Amour Foe
A Dating Simulation
Adam was beaming with pride.
“I didn’t spill on myself once during the entire meal.”
Hailey admired the unblemished tableau. “That’s why you got a cookie for dessert.”
Their Arkadian space cruiser was traveling at the speed of light. It left the shimmering boardwalk beset with simulated stars. Artificial atmosphere ensured the open-air boulevard remained breathable for the cosplaying cosmonauts. The sky overhead skipped past in still frame form.
Holding hands was intended to be infantilizing for Adam.
Hailey didn’t expect to feel fifteen again.
“You’re rebooting remarkably well. I think you matured another decade during dinner. When you got my chair, I almost fell out of it.”
“I’ve been in a fog since I was five,” Adam acknowledged. “That’s how it felt. You always were a lighthouse. I’m sorry I was too thick to penetrate.”
She squeezed his hand. “Can you see me now?”
His eyes hit the deck. Admitting the truth felt like walking the plank. “You’re the only thing I see.”
“You like to say that.” Her tone suggested it was all talk.
“There’s a reason for the repetition. It’s just reality.”
“We really need to get you to an optometrist.” Hailey slid a weightless index finger along the length of his temple. It caused her to briefly brush the real thing. She chalked up the charge to static electricity. “I think these are out of focus.”
The suggestion made him sad. “That’s funny. I thought I was seeing things clearly for the first time.”
Fellow travelers filled the deck of their floating steamship in every direction. The place was packed with inserted NPCs. Delineating between AI and actual Arkadians was an exercise in futility.
Jack and Rose running past the pair instantly broke the illusion.
Hailey watched the doomed lovers depart with a look of disgust.
She never understood why they didn’t share the door.
“Mainframe’s not even trying at this point. Just replicating old movies. We must be in pretty dire straits.”
A candy shop merchant tossed a preteen pickpocket through a plate glass window to underscore the point. Hailey and Adam watched the bon vivant in a purple bowler hat retrieve his pocketed lollipop. He added a swift kick to the sneak thief’s midsection as the cherry on top. Inflicting pain had become the path of least resistance in Arkadia.
Adam pulled a Lloyd Dobler and guided Hailey around the glimmering shards.
Detective Miller didn’t mind the intrusion into her personal space one bit.
His hand was cemented to the small of her back. “So, what’s next on the docket?”
“Apparently, I’m to put you through your paces,” Hailey reported. “Particular protocols that have to be followed to get you up to speed. We’re both just following an assigned script at this point. This little walk-and-talk was as preordained as our parting.”
He began to pout. “You don’t have to bring up our breakup every time we’re together. I’m reminded every second of the day. You’re being redundant.”
Hailey arched her eyebrows. “And you’re being juvenile, jackass. Although I must say it suits you. It doesn’t look like you aged a day since the last time I saw you on Earth. You’ve got Benjamin Button energy.”
His expression softened. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It was intended that way.” She body checked him with minimal brute force.
The nudge rerouted Adam toward a kiosk containing a cornucopia of floral arrangements. He surveyed the options while Hailey smiled in tentative anticipation.
“May I have the Middlemist Red Camellia, please?”
“An excellent choice, sir,” the vendor replied. “There are only two in existence.”
“One of one. Just like the wearer.” Preston placed the corsage around her wrist. “Sorry. It’s a little prom-y.”
Hailey began to glow. “Kid, you’re going to get us killed. This thing is worth like a billion dollars.”
“No one more appropriate to own it, then. It looks cheap on you.”
“You just came dangerously close to calling me cheap, Adam. But thank you.” Her tri-ridged dimples were fully engaged as she admired the priceless artifact. “You know, you could have put a dandelion around my wrist back in the day and that would have done the trick, dingus. Making it up to me now doesn’t make up for lost time.”
He nodded. “I know that. But if you give me more time, I’ll never stop making it up to you.”
The exes were too busy staring to mind their surroundings.
They were being watched
*
The couple were serenaded by Miles and Coltrane at Birdland.
Adam returned to the table after leaving a tip of Butter Rum Lifesavers in John’s jar.
“A dental appointment would have been more appropriate,” she added. “His teeth were terrible.”
“Give the guy a break, Hailey,” Adam insisted. “He was a kid in a candy store.”
Darkened candlelight was the color scheme. Shadows and amber filled the entire establishment. The ambience wasn’t helping to lower the temperature between the two.
Hailey Miller’s porcelain skin was the color of caramel. Adam couldn’t help himself. He reached across the table to brush a couple loose strands from her face. When he pushed them behind her ear for safekeeping, his fingers kept going. She leaned into the effort.
Her goosebumps got goosebumps.
It seemed sensible to change the subject. “I think this is the first time we’ve ever had an audience. My husband didn’t have the same hang-ups. It was nice not feeling hidden.” She politely removed his hand and placed it on the tabletop.
Adam used the enhanced leverage to straighten himself. “You’re my audience, Hailey. I’m only speaking to you. Everyone else is eavesdropping. I appreciate their applause, but your admiration is my only aim. As long as you’re listening, no one else matters. Even when you weren’t, that didn’t enhance their import.”
She started to shiver. It was evident in her elocution. “How do you know I’m listening?”
“I don’t hear anyone but you. Even your silence has a specific sound. It makes you hard to miss. Which is weird, because I’ve never missed anything more in my life.”
Hailey tried to shake the thought free.
It was a futile gesture.
“I love what you’ve done with the place by the way.” Adam’s own index finger traced a path across her hairline from afar. “Shorter, I mean. You could have sold the stuff for profit. I’m surprised you didn’t bag the remnants.”
“What do you think paid for this dress? Anyway, Prince Charming, I’d steer clear of the subject. You used to tell me I looked amazing with my hair down. Which by extension meant I didn’t look good with it up. See how that works, sport?” She crossed her arms and cocked a single eyebrow.
Adam finished his bourbon and clinked the tumbler on the table. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. I was only fluent in idiot back then. Where the party at was Adam Preston for wherever you are is where I want to be. You were the most beautiful woman in the world to me. On occasion, the title became intergalactic. What I was trying to say got misconstrued. Immaturity isn’t a viable excuse, and I’m sorry. I might be terrible at extolling your virtue but no one in the world has a sharper nose for that shit. You still looked like Helen of Troy when you were two infants deep and perpetually sleep deprived. I saw the pictures.”
Hailey lowered her head to hide the blushing. A thought bubble finally brought her back up for air.
“Were?”
“So What” finished bringing the house down before Adam could respond. Every clubgoer shot to their feet to offer a standing ovation. When Preston added a wolf whistle, Hailey started to laugh.
“Are,” Adam clarified over the cacophony.
It caused her to stop clapping.
Once the applause was snuffed and everyone took a seat, he got back down to business.
“Tell me about your life. Before the world ended, I mean.”
Hailey smiled. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.” He hesitated. “Am I allowed to ask about Heather?”
Adam always knew how to kill the mood.
Her smile died just like her daughter.
His palm preceded the apology. “I’m so sorry. Again, with the idiot. It’s infectious. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No. No. I mean, you are an idiot,” Hailey confirmed with a grin, “but it’s fine. There’s actually no subject I like discussing more. Just can’t seem to do it these days without crying.”
It occurred on cue. Her effort to staunch the bleeding was insufficient.
Adam reached across the table to clear the evidence.
“You don’t have to do that anymore,” he confirmed.
“Cry?”
“Wipe your tears. I actually don’t think crying is such a cancer. When you left, it was the only thing that made your absence tolerable for two seconds.”
Hailey decided to go with the flow. “She wanted to study public policy. Ford School at U of M. That was her dream. Only a weirdo produced from my loins would have that ambition at eighteen. She was a knockout brunette—that would have also been genetics, of course.”
“Of course.” Adam sniffed and shook his head in affirmation.
“Vice President of the National Honor Society. All-county striker two years running. Sense of humor drier than the Sahara. Heather was the pied piper when it came to popularity. Never rubbed another girl’s nose in it a day in her life. She was everything a mother could have wanted and more. And that’s probably as far as I can go tonight without weeping.”
“I understand,” he said. “Thank you for sharing that with me. I mean it.”
“Thank you for the reminder. I’ve yet to grow tired of the recollection.”
It jogged another memory.
“Adam—my daughter’s deletion isn’t the only round of simulated seppuku I’ve been forced to imbibe.” She summoned a shot of tequila and pushed it across the table to help grease the skids.
Her ex-boyfriend was completely oblivious. The state of affairs was standard issue in their relationship. “That can’t be a fun tune to play on repeat. Who was the second contestant?”
“Maggie Preston.”
His cackling caused the occupants of several surrounding tables to turn in their direction.
“No, seriously,” he said as he swigged.
She simply stared.
Adam returned the favor.
Hailey covered his hands with her own. “If it makes you feel any better, she was extremely old and bitter.”
“That was definitely my mother they deleted.”
His ex stifled a laugh. “I’m sorry, but you said it.”
“Was she okay at the end? There was no pain, right?”
“Assuming she avoided the minotaur.”
He began scanning her for seriousness through slits.
Hailey didn’t flinch. “She was fine. Even if she did run into Maurice, my money’s on Mags. Mainframe makes the journey a trail of tears, but she was at peace with her decision. No one pushed her through the door. It’s hard being human. Even in virtual heaven. Seven centuries inside a simulation proved sufficient.”
Adam reached the acceptance stage. “What about Elijah, then?”
“Utterly useless.”
They shared a laugh at her son’s expense.
“No, he wants to be a pilot when we get out of this place—if, I should say.”
“Elijah’s going to fly for real one day.” There wasn’t an ounce of uncertainty in Adam’s assurance. “You have my word.”
Another silent stare down ensued for a few seconds.
Hailey realized she was holding her breath.
“Why do you still look at me like that after all these years?”
Adam cocked his head. It was curiosity.
“How do I look at you?”
“Covetously.”
He considered her comment while he watched Miles Davis amalgamate with his trumpet one last time. “You got to be with the love of your life. Some of us aren’t so lucky.”
Hailey emitted a single sigh.
“You’re the saddest person on the planet, Adam Preston.”