Page 41 of Atticus
I turn when I hear Trey’s voice. He waves at me.
“I haven’t,” I say. “This will be my first. I researched and watched a few winning games of the New Carnegie Barons to ensure I understand how the game is played.”
Trey claps my shoulder. “Good man. You nervous?”
“No,” I reply. “Are you?”
“Nah. Part of being a good SRO is doing things like this. Connecting with the kids. It’s an important impression to make before they get out there into the world,” Trey says. “Where’s Lucy? She all set?”
“Getting there.” A familiar, yet uncomfortable surge moves through my circuitry. “I’d like to ask you a question, if I may.”
“Sure. Fire away.”
“There’s a fire?” I scan my surroundings quickly for any heat signatures. “I don’t sense anything.”
“No, no.” Trey laughs. “It meansaskaway.”
“Oh.” I discontinue my emergency response programming. “Are you attracted to Lucy Warren?”
Trey was scanning the field, but now he sharply swivels his head toward me. “What?”
“When you are speaking with her, I sense changes in your vital signs. Temperature, heart rate.”
Trey lifts his eyebrows. “You can scan all that, huh?”
“Yes,” I reply. “And it causes a reaction in me that I’m still trying to fully understand.”
Trey hooks his fingers on the front collar of his bulletproof vest. “Oh. You got me. All right, fair enough. Yes, Lucy is a beautiful woman. And I won’t say I haven’t thought about it.”
The racing of my circuitry causes my ivory blood’s temperature to climb, and my cooling systems automatically activate to mitigate it. I get little messages about these changes to my inner workings in the corner of my optic feed.
“Then what’s stopping you?”
“Well, for one, I have someone I love already,” Trey replies. “She’s in New Carnegie, where I grew up. We gave a long-distance relationship a try, and she’s not sure about things, so I’m giving her the space she wanted. Meeting Lucy—sure, it’s tempting to ask a woman like her out. She’s intelligent, she’s good with kids. She’d check all the boxes for my ma back home, I can tell you that much.”
“But?” I ask.
“But I’m a sap, and I’m still in love with my girl back home,” Trey says. “But that’s not the only reason.”
“What’s the other reason?”
“You really going to play dumb?”
“I’m not sure how to play dumb.”
“Let me guess. Body gets all tight when you see her talking to me, like you’re a puppet and someone’s just pulled all your strings?”
“Yes,” I say, with some exasperation. “I dislike the sensation very much. I think it could be a malfunction in my programming because I enjoy our conversations. You’re one of the few people at Vautrin who treats me like I’m not less.”
“But you still get that feeling about Lucy?”
“It’s overpowering.”
“It’s normal,” Trey reassures me. “Ain’t a man alive who’s never experienced jealousy. The fact you’ve never acted out about it means your miles ahead of most fellas, so I’d take that as a win.” Trey lowers his voice as Sullivan heads onto the field with more players. “Look, I’m not blind. She’s into you, Atticus. And it’s sure plain as day you’re into her too. Maybe the rest of these fools in this place can’t see it because they’re heads are way too far up their asses, but I know it when I see it.”
“You’re right,” I say. Lucy has set up her smartphone on a tripod near the stands. “I’ve read similar signals, and my...” I simplify my speech, so it sounds less like technical jargon. “The machinery that keeps me running always responds so strongly to her. Just her. No one else. It’s like...”
“You were built for her,” Trey finishes for me. “Her, and her alone.”
