Our Forbidden Love 2

26: Alexander

I lean down and kiss Starley on her neck and playfully leave little love bites. I suck a little bit on her neck, and I know she's watching me in the mirror on the dressing table. When I break away from her neck, just as I planned, there's a red mark on her neck about the size of a twenty-cent piece, not too ridiculous for the first one I've given her. Instinctively, she lifts her hand up to her neck to inspect it in the mirror. We'd been together for about six months but this was the first hickey I'd given her. I actually really liked doing that to her and I was definitely going to do it again. Her dad, Walter, was probably going to have a fit when he saw it, but his opinion didn't matter anyway. Starley and I are beyond happy and I loved giving her the hickey that was now on her neck.
"That's just a mark to show everyone I'm yours," I say, moving to kiss her on the other side of her neck. I'm also a bit worried because Lilliana has a crush on her too and I don't want to lose someone so special and unique like she is.
"I love the mark, but if you're doing it just because you're worried about Lilliana, I don't want the mark," she says, seeing through my pathetic acting skills. How had she known that?
"Okay, yes baby. You win that one. I'm not worried about Lilliana, just want everyone to know who my girl is," I say. I feel her sweep a Flicker wave over me and luckily for me it doesn't register as a full lie. I do want everyone to know who my girl is, as I'm worried about Lilliana but I'm not at the same time. Fate obviously understands which is why they don't feed Starley the code to the lie.
"What do I do with it?" she asks, randomly.
"With what, baby?"
"The mark. Is it just supposed to stay there?"
"Yeah, you just leave it there. It just lets everyone know you're mine," I say.
"Okay then. I'm just thinking about what Daddy's going to say about this-" then she randomly stops to say, "What's the time?" She goes to check her screen in her wrist but the wound there hasn't even come close to healing, and so the bandages are still on top of it. Instead, I check my own screen which I got when Starley and I went to Kiwi Civitatem with the Stonal Shell.
"Three-thirty," I say. "S**t. You were asleep for about five-and-a-half hours, a little less for me."
"We should probably get up," she says getting up from the bed.

We exit her bedroom and the rest of the house is empty. Both Walter and Bubbles are out of the house. We decide we're both hungry and so we head to the kitchen and Starley starts making us food. When she's in the middle of cooking us the savoury pancake thing, that I really enjoyed, there's a knock at the front door.
"Can you please get that for me, Alex?" she asks, her hands busy cooking for us. I swim over to the door and gently open it. Behind it, is my mum. Internally, I cringe. She's not my mum. She can't be. Kerri is my mum and Paisley is my sister.  It's that simple.
"Alex," Piper says, smiling.
"Who is it, Alex?" Starley calls out. I call back saying who it is and her head pokes out of the kitchen.
"Piper! We weren't expecting you, I'm sorry," she says.
"No, no worries Starley, I was just wondering if I could borrow Alex from you for a moment," Piper asks.
"I don't mind at all, it's really up to Alex," she says.
I don't know what I want. I refuse to believe that this is my mum and now she wants to talk to me? What about? I'd rather stay here with Starley and cuddle with her and give her more hickeys on her neck than go and talk with Piper.
Just go, Alex. It's okay. I'll talk to you about it afterwards, Starley says in my head.
"Sure, I'll come with you," I say and Piper smiles. I swim through the door and Piper shuts it behind me. I take a deep breath in and out. I wasn't a Reader but I knew what this was going to about and I didn't really want to talk about this.
Piper and I swim together to the Records Room and we sit outside on a bench that's there.
"So, umm, I'm your mum, and you have no idea how happy it makes me that you're here. Walter and I knew you and Starley were going to be together-"
"So you made out with him anyway, that makes perfect sense," I interrupt, sarcastically. She ignores my comment like I haven't even spoken.
"-but we'd never Read that you were going to live here. Now, your father, Fred and I aren't and we're never married. We just loved each other and hooked up. It was hard because he was still a human and I was still a merfolk but we made it work and then I was pregnant with the two of you."
"Piper, I know all this," I point out. "Why are you telling me?"
"Because... I don't know... I just I want to be closer to you. You're my son and I thought you were missing for the past seventeen years," she says standing up. We begin swimming back to Starley's house.
She opens the door, which we left unlocked.
"Alex, you're my son but you seem determined to hate me."
"I'm sorry," I say, because I am. That's not how I meant it. "I'm just having trouble adjusting to this new family story."
But really underneath all that, the life I had lived before I knew Starley was all a lie.