Series: Like Us Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 241
Estimated words: 236417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1182(@200wpm)___ 946(@250wpm)___ 788(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 236417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1182(@200wpm)___ 946(@250wpm)___ 788(@300wpm)
It makes sense why my mom really loved him.
“I still have time,” I tell Donnelly. He’s already helped me with a vital portion of my presentation after I asked for his artistic assistance. He’s a great boyfriend. The best in all galaxies. “I’d rather do this with you.”
I hug him from behind like I’m his barnacle. I sense his grin, and he lifts me up in a piggyback like that’s where I belong. Superglued to him.
“That one.” I point to a page on the pillow. “That’s the climax.”
“We love a climax.”
“In zero gravity,” I add.
“Floating and moaning.”
I smile so big, my cheeks hurt. He can’t see, but I kiss his neck and slip down his body to collect a fallen page. It’s slipped partially under the bed frame. Kneeling, I slide it out and overturn the page. My breath hitches as emotion surges.
Comics aren’t always just blocks of square panels telling a linear story. They can be circles and triangles—whacky, weird shapes. Panels can bleed into the next. Characters can even escape the frames of them.
I stare at these broken panels shaped like a shattered kyber crystal. Inside each one is a piece of our history together.
Donnelly carries me down the stairs of a grimy rowhouse, where I’d been taken.
We’re on our knees under a desert night sky, holding each other.
We kiss beneath a disco ball, mirrors refracting light all around us.
He makes love to me for what feels like the first time.
More little moments. Some, I can’t remember fully yet. Some, I can. And beneath the kyber crystal panels is a human man with his arms outstretched. Like he’s carrying the fragmented memories so they don’t tumble away and disappear.
Tears flood my eyes, and I wipe them fast before I wet the paper.
Not again.
I sniff.
“Something wrong with that one?” Donnelly comes over to see the page.
“Nothing’s wrong.” I clutch it tenderly, carefully, treasuring every line of ink. My love for him swells so mightily inside of me. “Everyone should know who you are.”
He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.
I pick myself off the floor, still protecting the art with a soft grip. “‘When the world has decayed and all I’ve ever known has disappeared in time you should know the very best of humankind is him,’” I recite my Unearthly Reader passage I wrote. “‘I hope he’s immortalized in this text. Please, keep him alive’—it’s you, Donnelly. You’re worth knowing, and this…” I stare around at the scattered pages. “It shouldn’t just be for us.”
“This story isn’t just mine,” Donnelly says. “It’s ours, Luna. If you’re sayin’ what I think you are—”
“Let’s publish it.”
He intakes a breath. “That’s what I thought…” He tilts his head, searching me. “It’s not a small jump. Even with the sci-fi elements, it’s pretty obvious this is an allegory of what happened that night.”
The night of the kidnapping. The one we haven’t shared with the public. This comic book isn’t a direct translation. It’s a sci-fi love story—where he’s a part of my galactic world before I literally crash-land on Earth. There are plots where we’re in a space pod in zero gravity. Everything we’ve felt, we’ve translated through the genre we love.
But he’s right, it’s easy to see the reality beneath the fiction. “I want the world to know,” I tell him. “This is the way. This is how they find out.”
Donnelly grips my gaze like he’s ensuring this is real. “They’ll know you lost your memories.”
I nod.
“They’ll know about my childhood.”
I can’t read his expression fast enough. “If you’re not ready—”
“No, I’m ready.” He takes the page from me. “Think this has helped me become ready for people to know. You were wrong though.” His eyes lift to mine. “It’s our love that’s worth sharing. It’s so big it’s spilling around us, and this…” He holds the page up. “Is the best damn thing I’ve ever read. And I say that with my whole chest and a hundred-buck wager.”
I smile bigger, excitement bubbling. “We’re doing this? We can send a submission to my dad, see if Halway Comics would want it first.”
He wavers suddenly.
I frown. “The sexy parts aren’t too graphic,” I say, thinking this is the hang-up. Donnelly didn’t draw NC-17 level smut, but sex is most definitely implied. “I think it’ll be fine if my dad reads it—”
“It’s not that.” He points to the alien princess on the page. “We used pieces from your Thebulan saga.”
“So?”
“You won’t be able to publish it as a novel, Luna.”
“I’m publishing it now, as a comic book. Volume one of maybe many.” I add quickly, “And I know it’s not the Thebulan saga. It’s very different and I only took tiny parts, but in a way, maybe that’s what my childhood writing was always supposed to be. A steppingstone to here and now. Every piece of who I am has led me to this place with you.”