Ghost Planet by Sharon Lynn Fisher

proximity sensor so it had to be opened via the touchpad.
    “Would you come out for a minute?” he continued. “I’d like to talk to you.”
    Fingers trembling, I touched the pad. The door slid open.
    Murphy’s eyes flickered to mine, and he nodded toward the dining table. “I’ve made tea, if you’d like some.”
    He moved to the other side of the table and sat down. I took the chair opposite him as he filled two cups and slid one across to me. I added milk, watching it swirl and settle into the color I liked. I recalled that Murphy drank his tea straight—he must have set out the carton for me. Apparently intending to ignore someone and actually doing it were two different things.
    I glanced up, and his gaze lifted at the same moment. I flashed right back to our kiss—the second, softer version. Heat rose to my cheeks as my eyes traced the curve of his lips. A counseling psychologist really should not have lips like that.
    “I want to apologize to you,” he said. “I know it was wrong to treat you the way I did. I won’t do it again.”
    It was my turn to say something, but the pterodactyls in my stomach interfered with my ability to think. I fiddled with the handle of my cup instead.
    “Can I ask you a question?” Murphy continued.
    “Okay,” I said, breathing out with relief.
    “I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened to you. I’ve wondered whether you feel at all … different. I mean…” I knew what he meant. And there was a shocking implication in the fact that he had asked.
    “No. I don’t feel different.”
    He stared at his cup, eyebrows angled down in thought. “Suppose you had a choice … a choice between dying—completely—or coming back—as you are … Which would you choose?”
    I blinked at him, astonished. At the question itself—because it cast my existence in a whole different light—and at the fact he had asked it.
    “In one sense it seems cruel,” he continued, sliding his cup from one hand to the other. “A human reincarnated as an alien, with no sense of alien- ness . But at the same time it’s a second chance, isn’t it? A new life.”
    “A dependent alien,” I reminded him. “A different kind of life.”
    “Yes.” He raised his eyes to my face and waited for me to answer.
    My mouth hung open for a moment, but in my mind there was no hesitation. “I’d choose life.”
    He nodded. “So would I.”
    Murphy sipped his tea and replaced the cup on the table. “Now that you’ve chosen to live, Elizabeth, what do you want from your life?”
    I wondered how in hell we’d ended up here. It was just like the kiss. In the last five minutes he’d flipped the way I’d been thinking about myself completely on its head. So was it genuine, or was he trying to manipulate me? Regardless, I figured I had little to lose.
    I continued to hold his gaze, ignoring the way my heart tried to scramble the opposite direction. “I think I probably want the same things you would want in my place. To understand who and what I am. To find a way to separate from you, if I can. If I can’t, to figure out whether some kind of balance can be struck between us. I can’t go on living as someone else’s shadow.”
    He smiled at that. “Is that what you’ve been doing?”
    Something fluttered in my stomach, something more subtle than a pterodactyl. Swallowing a mouthful of tepid tea, I took a moment to organize my thoughts.
    “If you could see the rest of them—the ghosts—like I see them … I’d rather die than end up like that. I’ve fought it as hard as I can, but I know I could have been smarter about it. It’s been a mistake to make things so difficult for you with your colleagues.”
    Murphy picked up the teapot and refilled both our cups. He leaned an elbow on the table, rubbing his temples.
    “I don’t know what to say to you, Elizabeth. Yes, you’ve complicated my life. Immensely. Maybe even put my career at risk. But I can hardly cling to my position and my