Chapter 9 #2
She choked down some of the juice and cleared her throat hard, ignoring the burning sensation over her cheeks and neck. “I-I don’t know. My mother was very… intense about sex when I was young. Even though I’m twenty-seven, sometimes it still feels like I’m doing something wrong.”
“What do you mean by intense?”
She ate another bite, contemplating how to word it.
“It was like… my only value was in capturing a man to take care of me, like she had with my father. But at the same time, she hated men and thought they were impossible to trust. So, if I didn’t go out, she was weird about how I was going to end up alone and regret all my choices.
“But when I did finally get a boyfriend and I lost my virginity with him, she showed up at my school to drag me out of class and yell at me over the condom she found in the bathroom trash. It was mortifying. She stood there on the front steps of the school, shouting at me, asking if I was stupid, and didn’t I know the kind of things I could catch, and did I think he was going to take care of me when I got pregnant. ”
The memory sent a shiver of horror down her spine. Her appetite faltered, and she set down her fork.
“You should finish it,” he said.
“Sorry, I’m just… I’m not very hungry suddenly.”
He surprised her by sitting forward, his eyes intense as he studied her face.
“You’re stressed.” One of his hands slid across the glass table toward her. His fingers, warm and so convincingly human, slid over her wrist. “Let me help you, Ophelia. I can ease your tension.”
Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and hope pricked within her. She pulled her arm out of his gentle grasp, fishing for the device. When she turned it over, she was dismayed to realize it was only another text from her mother.
Fine, I see you’re too good for me now. I hope you’re happy when I’m gone and this is how you treated me.
She sighed, setting the phone down on the table with a soft clink, staring at the message until the screen went dark.
“My understanding of human psychology leads me to believe your mother is attempting to emotionally manipulate you.”
She chirped a surprised laugh, looking at him with astonishment. “Does it?”
He nodded seriously. “That will impact your mental health. Between your sexual incompatibility causing relationship strife and your mother’s demands for your attention, I believe you are being placed under excessive mental strain, especially considering the nature of your mental illness.”
Her amusement cooled to bitter anger. “My mental illness?”
“Your obsessive compulsions.”
“And what do you know about it?”
“Very little, but I intend to research it further while you sleep tonight.”
She rose to her feet with a shriek of metal over polished concrete.
“I think it’s time you went back to the lab,” she bit out, snatching up her phone.
Tears of anger pricked her eyes as she tapped the screen until the line began to ring. Pacing away from the kitchen, she folded one arm over her chest.
Even the robot knows I’m broken, and he’s only been here for a day. God, what does that say about me?
Logan didn’t pick up, so she called him again, her desperation to get the robot out of the house overriding her fear of angering him further. When he didn’t pick up on the third ring, desperation bubbled within her chest.
He couldn’t ghost her, right? All his stuff was still in the apartment. He’d have to speak to her eventually, even if only to—
The door lock turned over with a clunk. She tossed her phone onto the couch, eagerly approaching the door.
“You’re back,” she said breathlessly. Her hands fisted in the fabric of the clean pajama shirt she’d pulled on after returning from her shopping trip.
Logan was still wearing the clothes he’d left the house in the night before, though now they were rumpled, and his pants were stained over the thigh.
“Yeah,” was all he offered in greeting, toeing off his shoes.
“Where… where did you go?”
He rubbed a hand over his neck, ruffling his golden waves.
“I crashed at Brandon’s,” he said, looking up at her uncertainly. “I hope that’s okay.”
“Oh. O-of course. You needed space.”
He hoped that was okay. Did that mean he cared what she thought still? That he didn’t want to end things?
“I’m sorry about last night,” he said in a rush, crossing the room to take her hands. “I’m sorry about this whole week, baby. I don’t know what got into me.”
Relief made her knees weak. She stepped into him, throwing her arms around his waist and burying her face in his shirt as her eyes welled with tears.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said, her voice muffled.
He huffed a laugh, smoothing a hand over her hair, and her fear of change, of loss, of failure, all smoothed away with it.
This was familiar. Familiar was safe. Everything would be okay.
She turned to press her cheek against the plane of his chest, meeting eyes with the android standing half in shadow between the kitchen and the living room. There was a strange glint in his eye, and for a moment, she could have sworn she saw a muscle tic in his jaw.