that they were going, and Marley wasn ’ t getting out of it.

Melissa was quietly relieved that her new friend was taking this stance and falling into the group of friends so easily. She’d worried about coming off overly pushy or it seeming as if she thought Marley owed her the world and then some.

“ Oh. Okay, yeah, that ’ s right, ” Marley said awkwardly, still ill at ease. “ Kranow did mention something about that when he showed me how to order groceries and clothes and stuff. ” She took a steadying breath and put on a bright smile that looked more than a little bit forced. “ I ’ ll be back in a jiffy, then. ” She gestured for them to come inside before turning to go ready herself.

Once the bedroom door closed behind Marley, Steven hissed in a low voice, “ You both sure about this? Helping get their place ready was one thing, but being up close and personal is another. ” He turned to Melissa with a raised eyebrow. “ You sure you ’ re one hundred percent okay with this? ”

Melissa ’ s heart felt full. Steven and Darla had become more than her best friends. They were family in all the ways that it counted and she knew he was just looking out for her. “ I really am, ” she replied easily, giving him a warm smile. “ Like I explained to Junrig and Gundar, her association with what happened doesn ’ t really seem quite real now that I ’ ve helped put her home together and met her and all. Cage wasn ’ t there when I was grabbed, and it was just the two men there in that garage. ” She shivered. “ Now those two, well, I doubt I could forgive them quite so easily. I certainly would not have helped get their house ready for them or asked them out to lunch! Rightly or wrongly, the circumstances I was in give me enough distance to see the troubled young woman who made a mistake, and it ’ s her I am trying to make friends with. ”

Steven sighed. “ I get what you ’ re saying. Okay, I ’ ll give her a chance. ”

“ Me too! ” said Darla. Darla ’ s eyes caught on the new view from the dining room. “ Oh! How cool! ”

“ Xero showed me s bunch of different streaming window views, ” said Marley, returning.

“ Streaming? ” asked Steven. “ Wait, you mean these views are live? Not decorative looped clips? ”

“ That is correct, ” Xeranos replied, having heard its name. “ They are recorded for both decorative and historical purposes. ”

“ Whoa, ” he breathed.

“ Xero said the view from Honolulu that you chose for me is showing what happened there at this time of day there yesterday. The space station one is same time, but has a longer lag between. So, not yesterday. ” The trio of friends looked at her, stunned.

“ Just when you think you ’ ve gotten a handle on being Mylos, ” Darla murmured.

“ Hey, you ’ ve been to one of their worlds. You ’ ll have to dish over lunch, ” Steven said.

“ I didn ’ t get to see much as I was in house arrest, but sure, I ’ ll tell you what I can. ”

“ Come on, ” begged Melissa. “ Preggo woman here. I ’ m dying to go sit down and have me some cannoli. ” She rubbed her belly meaningfully as her friends laughed. Melissa was pleased to see that Marley had joined in the laughter as she palmed the door opened for them to leave. ”

“ After you, milady, ” Steven teased with a gently mocking bow.

“ Hey, it ’ s cannoli. Cannoli! ” Melissa emphasized.

“ I ’ ve never actually eaten cannoli, ” Darla confessed.

Melissa and Steven looked shocked. “ What? Never? ” Steven asked.

“ I haven ’ t either, ” Marley admitted. I know it ’ s a dessert but is it pasta? ”

“ Oh Lord, no! ” Steven looked horrified. “ It ’ s a rolled pastry filled with cream! ”

Melissa giggled. “ That ’ s two of y ’ all losing your cannoli virginity today. Oh, I want some tiramisu too! ”

“ Now that I ’ ve had, ” Marley said. Then she recalled the date she ’ d been on which she first had it. Something on her face must have showed because Steven tilted his head at her and asked what she was thinking about. Upon finding out it related to a date from hell, the group pressed her for details.

“ So, then he tells the waitress that they should discount our dinner because they weren ’ t a genuine upscale Italian restaurant because they didn ’ t have violin players and an enormous wooden cheese mill going table to table to sprinkle Parmesan in everything, ” Marley was saying as they approached the shuttle bay doors. The group went through and quickly spotted the shuttle they had meant to catch. The pilot was just pulling the ramp up.

“ Wait for us, please! ” Steven shouted running towards the shuttle.

The pilot glanced up to see what the shouting was about. Spotting Steven running towards him and then noticing the fleet commander's mate in a group trailing behind, he put the ramp back down.

“ Thanks! ” Steven wheezed. He edited for the women to catch up before embarking. “ Man, I need to work out or something. I ’ m seriously out of shape. ”

They settled into their seats. “ So then what happened? ” Melissa asked Marley.

“ Hmm? Oh, on my date! Duh! ” Marley smacked her forehead with her palm. “ I wanted to just go but he insisted we have dessert. So I picked tiramisu at the waitress ’ suggestion and went to the bathroom. I came out and he ’ d left! Stuffed me with the whole check, too. I thought he must have also gone to the bathroom so sat there and ate my dessert and drank my coffee. I finished and then realized what he ’ d done. Asked the waitress if she ’ d seen him and they verified he ’ d gone. So, I ate his too and paid the check. Then I told my friend what her cousin that she ’ d set me up with had done. She quit trying to match make after that. ”

“ Oh my gosh, he stuffed you? What a tool! ” Darla said. “ Worst thing I ever had a date do is ask me out on a dinner date and take me to McDonald ’ s and ask me to order off the dollar menu because he was saving up for a Corvette. Seriously, that ’ s what he said to me while we were in line inside. We were only seniors in high school, though. ”

“ No, Len was a CPA, not a student ” Marley said. “ If he ’ d been a kid, no way could we afforded that place. As it was, I was in my last year of college so ended up eating store value brand instant ramen for a month. ”

“ Yikes! Yeah, in high school dinner dates were usually at least at Denny ’ s or at the local steakhouse with a coupon, ” Darla said.

“ My dinner dates were always being invited to a barbecue some friend of the guy was hosting or something like that, though the day the twin ’ s speed donor proposed, he took me to lunch at Ruby Tuesday ’ s at the mall in Ft. Walton, ” Melissa said.

Steven shook his head. “ I think my worst dinner date was when I went home for Thanksgiving one year. My parents lived an hour away so it usually wasn’t too bad getting there, though traffic was kinda awful. Being the holidays, this trip was horrendous and the bumps to bumper traffic made the one trip four and half hours, because of course, there had to be a minor accident up ahead that clogged it up worse. Then I got there and had put all my stuff in my old room and all, came downstairs to see Mom answering the door. Turned out she ’ d invited a date for me! Not only that, but he was a guy I ’ d hooked up with on Grindr before so it was awkward. ” He sang the last word.

“ Ohhh, ” Marley winced.

“ Yeah, and then later when we ’ re all sitting at the table, my dad suddenly says, ‘ So, it looks like you two know each other, ’ and the guy says, ‘ Kinda. We met on Grindr, ’ and my mom is all excited thinking that ’ s like Tindr. Only my sister starts laughing and tells her it ’ s a gay hook up app for, as she put it, ‘Wham, bam, thank you, man’. I could have just died the way everyone stared at me. I mean, dude, my aunties and uncles were all there. My cousins were already trying to pretend they didn ’ t know what it was, but boom, my sis had to put it out there. Worst Thanksgiving ever. Oh, hey, we ’ re about to dick. I mean, dock. ”

The women laughed uproariously at his slip.