I can’t help but notice that Josie also makes light of her history, focusing on kind nurses and teachers instead of procedures andrecoveries. 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 andsee 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.
Twenty
Josie
I’m not tired at all, but I can’t stand sitting here staring at Axe any longer. The setting is soextraextra—the hilltop view of the starlit sky, the cool evening breeze, the candlelit dinner. I get that it’s the whole SynthoTechthing—hyper-curated romantic experiences. But holding the line between reality and fantasy is starting to feel like a second job. Tonight’s Axe feels so different from the one I knew before. The whole scene was enlivening my senses in the best way until I was reminded it’s all a setup. Then everything turned artificial and too sweet, like I chugged a bottle of corn syrup.
“Is that okay? I know this is a job and I’m not trying to shirk. I just think if this was a real date, this is where I’d bow out, you know?” I ask. Though, I doubt he does. I can’t imagine Axe MacKenzie has ever had a date cut short.
He checks his gadgety watch—like an Apple Watch on steroids.
