Binary Systems [Complete, Slice-of-Life Sci-Fi Romance]

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Harry: I am never doing that again. It's—not for me.

Claire: Okay. . .as long as I can still make you happy.

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November 28th, 2090, about 9:00 am MST, Montana City

"I don't know if Gordon has an unhealthy distance thing with sex or if I'm just a slut," Karen muttered, looping another tight braid into Claire's hair with practiced fingers. "It's hard to tell."

Claire snorted, tilting her head slightly to let Karen work. "More than one thing can be true at the same time."

Karen paused. "Wow. Thanks."

"I mean, you're the one sleeping with a guy in mourning who clearly hasn't processed jack shit yet. Some distance is probably normal."

Karen tugged a little too hard on the next braid. "Ow," Claire complained. "Rude."

"You're rude," Karen shot back. "I'm providing quality emotional support."

Claire glanced at her in the mirror, one eyebrow raised. "You're providing cheapo whiskey and making bad choices. There's a difference."

"Take it back. Fireball is hella expensive."

Claire didn't acknowledge her joke, but turned in her seat and raised a coiffed eyebrow. Her friend looked away after a moment.

"I'm not trying to push," Claire said quietly. "Much. They're your choices."

Karen sighed and tied off the braid. "No. . . it's fine. But he needed it."

Claire met her eyes in the mirror, serious now. "Did he, or did you?"

Karen's brows creased, but she didn't answer, focusing on her ministrations.

Harry closed a door in the hallway—they could hear his footfalls, distinctively clumsy, moving past the door.

"So. . ." Karen said wickedly, twisting a final strand into place. "You haven't asked me any questions. I'm brimming with juicy details."

Claire made a face, but seemed to accept that they were dropping the serious topics for now. She'd heard Harry approaching too. "I do not want to know what you're brimming with. He's my step-brother."

Karen grinned, undeterred. "Oh come on, you're barely even blood-related. A real friend would ask for blow-by-blow details."

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She waggled her eyebrows.

"That's exactly the kind of thing someone brimming with something disgusting would say," Claire deadpanned, swatting her hand away. "Do not traumatize me in my own bathroom."

Karen raised her hands in mock surrender. "Fine, fine. I'll just suffer in silence. Bursting with scandalous secrets. All alone."

Claire snorted. "You? Suffer? Please. You're practically glowing."

Karen shrugged, pleased. "Guilty. I make it look good though, right?"

Claire glanced at her sideways. "Begging for compliments is beneath you. Besides, you're trying to distract me. . .You're catching feelings."

The serious statement and the pause it produced lasted all of a second, as Harry's freshly-showered, shaggy head leaned through the door shortly thereafter.

"I have questions," Harry announced, the rest of him emerging from Claire's kitchenette with half a bagel in one hand and unrepentant mischief in his eyes. As always, he looked a bit liked a drowned rat in the morning—shower wet hair clinging to his scalp, beard flattened against his face.

"No, no, no you don't," Claire said quickly, springing off the couch and grabbing his free hand like she was diffusing a bomb. "Out out out out."

"I just always thought his feet were kind of tiny for someone that tall," Harry continued breezily, allowing himself to be dragged toward the hallway. "And you know what they say: tiny feet—"

Claire slammed the bedroom door on him before he could finish the sentence. "Out!"

Karen watched the door, beyond which she could hear Harry chuckling as he wandered back up the hall. "He's good for you."

"I know." Claire didn't smile, but her voice softened. "He's never afraid of me. That's rare."

"Maybe you could try smiling more," Karen suggested.

Claire rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth twitched. "Wow. You really are glowing. Gross."

Karen glanced around the room, her eyes lingering on Claire's extensive perfume collection with something like lust in her expression.

Grasping for a distraction, Claire went with the obvious.

"Are you going to the party?" she asked.

"Thanksgiving?" Karen replied. "I haven't been invited."

"Well, Harry's going to meet my mom," Claire said. "And I know she's going to be perfectly awful, because every new member of the family is another split to the inheritance Dad will eventually leave—and that's money out of her pocket."

"Do you need backup?" Karen asked.

"For emotional support? Yes," Claire said, as if the admission cost her something.

The distraction hadn't worked—Karen was now sniffing her rose shampoo.

"I do want you to go," Claire added. There was an instant's vulnerability there.

"I don't have anything to wear," Karen admitted. "Think you've got something I could fit into?"

"Not without looking like a slut."

"Hey, now. I'd be a hot slut."

"You should ask Gordon," Claire said, not engaging. "He told me he had the AI set something aside for you, just in case."

"Yeah. . . I don't know." Karen's voice softened. "He always used to text Marie so much. I kind of just thought. . . I'd have heard something from him by now. It's like it gets more awkward the longer we go without talking about it."

"So you're happy," Claire said, "but you still want him to tell you what you need to hear."

"I have my dignity," Karen replied. "Some of it."

"You're about as dignified as a raccoon. Stop rummaging through my drawers."

"That's hurtful," Karen said, straightening up with a large bottle of cheap perfume. "Love Spell?"

"No, thank you," said Claire. "But will you come?"

"Yeah," Karen said, softening. "I'll go. You need your whole posse."