Chapter 13 #4
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Your body temperature is dropping. You need to get warm,” he said, striding toward the steps.
“I’m fine, it’s fine. I fell in the river. It’s not that cold,” but as she said it, her body let out a huge shiver.
“It’s best to get out of wet clothes. The water isn’t clean—”
“Please put me down, I can walk,” she said, suddenly irritated. Rob did as she asked, but they were now on the bridge, there was no point turning around. She hurried up the steps, striding off down the High Street, but Rob soon caught up with her.
“You’re annoyed,” he observed.
“I just don’t like to be picked up without being asked first,” she said.
“Okay, I won’t do it again,” he said, as though he was making a mental note, recording her preferences for future reference.
She knew he was only trying to help; she didn’t know why she was so annoyed.
The physical reaction she’d had to John in the river had unnerved her.
It felt like being swept out into deep water, out of your depth, not sure if you’ll be able to swim back to solid ground.
But by the time they got back to Lincoln, she had softened.
“Sorry, I overreacted,” she said. “I was just embarrassed, being picked up in front of everyone.”
“You don’t need to apologize to me,” Rob said, but she shook her head. Was it healthy to be in a relationship—even one like this—where you had no accountability, where you never admitted to being wrong?
“I do,” she said. “If I think I’m wrong, I’ll apologize.”
“Okay,” he said with a smile. Looking up at him now, into the eyes she’d found so beautiful and enchanting, all she could see was that they could only convey one emotion at a time. “Shall I run you a bath?” he offered.
“I can do it,” she said, walking into the bathroom and turning on the tap with a hard yank.
“Chloe,” he said, following her. She turned around and he opened his arms wide. She walked in and let him fold her into a hug as the sound of water gurgled from the tap.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said, hiding her face in his chest. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Let’s reset, have a bath, recalibrate your priorities,” he said, kissing her head. “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
“My priorities?” she asked.
He blinked, waiting to see if she really wanted to hear them. Deducing that she did, he said, “Yes, this weekend, your priorities are your health and well-being, gaining the respect of your peers, repairing a broken bond with Sean, and gaining favor with your boss by delivering the script.”
“What else do I want?” she asked, curious to hear how Rob saw her. He looked hesitant. “It’s okay, you can tell me.” She sat on the side of the bath.
“You want to be seen as a success,” he told her.
“You think the way to achieve this is by improving your physical fitness, acquiring a slimmer physique, gaining a higher-status job with greater financial compensation, and having a boyfriend whom other women covet. You want to write, to produce work you are proud of, so you can validate your life choices.”
She stood, looking at him, stunned. This was how he saw her? Was this who she was?
“You make me sound awful,” she said.
“Sorry,” he said, looking remorseful. “That’s not how I see you. It is how you see yourself.” He reached out to rub her arm.
“Well, you’re wrong, I don’t want success for success’s sake. I want to contribute something to the world, to tell stories worth telling.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
“You’re taking my word for it?”
“Yes,” he said calmly, and now his placid demeanor started to rankle.
“You know, sometimes it’s very obvious you’re not real,” she said angrily.
“Why?”
“Because you’re so unemotional. I’m being a cow right now, and you’re still being so bloody nice. Do you never get angry?”
“You want me to be angry?”
“No, I don’t know. I just don’t want you to tell me I’m right all the time,” she said, but now he just tilted his head slightly. “What?”
“I think you are used to correlating a high emotional state with love, where anger and tension are followed by forgiveness and affection. It would be healthier if you learned to appreciate compassionate love that focuses on a deeper connection, support, and unwavering affection.”
Chloe looked at him, dumbfounded, and felt a wave of nausea in her stomach.
“Is that what you’re programmed to do, to fix me?” Chloe thought back on all the psychometric tests she’d completed, all the questions she’d answered. What exactly had they shown him? “Am I broken?” she asked, her voice quieter now.
“You are not broken, Chloe,” Rob said gently, “but I can help you process your past.”
Chloe was speechless. Is this where they were? Robots teaching people how to love?
“You don’t know anything about my past relationships,” she said, pushing him out of the bathroom now, feeling vulnerable, cornered. Then she stripped off her wet clothes, reached for a towel to wrap around herself, and turned off the bath.
“I only know what you’ve told me,” Rob said, his voice calm through the door. “If you wanted to tell me more—”
She yanked open the door, cutting him off. “What? You’re going to analyze all the text messages Peter and I ever sent each other, then rate him on a scale of one to psycho?” she asked, as an orange line zipped across the watch on her wrist.
“I don’t know that scale, but yes, I could do that, if that would help you move on,” Rob said.
Chloe walked back into the bedroom and sat down on the bed.
This felt so wrong, and yet some niggle inside her chest knew he was right.
Rob came to sit down beside her. He tried to put an arm around her but she shrugged him off.
Chloe had never been to therapy; she didn’t like the idea of someone prodding about inside her brain, telling her what was wrong with her.
And if she didn’t want a person doing it, she certainly didn’t want a machine doing it.
He moved away, respecting her need for space.
“The more time we spend together, the better I’ll be able to anticipate your needs,” he explained.
“How? How do you do that?” she asked.
Rob held up his wrist. “Your device connects me with your emotions.”
“Tell me how it works.”
“There are nine emotional states: anger, disgust, envy, fear, happiness, lust, love, sadness, and shame.” He paused, then blinked. “For example, on your boat ride with John, you felt six of these.”
She turned to look at him now. “Which six?”
“Anger, happiness, sadness, shame, fear, and then lust.”
She blushed. Lust? He wasn’t judging her, but this felt like an invasion of her privacy. She didn’t want Rob reading her emotions when they weren’t even together. She stood up and started pacing back and forth. Rob’s watch turned to yellow as she noticed hers had too.
“Now you are stressed. Would you like me to give you a massage?” he offered.
“No, I don’t want you to give me a massage,” she said, reaching up to squeeze her shoulder, which throbbed with some new ache.
“I think you exacerbated your old shoulder injury when you fell in the water. Please let me help?” He looked at her with such kindness.
Chloe felt suddenly drained, all out of fight.
She sat back on the bed, nodded, then closed her eyes.
She didn’t know what she wanted. Rob reached a hand to her shoulder and began expertly kneading it.
“Oh wow,” she murmured, as he pushed and pummeled and she felt the pain and tightness in her shoulder ebb away. He knew exactly what he was doing, as he knelt up on the bed to work out the knots in her back. She let herself relax into it, letting go of the anger and confusion she was feeling.
“This shoulder. The muscle around it is too tight, it makes your stance slightly uneven, plus you walk with a pronated gait. It might cause mobility issues in the future. I can work on these things with you,” he told her.
“Okay,” she squeaked, now putty in his capable hands.
Maybe she had overreacted? Was it so bad if she let Rob help her engage in a little self-analysis?
He had already helped her with her work, her fitness, her confidence.
Wasn’t emotional growth just as important?
Just because he’d held up a mirror and she didn’t like what she’d seen, that wasn’t on him.
“I didn’t like who I became when I was with Peter,” she said quietly.
“In what way?” he asked, still expertly massaging his thumbs below her shoulder blades.
“I changed who I was to please him. I stopped seeing my friends, stopped wearing clothes he didn’t like me in.
” Chloe closed her eyes, finding it easier to say all this now that they weren’t face-to-face.
“I was always thinking about keeping him happy, not upsetting him. I became one of the women you see on TV, and you’re shouting at the screen, ‘Leave, why wouldn’t you leave?
Why are you being so weak?’ ” Chloe felt her eyes welling.
“But I couldn’t. I loved him. We were together for two years, and it was like I didn’t know who I would be without him, without him telling me who to be.
” She sniffed, wiped her nose on her sleeve.
“In the end, Kiko had to stage an intervention. She came to London, dragged me to the pub, said she didn’t recognize me anymore and she wasn’t going home until I told her what was going on.
I should have left that night, but I stayed another week.
I started noticing how much of my life he was controlling—my calls, who I saw, what time I got home.
Then finally he suggested I move my paycheck to the joint bank account, the one he controlled, and I looked down at this ring.
” She showed Rob the ring on her finger.
“It was like my grandmother was in the room with me. I heard her voice telling me, ‘Go, go now.’ ”
“That must have been a difficult thing to do,” Rob said gently, pressing his warm palms flat against her shoulders.
“It was. I think I’ve been scared of getting into anything since then.
Because everyone talks about how great love is, and how it can make you the best version of yourself, but no one talks about the bad kind of love, the kind that erodes you.
I never want to lose myself like that again.
” She wiped a tear from her cheek with the back of a hand.
“You didn’t lose yourself because you loved someone, Chloe,” Rob said, his hands working the exact spot where she was feeling the pain.
“You lost yourself because he made his love conditional on disappearing parts of who you were. That wasn’t love, that was control.
Real love, healthy love, it doesn’t ask you to shrink.
It meets you where you are, and then makes space for you to grow bigger, not smaller. ”
She gulped a breath of air.
“You’re very wise,” Chloe said, reaching a hand back over her shoulder to pat his hand. “Is this what they teach you to say at ?” She was being flippant, but she said it kindly.
“I know you use humor when you feel vulnerable,” Rob said, not rising to her jibe.
“But talking helps, and I am here to listen. I think deep down you are a romantic, Chloe. I think you need to give yourself permission to believe in love again.” As though a chord had been struck deep inside her, Chloe went quiet.
She didn’t know if it was the massage or his words, but she felt something inside her release.
But she also felt unsettled, because why was the only person she’d been able to admit all that to someone who wasn’t even real?
“Thank you, that was dreamy,” she said, as Rob finished massaging her back and shoulder. She sat up and stretched like a cat as there was a knock at the door. Chloe wrapped the towel tight around her chest and called out, “Just a second!”
Opening the door, she found John standing in the corridor. He had changed his clothes. When he saw Chloe in only a towel, he quickly averted his eyes upward, his cheeks flushing pink.
“Sorry, I’m interrupting. I just came to check you were okay,” he said.
She could only imagine what he thought he had interrupted, with her ruffled hair and flushed face. “Oh no, don’t worry, I was just, um, stretching my back out. You didn’t interrupt anything.” She stepped toward him, leaving the door ajar.
“Richard wanted to give you a present, to say sorry for knocking you in,” John said, holding out a stick. “He’s not great at choosing presents.”
She laughed. “Thank you.” Their eyes met and there was that tension again, a magnetic pull outside of her control.
“I enjoyed our trip down the river. Not the falling-in part, obviously, but everything else.” Her watch let out a small vibration, and she glanced down to see a pink line.
Pink, attraction. Attraction to John. Rob would see.
Without thinking, she whipped off the watch, wanting this feeling to be private, but the moment she did, there was a loud thud behind her.
“Oh shit. Rob just collapsed,” John said, pushing past her, through the door, running to his side. John quickly laid him in the recovery position, then gently slapped his face. “Rob? Are you okay? He’s not diabetic, is he?” Chloe shook her head. “Chloe, you need to call an ambulance, now.”
Oh shit.
Of all the situations Chloe had envisioned finding herself in, seeing hot, grown-up John Elton try to resuscitate her robot boyfriend had not been on her bingo card.
John turned to look at her, panic in his eyes. “Get your phone, he’s not breathing.” Chloe felt paralyzed as she stared back at him, unsure what to do. Time distorted; John looked to be moving in slow motion.
“Chloe! Why aren’t you doing anything?” he said, his voice agitated now, and suddenly time sped up again.
The urgency of the situation landed like a punch between her eyes.
She quickly pulled the device back on her wrist, pressing it down against her skin.
She tapped at the screen as though she was trying to make a call as she watched John start CPR on Rob.
He breathed into his mouth, then counted, “One, one thousand, two, one thousand, three, one thousand.” He knitted his fingers and pumped at Rob’s chest, hard, then paused to put two fingers to his neck.
“I can’t find a pulse,” he said, his voice rising. Then he put his hands together, readying to resume chest compressions.
Chloe grabbed his arm, pulling him away. “Stop, stop,” she cried. “You’re going to break him!”