Page 84 of Roping Her Alien Ranchers

Even Vantor, who had maintained his vigilant perimeter checks between sips of beer, began nodding his head to the rhythm. His gaze still swept the property line unceasingly, but his shoulders had lost some of their rigid tension.

Three beers in, I was feeling loose enough to grab Kalith’s hands. “Come on,” I urged, pulling him to an open space on the porch. “I’m teaching you to line dance.”

“Is this a traditional Earth mating ritual?” he asked earnestly, allowing himself to be positioned next to me.

“Sometimes,” I admitted with a laugh. “But right now it’s just fun. Watch my feet.”

I demonstrated the simple grapevine step, heel taps, and quarter turns that made up the basic line dance. Cyro picked it up almost instantly, his movements precise and controlled despite the alcohol. Kalith stumbled through the steps with enthusiastic ineptitude, occasionally catching his foot on a floorboard or turning in the wrong direction.

Vantor initially refused to participate, maintaining what he called his “security perimeter,” but after my third pleading look, he reluctantly joined our mismatched line. His movements were stiff at first, almost robotic, but as the music continued and the beer worked its magic, he began to loosen up.

“Right foot forward, left foot back,” I called out, laughing as Kalith went left when everyone else went right, creating a domino effect of collisions. “No, your other right!”

“I believe the alcohol is affecting my coordination capabilities,” Cyro announced before stumbling slightly on a turn. A ripple of iridescent color briefly flashed across his forearm, a sign that his human disguise was beginning to slip.

“That’s the whole point,” I replied, executing a slightly wobbly spin of my own. “Beer and bad dancing—it’s the human way.”

As the evening deepened and stars began to speckle the Kansas sky, our dancing grew increasingly uncoordinated. I found myself laughing more than I had in months, maybe years—genuine belly laughs that left my sides aching and tears streaming down my face. For a few blessed hours, I didn’t think about the bank, or the foreclosure, or Derek. There was just music, and firelight, and three aliens attempting to master the Electric Slide with varying degrees of success.

When Kalith attempted a particularly ambitious turn and ended up sprawled across the porch steps, I collapsed onto a lawn chair, breathless with laughter. “I think,” I gasped between giggles, “you guys might be drunk.”

“Impossible,” Cyro declared, even as he swayed slightly where he stood. “Our metabolic processes are far superior to human... to human...” He frowned, seemingly losing his train of thought. “What was I saying?”

“You were saying we need more beer,” I suggested, reaching for the cooler with a grin that felt permanent.

For one perfect night, under the vast Kansas sky, my problems seemed as distant as the stars above us. Tomorrow would come with all its complications—the bank, the farm, the fact that I was harboring three aliens who’d soon be leaving Earth forever. But tonight? Tonight was for celebrating small victories with cold beer and warm company.

The fire had burned down to glowing embers, casting a warm orange glow across the porch that made everything seem dreamlike and soft-edged. Four empty six-packs were scattered around our feet—evidence of the night’s celebration. I’d lost count of my own drinks somewhere around beer number five, but a pleasant buzz hummed through my body, making the night air feel like velvet against my skin. I leaned back in my chair, tipping my face toward the star-scattered sky, when a strange blue-green shimmer caught my eye. At first, I thought it was a trick of the firelight, but then I realized the glow was coming from Cyro’s forearm where his sleeve had rolled up.

“You’re... glowing,” I said, my tongue feeling pleasantly heavy in my mouth.

Cyro glanced down, his eyes widening slightly before he tugged his sleeve down. “A minor lapse in concentration,” he explained, his formal tone undercut by the slight slurring of his words. “The beer appears to be affecting our ability to maintain molecular stability.”

“In human words, please,” I laughed, reaching for another bottle.

“We’re drunk,” Kalith supplied helpfully, his grin slightly lopsided. “And it’s making it hard to keep looking human.”

As if to prove his point, Cyro burst into laughter at a particularly ridiculous lyric from the current song, and his entire neck lit up with undulating patterns of soft pastel light. It was like watching the aurora borealis play across his skin—shimmering waves of turquoise and lavender that pulsed with his laughter. The colors seemed to flow in rhythm with the music, intensifying with each burst of mirth.

“That’s beautiful,” I murmured, leaning closer without even realizing I was moving. The alcohol had stripped away my inhibitions, leaving only wonder in its place.

Cyro’s laughter faded as he noticed my stare, but the lights continued to ripple under his skin. “This is... embarrassing,” he admitted. “We are trained to maintain our disguises at all times while on foreign planets.”

“Don’t be embarrassed,” I said, still mesmerized by the play of colors. “It’s like having your own personal light show.”

Before he could respond, the song I’d been half-listening to hit its chorus with a sudden increase in volume. Vantor, who had been scanning the tree line while nursing his beer, startled visibly. A dark cloud erupted from somewhere beneath his shirt collar, spraying into the air like a fountain of midnight ink. The substance arced gracefully before splattering directly onto the fire pit, extinguishing a third of our carefully tended flames with a hissing sound.

“Defensive ink release,” Vantor stated flatly, looking mortified as dark droplets dripped from his chin onto his shirt. “My apologies.” He reached for a napkin, but the damage was already done—his light blue button-down now splattered with irregular black stains.

I blinked in surprise, then dissolved into giggles. “Did you just... ink yourself? Like an octopus?”

“A cephalopod-like defense mechanism,” he corrected stiffly, though the corners of his mouth twitched. “Typically deployed against deep-sea predators, not... Brooks and Dunn.”

My laughter doubled, tears streaming down my face as Cyro’s skin flashed brighter in response to his own amusement. Even Vantor eventually cracked a smile, his usually stern features softening in the firelight.

Kalith, meanwhile, was having his own disguise issues. As he raised his bottle to his lips, his shorter tentacle slipped out from his shirt collar, waving in the air like a curious snake. He cursed under his breath, shoving it back down and adjusting his collar with exaggerated casualness.

“Let it breathe,” I joked, pointing toward his neck.