How to Repair a Mechanical Heart - By J. C. Lillis Page 0,51

in your hotel room and the Castaway Ball is a half-hour away and you’re standing in front of his black leather swivel chair, a confusion of dollar-store makeup pots and brushes spread out on the table. You act out details from the best stories. The way you dip the largest brush in the silvery powder and smooth it across his cheeks, and then lean in just a little to blow stray flecks off his nose. The way you gloss the comb with Amp-U Electric Blue gel, just enough to streak his white hair Sim-blue. You’re so gentle with the comb, it makes him think of when he was five and his mom would detangle his wet head while she told him his favorite bedtime story.

Then it’s your turn.

He’s faster with the hairspray and makeup brushes, just like the fics predicted. He makes your face a screenshot of Cadmus from the season finale’s last scene: bloodied and triumphant, right before he collapses from the crystal spider bite. Red lipstick blends with brown mascara for authentic blood spatters; he tousles and soft-spikes your hair to perfection and mists it with a spray that smells like apples. Then he swoops in close to draw the spider bite on your neck with an eyebrow pencil, like he does in this week’s installment of “How to Repair a Mechanical Heart,” except in the fic he’s also shirtless and his pecs are like a love poem engraved on his torso. Your heart whirs faster anyway.

Time to get dressed.

You both turn your backs, though you’ve spent the whole week fine-tuning these details together while you drove and cleaned the RV water tank and cooked franks and beans over an Arizona campfire. How many strategic rips to make in your tight black Cadmus t-shirt (four), how to make a Sim collar for his shirt (a strip from a white plastic butter tub and two silver buttons), how to flip his six-dollar Goodwill wingtips from black to white (five coats of spray paint and a Hail Mary). You draw a breath and put on Cadmus. You shrug on Abel’s snakeskin jacket and buckle on the big fake-leather replica boots he bought at the Cleveland con, hoping he can’t hear the rustle of the newspaper you had to stuff in the toes. You listen to him curse his floppy collar and hum a Goldfrapp song while he yanks on his pants, and you think there’s no way he’ll transform his huge undeniable self into the trim elegant machine who makes your blood buzz in your veins.

Then he turns you around, and wow.

It’s perfect. The slicked blue hair. The shiny shoes. The fitted white pants and slim jacket he paid too much for at that fancy mall in Tucson. All of it = perfect.

He. Is. Sim.

And I’m in trouble.

Abel looks at my boots‌—‌his boots‌—‌and scratches the back of his neck. “You, uh, look great,” he murmurs.

“You too.”

“Nah.”

“No, I mean, the costume is‌—‌” Flawless. Revelatory. “Actually not too bad.”

“Just put on my corsage,” he says. “Okay?”

He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a small pod of white frosted plastic. He flips a tiny switch on the side, and a cool blue light glows off and on inside it.

I brush my fingers across the plastic. “You bought a mechanical heart?”

“At the Cleveland con. I was going to give it to you, but‌…‌”

This is better.

He hesitates a second, and then he quickly undoes a few of his shirt buttons. Now he’s staring past me, at the framed ocean painting on the wall behind us.

“Just hook it to the undershirt.” He blinks fast. “Actually, it’s tricky. If you can’t get it I can‌…‌”

“I got it.” I catch the little metal hooks into Abel’s shirt and button him back up, which is the exact opposite of what I want to do with those buttons right now and oh God why did I suggest this?

Stupid Augie Manners and his stupid Spaceman Straws.

We can’t go through with this. We can’t fake-kiss on the dance floor tonight like we planned all week. He’ll feel me melt into his embrace and hungrily devour his lips like in fic, and when we break apart under the swirls of disco starlight he’ll know it’s not fic for me, not anymore. And everything will be ruined. He’ll tilt his Sim head with lighthearted pity and I’ll get one of those sweet and mortifying speeches about how someday, I’ll find a guy who really appreciates me and how I’m such a great friend,