Chapter 13: Chapter 13: Resource Management

CARTER

He considered their options. “Have you ever been shopping before? For clothes?” She couldn’t have just been running around Ryan’s place in a towel, could she?

“I have been to the Goodwill,” Allison said. “I am familiar with the local geography, but not the best places to shop for new clothing. I would very much like some new clothing.”

Carter considered that. “Just how far did you run before you got to Subway?”

“A touch over thirty minutes. I thought to run further, but the Tharons had me surrounded on all sides. I realized I could no longer continue to flee and diverted into the first place I could reach in hopes I could hide there.”

“Thirty minutes on foot,” Carter said thoughtfully. “Still in the area, though. Where’d you live before?”

“Are you familiar with Briar Oak apartments?”

Carter grimaced. “Oh shit, you lived there?” He’d heard the whole place was this close to being condemned. Not even Rick went out there, except to buy drugs.

“I lived there with my former partner, yes.”

“What happened to him?” Then, Carter winced. “Forget I asked that. We don’t need to get into all this if you don’t want, and I’m prying.”

“You may pry,” Allison assured him. “Given we are considering forming a partnership as well, you should have all the information I do. My former partner is a man named Ryan. He is the man who gave me the same Sarenia and allowed me to cohabitate with him.”

“Was he a good partner?”

“Are you asking if I enjoyed it when he fucked me?” She didn’t sound angry or upset, just a little confused.

“None of my business,” Carter assured her. “It was all before we met. I just meant... was he not good to you? Why’d you have to leave?”

“Ryan left to go buy drugs and did not come back for five days. At the end of those five days, I was drained and weak. I then realized that Tharon bounty hunters had learned where I was staying. I could not find Ryan. My only option was to flee.”

Carter felt a full rush of anger. “And he just left you there? Knowing you needed his help? For a week?”

“I believe he may have lost track of time,” Allison said, and then raised one hand. “I am not apologizing for him. I tried many times to convince him to give up the habits that led to his difficulty in holding down a job or elevating his circumstances, but he was addicted. It was not the first time he left the apartment and ended up staying somewhere else.”

“You can only do so much for people like that,” Carter agreed darkly. “And if you try to do too much, you get dragged downstream with them.”

“He never hurt me,” Allison assured him. “That is not something I would tolerate. He was also kind and funny when he was in his right mind, but he had his troubles.”

Carter was this close to starting an argument about this, but he tamped down that urge as well as his anger. It was obvious to him that Allison was a wonderful person and this Ryan asshole had taken advantage of her and treated her like shit, but it was also clear she wasn’t going back to her ex-partner. He had no right to give her grief about it.

“Well, I don’t want that to ever happen to you again. You getting stranded like that.”

“How would just suggest I avoid it?” She sounded genuinely curious.

“I think you need to get a job.”

She nodded. “It is unfair to ask you to pay for all my resources. I would be happy to get a job, but I’ve had difficulty finding one that will take me. I have no identifying documents.”

Carter certainly understood that. “I get you, but we should still look for a way to get you some regular income. To be clear, I don’t mind paying your share until you get back on your feet. This is about you having your own resources.”

“So I can help you accumulate money?”

“So you’ll be okay if something happens to me.”

Her eyes widened. “Why would something happen to you? Is there a danger to you that you have not shared with me?” She now looked truly worried about him, which was so sweet.

He raised both hands. “No dangers other than those I mentioned. Worst possibility is I get arrested here, they find out back home, and everyone decides to extradite me to Texas. If that happens I’d be still alive, but not able to help you.”

“I do not want harm to come to you,” Allison said firmly. “I already care deeply for you.”

That was a massive statement they were definitely going to unpack later, when he was done making sure nothing like what happened with Ryan ever happened again. He couldn’t look too close at what she’d just said right now. They’d had plenty of time for that later.

“Still, anything can happen, Allie. I could fall dead of a heart attack. I could get hit by a bus. Let’s say I left today to go to work and fell down a manhole. You’d be stuck in this empty apartment with no clothes and no food, and your only chance to get more energy would be to find another person you can trust. Which would be hard if you didn’t have any clothes or food.”

Allison relaxed a little. “Yes, I see what you are saying. I’d be back where I started.”

“Exactly,” Carter agreed. “So if we can get you a job, you’ll have a way to support yourself and build up resources even if we decide to part ways. Also, anything you earn would be your money. I’m already living rent and utility free, so I’d only ask we go... half on groceries.”

“A generous offer,” she agreed. “It would also give us redundancy. If, for instance, you were to lose your job, the money I made could make up the gap until you found a new one. As you are now offering to do for me while I search for employment.”

“That’s the benefit of having two jobs, yeah.”

It still amused him how complicated she made the simplest concepts sound sometimes, but maybe that had to do with her real-time translation of her thoughts to English? He certainly couldn’t translate English to another language in his head, and if he did, he’d probably sound a little weird as well. Also, the way she talked was definitely cute.

“I would be happy to search,” she agreed. “But I would not know where to start. Hiding here on Earth has proved far more challenging than I expected. I wish I could have prepared better, but the circumstances preceding my arrival were less than ideal.”

On other words, she’d had to flee from her ex... partner, which suggested she’d left in a hurry and without the resources she needed to be secure. He wondered if she’d hopped in the back of an interstellar moving truck and hitched a ride out of town in the middle of the night. If that was the case, their experiences were almost identical save for the interstellar part.

“No need to figure everything out now,” he assured her. “I just wanted to pitch the idea and see what you thought of it.”

“It is a good idea. If I can find a job without revealing myself, I will take it.”

“Right, that’s the other problem we’ve got.” Carter visualized Agent Holloway. “How easy is it for these Tharons to find you? They can’t know who you are just by looking at you, right?” The man hadn’t had a clue Allison was who she was last night.

“No,” Allison agreed. “They can only identify me after lingering physical contact. Fortunately for me, most women on your planet have little patience for being touched by strangers without their consent. I am especially careful of allowing that.”

“Like you should be,” Carter agreed.

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“Because of the chances they could be called out by others and perhaps even reported to your human law enforcement, Tharons must be very cautious in how they test for us. So I should be relatively safe so long as I do not take a job that require touching.”

“Most don’t,” Carter said, though he could already think of a few that did. “So how’d they find you last night? You said they tracked you down. Do you know how?”

“I... do.”

Allison was rarely hesitant when she spoke. He was already confident she only acted like this when she was really uncomfortable. Should he push? This did seem important.

“How’s this,” Carter said. “You think it’ll happen again anytime soon?”

“No,” Allison said confidently, and smiled at him. “You are considering my comfort.”

“And that’s a thing I’ll always do. But to be clear, you know how they found you last night and don’t think it’ll happen again anytime soon.”

“Correct.”

“Then you don’t need to tell me anything else about it, and it sounds like we’ve got some options. Anything retail would work, and service too. Like what I do.”

She perked up. “I could join you at Subway?”

Carter couldn’t help but wince. “You probably wouldn’t like it there. My co-worker on the night shift is way too touchy, and Holloway might look for you there again.”

There was a lot more to his worry. Back when the original owner of Allison’s nametag had worked with them, Rick had hit on her constantly, even after she asked him to stop. Carter had run interference whenever he could, but he hadn’t worked every shift with them.

Moreover, the Allison who wasn’t an alien had insisted she could handle her own business and asked him to stop getting himself involved. He’d listened. After she quit and didn’t come back, he assumed she’d found a much better job. One where she didn’t have to put up with an asshole repeatedly complimenting her ass or bumping into her on “accident.”

He didn’t want his Allison to ever be stuck in that situation. He hoped she’d agree, but if she insisted on coming to work with him, they could figure something out. Maybe he could convince her to hypnotize Rick into not being an asshole.

“I understand,” Allison said. “Also, if we worked at the same place, we could both lose our jobs at the same time if it ceased operation. By comparison, if I find somewhere different to work, we’ll be distributing our resource gathering across a wider area.”

“Not all our eggs in one basket,” Carter agreed. “But hey, we’ve talked about this enough. Let’s go get you some actual clothes, all right?”

She glanced down at herself. “It’s fine to wear this uniform while we shop?”

“I don’t see why not. The only branding is on the shirt, and without the apron, the rest is just clothes. Most women would probably wear a bra under that shirt, but I doubt anyone will complain. It’s nothing like what people normally wear at a mall, but it’s not indecent.”

Allison looked up. “Can we also buy me some indecent clothes?”

His brow furrowed. “Do you want some?”

“I would like to wear something indecent for you. If it is reasonably priced.”

Carter couldn’t help but grin. The way she asked about such sexy stuff so innocently remained a huge turn on. Did she know that?

She was telepathic. She had to have figured that out by now.

“Regarding indecent stuff, I’m sure we can find something that’ll work.” He pointed to his bedroom. “Now, let me show you the bank. Kind of important you know where that is.”

He walked into his bedroom and looked back to make sure she’d followed him. Once she had followed him into the room, he knelt, lifted the mattress with one hand, and reached beneath it until he found the old metal peanut can hidden by the bedframe. He pulled that out.

Carter dropped the mattress and pulled off the plastic top on the old can. He dumped out several rolls of bills bound up in rubber bands. As much as he would have loved it to be otherwise, it wasn’t a bunch of rolls of twenties.

He had one tiny roll of those, what was left from the roll Uncle Eli had sent with him as starting capital, but the others were mostly fives and ones, with a few tens. All in all he had around six hundred dollars in cash right now, which was fine so long as he continued to make money. Groceries and gas could eat it all in a month or two if he lost his job.

He mentally calculated the cost of basic panties, bras, and shirts or tank tops. He already had several pairs of sleep pants, so for sleeping, she could just borrow one of those for now. Once he got his next paycheck, they could buy her some sleep pants of her own.

He flipped through the rolls until he’d counted out one hundred and fifty dollars. It was a decent budget for a brand new set of clothes. It was also over a month of grocery money (or less, if he bought beer) but Allison was starting from scratch. She needed at least this to start.

“This is where I keep my cash,” he told her. He stuffed another twenty into his pocket for the food court and stuffed the rest back into the can. “If there’s an emergency, and you can’t get ahold of me or whatever, you know where this is.”

She tilted her head. “What would I do with it?”

“Take it,” he told her. “If you need it.”

She considered him for a moment. “You are offering me a huge amount of trust.”

He stuffed her clothing budget into his wallet and tucked his wallet into the back of his jeans. “You just spent the morning telling me all about how you’re an alien from another planet. You got right out there with it. Seems to me like you’re the one offering trust.”

“But I can mind wipe you if I want you to forget about me.”

It took a moment for Carter to realize she was joking. One hint of a smile gave her away. Never without your consent.

“I appreciate your trust in me,” she added softly. “I appreciate your generosity so much. I hope I never have to touch this container.”

“Me neither,” he agreed. “But if you do need it, it’s here. I’d want you to have it.”

“I will remember,” she promised. “Now, I have a question for you.”

Before he could say anything else, she stripped off her shirt. Before he could finish asking about that, she also dropped her slacks and stepped out of them. Which reminded him she still didn’t actually own any underwear.

He stared in surprise. “What are we... shouldn’t be go shopping first?”

“We will,” she promised, now once again completely naked and this time, in his bedroom. “But if you plan to purchase clothing for me, we should first agree upon my configuration. Do you like these proportions? Or should I change?”

Carter whistled softly. “That’s a wild question. How did I forget you can do that?”

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