Alien Soulmate(10)

Eli grinned at her and ate his food at a slower pace. "Fair. But seriously, was it in your other hand?"

"Yes, okay? It was in my other hand. In my defense, I've been handling stupid little fiddly things all day, so they're all starting to look alike to me. Why did I think this was a good idea again?"

"Because you went on a long and impassioned rant about how you wanted to play your games on a machine that you knew wouldn't crap out on you because you'd built it yourself? Because we went to the store and you made some salesgirl cry with the amount of questions you threw at her about their gaming rigs? Because you quite possibly have a problem with your brain that no one has discovered yet? I can keep going."

Vivian leveled a glare at him. Elijah Parker was her best friend in the world and had been for the last seven years, but he was a smart aleck if there ever was one, and he seemed to delight in making her want to throttle him.

"You know, sometimes I have to ask myself why I even bother with you," she said, stuffing beef lo mein into her mouth and chewing thoroughly.

"I feel quite the same way," he replied. "But then I remember that you would starve to death buried under a pile of unidentifiable machine parts if I didn't come around every day, and I suck it up and consider it a public service to be your friend."

"How positively noble of you."

"It is, isn't it? I should be receiving my invitation for sainthood any day now."

Vivian arched an eyebrow. "You know you have to be martyred for that, right? I'm sure I've got some unidentifiable machine part around here that can help make that happen for you if it's really what you want. I'd hate to stand in the way of your dreams. What kind of friend would I be?"

This was a common enough occurrence between the two of them, sitting on her living room floor eating and snarking at each other. They'd been doing it for years now, and it was as routine as anything else.

Viv liked to joke that Eli was like her good luck charm. She always had him around when she was building something new because he kept her head on straight and made sure that she didn't actually lose herself in whatever it was she was doing.

Her mother despaired of her most of the time. Twenty three years old with no prospects. Of course, that wasn't even remotely true. She had plenty of prospects. Vivian had been the youngest graduate in her class, and she'd graduated a year early at that. She was one of the only female robotics and engineering graduates in the state, and already she had major companies courting her.

What her mother meant by prospects were things like dates and men flocking around after her. It had been alright when she'd thought that Eli was her boyfriend, but once she'd found out that Eli was gay and had very little interest in her in that way, Vivian's mother had gone back on her crusade to get her daughter married off before she was twenty five.

It wasn't like Vivian wasn't attractive, she always said. Viv was a very pretty girl, all things considered. She had a head full of chestnut colored curls that spilled down her back and over her shoulders when she couldn't be bothered to tame them into something resembling a style. Her eyes were a clear, cool gray, and she had dimples when she smiled. She was short and curvy, and she got plenty of looks from men on the street, but she was just never interested in returning them.

No one wanted to hear her talk about machines and fiddly bits, and that was one of her passions in life. It was one of those things that she wasn't going to pretend like she wasn't into just to keep someone's attention.

And really, she was fine. She wasn't lonely most of the time, and when she was, there was a running joke about how she could just build a robot lover and solve her problems that way.

Eli was good company, anyway. He made fun of her sometimes, but in that way that proved that he cared about her. He'd even offered to pretend to be her boyfriend just so her mother would get off of her back about how she was apparently going to die alone. In the end, Viv had declined because knowing her mother, she would start hinting about marriage or something and then they would have had to fake a breakup to throw her off. It would have ended up being too much hassle. But Eli was a sweetheart for offering, and Viv was more than content with his friendship to break up her time spent fiddling with things. So it wasn't a big deal, and definitely not the catastrophe her mother made it out to be.

She was making good progress on her latest project. Good enough that the next couple of days would see it finished, and then she would spend the rest of the summer playing games and relaxing. It would be perfect.

In the fall, she'd have to decide which of the seven or some companies that were all jockeying for her attention she would actually choose. She knew what he father would say: play the field, make them give you the sweetest offers they can. It was tempting, really, and it definitely wasn't like the big names couldn't afford to court her a little. Clearly they saw something in her that they wanted, and as much as she would deny it if anyone ever asked, it was nice to have someone vying for her attention, even if it was just a few different tech companies.