Chapter 9
Ophelia watched the android out of the corner of her eye as they walked back to the apartment. He was startlingly considerate for a being who was invented to have wild sex with people who had lots of money.
“Effie? Is that you?”
Her blood ran cold at the voice calling out to her. She stopped dead in her tracks as dread cracked like an egg over her head, sliding down her scalp. Forcing herself to smile, she turned to face the music.
Laura jogged up to her with a huge pair of headphones hanging around her neck, her red hair pulled up in her signature space buns. A hot pink two-piece clung to her curves, and she carried a yoga mat under her arm.
“I knew it!” She laughed, throwing her arm around Ophelia’s shoulders. The earthy smell of sweat and baby-powder deodorant wafted over her. “It’s so good to see you! What are you doing out?”
“Oh, just… getting my groceries,” she said cheerfully, hoping the way her eyes crinkled looked natural.
She was terrible at this—shifting gears from introspection to conversation without warning.
Laura frowned a little, her eyes dancing over Ophelia. “Where’s your food, then?”
Laura’s gaze shifted as the android stepped closer, like a wall of muscle at Ophelia’s back.
“I am holding it,” he said.
Laura’s brows crumpled, outrage momentarily flickering in her gaze—for her colleague, who she now believed was being cheated on, no doubt—but recognition took root. She sucked in a sharp breath as her jaw dropped. “Thirty-One?”
“That is correct.”
Her blue eyes widened so far that Ophelia thought they might fall right out onto the sidewalk and roll into a gutter.
“What are you doing out of the lab?” she asked, gaze darting between the android and Ophelia.
“Logan took him home to work on him a bit,” Ophelia blurted out before the android could offer up the truth. “He’s trying to spend more time together, you know? Since the big crunch has kept him away so much.”
Suspicion darkened Laura’s gaze, but she allowed the lie to fly, nodding demurely as she studied the hulking android. She leaned in, lowering her voice as she darted looks at the people passing them on the sidewalk.
“You know he can get in so much trouble for this, right? Thirty-One is basically top of the line. He’s the sample bot, so his value is depreciated anyway, but the bidding still starts at a quarter mil.”
Now Ophelia’s eyes were popping out of her head. “H-How much?”
Laura nodded tightly. “If he gets a scratch, they’re going to make Logan cough it up. We’re paid good, but not that good, you know?”
She did know. Logan was up to his ears in student loans and other debt, so Ophelia took on the lion’s share of all the bills.
Her father had drawn on his connections to get her through school debt-free—one of the few times he deigned to acknowledge her existence outside of child support checks.
She’d been happy to pick up the tab for Logan with her lesser expenses.
Warily, Ophelia looked over her shoulder at the towering sexbot, whose attention, as per usual, was singularly and intensely on her. She shuddered, quickly looking away.
“I have been instructed not to damage myself,” the android said. “You do not need to stress.”
“You’re worth six figures, and now I think you’ve been borrowed without permission,” she whispered, glaring at him. “I very much need to stress. God, I need to get you home yesterday.”
“That is impossible.”
Ophelia gave him a flat look before turning back to Laura with a beaming smile.
“Well, I should probably get him back before he scuffs his shoe or something!” Her congenial laugh was a little too shrill in pitch, even to her own ears.
Laura nodded emphatically, then caught at her arm as she tried to walk away. “Wait.”
Ophelia blinked at her.
“Is… is everything okay?” Laura dropped her voice, stepping closer. “Your eyes are all puffy like you’ve been crying. Did something happen?”
“Oh, it’s nothing.” Ophelia swallowed hard and tittered a nervous laugh. “Just PMS, you know?”
Laura looked unconvinced, her head tilting and lips twisting as if she were biting on the inside of her cheek. “You still have my number, right? You know you can call any time.”
Ophelia’s heart panged. If only Laura knew how close she’d come to doing just that the day before.
She waffled a moment, trying to decide if it was worth opening the can of worms that was her relationship drama.
Caught between the fear of spoiling Logan’s career and the distinct possibility that Laura would tell her to suck it up the same way her mother had, she clammed up.
“That’s really sweet, thank you.”
Laura rubbed the back of her neck. “Do you want to grab a coffee? I’m free now.”
God, she wanted to say yes.
“Sorry—the groceries.” She pointed toward the bag on Thirty-One’s shoulder.
“Right, of course.” Laura rocked on her feet. “Okay. Just… really, call me if you need anything. And hey, if you need an actual PA bot, just let me know. That’s my department, remember? I can get you the hook-up.”
Ophelia’s smile softened into something genuine. “Thanks, Laura. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Ophelia busied herself with carefully arranging the produce in the fridge, trying her best not to think about the weight of everything looming over her.
Her mother had texted her two more times on the walk home, imploring her to come over because she’d gotten in another fight with her neighbor over whether or not he was allowed to have a welcome mat.
He didn’t clean it often enough for her mother’s liking, and instead of managing her own distress over the dirtiness of the mat, her mother had gone to war.
She’d already been visited by the police earlier that month for throwing the man’s mat away—twice.
Also, she wanted to know if she could borrow three hundred dollars that she would definitely pay back when her father’s alimony check came in.
She had never paid a penny back, and though Ophelia was too courteous to keep track of how much she’d lent her mother over the years, she knew it was in the tens of thousands.
When she’d gotten home, she texted Logan to ask him to please let her know he was safe.
She was sure he’d probably gone to stay with a friend after the failure of the night before, but DC was a big city.
Anything could happen, especially with the rising disparities in wealth caused by all the tech conglomerates moving in.
Desperate times made for desperate people.
Logan hadn’t answered, and it was beginning to gnaw at her.
When she was young and they’d had a big argument, her mother had often stormed out of the house, knowing Ophelia was too young and too frightened to wander off in search of her.
Every time she’d left, she’d made the same ominous statement: “You better hope something doesn’t happen to me while I’m out.
Wouldn’t you feel awful if those were the last words you said to me? ”
She’d slam the door, and Ophelia would sob and pace the house, wondering if they really would be her final words to her mother. Now, her mind went to that same bleak place every time she argued with anyone.
She sat back on her heels, looking sidelong at the android. He had insisted that she needed to eat something, and apparently, they’d programmed him to cook as part of his dream-lover package. He scrambled eggs over the stove with singular focus, a lock of his dark hair dangling in his eyes.
If she’d let him have sex with her, none of this would have happened. What if the last argument they ever had really was over her refusing to use what amounted to a state-of-the-art sex toy? Her stomach twisted angrily, protesting the self-flagellating thought.
It’s not that simple.
But she wanted it to be. She wanted Logan to be right to be annoyed with her, because then she could bow her head, apologize for her shortcomings, and everything could go back to normal. God, she wanted everything to go back to normal.
Straightening, she nudged the fridge shut.
“Sit at the table,” the android said over his shoulder.
Numb even to the irony of being told what to do by an expensive appliance, she trudged over to the kitchen table and plonked down heavily into a metal chair.
He brought her eggs over, plated with an eye for presentation that she would have expected at a nice brunch place.
He’d covered the eggs with crumbles of goat cheese and finely chopped chives, and he’d found the pretentious salt Ophelia kept on hand for entertaining—big, flaky pyramids.
The fork clattered as he set it on the glass table beside her plate.
He even set a tall glass of orange juice out for her.
Despite everything, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “This is… really nice.”
“You haven’t tasted it yet.”
She picked up her fork.
“I just meant the gesture,” she said, digging into the silky eggs. “It’s been a long time since anyone made me breakfast.”
The feet of the chair next to her scraped across the floor, and he sat down beside her with that rigid good posture, hands folded on the table. “Logan does not make you breakfast?”
Her eyes went heavy-lidded as the flavors of the simple dish burst across her tongue, and the android patiently waited until she finished chewing to answer.
“He doesn’t have time.” She pushed the eggs around her plate, suddenly defensive. “He used to, in the beginning. Especially the morning after we…”
A flush rose to her cheeks, and she quickly filled her mouth with another bite of egg.
“Had sex?”
She coughed, hand over her mouth to keep from spraying food all over the very expensive robot sitting next to her.
“You’re easily embarrassed around the mention of intercourse.” He pushed the glass of orange juice toward her. “Why is that?”
He wasn’t helping at all.