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Ezra

In Ezra’s opinion, an outdoor wedding would have been preferable—it had been an unseasonably warm winter, some days reaching all the way up into the sixties—but he had been unanimously outvoted by the rest of the planning committee, which was primarily comprised of aliens originating from a sweltering desert climate.

“We will perish from freezing,” Al Leon, Ezra’s best friend’s husband-to-be, had said with genuine concern when Ezra had suggested it.

Al’s mother, Mrs. Leon, had agreed. “While it is traditional for bonding ceremonies to take place out of doors, the temperatures are bad here, and we must have the ceremony in of doors, Human Ezra, or we will feel much discomfort.”

“I do not wish to feel coldness, Ambassador Ezra,” Mr. Leon had said with a nod.

He always insisted on using Ezra’s formal title, even after Ezra had made it clear he didn’t have to.

“Such unpleasantness will detract from the beauty of the bonding ceremony, and it would cause us all to feel much sadness indeed. ”

“Don’t look at me.” Corbin, Ezra’s other best friend, had given an exaggerated shrug. “I’m just here to color coordinate outfits and forge marriage licenses.”

The only one who had been on Ezra’s side had been Jude, the groom and Ezra’s aforementioned bestie, but even he had ended up rejecting the suggestion, letting Ezra down with a guilty smile.

“Sure,” he’d said, “it’d be nice to have the wedding outside and all, but the kids don’t do great in the cold either, and I don’t want them to be uncomfortable. ”

So that had been that. And it wasn’t such a big deal, really—one of Ezra’s greatest strengths was his ability to go with the flow in almost any situation—but it was just a bit of a bummer.

Maybe it was Ezra’s personal bias speaking, but there were few things better than the New Mexican landscape, and it was a shame Al and Jude wouldn’t get to enjoy it on their big day.

The truth of it was, Ezra loved the desert.

He’d spent the first eight years of his life smack dab in the center of the country on a deeply dull stretch of farmland in Kansas he had never learned to appreciate, where he’d woken up every day to a nagging feeling he couldn’t quite describe.

It wasn’t until his mom had decided to move to New Mexico to be closer to her sister that he’d realized what was wrong—like a polar bear cub born in a tropical zoo, he had been raised somewhere he shouldn’t have been.

For the first time in his life, upon arriving in New Mexico, he’d felt like he was home.

Sure, to some the desert was a giant swath of nothing, but the nothingness of the Great Plains was totally different from the nothingness out here.

In Kansas he had been surrounded by cornfields, cornfields, the occasional soybean crop, and more cornfields.

In the desert, though? In the desert, he was surrounded by variety.

Weird little plants and cute, bitty lizards.

Sandy soil interspersed with gravelly terrain.

Hell, just the topography, with its rusty red mountains jutting out from the earth and buttes that broke up the skyline, was fascinating.

The desert was the opposite of nothingness—it was everything—and all of it beneath the biggest, bluest sky.

So yeah, Ezra was bummed that the others had disagreed.

That said, as he loitered around waiting for the rehearsal dinner to begin, he had to admit that they’d picked the next best thing.

Jude and Al’s mansion was gorgeous on a day-to-day basis, but the wing they’d transformed into the wedding venue was a work of art.

With its high, dramatic inset ceilings and its pearly white interior, all it had taken were some tastefully positioned sheer white curtains, sparkling fairy lights, and some luxury banquet furniture to make the place feel like the space had been lifted out of a fairy tale—and that was just the reception hall, where they were all having dinner tonight.

Corbin was set to pull an all-nighter to put the finishing touches on the room where the vows were to be exchanged and the weird alien bond was to be set in place, and if the work he’d done out here was to be believed, it was going to be magical…

Although Ezra had overheard Corbin on the phone earlier that day, heatedly informing someone, “No, I was not kidding when I told you I needed twenty thousand pounds of white sand delivered through the designated window at the given address. Why would I joke about something like that?”

So, magical but weird.

But Ezra was chill with that.

Case in point, just then a server walked by carrying a platter of artisanal cheeses and crackers, including such choice varieties as Roquefort, Pecorino, and Whizz-eez Cheezy Pasteurized Cheese Snack, which guests could serve themselves fresh from the brightly colored spray can.

Ezra flagged the server down, helped himself to a cracker that looked like it cost at least half an hour’s labor at a part-time gig, and blasted it with spray cheese.

For all the out-there things he’d seen Al eat since crash-landing on Earth, spray cheese was pedestrian—but Ezra remembered all too well that it was a concession after the peppermint-scented hand sanitizer Al had originally wanted to pair with the crackers had been vetoed by Jude.

As Ezra chowed down on his cheesy, thankfully hand sanitizer-free cracker, he reflected a little more on how absolutely bonkers the past year of his life had been.

Not only had he gone from barely scraping by with temp work and freelance courier service gigs to living the high life in his best friend’s mega mansion, but he’d tumbled into steady work as the human ambassador to an alien species still unknown to ninety-nine percent of the people on Earth.

The American government had done their best to oust him from the position, insisting they had far more decorated men who were a better fit for the job, but the Darvrokians were stubborn, and would not allow their minds to be changed.

Which was pretty cool, all things considered—Ezra wasn’t used to being anyone’s first choice—but it was also a lot of pressure. Not that he couldn’t handle it. But there certainly was a difference between driving for Uber Eats and representing the entire human race on the intergalactic stage.

“Hello, Human Ezra,” said a deep and rumbling voice from Ezra’s right side, interrupting him from his thoughts.

It belonged to Kyle, a brick wall of a Darvrokian under the employment of the Leon family who had come to Earth to help Jude and Al raise their kids.

He was dressed in a suit jacket, shirt, and tie, which he had paired with his favorite swimming trunks and a pair of sturdy hiking boots.

One of the kids—probably Penny—had put pink bows in his hair, giving him tiny lopsided pigtails.

They stuck straight out from the top of Kyle’s head in tufts.

It was a good look.

Like Ezra, Kyle lived in the mansion, and while the place was big enough that their paths might never cross on a day-to-day basis, it had become somewhat of a tradition for Kyle to come to Ezra’s room on Wednesday nights to watch nature documentaries on Netflix and—as Al called it—become a douchebag.

Luckily, Ezra’s stratospheric salary as human ambassador to the Darvrokians had allowed him to amass a considerable number of bongs, vape pens, one-hitters, and other assorted douchebag accessories that made becoming a douchebag easy.

Whoever said money couldn’t buy happiness had clearly never gone from eating ramen every day to smoking from a five-chambered crystal bong.

“Hey, bud.” Ezra shot Kyle hand guns which Kyle struggled to return, as he held a flute of champagne rimmed with Pop Rocks in one hand and a spray cheese-coated cracker in the other. “How’s it going? You digging the rehearsal so far?”

“I have yet to dig a single thing,” Kyle replied quite solemnly. “I was not made aware there were shovels.”

“Ah, yeah, I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”

“I feel much relief to hear you say that.” Kyle popped the cracker into his mouth and gave it a thorough chew.

“Shovel business aside, I am feeling much enjoyment for this strange parade of foods. Dinner should be served by tuxedoed men doing their best to avoid you more often. It causes far more feelings of entertainment than dinner served on immobile plates.” Kyle took a moment to sip at his champagne, which Ezra now saw had a cube of Camembert cheese sitting in it like an ice cube. “The flavors are better, too.”

“Word.” Ezra fidgeted with the front of his shirt.

It had folded in an unpleasant way over his stomach and, despite repeat adjustments, could not be made to stop.

Fancy clothes were the worst. Not only did they cost a fortune, but they were uncomfortable.

He was really starting to regret not having dressed like the alien attendees—which was to say, in whatever he felt like, regardless of whether it was appropriate for a wedding or not.

For example, one of Al’s sisters was wearing hot pink stilettos with a Louis Vuitton bathrobe.

An aunt was decked out in a muscle t-shirt, leather pants, and as much jewelry as she could fit on her body, her wrists jangling loudly with bracelets every time she gestured.

Someone Ezra assumed was a family friend was neatly dressed in a tasteful suit he had accessorized with a pink, glittery cowboy hat that had the word “SLUT” glued onto it with sequins.

It was the best kind of chaos, and Ezra was living for it.

Corbin, however, was not.