Page 6 of Stardusted

“That’s an interesting theory.”

Amusement. That was amusement coloring the casual statement. My flush returned with a vengeance, the blotchy kind. Sweat beaded on my forehead.

What was he talking about?

Oh. Right.

The alien thing.Myalien thing.

Out ofeverypossible thing I could’ve said to Sky Acosta, I’d gone with the tinfoil-hat manifesto.

My back to him, I opened my mouth to do some damage control, but all that came out was a tiny, squeaky noise that sounded suspiciously like a baby chicken. Ameep.

Okay, maybe skip the silverware-basket burial and just chuck me right into the dumpster. Because this whole night was trash.

Dread pooling in my stomach, I gave up on the fallen silverware and slowly turned his way.

Sky scanned my face, as if taking stock of my slow descent into mortification. He wasn’t laughing, per se, but there was a softness to his mouth as he studied me. I could see the thoughts churning inside his sapphire eyes.

His eyes had always been my favorite. That deep, clear indigo, like ocean water right before nightfall. You could write songs about those eyes. Those chiseled cheekbones, too.

I mean, I couldn’t. I wasn’t Ed Sheeran. And also, I was currently mute. Except for poultry sounds.

We looked at each other in silence, me screaming internally, him entirely too composed and seeming more amused by the second.

The faintest smile finally broke free and tugged up the corner of his full mouth.

“Aliens, huh?” he said, flashing white teeth in a slight grin.

Say something, Rae. Sayanything. Stop being a malfunctioning Roomba.

“Um,” I said again.Stellar. My gaze slid sideways to his shoulder, a safer place to focus than thoseeyes. “No. I mean, yes. Well, Kelly said…I don’t actually think…”

What had Kelly even said? What wasIsaying?

I trailed off, certain I was about to spontaneously combust from sheer shame. Not that I wanted to die. I couldn’t die. I was finally talking to Sky,actuallytalking to him, and not just the standard “here’s your shift drink,” “table four wants a whiskey on the rocks,” and “have a great night.”

Six months of stolen glances and overthinking everything. Six months of mentally scripting this very moment, and this was what I delivered. My rehearsals in the shower had gone so much better. In those, I was witty and clever and absolutelyzeropercent baby chicken.

God.

It wasn’t like I didn’t know how to talk to guys. I wasn’t a nun. I’d had my share of boyfriends. A few casual flings. Amelia and I had hit the party scene hard when we turned twenty-one. There had been experiences.

None of them had looked like Sky Acosta…but still. I wasn’t a virgin. I wasn’t some teenager wallowing in new hormones.

And yet…this wasSky. And Sky was different.

It wasn’t just me. I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed him. If you swung that way, it was impossible not to. Even Kelly,whose standards were somewhere in the clouds with Everest, had pointed him out my first night.

“That’s Sky Acosta,” she’d whispered, yanking me around the corner and motioning to where the guy in question was making a dirty martini. His profile was to us, his attention on the pour, but I still felt myself flush—despite the fact we were hiding behind a fake palm tree, lurking in the faux foliage.

“He lives above the place,” Kelly continued, stage-whispering like we weren’t clearly stalking him. “Rents the apartment from the owners. He always does his own thing, keeps to himself, never stays after to hang out. Never comes when we go out to Crescent or anything.”

The last part came with a pout.

That’s when I discovered she’d tried her luck with him and struck out. Hard. Kelly didn’t get turned down often (read: ever) and Sky’s polite but distant rebuff hadn’t gone over well.

She wasn’t wrong, either. I’d never seen him at work events. He had no social media, no online presence at all. No one ever came in to visit him like with the rest of the bartenders. He was, for all intents and purposes, a loner. A quiet, sexy-as-sin enigma.