Page 10 of King from the Sky

Laura had no shame at all. That was why Emily loved her.

Emily turned her car onto the highway and began driving to the north side of town. She hated that the only Starbucks was on the other side of town from the animal hospital, but she had to have the stuff. It was addictive, but Laura was definitely more addicted to it than she was. Laura had it at least two or three times every day without fail and if she did not get it for just one of those feedings, she was not a happy camper and not exactly easy to be around.

Emily turned on her XM radio and listened to some of the old country music that she loved. All of her friends teased her about it but she loved the oldies. She just did not feel that the new stuff sounded like real country music. It was all pop music with a country flavor and now it was getting crazy with some groups putting hip hop and even some techno into it. Emily was a music purist and she loved the country music from the sixties and seventies best of all. Those songs were all so soulful and magical. Every time she listened to Alabama or The Judds she got tingles all over as it took her away to another place.

Plus, it helped her forget about all of her worries and it made the drive across town much easier to deal with, but she did have to watch out for the psychotic drivers that terrorized the streets with what they thought was proper operation of a motor vehicle. All of them should have been kept at least 100 yards away from a driver’s Ed instructor.

Someone was following her.

Emily’s whole body began to seize up as she saw the black car that had been hanging out in her rearview follow her through the third turn in the past five minutes, being careful to stay about two car lengths back. They were good; but she was apparently just paranoid enough to realize when she was being followed.

But why? Who would have been following her? She barely had the thought when the name ‘Alex’ popped into her mind.

It had to be him. But why was he following her? He knew where she worked and it wouldn’t have surprised Emily if he already knew where she lived too. He could have just come in and talked to her if he wanted to tell her thanks for saving his life, and not telling anybody about the fact that he was an alien.

Maybe he was not from the area and wasn’t sure how to get back to the animal hospital. The roads around there could be really confusing if you were not used to them. It was all flat streets with wide lanes and smooth pavements. It was easy to get lost when one street and one neighborhood looked just like the other streets and neighborhoods. The area had undergone rapid expansion early in its development and so a lot of it did look alike. Easy for an out of towner to get mixed up.

But he had found her hadn’t he? How had he found her…?

It was possible that he simply got lucky. Somehow she just didn’t think so. Maybe he had a way of tracking people or he had a better memory than the average human being. She was tired of trying to figure him out. She just wanted to get to the animal hospital and talk to him finally. Her head had been spinning around with insane thoughts and musings ever since she had met him.

Emily turned the corner and slowed the car down to the parking lot of the clinic. She parked in her usual spot and stepped out of her car expecting the car behind her to simply pull in and park in the empty space beside her.

The car slowed down and she could see it was a dark black SUV with tinted windows. The windows were so dark she wondered if they were even legal. She squinted her eyes trying to peer into the car to see who was behind the wheel. She was starting to suspect that this might not be Alex after all.

The car appeared to be turning into the parking lot but it lurched forward suddenly and sped off down the road almost cutting off another car that was driving in the other lane. Emily watched as the SUV spun around a corner at speed and was surprised when the thing did not flip over.

“What the hell…” she muttered to herself as she walked towards the door of her place of business.

She had been certain that it was Alex in that car. Her heart sank at the realization. Laura was right; she did have it bad for him. Every time she tried to think about something else his beautiful face popped back into her mind. Oh, those eyes. They were so piercing that when she thought about them she felt like she was going to just melt right into the ground beneath her feet.

She would never tell anyone else how she felt, but Laura had read right through her because she knew Emily so damn well. That was the downside to having a friend like Laura who seemed to be able to read any person within seconds. That was probably why she had always been the life of the party wherever they went and Emily had faded back into the background a bit. She had just never been able to get a good read on people right away, but she could with animals. That was probably another reason why she had become a vet instead of a doctor.

As she entered the building she couldn’t help but smile at the smell and the sights of the day to day operation of the vet clinic. She usually went out and got food for everybody, but today she and Laura decided that they had to have one of their secret hangouts at Starbucks. The rest of the staff understood and it appeared that they had taken advantage of the Pizza Hut Friday special and had a great time without her.

“Wow, that looks good,” Emily said with a smile as she walked past the front desk and saw Cheryl scarfing down the last bites of a slice. She could swear that her coworkers were doing everything in their power to wreck the good diet progress she had made recently. They were all young and slim and had no idea what it was like to even put on a couple of ounces. But they would get there after they left college and hit the real world. Emily had to smile at the disaster awaiting them. Not that she wished any of them harm—she loved them to death—but she occasionally wished that they were not all younger than her.

“It is good,” Cheryl replied wolfing it down and then taking a big gulp of soda. Then she had the audacity to give Emily a thumbs up to rub it in her face.

“That’s very funny, Cheryl. Yeah that is very mature,” Emily said laughing. She loved her staff so much and she could not imagine ever working with anyone else. If she could only find an office manager who fit in and was this cool to hang with. Most office manager’s seemed to be fussy and uptight, which probably made them good at organization. And managing things…

Emily hated reminding herself of that but she knew that she might have to bite the bullet and just hire a qualified person to manage the office so she could actually enjoy her evenings. Besides it would be a fun thing for her and the other girls to have someone to “team hate” in person.

“That is going to catch up with you one day and you are going to be so fat. I can’t wait,” Emily said as she walked past the desk and started down the hall to her office.

“I can’t wait. I’m tired of being cold,” Cheryl said.

“How can you be cold when we don’t even get fall or winter weather here?” Emily asked.

“Oh, you’d be surprised, but I’m always cold. That’s why I need to fatten up.”

Emily could hear the girl running to the break room to open up another box of pizza. There were only four people who worked there besides her and they were all girls, but they somehow managed to eat six large pizzas every Friday. That was considered Pizza day. Emily thought it was lame to designate a day for a particular kind of food.

Or was she just angry once again that she had trapped herself in this low carb prison and wanted to kill everyone around her now?

She went to her office, grabbed her jacket and got ready to start seeing her afternoon patients. She heard Cheryl unlock the front door. Within five minutes she had a waiting room full of patients. She wondered why she scheduled so many appointments at the same time. She always had to make people and their pets wait and it always took her longer to fully examine one of her patients than she had scheduled. She hated when doctors did that to her, but she did the same thing to her patients. That was something that she was going to work on.

As she went through her busy afternoon rounds she tried not to think about Alex at all and for the most part she was actually succeeding, but every now and then the man would creep into her mind and she would feel almost as if he was standing right beside her. She had to turn her head and check a few times just to make sure that she was only daydreaming.