Chapter 3: First Day of Work Part 2

Bella

I couldn't get the image of Damien without a shirt on out of my head. He was actually good-looking. It wasn't like he was so hot that I couldn't take my eyes off him; it just shocked me that he actually looked good. I did kind of stare at his back the whole way back to the farm.

I opened my eyes.

"What are you up to?" Damien asked. He was bending down over me, the top of his head pointing south, the top of mine pointing north. (AN: Like what Drew Seely did to Selena Gomez in that movie "Another Cinderella Story".)

He speaking made me realize that he was above me and I was lying down on a random patch of grass. I jumped and hit my forehead to his.

"God!" I whisper-yelled, rubbing my forehead. I didn't want to disturb the peace and quiet.

"Damn it!" Damien was rubbing his forehead too. "I come over here to see if you were okay and you hit me."

"It was an accident and you're the one that got so close." He stood up, picking up two halves of a broken shortboard that were lying next to me. "Where are you going?"

"My sister made me break my shortboard so I need to go trade it in for a new one."

I nodded and he started walking the other way. I laid back down.

"You want to go to dinner?" He asked. I looked up at him.

"Like…on a…date?" I asked very slowly.

"What? No!" He chuckled. "Just go out to dinner."

"I have no money."

"Don't worry; I have money. There's a great buffet in town that's only ten dollars per person. And we can go in the shops and stuff like that." He stuck out his hand to help me up.

"Okay," I smiled, "sure," I said, taking his hand.

Lily

"This thing is awesome!" I said to myself. Some people passing by looked at me weird. Music was coming out of it through little white things you put in your ears. I think they called it an 'iPod'. Olivia lent it to me. She said if I made myself enough money, I could buy myself one. And I wanted my own really bad.

I walked on a bridge over a river that came from a waterfall, and ran into the ocean. As I was going through the different songs on Olivia's iPod, I heard someone yell, "Look out!" I turned around to see what it was about, when something crashed into me and sent me flying into the river.

Luckily, it wasn't that deep. Just about a foot, actually. But it was really rocky. I think my hand got a few cuts from them. I opened my eyes and realized there was a boy stuck to me. His hands were holding the back of my head, protectively.

SHIT, the iPod.

It was still in my hand, not wet at all, somehow. One of the ear buds had fallen out of my ear.

I was worried about the iPod and then I saw the boy's arm. There was a giant gash. Blood was streaming down and into the river. Then I noticed our bodies were stopping a long board that was broken in half.

He pulled away from me. "I didn't see you there, you were all sneaky, sneaky. Are you alright?"

The whole 'sneaky, sneaky' thing made me want to giggle, but then his eyes were looking into mine, seriously. When I looked closely, the gash wasn't his only scar. He had what looked like a giant tiger scratch mark on his face, and tons of miscellaneous scars all over his chest and arms.

Did I mention he was shirtless?

He had really nice green eyes too that fit his tan, muscular body and dark brown hair.

Then I realized I was probably staring at him for too long.

"Am I alright? Look at your arm!"

"Well, yeah, but as you can see," he looked at some of his battle wounds, "I'm kind of used to it."

I stared at his scars a little longer.

"But my head does hurt." He looked back up at the bridge. It was about five feet above the river. When he stood up, I could see he was tall enough to reach that. "Hold on a sec," he told me. The boy jumped up, grabbing the edge of the bridge, and pulling himself up.

I stood up and stuffed the iPod in my back pocket. He stuck out his hand. I then realized I was too short for that. He looked at me, and his eyes began to close.

"Is something wrong?" I asked.

His hand dropped. He had passed out right there on the bridge. I pursed my lips and made some sort of pouty-face. "Jeez," I said to myself. Then I saw red liquid running out from the back of his head.

"HEY," I called out, "ANYONE OUT THERE?"

No answer.

I sighed, closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and white wings sprouted out of my back. We were only supposed to use them during crucial times. Hopefully, no one was watching. My feet lifted out of the river and brought me to the bridge. My wings disappeared as I landed.

I pulled his arm over my shoulder, trying to drag him back to the farm. Took long enough; he was heavy.

***

"Ugh," he finally woke up. He was lying on my bed. I had just finished wrapping his arm up in gauze and was padding the back of his head with a towel. "Where am I?"

"My home." I stopped for a second to rephrase my answer. "Well, I wouldn't really consider it my home yet; I just moved in."

"How come you didn't just take me to the hospital?"

"Do you know how far that is? You're heavy and I'm… small." I padded the back of his head more. The bleeding was starting to let up. "What happened anyways?"

"What do you mean?"

"You crashed into me."

"Oh, yeah. Sorry about that. Something just happened not too long ago and it's just kind of been bothering me. I wasn't paying attention."

"It's okay." I soaked the bloody towel. "So, what happened?"

He looked at me wondering why I was asking. "Well, I was going to propose to this girl, but then her brother wouldn't give me consent, and she rejected me anyways."

"Why would she reject you?" Did that just come out of my mouth?

He sat up, "well, I wasn't really dating her…"

I dropped the towel and looked at him, "you proposed to a girl when you weren't dating her? Of course she's going to reject you!"

"So much for your sympathy."

"I'm serious! I mean, what do you expect a girl to like in you when she hasn't even met you?"

"Yeah…" He chuckled. "I'm Ace."

"Lily." I smiled.

Bella

"So when my parents divorced, they asked my brother who he wanted to go over to, and whoever he went over to, the opposite person would get me." Damien told me as I ate a piece of fried shrimp. "Even though my brother was only seven, he knew that our mother didn't treat us very well. She was lazy, cruel, and always made us do her work for her."

"You were two," I reminded him. "How could you, one, remember this and two, be forced to work?"

He finished drinking some of his water. "One, it's one of those things that you never forget and two, my mother had her ways. Anyways, My brother chose my dad, but he told them that he wasn't going to let me go. So we both went with my dad. He got married a year later, and after another couple of years, had my sister. Our new mother was everything you could want in a mother."

"Wow," I said, sipping my water. "I wonder what it's like to have parents. Wait, so then where does Olivia fit into the picture?"

"Right before my parents got divorced, my mom had cheated on my dad and got pregnant with Olivia. That's why she had blonde hair instead of brown."

There was a silence for a minute.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure." What else did he want to know about me?

"Can you explain to me how all this star stuff happens?"

"Well…" I began, trying to figure out how to put it all in words. "Every ten years, five stars fall. Like Lily said, we watch down on the Earth until we're 'seventeen' years old and then fall into the ground. We're born from a glowing ball of light, like a fetus, and we change into a baby, then a child, a teenager, just like a normal human, and then we're sent down to Earth."

"And you already know how everything works?"

"That's why we watch down on the Earth until we're 'seventeen'."

"Do you age?"

I nodded and sipped my water again.

"Why would God create something that's exactly the same as humans, just prettier?" Was he flirting?

I giggled. "It's more like paranormal activity. As far as we know, there isn't any God. But that's just our guess. It's planted in our minds when we're 'born' that our goal when we come down to Earth is to make it a better place for humans who just cause problems."

"Have you been successful so far?" He sounded like an interviewer.

"Some stars become so influenced by humans in this world. Others can turn into a human, in a way." His eyebrows scrunched a bit, so I proceeded to explain. "If we fulfill our duties and make a more positive influence on at least one person's life within a couple years, then we can stay here and turn into normal humans. If we do not make a more positive influence on someone's life, and possibly turn into one of those humans that make the world a worse place, then they will turn into dust.

But it can't be something as simple as saving someone from slipping on a banana peel. You'd have to been someone they'd remember for awhile for influencing their life."

"That doesn't sound very easy."

"It seems… so-so." I took a bite of my food, sipped my water, and continued. "There are also… other ways."

He looked at me confused. "Like what."

My heart began to speed up. What's happening?

"Like…" I began to mumble, "falling in love."

"Oh," he looked down at his plate. Is he smiling to himself?

Another silence.

I ran my finger around the edge of my glass. "Have you ever…" My face began to get warm.

"Hmm?" He looked up at me.

"Have you ever…" I hesitated, "fallen in love?"

His eyes widened. "Ah, well, you know…" His voice was shaky. "Once… I thought I did."

I was sitting there, waiting for him to keep going and keep giving me more details, but he didn't. He just looked at me. What was actually about a second, seemed like forever. We were just sitting there, staring at each other. It felt like we were the only two in the entire restaurant.

Damien

When we left the restaurant, there was a nice sunset. We went in the general store and I gave them my short board to fix for a few days. Bella was looking at the bottles of stardust on necklace chains.

"You think these are real?" She asked.

"Real what?"

"Real stardust. Do you think they're real?"

"I didn't even know there was such thing." I only knew there were these bottles of silvery powder.

I grabbed the one she had been staring at and gave it the cashier.

"What are you doing?"

"You want it?" I asked, smirking.

"You don't have to buy it for me!"

"There you go being all nice again." I pinched her cheek and started to pull on it. "You were all grumpy this morning."

"Ow!" She pulled my hand from her face. "I was tired then."

"How would you know?" I gave money to the cashier. "This is your first morning waking up." The cashier gave the necklace back to me.

"I just found out this morning." She pursed her lips.

"Turn around." I told her.

"Huh?"

"Just do it." I said, smirking again.

She did as she was told. I reached the necklace over her head, brought the chain around her neck, and clipped it together. She swept her hair so that it was over the necklace chain. Bella was the perfect name for her.

"You two make such a cute couple." The cashier said.

"We're not a couple!" We both said.

I turned to face Bella. "Your cheeks are red," I pointed out.

She covered her cheeks. "Let's just go."

As we were walking back, I was walking on Bella's left. Her right hand was holding her upper left arm. Her left hand was dangling. I wanted to hold it. If only she came to Earth not knowing anything, I thought. But it wouldn't be real if I were pretending.

***

We got back to find Lily and some guy running around playing with Kiwi. The guy had gauze around his arm and head. The guy was tan; that was all I could make out of him at the moment. But when we got up closer to him and he turned to face us, we could see that he had a claw-shaped scar on his lower left cheek, and miscellaneous scars all over the rest of his body. He appeared around the same age as me; the same height.

I cleared my throat and Kiwi came running over to me. Her body began to wiggle out of control as it always did when she first noticed Olivia or me. Lily and the other guy looked up at me. "Lily, who is this and why is he running around with my dog?"

"This is Ace," Lily said. My body went into a state of semi-paralysis from hearing the name earlier that day. "He's from Candle-Light Valley."

"Hey, sorry I'm intruding," he apologized in a matured voice. Yep, the same age as me, I was pretty sure. "Your dog is so much fun."

"So, why are you here?" I said rather protectively.

I began to think that I was getting protective – not only over Bella, but also over all of the girls. After what Bella had explained to me, it was probably a good idea to make sure they had a happy life. It wasn't like I wanted them to leave; they were a benefit to everyone. They helped my sister and me out in the farm, so we had more free time. For my sister personally, she had girls she could talk to about whatever girl stuff comes to mind (I'm not exactly the one she should be talking to about that 'girl business').

"He got knocked out," Lily answered, smiling at him, "and then I helped him over here."

"Why do you look paler?" Bella asked suddenly.

Now that she mentioned it, Lily did look paler, more tired. You could see purple circles under her eyes if you looked closely.

Bella mouthed something indistinctly to Lily.

She replied, "Yes, I did," in a whisper-yell, before walking past Bella. "C'mon, Ace, I'll take you back."

"Who's going to take you back," I asked. "You're not eighteen."

"It's fine," Ace said, seeming a little disappointed. "I'll walk by myself; it's no big deal."

"Are you sure?" Lily asked worriedly.

"Yeah."

"Why don't you come over for dinner tomorrow?" Lily asked, turning to me, "if it's alright with you, Damien."

"Yeah, sure." I said out of impulse. I wasn't really excited about this guy coming back to my house, but Lily seemed to have taken a liking to him.

"Alright," Ace waved at us, then turned his attention back to Lily, "I'll see you tomorrow then."

Lily nervously tucked her hair behind her ear and smiled.


Oh my goodness, this took me long enough to write out. I stopped doing this for awhile, but my editor wanted me to keep writing this. She loves the Lily & Ace part of the story (LOL, AKA, the character that's based off of her). I love you, Nganny! :D Just keep nagging me & I'll finish this story for you (and the 2 other fans I have reading this story, hahah).