Chapter 9 Elanie
“Hey, babe. I brought you that special drink I was telling you about.” Blake set a Starflux cup on the table in front of me. “I’m calling it a happleccino.”
“Thanks,” I said, not meaning it when the deeply unpleasant fumes of his concoction hit me.
He leaned in to kiss my cheek, and I wondered why his lips felt so dull against my skin.
Bionics didn’t have siblings, but I imagined that was what being kissed by one might feel like.
And why wasn’t I excited to see him? Shouldn’t I be excited to see my boyfriend?
“Hi, I’m Doctor Semson.”
His smooth voice behind me tickled my auditory neurofibers. And that wasn’t dull, the sparks skittering over my neck and down my arms.
Sunny squeezed my knee under the table while we watched Dr. Semson extend a blue hand toward Blake.
Gingerly, Blake put his fingertips in Dr. Semson’s hand and pressed down. Almost a shake? To be honest, I wasn’t sure what it was.
“Uh, hi,” he said. “I’m Blake. Elanie told me she’s been seeing you. Seems weird to me, a bionic seeing a doctor. Especially a Portisan, right? But hey, thanks for the lube suggestion.”
Mortified, I shot to my feet while Sunny coughed on her drink.
“Come on, Blake.” I clutched his hand before he could say another embarrassing word. “We should go.”
“See you tomorrow, darling,” Sunny said, dabbing her lips with a napkin as I tried to usher Blake to the door.
“Wait.” He dragged his heels and pointed back at our table. “You forgot your happleccino.”
While he swiped the cup from the table, Dr. Semson met my stare and walked smoothly across the room to bring it to me.
I commed him.
he commed back. His lips quirked, and it did something strange to my belly, like a thousand tiny wings fluttering.
Where did that come from?
That quirk spread into a lopsided grin.
And what was that? The way his voice dropped? That little twinkle in his eye? Were we…flirting?
“Thanks, man,” Blake said when he reached us.
But I barely heard him. Because when I took the cup from Dr. Semson, my fingers accidentally brushed over his.
“Anytime,” he replied, looking only at me, still smiling. “Have a nice night.”
Biting my cheek, refusing to smile back even though my mirror neurons were firing at max capacity, I turned around. On my way to the door, I commed,
His low chuckle followed me all the way out into the hall.
Blake’s hand was plastered to my ass, heavy and annoying, like I’d sat on a moon jelly.
When he nudged me into his pod, I noticed that candles flickered on his dresser.
He’d actually made his bed, and on his bedside table sat two bottles of lube, one cherry flavored.
I guess he hadn’t thrown it away after all…
Slinking up behind me, he kissed my shoulder and ran his hands up and down my arms. “What’s the matter, baby? You feel tense. Didn’t you like the happleccino?”
No, I didn’t like the happleccino. Nobody with taste buds would ever like the happleccino.
I turned around in his arms. “Can I ask you a question?”
His brow waggled. “Is this like a truth-or-dare or never-have-I-ever thing? That’s so hot.”
I bit back a frustrated grunt. “No. It’s a serious question.”
“Oh. Okay. Um, what is it?” He tugged on a strand of my hair in a way he probably meant to be gentle but was more of an uncomfortable yank.
Swiping my hair back over my shoulder and out of his grasp, I asked, “Have you ever heard voices?”
“Huh?”
“Voices. Like someone’s talking to you but nobody’s there.”
Blinking at me, he reiterated, “Huh?”
“Never mind.” I rolled my eyes. This was useless. “Forget it.”
“Okay, cool.” Kicking his shoes off into a corner, he unzipped his pants. “I just caught the tail end, but that Dr. Semson sure can sing. And wasn’t that your favorite song? That Mavis Valentine—”
“Macey,” I corrected while he stripped in front of me. No teasing, no slowly unbuttoning one button at a time, just stripping and hurling his shirt unceremoniously over his shoulder.
“Oh, right,” he said while stepping out of his pants. “Whatever. But he always seems like such a buzzkill. So serious all the time. It was cool to see him unwind.”
“He’s actually kind of funny,” I said while Blake tossed his pants onto a chair. “What are you doing?”
“Taking off my clothes, duh. What does it look like? Hard to have sex with clothes on.”
Crossing my arms over my chest, I huffed out a breath. “And what if I don’t want to?”
“Take your clothes off?” He raised a shoulder. “That’s cool. I can work around—”
“Have sex.” My voice swelled in volume. “What if I don’t want to have sex with you?”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
“Babe, why not?” His shoulders caved in a whine of a slump. “I’ve been waiting all day. I got the lube. I even got candles. We’re a couple, Elanie. We’re supposed to have sex. All my friends are having sex. Like all the time. What’s the big deal?”
I looked at him, really looked at him. And it was like I’d swiped my fingers over a steamy bathroom mirror and I could finally see him clearly. I didn’t love Blake. I wasn’t even sure I liked him. He was just…there. And I didn’t want my first time to be with someone who was just there.
I wanted more.
Taking a step toward him, I reached out for his arm and gave it a little pat. “I think we should break up.”
“What?” he blurted out, standing there in nothing but his tight black underwear. “You want to break up? I thought you loved me, or whatever.”
“Do you love me?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
“Totally. You’re my girlfriend.”
“What’s my favorite color?”
He balked, and again with “Huh?”
“My favorite food?” I asked, stepping away from him. “My favorite drink? Book? Movie? What are yours? If we really loved each other, we’d know these things.”
“I knew you liked Mavis Valentine,” he pointed out with some hope. “That’s gotta count for something.”
“I’m sorry, Blake.” I wondered how I could end this without hurting his feelings. “But it’s not you, it’s me.” There, that sounded good.
“Yeah, well, fine.” He sniffled, then sagged down onto his bed. “But don’t come crawling back to me when you realize what a huge mistake you’ve made. Cuz Feather from work has already asked me out. Twice. And she loved my happleccino.”
“That’s great,” I said on my way to his door, meaning it. “I hope you and Feather are happy together. I really do.”
“Elanie, wait.” He scooped the bottles of lube off his nightstand, clutching them to his chest like they were some sort of hydrogel-based shield. “Um, what is your favorite color?”
Gathering my hair over my shoulder, I smiled. Because this question was easy to answer. “It’s blue.”
Lying on my bed, staring up at my ceiling, I felt different, changed, altered on some bionucleic level.
Despite all my systems running nominally, despite the simulated gravity on the ship remaining constant, I felt weightless, warm, glowing like a mote of spacedust floating through a ray of real sunlight.
When Dr. Semson had asked me if I had reason for installing the hormone upgrade, I didn’t have an answer.
I still didn’t now. But maybe it had something to do with this feeling, this lightness.
This sense that my days weren’t destined to be identical.
That I could have more. That my life could be more.
That there was more to me, inside me, than I ever imagined.
Even though I’d just walked away from my first-ever relationship, I couldn’t help but feel that this was the beginning of something, not the end.
I opened my eyes, and fear gripped me, freezing me in place, sticking my feet to the floor. My bare feet. I wasn’t in my bed. I wasn’t even in my pod. I was in the middle of the deck twelve hallway in my pajamas.
Alarms blared, my organic systems straining from overload.
My neural interface sputtered and glitched like I’d just woken up from a full factory reset.
According to my internal timing system, I’d fallen asleep three hours and thirty-two minutes ago.
I had no memory of waking up, no clue how I’d gotten here or where I was going.
All I had was a deep voice reverberating between my ears, a word from a dream I didn’t remember having.
Golgunda.