“Sure,” said Jeff, unable to resist her charms. However weird this night might become, he couldn’t help but want to be near her.
“Later, Jamie!” he shouted as he and Tamara walked out the door and shut it behind them. They held hands, or more accurately, he held onto her hand as she led him to her car. It was both an intimate display of affection and an eerie reminder of the age difference between their bodies. She opened the back door of her car, revealing a child safety seat with a five-point harness.
“Whoa,” he said, letting go of her hand. “I’m not sitting in that. I’m riding up front with you.”
“Jeff, come on,” she said gently, trying hard not to insult him. “We talked about this. I could lose my license if I got caught with you in the front seat. I know how old you really are, but your body is still too young to use a regular seat belt. I have to put you in the booster seat.”
Jeff was shocked to hear her talk in such a matter-of-fact way about his freakishly mismatched body. “But,” he said trying to save some shred of his dignity. “I mean, can’t I just sit in the back? You know? …not in the booster seat?”
“Not ‘till you get over 70 pounds,” she said. “I promised your mom that I would use the booster seat until she said you were big enough. That was her one big stipulation for me before she allowed us to date, remember?”
“Oh,” he said, realizing that there was no escaping the coming humiliation.
“You know how protective she is of you and your sister,” she said, and then she looked a bit guilty. “Listen, I know how much you hate it. Hell, I don’t like having that seat in my car either, but I do it for you.” She lifted his chin and gave him a quick kiss on the forehead. “Can you do this for me?”
How could he refuse after that? “Sure.”
He climbed into her car and sat the dreaded seat. Then, he waited as she fastened the five-point harness on him. When she finished, she kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said. “Ok, let’s roll.” She shut his door, got into the driver’s seat, and backed out of the driveway. Sitting in the booster seat, Jeff felt firmly fastened in place, like he was riding a roller coaster. It was oddly comforting.
Tamara put the car in drive and they were off. “Alright,” she said looking at him from the rear-view mirror. “You ready for a fun night?”
“You bet,” said Jeff. She put on some music, which meant that she and Jeff would have a hard time talking to each other during the ride, but Jeff didn’t mind. He had a lot of new information to try to process before the real date began.
Thinking about his relationship with Tamara, he tried to figure out just what it was that was attracting her to him now. Did his new body bring out her motherly instincts? Was she really just his soul mate, a person able to overlook his current shortcomings? A person who loved him for who he was not what he looked like?
His mind was also preoccupied worrying about the Chronivac. He wondered if it was actually repairing itself or if it was truly broken and unfixable. “Maybe I could call some kind of tech support for it,” he said quietly to himself.
“What was that?” Tamara asked over the music.
“Nothing,” shouted Jeff. “Just thinking out loud.”
“Okay,” she said. “Oh, here we are.”
Jeff looked out the window and realized that they were pulling up to…