Dating-ish (Knitting in the City Book 6)

by Penny Reid

  These feelings are one-sided. Your-sided. Not his-sided.

  “Marie?”

  “Um.” I rubbed my forehead, trying to recall his question and keep the tightness out of my tone. “He didn’t flip out, not quite. I’d told him what the assignment was, and he said he was fine with it. I told him I didn’t have to write the article, but he said he wanted me to do it. But then, after it came out, one of the guys—the bodybuilders—wrote David a letter and told him that I’d slept with him. David called me, told me it was over.” I shrugged, hating that I could remember how much his call had hurt. And how much it hurt that he had called instead of telling me face to face.

  As though reading my thoughts, Matt sneered. “He called? After six years, he called you to say it was over?”

  I nodded.

  “What a fucking coward. Man, you deserve so much better.”

  I paused at the intensity of his voice and stared, as something about the way he’d said the word deserve struck me as odd. This was not the first time he’d brought up how he thought I was exceptionally deserving.

  I glanced at our joined hands, unable to figure out precisely why his use of the word bothered me. “But it was okay, I think. I mean, I adored him. I did. He was so sweet. But we weren’t right for each other, obviously.” At some point one of us had threaded our fingers together instead of a simple hand-hold. “And I think I’ve just always wanted someone to adore.”

  “Someone to cuddle?”

  I lifted my gaze and found him staring at me with poignant concentration.

  “Yes, Matt.” I squeezed his hand and he squeezed mine back. “Someone to cuddle.”

  And right now, I wanted to cuddle with Matt. Even if he could only give me platonic cuddles. I wanted him.

  “You should have someone who adores you. Who is worthy of you, Marie.” His mouth firmed into a determined tight line. “Never settle for less.”

  15

  Personal Couriers (Delivery Robots)

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  Source: Starship Technologies

  “What about hot sex?”

  My mouth fell open and I gaped at him. “Excuse me?”

  Way to blindside a lady, Professor!

  We’d just left the movie theater, having taken off a half day of work so we could spend an afternoon watching a triple feature. We both wanted to see the same three movies, but hadn’t been able to pick just one. So we compromised by watching all three.

  Presently, we were walking toward an ice cream shop he knew about, and apparently Matt wanted to discuss hot sex.

  “You know.” He nudged my shoulder with his, grinning with overly exaggerated lasciviousness, such that it wasn’t lascivious at all. It was just silly. “Is that one of the reasons you stuck things out with Doug? Because he supported both portrait and landscape modes?”

  “What? You mean David?”

  “Sure. Whatever his name is. Did he have you demo his multi-touch capabilities? Was it love at first optical recognition, or did he have to ambulate by your location multiple times? I bet you liked it when he touched your PCI slot, and it probably made his floppy drive hard.”

  Speaking of hard, I was laughing so hard my jaw hurt. “Oh, God. Stop.”

  Matt lowered his voice and leaned close to my ear. “Your mouth says 0, but your eyes say 1.”

  “Oh no.” I tried to look horrified, glancing at him askance, but the effect was ruined by my laughter. “Was that a binary pick-up line?”

  He was also laughing, but not nearly as lost to it as I was.

  Man, I loved how funny he was.

  “Come on, Marie. Did he make your interface GUI?”

  I made another involuntary snort-laughing sound, but finally managed to say, “No. David wasn’t really like that.”

  Matt’s smile fell. “What about your other suitors?”

  Wiping the tears of hilarity from the corners of my eyes, I didn’t point out Matt’s use of the word suitors and instead I considered my other boyfriends—short-lived as they might’ve been—and scanned my memory for any occasions of hot sex. “I was with two guys in college, both of whom were inexperienced. We didn’t stay together long enough to unlock the key to hot sex. But there was this one guy I dated—or thought I was dating—a musician. A friend of my brother’s. He was a fantastic kisser. And, yeah, I guess he was a purveyor of hot sex. I thought I was in love.”

  “But you weren’t?” He looked acutely interested.

  My smile flat, I shrugged self-deprecatingly. “I found out that I was just one of many. So I called it off.”

  Matt’s jaw ticked as his gaze traveled over my face, but he said nothing.

  “I think that’s one of the reasons I stayed with David for so long.”

  “The lack of hot sex?”

  “No.” I shot him an amused look. “Because I trusted him to be faithful.”

  I didn’t add that, with David, I preferred to take care of business myself. I never saw David “lost to passion” while we had sex. It seemed like he preferred blowjobs more than traditional sex. So most of our times together were as follows: I’d go down on him until he was hard; we’d have sex for maybe two minutes; I’d fake it sometimes; he’d come. Then, if I felt so inspired, I’d finish myself off—by myself—in the bathroom, or maybe the next day while he was at work.

  And I didn’t like it when he went down on me. It felt like he was doing something just because he thought I’d like it. Like a favor. He didn’t say anything to make me feel that way, but I never believed he was into it and I couldn’t get out of my head long enough to enjoy the feeling. So, eventually, I told him I didn’t like it, and that was that.

  “He was faithful, but not a purveyor of hot sex,” Matt said, forcing me to grin.

  “No. Not a purveyor of hot sex.”

  “Would you like to? Have hot sex?” he asked, now sounding and looking acutely interested.

  Glancing at him askance and giving him my very best get-over-yourself look, I endeavored to ignore how his question made all the most fantastic parts of me tense with anticipation.

  With forced flippantness, I said, “Are you offering me a prototype robot capable of hot sex?”

  “No.” He laughed. “I’m just curious. Kerry didn’t want to. She was very . . . efficient in the bedroom.”

  “Shy?”

  “No. Efficient. At first, I was as well, so it worked. But then I wanted to try new things, positions and such. And she didn’t understand why we couldn’t just do it for five minutes once a week, missionary.”

  I winced, at this point in our friendship no longer surprised by his candor. “Oh my.”

  “When we divorced, I made it a point to find someone who wanted to have hot sex. And that was . . .” His voice deepened, his sly smile sliding into place. “A fucking god-awful disaster.”

  I burst out laughing at the unexpected description, covering my mouth.

  “She was completely crazy.” His eyes grew wide and something like remembered-unpleasantness pulled at the corners of his mouth. Eventually, he shook himself, his attention refocusing on me.

  “But the hot sex was worth it?” I asked, both curious and teasing.

  “No!”

  And just like that, I was laughing again.

  “No. No. No. God, no. Definitely no. It wasn’t even that hot, it was just freaky. And dirty. And weird.”

  “So freaky, dirty, and weird don’t do it for you?”
>
  “I guess not. Not with her, anyway.” Matt’s gaze conducted a quick sweep of my body, but before I could process the mysterious shift behind his eyes, he pointed to a sign across the street. “That’s the place I want to go. They have coconut ice cream.”

  “Sure. Fine. We can go there. But, about your lady friend who you were using for hot sex, maybe if you—”

  “I wasn’t using her for hot sex. I don’t use people. I liked her at first, or I thought I did. I wasn’t just looking for a hookup. She was smart, worked for Yoodle as a team leader. I thought, okay, here’s someone I could be with, shares my interests, let’s see where this goes. And then, she starts showing up at my work every day, every day, at all different times.” His gaze swung back to mine. “She accused one of my managers of trying to seduce me, in front of my entire team. She put a camera in my house.”

  “Oh no. That’s so awful.”

  “She told me she did it because she loved me, and that I’d never been loved before, so I didn’t understand.”

  “That’s not love.”

  Matt gathered a deep breath, and shook his head. “She cheated on me, with lots of different guys. She took pictures of herself doing it, and then left them all over my bed.”

  I sucked in a shocked breath. “That’s so bizarre. I’m so sorry.”

  He shrugged. “By the time it happened, it was a relief. I decided, if that’s what love is, if that’s how people behave when they’re in love, I didn’t want any part of it.”

  “Wow.” I was stuck on his words if that’s what love is. I was assembling the puzzle pieces of Matt Simmons, and finding that much of his repugnance for long-term relationships made a lot more sense now. “So, that’s the last time you dated someone?” I wondered if he had any more buried horror stories.

  “No.” He gathered another deep breath, shaking his head. “I tried dating a few times after that.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, one woman wanted to take pictures of us all the time, for her Instagram account. The few times we went out it felt like we were dating for the sole purpose of posting pictures to Instagram. She wasn’t ever happy with how I looked, or how I dressed, and she wouldn’t let me drink my coffee—you know, at coffee shops when they put a design on the top—until she’d photographed it. And then she always wanted me to take pictures of her, so she could get just the right one, and post it to her account. Then she’d spend the whole date on her phone reading comments on her photos. She couldn’t understand why I didn’t think this part of her personality was cute.” He made a face. “It wasn’t cute. It was annoying. And childish.”

  His addition of the descriptor childish made me pause, because Matt often did things that were somewhat child-like, like his propensity to ask all manner of questions without gauging their appropriateness, or his tendency to be honest in all situations.

  He just seemed candidly curious about everything, which never struck me as childish. I associated childish behavior with selfishness, and child-like behavior with never being taught or knowing better. But I hoped he’d never know better. I hoped this part of his personality never changed, because I loved his unguarded curiosity.

  “So you broke up?”

  “She dumped me when she found out I’d automated my text messaging.”

  “Um, what?”

  “You know.” He made a vague gesture with his hand. “I built a program that would respond to her text messages.”

  “You did what?” I thought we’d reached a point in our relationship where he couldn’t shock me anymore. I was wrong.

  “She texted me a lot. I didn’t have time to respond to her immediately—or at all, not the way she needed—so I designed a simple AI with several different modes to immediately respond to her messages, dependent on key words.”

  “Like what?” I should have been outraged on her behalf, but I wasn’t. This was too fascinating.

  “Like, she’d send me a text saying something like, You’re so sexy. And so the program would go into sexting mode.”

  My mouth fell open with more shock, but he wasn’t finished.

  “Or she’d ask me what I was doing and it would go into conversation mode. Or she’d text about how she was angry about something or upset, and it would go into supportive mode.”

  “I can’t believe you outsourced your relationship to an AI.”

  “It’s actually where I got the idea for the Compassion AI. She was perfectly happy until she texted me while we were together, my phone was in the other room, and the AI immediately responded. Oh, something cool, I also programmed it to check my calendar and respond with dates and times if she was trying to schedule something. All in all, it saved me hours of pointless texting.”

  “Matt.”

  “Marie.”

  “If you truly like a person, their texts aren’t pointless. You’ll look forward to them.”

  He shrugged noncommittally.

  I gave him the side-eye. “Have you been automating your texts with me?”

  “No! No. Of course not.” His expression grew intensely serious. “You don’t seem to require frequent texts, or immediate responses for that matter. Plus, don’t I usually message you first?”

  “That’s true.” I realized he was right, usually he was the one to initiate text conversations between us. “So, why didn’t you just break up with her if you were unhappy?”

  “Because . . .” he visibly struggled to explain, his attention darting from the sky to the sidewalk to the street, “No woman is going to like how much I work, how unavailable I am. If it wasn’t her, it was going to be someone else, because I’m the problem.” He took a deep breath, wiping his face tiredly with his hand. “I know I work too much. My job, my research, that’s what I want to be doing.”

  I nodded. “I get that. You love your work. It’s difficult to justify giving up time spent working for a person you can’t be certain is worth the investment.”

  “That’s part of it,” his gaze hardened, then turned contemplative. “But I also have to wonder . . .”

  I waited for him to continue; when he didn’t after several moments, I prompted, “What?”

  “I wonder if I’m just not built for that. You know? With Kerry, we weren’t ever in love. We cared about each other, but it wasn’t what I see with people like, let’s say, Fiona and Greg. Or even Kerry and her new husband. We were good friends, and it was convenient to get married, so we did. We saved on living expenses, got to move into the married people dorm, always had someone to go see movies with. And then everyone since, I’ve never—” He shook his head, like he was frustrated.

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” he said with a touch of melancholy, his eyes lifting to the sky.

  My heart beat quickly, frantically, and the crazy in my mind had been awoken. It was currently screaming from its padded cell I’ll love you! I’ll teach you how to love! You’re so smart and funny and sweet and unfairly handsome. Let’s have hot sex!

  I had to seriously concentrate on my breathing and roll my lips between my teeth, because I couldn’t calibrate my smile and my lung function at the same time.

  Luckily, he wasn’t looking at me when he continued speaking his thoughts aloud. “But I do love my job. I do love my work.”

  Unable to contain myself, I stopped him by tugging on his arm and waited until he looked at me before saying, “You sound so sad, Matt.”

  He stepped closer, a small smile on his lips, his expressive eyes twinkling down at me like I was wonderful. But I also saw something different there as well. I saw self-possession, restraint, and frustration.

  “How can I be sad? I’m with you. Here.” He wrapped me in his arms.

  I rested my cheek against his chest and felt his heart beat. I’d never been particularly touchy-feely with any of my male friends, but with Matt, it didn’t matter where we were, embracing usually felt completely normal.

  But not tonight.

  Tonight there was a stiffness in
his posture, like he was holding me close, but not too close. Something was bothering him, but I didn’t know how to push the issue.

  A few people passed by on the sidewalk, taking no note of us. I tried snuggling closer to his chest, hoping to dispel the sense of disharmony. It didn’t work, the tension remained, so I inhaled the scent of him. He smelled like peppermint, making me think he had a mint habit, and also a lovely cologne or aftershave I couldn’t place.

  “Are you smelling me?” he asked, tilting his head to the side. “Because, if you are, you should know I’m totally into that.”

  “Maybe.” I pulled away, wagging my eyebrows at him, wanting to disperse the odd dark cloud that had emerged over the evening, and instead replicate our previous light-heartedness. “You’ll never know for certain.”

  Matt fell into step beside me. “Because you’ll never tell?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s not right, Marie. Real friends have no secrets between them.” He shook his head like he was disappointed in me, and I could see he was also trying to recapture our earlier mood. “I demand you tell me the color of your underwear.”

  “What? Never.”

  “Come on.”

  “Nope.”

  He leaned close and whispered conspiratorially, “Black, right?”

  I shook my head, fighting off a shiver at his proximity.

  “I’ll get them off you—er, I mean—I’ll get it out of you one of these days.”

  I said nothing, because my instinct was to say, Yes, please. How about tonight?

  And he would probably think I was joking.

  That Friday night, I found myself fighting Professor Quirrell for the Sorcerer’s Stone, still on a Matt-induced high from the evening before.

  Okay, yes. My more-than-platonic feelings weren’t reciprocated, but my heart didn’t seem to care. I liked him. A lot. Exorbitant liking. So what if we were never anything more than friends? Being around him was beyond satisfying in so many ways, I was beginning to think a friendship with Matt was preferable to a romantic relationship with anyone else.