But most of my thoughts were about not acting like a crazy person.
Pull it together, Marie. He’s attracted to you. This is not news. He did want to sleep with you in New York, remember?
He didn’t look at me again, but I did notice he scowled at a few tables as we passed, eventually placing his arm around my waist and tucking me against his side. I tried not to let myself notice how much I missed this, his touch, his closeness.
Him.
So I forced myself to focus on the interior of the restaurant. It was atypical in design. Instead of one big open room, it had multiple floors with smaller rooms. Each table was like the perfect table at my coffee shop; set off to the side, allowing for privacy and encouraging conversation. The walls, screens, and tablecloths were lavender and beige, which shouldn’t have worked, but it did. Giving the small rooms an unobtrusive, open feeling without being stark.
We approached a table by the window on the second floor, where a man and woman sat holding hands and sipping cocktails. Upon spotting Matt, the woman stood, her lively eyes moving to mine as a smile split her face.
“You’re Marie,” she announced, coming around the table to shake my hand.
I nodded, returning her grin and finding that—even though Matt’s earlier words had thrown me for a loop—smiling at this woman felt easy. “Kerry.”
“Yes.” Her plush, purple painted lips widened over large, straight white teeth; her light brown, almost golden eyes were wide and rimmed with striking black lashes. Her skin held a smooth tan with a hint of rose, like she loved spending time in the sun, and she had a sprinkling of freckles on her nose and cheeks. Her hair matched her lips, dark purple, straight and glossy, cut into a stylish bob. “It’s so great to finally meet you,” she said warmly. Her other hand came up so she was cradling mine in both of hers as her gaze moved over my face with open interest.
“You too,” I said, meaning it. Maybe I hadn’t consciously thought as much, but seeing her now, I realized I’d been enormously curious about this woman.
Who could be indifferent to the sexiness that was Matt? Who wouldn’t want to have hot sex with this man? How was that possible? His brain made me want to strip naked half the time, and his goodness made me want to strip naked the other half of the time.
So, naked with Matt all the time was basically want I wanted.
Missionary once a week? Was she crazy?
“Hi, I’m Marcus,” came a male voice to my right. I turned and accepted the handshake he offered. The first thing I noticed about him was his height. He was tall. Really, really tall and lanky. His hair was dyed fire-engine red, styled in a curly, lopsided Mohawk. His eyes were dark brown, his face was remarkably attractive in a classical that’s-a-handsome-man kind of way.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Marie.”
“Yes. We know.” Marcus let my hand go and sent his wife a furtive glance. “Matt hasn’t stopped talking about you since we landed.”
“Let’s sit.” Matt had moved around me and pulled out my chair.
“Oh, thank you.” I sat, noticing after he pushed it in that he was sitting across from me. Marcus and Kerry were on my right and left respectively.
The ma?tre d' laid a napkin in my lap and then left us.
Kerry placed her hand near my plate to draw my attention. “Matt told us how you two met. I think that’s the best first-date story I’ve ever heard.”
My attention flickered to Matt. His eyes were on me as he took a sip from his drink. I assumed it was tequila, neat, because that’s what he always drank.
“You mean where he gave me a fake name? That wasn’t technically a date.”
A guilty, but remarkably unapologetic smile spread over his features, his eyes twinkling back at me. “It was a date. And you were doing some light reading, as I recall.”
I chuckled. “That’s right. Reading is a hobby of mine.”
Matt laughed at that and so did our tablemates, which clued me in to the fact that he must’ve already shared the name of the book I’d had with me.
“Our first date was boring in comparison.” Kerry gestured to her husband. “We went to an art gallery, then made out on the beach.”
“You call that boring?” Marcus asked, sounding amused and offended.
“Well, in comparison to Marquis de Sade and a social behavioral deception study, I’d say the evening was pretty tame.” Kerry gave Marcus a saucy grin.
“How did you two meet?” I spotted two cocktails by my plate—a lemon drop and margarita Matt had alluded to earlier—and selected the lemon drop, deciding the fortifying warmth of vodka was preferable to the loose-limbed spiciness of tequila.
“Matt set us up.” Marcus sent Matt a grin.
I almost choked on my cocktail, but swallowed just in time, rasping, “Matt set you up?”
“Marcus worked at the Starbucks near my office. He and I got to talking one day about automation.” Matt’s eyes were on his drink.
“You know, how robots will be doing the jobs of all humans in a few years?” Marcus shot me a teasing grin. “The subject turned to creativity and whether art is unique to the human experience. He said something about an AI that can compose original music. I told him I was a painter, and we talked about how difficult it was to teach an artificial intelligence about art appreciation, or humor, or other qualities that are inherently human.”
But I was still stuck on the Matt set up his ex-wife with her current husband part, so I repeated, “Matt set you up?”
“Yeah, and we were still married at the time. Separated, but still married.” Kerry nodded, giving me a funny look, which was when I realized I’d allowed the full extent of my surprise to show on my face.
Swallowing, I glanced down at my plate to gather my composure, and laughed lightly.
“So, Matt brings Kerry into the Starbucks one day . . .” Marcus continued to tell his story, and I gave him my attention, but I was only half listening.
I mean . . . what?
That’s weird, right?
Matt hadn’t followed through setting me up with Dr. Merek—and we were only friends—but he set up his wife at the time with another man? While they were still married?
I glanced at Matt and found him watching me with a thoughtful but peculiar expression, which I imagined mirrored mine.
The fact was, I thought I knew him. I thought he’d shared so much of himself with me over the last few months. But at times like these I wondered if I would ever truly know him.
One thing was for certain; I doubted I would ever understand him.
23
BenevolentAI
A machine learning AI that can draw inferences about what it has learned. In particular, it can process natural language and formulate new ideas from what it reads. Its job is to sift through vast chemical libraries, medical databases and conventionally presented scientific papers, looking for potential drug molecules.
Source: BenevolentBio