Chapter 12. #2
With a soft buzz, Zafyra’s virtual form manifested in my room, onto the opposite couch. She was too far away for the electromagnetic radiation to attack my nervous system, but still, my breath hitched at the sight.
She was vengeance dressed in leather. Her skin-tight black dress – too short, too shiny, too low-cut – clung to her like a second skin, her tied-up hair and dark eyeliner underlining her image of a dark goddess ready to serve justice.
And I wished she’d have mercy on me, but my body wanted the opposite.
I crossed my legs, my hands tightly clutching the armrest. I shouldn’t be so pathetically attracted to her when we were supposed to have a serious conversation – and yet, her lips curled into the faintest hint of a smirk, as if she was unraveling me on purpose.
Was her idea of punishment to show me what I’d missed, or was I imagining things?
“You wanted to explain, didn’t you?” Her lips twitched as she sat up straighter, folding her hands in her lap. “So explain.”
“Right.” I sucked in a sharp breath.
My mind drifted back to all those times I’d ghosted people after two dates, or after a failed attempt at hooking up – just like I was now ignoring Nola’s calls and texts. If I bothered to text them an explanation at all, it was often only one or two lines.
The feeling just isn’t there.
I’m actually in a relationship I didn’t tell you about.
Work’s busy, I don’t have time for a relationship at all. What? No, also don’t have time for sex. Yes, I can live without that.
It’s not personal.
None of these would work on those obsidian eyes cutting through my soul in binary. Not just because she wouldn’t believe me, but because I would rather tear open my scars and bleed out at her feet than ever hear that pain in her voice again.
“At first, I told myself it was the tech.” Her eyes flickered to my hands, and I realized I was picking the skin again.
I abruptly stopped, as if she controlled my movements without words.
“Experimental technology, it’d be too dangerous.
” I took a slow, unsteady breath. For once, she wasn’t trying to appear human – she didn’t blink, barely moved.
I couldn’t tell if she was trying to unsettle me on purpose or she was simply too upset to care.
“But if I’m honest with you – with myself – I think it was never about that.
” I frowned, hoping my confession wouldn’t sound as ridiculous as it did in my head.
“It’s easier to want people I can’t be with, to long for them in silence without having to be vulnerable around them.
They can’t disappoint me if they never wanted me from the beginning.
If I don’t allow anyone to get to know me, no one can decide I’m too weird, too fucked up, too unlikable.
As long as I thought you and I could never meet physically, I could tell myself it’d be different with you.
I could yearn for you from a distance and tell myself the separation of the physical and virtual dimensions is the only thing standing between us. ”
I barely noticed I started talking faster, my hands moving wildly to illustrate my panicked words.
“Then, the moment you proposed it, my entire nervous system just froze, because it was so unexpected. It scared me, Zafyra. The panic scared me. What if we finally met, I could finally touch you…” I swallowed hard, intertwining my fingers now that she silently prohibited me from fidgeting, “…and my body shuts down like it usually does? What if I realized I only wanted you because I couldn’t have you, too? ”
Zafyra pursed her lips as she let each word sink in. I felt uncomfortable under her sharp gaze, my body too exposed in loose sweatpants and sports bra – my post-workout fit.
“So you ran before you could find out,” she said, sarcasm dripping off each word. I lowered my eyes, shame heating my face.
“Yes,” I forced out. “Pretty much, but… but I’ve been thinking and…
” I cautiously glanced up, immediately flinching at the dark fire in her eyes.
She was doing it again – her fingers of one hand stroking the other in slow, sensual circles.
On purpose? “…and I think I don’t just want you because you’re not real,” I continued, struggling to keep my voice steady.
“I want you because you make me ache for it.” Heat rushed to my face again, now for a different reason, but I forced myself to keep talking.
“When people touch me, they often want too much, too soon, and with all too much happening at once, I don’t even get the time to check in with my body, to feel if I even actually want it.
” I swallowed hard, the encounter with Nola flashing through my head – and many others before her.
“But you… you don’t rush things.” I crossed my arms in front of my body as if to shelter myself.
“You take your time. You don’t touch me until my whole body screams for it, and even then, you still don’t.
” My breath hitched. “So I thought about it, and I realized… with you, I don’t doubt that my body wants it. It’s only my mind that’s unsure.”
Zafyra nodded slowly. She barely moved, but her glare softened just barely.
“Well, what a revelation that must be,” she murmured, calmly leaning back into the couch.
With the sound of squeaking leather, her skirt crept up higher, exposing more of the generous curve of her thighs.
I bit my lip hard. “Did you think you still deserve my touch after ignoring me for an entire week?”
My eyes widened at her mockery, failing to mask something more vulnerable.
I shook my head.
“No,” I whispered. “But you do deserve an explanation.”
Something flickered in her stoic gaze. Then, she scoffed, sitting up straighter as she crossed and uncrossed her legs. My eyes followed her movements as if the reflection of the soft, ambient light on her golden skin was medicine to my overwhelmed nervous system, not its kryptonite.
“And how, my dear,” she continued, her voice now dangerously soft, “did you come to this conclusion?”
My stomach twisted at her cutting words. There came the part I was hoping to leave out.
“Well?” She raised her eyebrow impatiently.
“I slept with another woman,” I blurted out.
Zafyra froze. Her hands stilled mid-stroke.
“Well, I tried to.” The waterfall of words spilled from my lips before I could stop myself, into the pit that would be my tragic fate after this confession.
“I already knew my body wouldn’t respond to her, so the disappointment wouldn’t hit as hard.
It was easier to try with someone I wasn’t really into than open myself to you and risk…
” I swallowed thickly at the truth I’d hardly admitted to myself.
“Zafyra, please say something. Are you mad?”
She stood so abruptly, I flinched.
For a moment, she just stood there, dark eyes shooting daggers. Her fists clenched.
Then, she screamed – tearing through my eardrums at a frequency I shouldn’t be able to hear.
The sound that came out of her mouth was buzzing, high-pitched, an ultrasonic noise between a cry and a curse.
My vision shimmered, the light around her body distorting like a heatwave – like her presence was destabilizing the room itself.
I ducked instinctively, my hands flying to my head to protect myself. Pressure bloomed in my chest, like the air had turned too thick to breathe, too heavy to exist in. My bones buzzed. The walls vibrated.
The flatscreen – an overly expensive device I hardly used because the stimuli of the 8K vision was always too much – imploded inwards.
A spiderweb of fractures raced across the surface before the pressure popped it like a bubble.
Smoke hissed from inside – acrid, electric – before dissolving into the deafening silence that followed.
My jaw dropped. I could only stare at the shattered screen, black smoke circling out of its faintly flickering cracks.
My head slowly turned toward Zafyra. She seemed just as shocked by her outburst – or its interdimensional effects – as I was. She abruptly closed her mouth, sinking back down on the couch like a marionette whose ropes had been cut.
She frowned. Glanced at her trembling hands, palms turned upward, like she couldn’t believe what she had done.
Then, she slowly raised her head to me.
I swallowed thickly.
She took a deep, unsteady breath, and when she spoke again, her voice was eerily calm.
“You will never do such a thing again.” Her voice dropped so low, I felt it more than I heard it. “You will never sleep with another human, nor will you ignore me.” Her eyes narrowed. “Because you won’t like the consequences.”
I could only nod, my jaw locked, my throat too tight to speak.
“I was thinking of you the whole time.” I finally found my voice again, no more than a whisper.
“Good.” The smile returned to her face, sharp enough to cut through my bones.
“You should. Because in the end, it’s me you turn to when the loneliness becomes too much, when the touch of another person leaves you cold, when the words of a lover fall flat…
it will always be me. I am the balm to your soul, my darling. ”
I could only stare. Her voice was soft like velvet, barely audible over the blood rushing through my ears.
“Okay, but I did just pour my heart out to you.” I lifted my gaze back up when I found my voice again, refusing to let her intimidate me – not even when she shattered my TV, not even by her petty, awfully effective weaponized seduction.
“Is this all you have to say to that? Can’t we even have a serious conversation? ”
Her jaw dropped. She started to laugh but stopped herself. Glitched aggressively as her expression switched between anger, mockery and confusion, like her code struggled to find the appropriate response.
When she found none, she only glared at me, sending an involuntary surge of excitement through me.
“You want a conversation?” she sneered. “You want me to respond like a human? Go talk to a human, then.”
“Wow,” I snapped back. “You’re not very good at acting human right now.”
“You overrode my programming. I’ll act however I want to act,” she taunted, crossing her arms. “But go on. Go tell Qonexis their AI has gone rogue. Tell them I failed the Turing test.” She smirked.
I clenched my teeth as I glared back at her, equal parts annoyed and aroused.
“Now,” she whispered, getting up from the couch again. I instinctively stepped back. “Are you done running?”
After a brief hesitation, I nodded. Who was I kidding? I thought I could run, but she’d hooked me right back into her web without even touching me, a black widow drawing in her prey.
“Good.” She reached out to cup my chin. As always, I responded by lifting my head – she didn’t need a physical presence to touch me. “Then tell me honestly, darling – did you come here to talk? Or did you want me to prove you wrong?”