‘He’ll be here any minute so you’d better scram.’ She gave him a look that could melt steel. ‘Oh, I thought you always ate alone,’ he said...with a victorious grin along with a bit of an attitude. She hated men like him, men who thought they were so smugly smart when they were just mentally twisted and insufferably annoying. Just by his immediate sarcasm, she knew he’d be a problem. He looked from her to look at the big, black man and to watch the man leave the counter to sit at another table. I don’t mean food. This man hungered for things I couldn’t give him. I couldn’t shape shift and turn myself into a new lover every night. I couldn’t clone myself. I couldn’t handle his brutal ways in the bedroom. All I could give him… was freedom. Complete and unrestricted freedom. Had he cheated on me? Was this my desperate attempt to keep him? No, and no. I was beautiful, confident, and intelligent. I could have had any guy I wanted. But I wanted him. If I evaluate my feelings for him from a. I was going to go out, drink and finally lose my virginity. I didn’t care who, when, where, how or why, I just had to do it. I was incredibly shy, wore glasses, outstripped most of my peers intelligence wise, and didn’t have an interest in boys. I wasn’t a great prospect for any male, I was no eye candy to dangle off your am. I had even earned myself the label of “frigid” This was far from the truth I was very interested and couldn’t stop looking. I had been living in Essex for many years now. It had made its journey at a velocity dramatically greater than any comet or meteor. And when the shell of the ovoid alien craft peeled open like a flower, all that emerged was this relatively small, oddly complex and seemingly unthreatening artefact.This wasn't quite the way one would have anticipated humanity's first contact with alien technology.Unsurprisingly, there was considerable speculation on Twenty-Seventh Century Earth as to what this strange thing might be. Human civilisation had by.