Page 43 of Fembot
His love of fashion, skirts and bright colors in particular. Winston hadn’t interacted with a robot that had a preference for anything before. Mind you, Winston’s interactions with them were usually perfunctory. A delivery robot. An assistant to book an appointment. That kind of thing. Even the more advanced ones weren’t as advanced as Calvin seemed to be.
Or maybe Winston had lost his mind when he fell in love with a robot and was looking for ways to humanize Calvin so that his feelings for him seemed less weird. Winston was sure Calvin was going to ask if he was okay. He tended to keep a close eye on Winston’s pulse, it had already given him away once today.
This time, Calvin didn’t. He was too busy watching Lucky watch the cassowaries.
“We should have come here sooner,” Winston told them. He regretted wasting so much time with Lucky, and he regretted not being present enough to realize that Calvin might want to see something more than their home.
“We’re here now.” Lucky looked at him and smiled.
“We’ll come again after exams. It’ll be a nice way to celebrate.”
“Sure.” Something flicked across Lucky’s expression, but it was gone before Winston could identify it.
While Winston and Lucky ate, Calvin went into robot-geek mode and told them all about the primates they were going to see next. After the kangaroos.
“Next time we’ll have to visit the hippos,” Winston said as they left the restaurant. He was happy to leave the evil Cassowary enclosure behind. “They’re like big land puppies. Water puppies? I don’t know. I just think they’re cute.”
“The hippopotamus is responsible for an average of five hundred deaths a year,” Calvin told them.
“They don’t even eat people. They just don’t like them and, honestly, that’s kind of valid.” Lucky looped an arm around Winston’s waist.
“You like people,” Winston said to Lucky. “You’ve always been social.”
“Out of necessity. I like a grand total of three people, the two of you and Novak. That’s it. Everyone else I merely tolerate.”
Something about Lucky’s demeanor bothered Winston. On the surface he seemed fine, but it was like Lucky’s outward appearance of being okay was a thin veneer that had started to crack. It was subtle things that gave it away. The flicker in his expression earlier. His bleak view of people in general just now. He’d insisted on paying for them to get into the zoo, and then he’d insisted on paying at the restaurant. Even though it made more sense for Winston to pay. Winston had more disposable income available to him.
It was a good thing they’d visited the primate enclosures last because Calvin had been smitten with them from the first moment he laid eyes on them. If Winston hadn’t noticed before then that Calvin wasn’t like other robots, his enthusiasm for the monkeys would have tipped Winston off.
Calvin was more animated than Winston had ever seen him. He was torn between wanting to see everything all at once, but also not moving along so he could keep enjoying the animals he was already looking at. Lucky stayed glued to Calvin’s side. The two of them together made Winston’s chest hurt. They were soperfect for each other. And him. Sure, it was unorthodox to be in a relationship with a robot, but it wasn’t unheard of.
From the moment robots started to resemble humans, people had been falling for them. Winston was now just another statistic. It was just one more thing that his father wouldn’t approve of if he knew about it. But in order for his father to know about it, he’d have to pay any sort of attention to Winston. There was a time, not so long ago in fact, where his father’s apathy toward him bothered him. But now he saw it as a blessing. The less his father was invested in his life, the more freedom he had.
When his father gifted him with Calvin, Winston doubted that he’d meant for him to go and fall in love with it. At least not in the way Winston had.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR_
EMOTIONAL DAMAGE
Winston slipped awayfrom Calvin and Lucky when they were in the gift shop and when they managed to meet up with him again, he had a bag full of purchases.
“What’s all this?” Lucky asked. “I thought we were just browsing.”
“I wanted to get you two something to commemorate the day we had.” Winston was such a sentimental fool, but it was one of the things Lucky loved about him. Winston had a big heart, and he wasn’t afraid to shower people he loved with affection.
Lucky reached for one of the bags, but Winston laughed and stepped out of his reach. “I didn’t say you could have them now. You can open them when we get home.”
“Wow, you’re no fun.” Lucky pretended to pout. “Did you want me to drive so you can guard the gift bags?”
“No need. I’ll put them in the trunk.” Winston stepped close enough to brush a kiss against Lucky’s cheek. Winston practically glowed, he was so happy. Happy without pretense or pretending. Happy because he had everything. Happy the way Lucky should have been but couldn’t make himself. Not when everything that wasn’t Winston and Calvin was going to shit.
Lucky took a seat in the back and let Calvin ride shotgun. He leaned his head against the side window like he did when he was a kid being schlepped off to boarding school. He’d feigned sleep then the same as now. He knew he probably wasn’t fooling Calvin, but that was fine. Lucky just needed a few minutes to get himself together.
Pretending to sleep, though, had manifested actual sleep, and Lucky jerked awake as the car came to a stop outside their house.
“Fuck.” Lucky sat up and tried to stretch out the kink in his neck.
“You crashed pretty hard,” Winston said.
