Technically Faking

by Robin Hale

  * * *

  AMBER KOWALCZYK WAS A SNAKE.

  A hustler. A sandbagging, lying, devious little counter-intelligence operative who preyed upon the vulnerable and the weak.

  “This is obscene,” I growled, staring at the television with increasing frustration while the tousled brunette to my left simply laughed.

  “How have you not played Mario Kart? What happened to your childhood? Who hurt you, Iris?” Amber giggled through her questions as she hopped cheerily over the oil spill that had sent me sailing over the side of the raceway.

  From the corner of my eye I could see the chat window — a relatively recent feature for SparkSignal — exploding with activity just as it had since we began this farce of a video game live stream.

  That had been Amber’s stroke of genius. It wasn’t enough for the internet to see me as something they liked. Someone they were happy to fall in love with or alongside. The increased name recognition wasn’t enough. They needed to connect me to the product I’d built, and Amber believed it would be productive to…embarrass myself. Use SparkSignal the way they used SparkSignal.

  Not to broadcast nude photos — although I would admit to a diminished sense of shame around nudity — but to engage in the sorts of potentially-embarrassing hijinks that other people my age did. The ubiquitous ‘felt cute, might delete later’.

  Which was how I found myself driving a mushroom creature around a racetrack and getting bombarded with cartoon weapons.

  “When you were getting your ten thousand hours in on, on — damn it! — hurling bananas with deadly accuracy,” I leaned to the side helplessly, sending Amber into another fit of giggles. Evidently, the lean had no mechanical impact. It still felt right. “I was learning to write computer code.” The next turn was a hairpin, but I hit the slide too late and — fuck. There I went over the edge again. “I have never regretted that until right now.”

  The cloud creature with the hook settled me back onto the track and I took off again, somehow not actually in last place. Miracle of miracles.

  The video games had also been Amber’s idea. Not only for the built-in audience but because she thought it would do my reputation some good to fail at something publicly. As long as it was a trivial failure. Thankfully, I could quell most conference room rebellions without resorting to a game of Mario Kart.

  “That’s it,” I said as I watched Amber sliding around into the last lap of the race. “This is a hostile takeover.”

  I hopped up from the couch and deposited myself in Amber’s lap, obscuring her view of the screen and trapping her hands — and controller — against her chest.

  “Cheat!” Amber sputtered, struggling to draw in enough breath for the word past the helpless way she laughed. She squirmed to the side, trying to unseat me from her hips. I didn’t bother telling her she’d have to try a little harder to beat the decade of riding lessons I’d had while growing up.

  “I don’t recall establishing any rules,” I said as casually as I could while still trying to keep Amber from seeing the screen.

  She struggled to get her head around my shoulder and make space between our bodies to use her controller, but I pressed her back into the couch, unable to keep the grin off my face. Her helpless squirming shifted at once into wrestling and her legs came up around my hips to pin me between them, fighting my movement. Amber gave up on using her controller behind my back, slipping her arms around my waist and pulling me more tightly against her. She pressed the soft heat of her body against me from shoulder to knee, hands curled around my waist. The gusting breath of her laughter was a delicious tease, but nothing compared to the sudden shock of wet heat searing a stripe from my shoulder to my earlobe. She followed the lick with a nip of sharp teeth.

  “Amber —” The gasp was out before I could control the impulse and the damned woman purred at me in response.

  It was in-bounds based on the careful negotiations we’d conducted at the beginning of the farce — shoulders and up were fair game. And if I were being fair, which I was not generally inclined to be, I would admit I had kicked off our current bout of rampant cheating.

  Her next chuckle was lower, dark and hot and every nerve ending in my ear sparkled beneath it. The tip of her tongue flicked along the lobe, her lips sucked at the skin, teeth dragged softly over the surface — and I went careening over the side of the raceway.

  “It was a good try, though,” Amber laughed gently, nuzzling against my hair as she made the final turn.

  I didn’t trust myself to speak.

  10

  AMBER

  I leaned back against the counter while I waited for the coffee pot to finish brewing, swiping open the email app on my phone through force of habit. My eyes moved down the list by rote, flagging and tagging emails for future attention, dragging my mind back from where it wanted to wander when it drifted from the task.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the SparkSignal video game stream. It’d been a wild success, by all accounts. Carrie had gotten me in on the daily analytics reports with minimal fuss — only the bog-standard NDA that I’d come to expect from all of my Silicon Valley clients — and I knew exactly how hard we’d hit SparkSignal’s engagement tracking with that little display.

  Little display. Right.

  It wasn’t just the mission success that lingered. It was how real it all had felt. How…guileless. Which was insane. The whole thing was an exercise in guile. We were putting one over on the entire social-media-engaging public.

  But it hadn’t felt that way. Not when Iris had been scowling at me about her losing streak, foot casually tucked beneath my leg like she hadn’t thought about it, she’d just wanted to touch me. Not when she’d launched her — entirely cheating — assault by flinging herself into my lap. The sharp edge of her grin had been every bit as real as her skin beneath my lips.

  And, oh, the way she’d gasped my name. That had sounded so, so real. It had to have been. She couldn’t have been faking that.

  The low thrum of arousal had been my constant companion since that first night in Iris’s apartment when we’d made our insane plan, but I couldn’t ignore it anymore. Couldn’t shake it off. I got caught in these spirals of remembering her hips between my thighs, her ear beneath my mouth, and the way she’d felt pressed against me.

  I was doomed.

  “That’s an awfully serious look. If it’s the coffee doing that to you, maybe you should stop drinking it?”

  I turned to face Rain, Dave’s and my other roommate, where she stood in her doorway. She was barely dressed: a vintage silk robe clung to her shoulders out of politeness rather than any sort of fastening, sandy hair hanging in waves down her back, save for the quarter section of her scalp buzzed short. She was barefoot, fresh-faced, and utterly unconcerned about anything except smiling at me.

  “Hey,” I said fondly. “Long time no see, stranger.”

  “Mm,” Rain hummed in agreement and stepped close, wrapping soft, pillowy arms around my body and resting her cheek against my shoulder. “Relationships are hard work, sometimes.”

  I brought a hand up and stroked between her shoulder blades. “I don’t think I could do it, you know? Dating one person seems like too much effort most days. But three?” I let the air out of my lungs in an audible rush.

  “It’s usually worth it,” Rain said as she gave me one last squeeze and moved to the fridge. “Besides, it’ll be two soon. Won’t know what to do with all my free time.” She offered me a smile but it didn’t hide the flash of genuine pain in her eyes. “Yogurt?”

  “Yes, please.” I grabbed a couple of mugs and set about fixing our coffee the way we both liked. “Two, huh?”

  “Zachary is moving to Portland.” The words were matter-of-fact, punctuated with the sounds of spoons against glass bowls, a knife against a cutting board.

  Oh, no. Rain and Zachary had been together longer than I’d known her. Why hadn’t she said anything?

  “When does he leave?” I asked, watching her
face for the things she might not want to tell me.

  “Tomorrow, actually.”

  Yikes.

  “How long have you known?”

  “He told me last night.”

  I was staggered, eyes round and gut dropping into my feet. Last night? That long together and he just sprang it on her?

  “I’ll kill him,” I said, putting my hands on her shoulders and tugging her into another hug. More insistent, less a greeting.

  “It’s okay.” Her voice is small against my shoulder.

  “It isn’t,” I insisted. “He owed you better than that.”

  She lifted a hand to brush away the tears gathering in her eyes and shrugged the soft curve of a shoulder like she could slough off heartbreak as easily. “He’s just…reminded me I prefer not to date people who insist on a relationship hierarchy. That’s all.” Green eyes twinkled up at me as she smiled again. “That, and it’s a good time for me to focus on my platonic relationships, too.”

  “Damn skippy,” I said with a grin. I couldn’t imagine how she must have been feeling. I had my own hangups about exes, about heartache, but it must have been worse to realize this guy she’d loved didn’t think he needed to treat her any better than he had.

  “I was thinking…Dave’s birthday is coming up.” Rain hopped onto one of the kitchen stools. “Karaoke?”

  A grin swept across my face. “Absolutely.”

  “You should invite your girlfriend,” Rain said, nothing on her face except her kind, genuine smile, and I instantly felt like something she should scrape off the bottom of her shoe.

  My girlfriend. Right.

  “I saw the Mario Kart stream,” Rain continued, scooping a spoonful of yogurt and fruit from her bowl. “You two are adorable together. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so happy.”

  The words were like falling through the ice into a pond. Painful. Shocking. And my own damn fault.

  “And it’s obvious she’s crazy about you,” Rain continued. “She shouldn’t play poker if she was trying to be subtle.” She winked.

  “We — we haven’t —” What the hell could I say to that? “We haven’t talked about — feelings.” Oh good. Making it sound like we were casually hooking up was obviously the better choice.

  Sympathy flashed in Rain’s eyes. “Are you — how do you feel about that?” And that was Rain from top to bottom. No judgment as long as everyone was honest and upfront about their needs and expectations. It didn’t have to be something that would make her happy for her to support you.

  Never mind the fact that ‘upfront and honest’ was about as far from my current reality as it was possible to get.

  “I’m — you know, I don’t want to push her.” That much was true.

  The corners of her eyes crinkled and Rain sucked the rest of her yogurt off her spoon with a theatrical pop. “I don’t think you’re going to have to wait long.”

  I ducked my head to hide the heat in my cheeks, the grin I couldn’t fight off — and the doubt written all over my face.

  * * *

  MY PHONE WAS on its fifth ring when I finally snagged it from the side of my desk — mid-afternoon nap attempted and aborted — and I held it to my ear without registering the call number.

  “This is Amber!” I was breathless, heart pounding.

  “Glad to hear you’re not dead,” a familiar voice said dryly from the other end of the line. My heart lurched, the familiar swell of guilt settling in around the clearing fog of my failed nap.

  “Hi, Mom,” I breathed, falling back onto my bed. Great. Should’ve checked the caller ID.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t love my mom. I did. She was a great mom. I’d just been avoiding some of the usual family news and I knew exactly how long it had been since I’d last called — it didn’t look good for me.

  “Are you feeling okay? You sound out of breath.”

  I let a smile quirk the corner of my mouth. “I’m okay. Ran for the phone, is all.”

  “Well, maybe take your temperature to be sure. Fatigue can be a symptom of all sorts of things.” It was her favorite pastime now that I’d moved out of state from where I’d grown up. She couldn’t actually make sure I ate enough and slept enough and took care of myself the way she wanted me to, so she’d suggest I might be sick. Near as I could tell, it was so she’d be able to tell herself she’d helped me on the off chance I was sick.

  “As soon as we’re done, I’ll do that,” I promised. “How’s Dad?”

  My mom let out a fond, exasperated sigh. “Oh, you know. Next year is his last year of teaching before retirement. For the fifth year in a row.”

  I grinned. My dad was the best calculus teacher my high school had ever seen and he couldn’t seem to give it up for anything. He’d be teaching derivatives at his wake.

  “Thrilled about Gregory, of course. I didn’t hear from you after the family newsletter. Have you seen it?” She hadn’t so much as changed the tone of her voice, but I could hear the disappointment behind it.

  “No,” I admitted. “I’ve been…busy with client work.” True, if misleading. “How’s he doing?”

  “Marvelously, as usual,” I could hear the wink even if I couldn’t see it. “That boy puts the rest of us to shame, I’ll tell you what. He’s been accepted to two of his top three picks for medical school. Two!”

  I felt a jolt of nausea and an immediate wave of self-loathing for it. Couldn’t I just be happy for him? What kind of sister was I that hearing about his success made me sick?

  “That’s amazing,” I said. It was. It was absolutely amazing. He was always amazing.

  “And I gather I’ll need to put a little something about you in the next newsletter. Do I have that right?” Mom asked.

  My brow furrowed. “I don’t think I know what you…?”

  “That girl you keep posting about!” Mom laughed. “She’s all you talk about online anymore. So…” Her voice trailed off, carefully casual and obviously fake. “Is it serious?”

  I forced a laugh and hoped my acting was better than mom’s. “Oh, you know. Just…seeing where it goes.”

  A hum. “I’ve done some googling about this girl.”

  Oh no.

  “And I have some concerns.”

  There it was. Mom voice. Full-on Mom Voice.

  “She seems like she’s…not your usual sort of date, you know?” There was something else there. A disapproval she was burying behind the casual remark. “I’m worried that she’s — well, to be perfectly frank, I’m worried she’s using you.”

  ‘Don’t worry, Mom. She’s paying me for it.’ Not that I could say that. The words formed and I bit them back as quickly as they appeared. I didn’t catch the surprised laughter quite as fast.

  “I don’t think my concern is funny, Amber.” The note of hurt in her voice made the guilt in my chest go tighter.

  “Sorry, Mom. I just — I don’t think you need to worry about that. Iris is great. She’s really great.” Understatement. Iris was the single most compelling person I’d ever met. I might have ruined myself for genuinely dating anyone in the future.

  “She might be, but she’s still a Silicone Valley CEO.” The urge to correct the mistake was nearly overwhelming, but it wasn’t useful so I didn’t do it. “I saw pictures of her last girlfriend. I just think you should keep your guard up.”

  ‘Saw pictures’. Meaning that she saw how gorgeous the redhead was. How very different from me. Meaning that she knew that the redhead had been part of Iris’s sphere before they started dating. That this cross-class nonsense was entirely outside Iris’s wheelhouse.

  And I couldn’t tell her she was wrong, because she wasn’t. Those things were all true. And Iris didn’t really care for me. Not the way I found myself…wishing she would. I was performing a service. And it would be over soon.

  “I appreciate it, Mom. And I will. So how’s Greg going to pick?” I settled back against the pillows, trying not to imagine the last time I’d seen Iris in my bed working on
her laptop, doing the same thing. It was a nice dream. Like doing theater in school. Something difficult and magical and very, very temporary.

  I listened to my mother’s voice and tried not to drift to sleep.

  * * *

  ‘KARAOKE? IS THAT THE NEXT PHASE?’

  The message was the only one on my lock screen when I woke, and I smiled down at the phone helplessly.

  ‘All part of my evil plan. And it’s Dave’s birthday. I’ll post things from it, so maybe you should be there?’

  My heartbeat sped up. Why did it feel so different, inviting Iris to something like that? Why wasn’t it the same as every other event we’d pulled off?

  Because it hadn’t been in the plan. Everything else had been…isolated. Just us. Or rather, just us and the entirety of my social media following. We went to dinner and I posted a photo of Iris eating dumplings and glaring at me for taking a shot with her mouth full. They didn’t see how she’d taken my hand to walk me home. We watched a movie and no one saw the way she laughed, they only read the things she’d said.

  But inviting her to Dave’s birthday? Inviting her to a small gathering of my closest friends, to do something fun and ridiculous? To introduce her to my roommates and tell them she was my girlfriend, the woman I’d been spending all my time thinking of?

  That was different.

  ‘What does he like?’

  I blinked at the message. ‘Who, Dave?’

  ‘Yes. So I can bring a gift.’

  ‘You don’t need to do that’

  ‘It’s been a while since third grade, but I understand that is still the protocol.’

  I tried to picture Iris as a nine-year-old, prowling up to some unsuspecting child and thrusting a gift into their hands. Growling a greeting then retreating somewhere that had fewer children. Protocol completed, handoff successful. Birthday party achieved.

  It was the single most terrifying and adorable thing I’d ever imagined.