4. Blue-Blonde
Blue-Blonde
Isaak
Her smile broke him. Isaak tried to keep it CCC – cool, calm, and collected – even if he felt anything but.
The heist with Astrid, shooting that guard in the Tapeworld…
It had left him angry, wiped out. Was it a dummy program, an AI?
But it had acted like a real person. Could it have been someone else taped in? Astrid wouldn’t tell him.
Stealing data from upstart spots for her had been fine at first, but it was getting old fast.
He tried to shake the negative thoughts from his head and focus on where he was now.
The lights of Aftershock’s dance floor hit him.
Dylan had that vibe to her. Sure, a lot of women in Shoreditch and East London dressed in a similar way – the can’t-be-bothered look, a hand-picked selection of artisanal clothes, and the dyed hair.
But there was something special about her.
Her cool, not-really-wanting-to-be-there attitude didn’t feel contrived.
She felt genuine. Plus, she looked beautiful in her white minidress.
He was trying hard not to come across as shy, unsure if it was the drink, the fresh trauma in that other place, or Dylan’s disarming charm that kept him on the edge of his seat.
It had been years since he’d done this – gone out on his own and struck up a conversation with a beautiful stranger.
The last time was before he got famous, before the Lazarus, when hooking up with strangers got too easy and empty, vapid.
Fast-forward five years and one rollercoaster career, and he was back to the nothing he’d come from.
Maybe reaching out to someone was one way to stop the dark filling up inside him…
He’d noticed the Apocalypse Revolt earring before approaching her.
It only made him more determined to say hi to her.
He didn’t think of himself as a proper vegan – if meat was still legal, he’d probably still have eaten it.
But the earring told him this was someone who believed in something.
And yes, it looked cute on her and gave her an edge, like a knife pendant hanging on the neck of a sword and sorcery princess.
Dancing – more like awkwardly moving around his arms and legs – and the occasional brush of body parts with her was having a definite effect on him.
While he mouthed along to the lyrics – he’d always assumed belting them out would make him look silly – she sang them out loud, swinging her arms from side to side, bending and twisting to the flow of the song. He swayed in place, trying to keep up.
What started as a melodious tune became a hardcore techno track. Everybody danced with their game face on, with that unflinching belief they had to move their bodies or they might keel over.
He was starting to regret suggesting they dance, but then Dylan bent down, hands on opposite knees, then climbed up slowly, arms reaching out to him, coming closer to him, the tips of her fingers touching his face.
She laughed and broke the spell that kept him frozen in place. Isaak bought in, then dared to bend his own knees.
Fuck.
Fucking pain. He bit through it, the joint in his right knee screaming at him.
Dylan smiled at him. Cool. She hadn’t noticed anything.
The DJs switched to a softer, pop-EDM track. A chart-topper.
“I love this song!” she shouted, pumping her arms in the air, hopping side to side to the beat. Sweat slicked her skin, lit by the neon lights in the distant wall, the glowing peach fuzz around her arms an atmosphere he longed to breach.
Damn.
Gorgeous.
He smiled.
Confidence flooded his veins like nitrous-oxide juicing up a sports car.
He moved closer to her, his moves more self-assured.
Then the song demanded more of them, romantic lyrics about quickly made promises, and he dared to loop his arm around her back and pull her closer.
Dylan looked up at him, but just as it seemed to be the start of a moment between them, her eyes found her friend in the crowd and went wide, and she sang out loud again.
The moment was lost as the beat signalled a change back into hardcore. Her face twisted in surprise, and he couldn’t tell if she was happy that nothing had happened.
Trying to keep himself going, he tried a bolder dance move, and that’s when the pain in his knee woke up.
“Ah, fuck!”
Her eyes filled with worry. “What’s wrong? You want to stop? Oh, shoot. Your lim—”
Isaak knew the next word out of her mouth was going to be “limp”, despite her stopping herself halfway. They’d been talking mostly with their eyes and expressions up to now, letting the dance speak.
Hand on his knee, he headed towards the corner seat where his jacket and her green snakeskin coat lay bunched to one side, like props out of an action movie from the late nineties.
“It’s fine. I’m okay. Keep dancing if you want to…”
But by the time he sat back down, she was at the bar again. Two more G&Ts on the way. He wasn’t opposed.
He scooched to the side. There was plenty of space for both of them and their stuff. Still, she sat down as close to him as possible. Her warmth made his insides flutter.
“Those were some nice moves out there,” he said, immediately regretting how he’d phrased it. Real slick stuff, buddy.
“Thanks. You weren’t so bad yourself,” Dylan replied, taking a sip of her drink. He figured she must just be being polite, especially given the way he’d retreated from the dance floor. “You didn’t have to— Ah, shit. Sorry I keep bringing it up.”
He could get lost in those eyes of hers. The excitement in them had turned into worry.
She’d gone quiet, eyes to the distance.
“What?”
“I… I was about to say…” She struggled to get her words out. Isaak recognised himself in that. “I’m sorry about your leg,” she managed eventually. “You didn’t have to ask me to dance. You don’t need to prove anything.”
Ouch. He felt his face redden, the sweat in his pits worsening. His knee twinged in slight pain, as if on cue. “I wasn’t trying to prove anything,” he said defensively. “I just fancied a dance—”
She placed a hand on his arm, interrupting him. “It’s fine. Sorry.”
Now it was Isaak’s turn to look away.
She squeezed his arm. “I liked it…”
Isaak turned to look at her and into her eyes, deep as galaxies.
“It was very sweet of you.”
“But…?”
Dylan tilted her head. “No buts,” she assured him.
A few drinks later she was under his arm as they sat back in that corner, in the quick intimacy of alcohol and excitement.
“Then I found out they were pivotal to the rebellion, Wesley and Constance Colt, heroes of the Apocalypse Revolt!” She waved her arms agitatedly. “I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do, you know what I mean?”
He nodded at her. She leaned close to him.
“Or who I’m supposed to be.”
“Because of your parents? At least yours are around…” Isaak felt a lump forming in his throat.
Dylan straightened up at this. She brought a hand to her chest. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” Then her eyes went wide. “Wait a minute. You were just telling me your father still eats meat…”
“They’re not dead!” he said through the lump, before she went any further. “Mum left, when I was a kid. And my dad’s a non-starter. And a meat-eater at that… You’re lucky your parents are around is all I’m saying.”
She looked at him with that pitying look he’d seen on others, after being kicked out of the Lazarus. Isaak didn’t need any of that. He started to cross his arms, but Dylan placed her hand on the one that had been around her before he could.
Her lips were pursed, eyes narrowed. “I get it! You’re not looking for a pity party.” She playfully lifted his arm again and leant underneath, her head touching his shoulder. Her warmth spread to Isaak’s skin through the thin London Lazarus shirt.
Letting out a meek, complacent sound, he went quiet as she carried on.
“It’s about legacy. We got a hundred-year head start on climate change thanks to people like my parents.” Dylan sighed. “What’s left for me to do?”
Isaak looked at her. She was staring ahead, her eyes following the crowd of twirling revellers on the dance floor.
“What do you do?” he asked, his finger laced in Dylan’s blue-blonde hair, the quick comfort they felt with each other possible in no small part due to the drinks they’d been having.
“Outreach, at the Office for Veganism.”
He’d heard about that. Changing the hearts and minds of resilient carnivores, one phone call at a time. Frankly he had no idea how she had patience for it.
Noticing a change in her tone of voice, he probed further.
“You don’t like it?”
She glanced at him. “Convincing people who have never even tried going off meat to switch diets…?” She waved her hands as she answered, and she gave a huffed breath.
“Yeah, not easy. Not much fun either. Most carnists are set in their ways, don’t want to change.
Summers should make it mandatory for everyone in the Kingdom and be done with it. ”
Carnists. Isaak flinched at the word. He didn’t particularly sympathise with meat-eaters but they were still people.
His dad for one. He still had memories of his dad pushing him to “get eatin’ some bacon.
” “No, thanks,” he’d reply. It got worse after Maria left.
Maria was his mum, but she’d very much stopped feeling like it after she just up and left one day.
She never spoke to him or his dad again.
His dad became a different person after that too.
Never cared. One day, Isaak left home and didn’t return.
“They should pay a tax for every day they eat meat,” Dylan said, absorbed in thought.
“Would you do it?”
“What?” she asked, lifting her head from his shoulder, a smile forming on her lips.
“Break out the cows from the farms,” he said, with absolute seriousness. He wanted to know how far she’d go.
Her mouth formed a shocked “O” for a moment, then she recovered herself. “O-of course. I wanted to protest at the farms but they’ve—”
“They’ve what?”
“Hidden them! Cows, pigs, chickens all in ‘uncertain locations’. It’s like fucking Area 51, but for cattle.” She was speaking so fast she seemed to be running out of breath.
Not knowing what to do, Isaak returned the swear. “Fuck ’em.”
“The animals?!”
He chuckled. “No, the ministry!”
Relief over her face. “Ah… yeah. Fuck ’em.” She nuzzled under his arm again, and started tracing each letter of the London Lazarus logo on his shirt. He liked that. A lot. She not only had values but would be brave enough to defend them.
“I punched a wall once. Broke my hand.” The words came out of his mouth before he had a chance to think them through. Whether through some self-pitying instinct or a strange desire to be judged, he couldn’t tell.
“You punched a wall?” She moved out from under him again, laughing and smiling at him.
As Isaak stayed still, her mouth formed a pout. She caressed his hand. He pulled it away, avoiding her examination.
Then he sensed it. A spike of dread. What if they went back to his place and…
had a one-night stand, and then it was all fucked, and he never saw her again after that?
He’d never been able to make a one-night stand last longer before.
The magic was always tainted somehow. He’d move on to the next night, the next woman he’d meet, after another victory for the Lazarus.
Before he let the same thing happen here, he got up and made to leave.
“You’re off?” Her voice sounded slightly wounded, hitting him like a punch. He didn’t want to go, but at the same time he didn’t want to stay and let it go to a place he wasn’t ready for. Yet.
He’d gone further with her than he had for a long, long time.
Being with Dylan soothed and excited him all at once.
But he felt like a loser. He knew he was a loser, a wash-out, an ex-ReSports team captain forced into early retirement.
They’d been close to kissing earlier, on the dance floor, and it didn’t happen, and that hurt.
Like jabs in his heart. And now it might happen again, with their closeness, and quickly formed intimacy, but the self-preservation systems in his brain flooded him with anxiety and panic chemicals, and Isaak so desperately wanted to see her again, and make it last instead of flaming out in a passionate one-night fling.
Wait. “Desperately”?
They traded phone contacts. Dylan pulled him closer to her just before he turned away. Aching to lean into her kiss, but wanting to save it for another day, to keep this feeling going for longer, Isaak began to unravel.
It might have been the alcohol, or the near panic attack, or the fear that came from his long history with women when he was popular and a star – that they’d spend the night, that he’d ghost them afterward, that he’d fuck it up.
To Dylan, he was just some guy with a limp she’d had some fun with tonight. He’d avoided explaining what he did for a living. Avoided explaining his Lazarus t-shirt. With the beard, she probably wouldn’t have recognised him from the team, not from all that time ago.
He thought long and hard about it, as long and hard as he could in the space of a few desperate seconds.
It definitely wasn’t the alcohol talking. He was sure of it. How much could five G&Ts really do?
He grabbed the roll of tape from his jacket pocket. It was his last spare one. He’d only brought it with him in case of emergency.
Well, impressing this girl was an emergency.
Leave her empty-handed and he’d always just be some nobody who couldn’t dance, forgotten in a fortnight. Give her the keys to the Tapeworld and… To be honest, he didn’t plan that far ahead.
“Here. So you’ll think of me.” He encased the roll in her hands. Black-polished fingernails, eyes confused.
It was only later, when he was walking home, the fog of drink having lifted a little, that he realised the full implications of what he’d done.
Fuck.