“That’s right, Mother,” Zo said. “What kind of idiot would think that just because we treat people like servants, they should act accordingly?”
“You think I’m too big an idiot to know you’re talking about me?” Riley snapped, finally speaking up loud and clear—at exactly the wrong moment. I realized he thought she was making fun of him—and I couldn’t correct him without making him feel even stupider.
“You will not speak to my daughter like that in my house,” my father said. He rose to his feet. “And I certainly hope you don’t speak to Lia like that, ever.”
Riley rose to meet him eye to eye. “I give your daughter the respect she deserves,” he said, then paused just long enough to give me hope… only to make it even worse. “Unlike some people.”
When my father got angry, he got quiet. His lips went pale and thin. You’d think he was retreating. But I knew better. “You had better not be implying—”
“Maybe we should skip dessert tonight,” my mother said quickly, in a fluttering voice. She patted an imaginary bulge in her belly. “I’m just back from a binge-purge, and trust me, it’s not an experience I want to repeat any time soon.” She threw in some obviously fake laughter when it became clear the rest of us wouldn’t oblige.
“No one wants to hear about your fat suctioning, Mother,” Zo said. “Although I guess that explains why you’ve got that disgusting vat of fat juice in the fridge. Maybe we should skip dessert if that’s what you’re planning to—”
“Zo!” My mother’s cheeks reddened. “That’s tapioca pudding,” she assured us. “Not… I mean, obviously I wouldn’t serve…”
“I think the term you’re looking for is ‘medical waste,’” Zo said.
“Your room.” My father didn’t have to shout—and he didn’t have to say it twice. She was already halfway up the stairs by the time he spat out, “Now.”
I stood up and took Riley’s hand. “I think that’s our cue. Thanks for dinner.”
“Yeah.” Riley gave my mother a quick, awkward nod. “Thanks.”
I couldn’t believe I’d wasted time worrying about what Riley would think of the house, as opposed to the freaks who lived there.
“A moment, Lia?” my father said, blocking our path to the door. It wasn’t a request.
I squeezed Riley’s hand. “Wait for me in the car?”
He was out the door before I finished the question. Leaving me and my father alone in the marbled entry hall. Even as the door shut, the tiles were scrubbing themselves clear of any tracked-in mud and dirt, real or imaginary. My mother had trained the house to be even more compulsive than she was.
“This boy…” My father let the words dangle between us.
“What about him?”
“How much do you know about him?”
“Enough.” And how much do you know about him? I thought, but didn’t ask, because I already knew the answer. My father always did his due diligence.
“Where he comes from…” It wasn’t like my father to drag things out like this. Usually his proclamations were more like bullets, hitting their target almost before you realized the gun had gone off. “He’s not like us.”
“Not good enough for us, you mean. I know you’re thinking it, so you might as well say it.”
At least he still cares, I thought. At least he still thinks I deserve the best.
“I say what I mean.” He pressed his fingertips together, brushing the base of his chin. A shadow of beard was growing in gray. “And I mean: Be careful.”
“Riley would never hurt me.” It had been too good to be true, I thought, this silent truce between us. If he ordered me to stop seeing Riley, I would have to choose. I would have to choose Riley. “If you would give him a chance…”
“You mean well,” he said, “but you’re naive, with limited experience of the world—”
“Limited experience?” I didn’t know whether to laugh or throw something. “In the last year I’ve been kidnapped, blackmailed, and arrested, not to mention dead.” He winced, and I averted my eyes. He wouldn’t want me to see the moment of weakness. I didn’t want me to see it. “I think I’ve got experience covered.”
“That’s not the kind of experience I mean,” he said. I was looking down, so I didn’t see him reach for me. But I felt his hand on my shoulder, its steady weight. “You’re young. You don’t understand that there’s such a thing as too much difference. Things can be… difficult.” Then he sighed. “But I suppose you’ve earned the right to figure that out for yourself.”
I looked up and met his gaze, surprised.
“What were you expecting me to say?” he asked, with a hint of a smile.
“Nothing. I was—Nothing.” Suddenly, I wanted to hug him. Not in gratitude or relief, or anything like that. But because I remembered how it used to feel, when I was five years old, when I was ten, to be walled off inside his arms, hidden and safe. “I’ll probably be home late.”
“As long as you come home.”
“You don’t need to say that every time I leave.”
He hesitated. Also unlike him.
“It’s good. Being back home,” I said, since he wasn’t going to.
“Well, whatever happens, I hope you’ll remember that.”
I tapped the side of my head. “Computer brain, remember? We never forget.” It wasn’t true—mech brains were no more reliable than orgs’. But as a lame joke to leaven the mood, I figured it would do.
He didn’t laugh.
I wanted to go back to Riley’s place, somewhere we could be alone, with walls separating us from the rest of the world. But he didn’t want to, and I didn’t press. You could fit twenty of his apartments into the Kahn house, and he could do that math as easily as I could.
So we drove into one of the Sanctuaries, a wooded space guaranteed to be empty at this time of night given the late autumn chill, the rain, and the smog so thick you could barely see the trees. The patrols wouldn’t even bother hunting for trespassers; this wasn’t a night for orgs.
Riley had a blanket in his trunk, and he laid it down in the dirt, as if our mech bodies were too delicate to sit in the damp, rocky soil. But I appreciated the effort, and I appreciated his body curling around mine, his face hidden by smog and night but still there. I pressed the back of my hand to his cheek. Solid. Real. All I wanted was to sit there with him and not talk, not act, for the first time in two weeks. I wanted everything to stop.
“Sorry about my father,” I said. “He’s… you know.”
“An asshole?”
I couldn’t blame him for thinking it. “He doesn’t mean it.”
Riley laughed.
“Let’s just forget about it,” I said, sliding my hand down his chest. “I’ll never drag you back there. Promise.”
He stiffened and pushed my hand away. “That’s how you want to play it?”
“What?”
“Like you’re doing me some kind of favor?”
“It is a favor,” I pointed out. “You hated tonight, didn’t you?”
He didn’t answer.
“So why would you want to go through that again?”
“That works out pretty good for you,” he said.
I’d gotten much better at reading Riley, but I couldn’t read this. “What’s your problem?”
“Seems like I am,” he said. “I embarrass you.”