Company - Max Barry [87]
“It's okay, you don't—”
Eve leans forward and takes his hands. Jones's sentence terminates with a sound like uck. “Jones,” she says. In the lamplight her eyes look enormous: huge and dark and unreadable. “I knew you were smart right from the beginning. The way you found out about Alpha so fast . . . that impressed me. Then we went for a ride in my car and I thought you were an idiot. You had to be, because whenever people raise ethics, it's a cover. They're worried what other people will think, or whether it's legal, or else they're just too scared to make a decision. But you're something else. And I finally worked out what. You're a good man.” Jones feels his eyebrows bounce up. “You probably don't even know that that's rare. But it is. It is to me. Every man I know is either smart and selfish, or generous and stupid. And I don't like those people, Jones. Guys like Blake and Klausman, I respect them, but I don't like them. You . . . you're different. This is going to sound stupid, but I swear to God, I didn't even know there could be someone like you. I didn't think it was possible.” To Jones's alarm, her eyes begin to glisten. “You make me feel like a piece of me is missing.” She pulls a tissue from a box and wipes her nose. “I'm not saying I want to be exactly like you. That's probably impossible. But I don't want you to become like them, either. You are admirable, Jones. I feel it in my heart. You're good. I think . . . we could learn from each other. I think we need each other. I think . . .” She stops. “I know. I know I need you. I really need you.”
“Oh. Boy,” Jones says. In his mind, there are alarms going off everywhere. His hands are sweating. His chest is constricting. Violently different ideas about what to do next crash against each other in his head.
“If you laugh,” she says, “I'm going to kill you.”
“I'm not going to laugh.”
“I haven't done this before.”
“What?”
“I mean, said things like this.”
“Oh,” Jones says, with relief.
“I'm not saying I'm a virgin.”
“Right. Sorry.”
“Not since I was thirteen. But that wasn't exactly voluntary, and there was no one else until I was twenty. So you could say I'm a late bloomer.” She smiles at his expression. “Ah, Jones, you are so cute when you're appalled.”
All he can say is, “Oh, God.”
“Kiss me. Please?”
He kisses her.
Her lips are dry and cracked; still, when they touch his, something hot and brilliant sparks behind his eyeballs. Maybe it's his ground rules. Jones has imagined this moment many times, sometimes idly, sometimes not so idly, and in none of those scenarios was Eve sick. This should, therefore, be one of those times when fantasy is deflated by the mundane prick of reality. Only it's not. Kissing her feels like the best thing he has ever done.
She gets her hands inside his shirt and tries to pull it open from the inside, but it's new and the buttons don't budge. Her lips curve beneath his; they both laugh. Eve doesn't remove her gown but eventually Jones works out that he should do it, which initially seems like a challenge but turns out to be an amazing voyage of discovery. He kisses her from navel to shoulder, and when he arrives, she grabs his face and gasps, “I love you!”
“I love you, too,” Jones says, and the terrible thing about this is that it is true.
He almost makes it back to bed, but knocks the freestanding mirror with his hip in the darkness. The rotating section flips back and one end bangs against the wall while the other clocks him in the shin. “Owwrg.”
“Jo-o-o-ones?”
“Sorry.”
“What are you doing?”
“Bathroom.” He climbs under the sheets.
“Oh. Mmm.” Her arm snakes over his chest. Her head nestles into his shoulder. “I thought . . . you were trying to sneak off.”
“No.”
“Mmm.” A happy sound. Her fingers tighten on his bicep, then relax. To Jones, who has been single for a year, it is beautiful. In this moment, there is no Zephyr. No Project Alpha. No corporate heartlessness or productivity maximization. There is just him and Eve. There's not a trace of cruelty in the dim lines of her face. No hint of selfishness