Chapter Nineteen
Nineteen
Axe
Aye, fuck me. She’s wearing the most beautiful dress I’ve ever seen. A slip of silk, soft as liquid, with thin runaway straps, and her strawberry curls, mussed by the helmet, make a tempestuous riot around her Botticelli face.
I was already rock-hard from having her breasts pressed against my back on the ride.
Shite, I’m an idiot. I knew this picnic dinner was a bad idea.
Thank God for the thick thermal blankets folded on the chairs.
Pretty soon she’ll be all wrapped up, and I can do what we came here for.
Not be distracted by her details, but instead record and memorialize them for someone else’s future pleasure.
This isn’t a real date with a real woman.
It’s a professional exercise in gathering intel.
I’ve always been good at coding human behavior into tech, and just because this happens to be the romantic realm doesn’t mean it’s any different.
The philosophy behind the AI software is simple: engage, observe, and translate the essence of Josie into a template that could genuinely help some poor bastard feel a bit less alone.
Or offer some solace to a woman stuck in a life where she can’t yet come out of the closet.
Our previous iterations’ behavior has always too closely coincided with predictive models, which somehow took the messy, glorious humanity out of the product. Josie, who surprises me at every turn, will no doubt provide that captivating alchemy we’re missing.
What we’re doing is creating something real from something unreal, a digital companion that feels as close to human as possible, that fills those lonely gaps, gives a person the illusion of connection.
Aye, the illusion. That’s the rub. Making it seem so lifelike that even the most skeptical soul believes it.
Josie sits in the chair and throws the blanket over her lap.
Her wrap is loose around her shoulders, and I’m terrified she’s going to freeze.
But my team has left nothing to chance. Tiny camping heaters are arranged all around us, creating a cozy bubble of warmth.
It’s as if we’re in our own magic world up here.
“Well, this is…something,” Josie says, flashing that glorious grin of hers.
There’s always a hint of a secret tucked away in the corners of her mouth, and yet tonight, she seems to have shed a layer of defensiveness.
Like she feels freer, maybe. Like the ride loosened something in her the way it does for me.
I always tell Strike that the bike is better than scotch, but he’s too much of a pussy about road rash to understand.
“It’s just us,” I say, though it’s plain as day there’s no one else around for miles.
The team decided there’d be no staff up here tonight—bringing more people into the mix would just screw up the vibe.
So I’m serving our supper myself, straight from a wooden chest packed with multiple courses in temperature-controlled containers.
Seemed like a grand idea until this very moment—my hand’s got the slightest tremble.
What the hell? Am I…nervous? Not a chance.
I never get nervous, but this—the intimacy of sharing a meal, the vulnerability of opening up, even slightly—is a different kind of challenge.
Sort yourself out, Axe. You can handle a pretty woman in a slip dress. Jesus.
The first course is a vegan burrata—Josie has a list of food allergies as long as a Highland winter, so we found all the best alternatives—along with Santa Rosa plums that I had flown in from my small orchard. Their deep purple skins glow by the soft light, and the fragrance is intoxicating.
“When you put the plum in your mouth,” I tell her, “you must smell it, too. It brings out the taste.”
Josie’s eyes go heavy with delight as she tastes everything like it’s a treasure.
We move through the courses: roasted vegetables artfully arranged and drizzled with citrus reduction, along with a selection of Spanish tapas dishes meant to be shared and savored.
Everything on the table is specifically designed to make us lean closer, touch more, and forget the distance between us.
My team knows exactly what they’re doing.
Our software will create curated experiences depending on the whims of the user.
Some people will want a cozy night in on the couch.
Others will want a more unattainable fairy-tale experience like this one. SynthoTech will make anything possible.
Josie asks me about my childhood in Scotland.
I give her the cleaned-up version that I tell everyone, my heart trained to keep forty-two beats per minute.
I mention the castle and the idyllic island, the warm rolling greens of the bogs, the glens that grow thick with bluebells come spring.
I do not mention my father, my upbringing, my family.
What else is there to tell? It would be like someone yammering on about a nightmare they’ve just had. Nothing to do about it, and no one wants to hear it.
I can’t help but notice that Josie also makes light of her history, focusing on kind nurses and teachers instead of procedures and recoveries. She mentions the steadfastness of her mother, not the isolation of illness.
“More wine?” I ask, and when she nods, I pour carefully from the carafe on the table.
I’m less shaky now. The meal might be ending, but the night is just starting.
The chemistry between us is sharp enough to cut.
I can feel it in the sparkle of her eyes, in the way she’s let that strap fall down her shoulder, so sexy I want to put my mouth right against her skin.
Then again, no. This isn’t chemistry.
Her sorcery only solidifies my choice. Josie glows and spins all those around her into her web.
The connection I’m feeling isn’t about us, not at all—which is exactly the point.
It’s about Josie Greene and her witchy attraction in this perfect setting.
It’s about how she weaves her spell on the everyman.
“It feels like we’re on a different planet up here,” Josie says, and her words are tinged with wonder.
I like the sound of it. I like being responsible for it.
“I haven’t traveled much. Or really at all.
I was medevaced once, to Philadelphia, and it sort of felt like this when I looked out the window.
Like I was somewhere completely out of reach of my normal life.
It’s a rare moment when…actually, never mind. ”
She looks suddenly embarrassed. Like she’s forgotten why she’s here and has gone off script.
But that’s exactly why she’s here. I need her off script.
I need to get to the heart of the real Josie, not some generic woman.
I recognize that’s going to be the allure of She’s the One—its specificity. The Josie-ness of it all.
“No, please, go on,” I say.
“It’s not interesting,” she says.
“Everything about you is interesting,” I say, and now it’s my turn to feel embarrassed. “I mean, that’s what this is all about. For the project. I need to find everything interesting about you and see how to translate that to code. So, please, finish what you were saying.”
She straightens a little, a bit more confident.
“I was going to say that it’s rare when you get to escape the clutches of your reality, you know?
And because you’re so far from your day-to-day, you get to sort of be your most real self.
Which I realize is a bit of a paradox. But it’s real for me.
” Then Josie looks down, as if she feels she’s shared too much.
Bites her lip and fiddles with her napkin and then takes a sip of wine.
“I’ve never thought of it that way, but aye.
I suppose I know what you mean,” I say. I’m half-tempted to tease her.
Paradox—that seems a weighty word for the light and breezy Josie she presents to the world.
But I don’t want to get her back up, not when I’m enjoying this glimpse of the person underneath the polish.
I didn’t have to read Josie’s high school transcript to know that she’s sharp as a tack—there’s a shrewdness in her eyes that she keeps beneath her sunshine, like a Trojan horse.
I wonder where she learned the terrible lesson to keep that part of herself tucked away.
“I feel that way on the bike. If I need to clear my head, I go out to the mountains until I feel all those layers fall away.”
“Layers,” she repeats, and smiles at me again, though this is an altogether different kind of smile from when we first sat down. This one says, I understand.
“Like a bloody onion, me,” I say.
“Well, you do make people cry,” she jokes.
I want to tell her that I could make her cry out in pleasure, that I can picture her naked, her dress crumpled at her feet, begging me to touch her.
I won’t, of course. Though I feel my dick ready to answer that thought—not only because of the vision, but also because I’m imagining her reaction to my saying it.
I’d wager she’d go rosy from head to toe and heat up properly from the inside out.
“Fair enough,” I say, and clear my throat. Shake away my impure thoughts. “So tell me about you, Josie. What do you normally talk about on a first date?”
“Is that what this is? A first date?” She levels me with a playful glare, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say she was flirting.
“Nah, it’s only a sim,” I blurt out. I do feel obligated to remind her, and yet suddenly she looks so disappointed, like I punctured the fantasy, which is the opposite of what I intended.
I only wanted to make her feel comfortable, to remind her we’re here for work, so we don’t have to playact.
Because that’s what dates normally are, aren’t they?
A show for another person? Though, to be fair, I don’t go on many dates.
I’ve had my share of beautiful women, aye, but they’ve always known the deal—I don’t have the time or inclination for romantic wining and dining or commitment.
That’s why I’m straight up right from the start, when I tell them I’m only interested in a no-strings-attached bit of fun. No more, no less.
But Josie’s eyes have dimmed and her smile has vanished. “Right. Work.”
The silence between us stretches, heavy and awkward. I fumble for something to say, but I’ve soured the moment. Josie takes a sip of wine and shifts back in her chair in a way that creates even more distance.
“All the pencil necks over at SynthoTech are monitoring and data scrubbing,” I remind her. “They’ll be analyzing everything we do tonight.”
It’s all there in the contract. Plain as day. Josie already knows that my entire body is wired for responsiveness; that every flicker of emotion, every heartbeat, is feeding their endless algorithms. That our conversations are being recorded. That our time together doesn’t really belong to us.
She nods, then places a hand over her mouth and yawns and gives me a smile that’s about half-wattage, and I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve lost something more precious than I even fully understood I wanted.
“It’s been a really fantastic date, too. Good job. But I think if I stay out another hour, I’ll turn into a pumpkin,” Josie says.
The lass does look tired, and I’m quick on my feet, trying not to look as hugely disappointed as I feel.