all dressed up

August 2086. Keri Riley is 25, Tyler Jackson is 22.

* briefly NSFW


There was no point in bringing a ball gown to the moon. Keri's room on base was small and space was limited. She had flight suits, work clothes, workout clothes, and pajamas. Here on Earth, she had more ball gowns than she would ever have occasions to wear. Some of them had been her mother’s. This one, maybe, since she couldn’t remember having worn it before and couldn’t remember buying it, either.


She cleaned up nicely, maybe. But what was the point? This wasn't the kind of dress a girl wore to a booty call. And besides, she didn't really just want sex. She would have some sex, too, of course, maybe as the culmination of a whole night. She didn't know exactly what she wanted. A date? To get herself gorgeous and show up somewhere on somebody's arm.

She thought of Justin, first. She thought of prom dresses and dinner dates with her daddy's credit card. She thought of drunken college parties, using somebody else's bed to make out. She thought of meeting him and Stephanie—always and Stephanie—for hamburgers on campus, pizza and movies in their pajamas in Frosh Hall. How funny, she thought, that she never got to go on a real grown-up date with the only husband she would probably ever have.

Then she thought of Tyler. Tyler was fun. Tyler had called three times since they reconnected for "a little bit of fun." Never more than that. One time she fell asleep on his shoulder for a few hours, but she slipped out in the night without waking him. He was a heavy sleeper.

Who would take her on a date if she didn't want a boyfriend? She was going up to the moon again in January, so it was bound to end. But for now, could they go on a date? Something casual? Dinner? Were fuck buddies allowed to go out on dates? Would he think that was weird?

It didn't matter, anyway. Keri had work to do.


Work was calm. Keri missed the tension and immediacy of being at war, but she wished she could get that back without having to actually be at war. So she drove the Cassiopeia project hard. She wanted a full team ready before she went up to the Lunar base in January. She wanted everyone to have a task to work on while she was away.

She and Dominique traveled south to Fort Palmetto and they conducted more interviews.


They interviewed an engineer.


And they finally recruited a scientist.

She finished her work. It was too early in the evening for a pajamas, but early enough she could still catch a train back home and salvage the night.

Just after she walked through the door, she had a text.


It was Tyler.

Tyler: I was just thinking about you. What are you doing?

He was thinking of her! He just wanted to hook up, she thought. That must be all. For all Keri knew how to demand what she wanted, she'd never had to ask a man out on a date before and she wasn't sure if she knew how to start.

Keri: Just got home, bored stupid. 

Tyler: I can fix that. ;)

She started to type, thought, typed and erased it. But he wrote back again first.

Tyler: I kind of feel like dancing.

Oh! He's asking me out, Keri thought. Oh, but I hate dancing. But, oh, he wants to take me out dancing? That's a date. I think.

But Keri hated clubs and loud music and flashy lights. Should she lie and just go? What if he never asked her out again?

Keri: I’m kind of starving. I worked through lunch. Can we eat instead? 

Tyler: I can always eat! Hey, I know of a place. Meet me in about an hour? 

Keri was excited. She was going on a date.




Keri got dressed and called for a cab and stopped by Tyler's place to pick him up.


She was seriously starving, and that was no lie. They walked past a cupcake stand on the way to the restaurant, and she stopped to buy two cupcakes.

"Do you always eat dessert before dinner?"

"I always do whatever I want," Keri said.



Tyler watched her eat. He said, "It's kind of sexy how much cupcake you can fit into your mouth all at once."


They had drinks.


They ordered a pita plate to share.


They played darts together.


It wasn't very fair. Tyler was a professional athlete now. He aimed things at targets for a living.




Keri was not much of a sportsman anymore and had lost her edge in full gravity. She lost by a lot.

But she didn't hate that. She kind of liked a man who could challenge her.


A warm, humid breeze blew over the river and carried music away. She hadn't known what she wanted when she started the night, but this did the trick.

She just wouldn't tell him that she hated dancing. Like she wouldn't tell him that she never wanted children or marriage and that they could never last more than a few months. She was going back up to the moon in January. She’d be back a time or two, but after that, within a couple years, she'd be farther away than any human had ever been from this Earth. She'd be a speck of space dust in the great cosmic sky. She'd be a memory.

So she wouldn't tell him that and maybe they could do this a couple more times before it was all over.


There was a hookah behind him and he'd been hesitant to ask her whether she was the type to indulge. "I've actually never tried it," Keri said.

"You never tried the hookah in college? I thought you said you lived in Frosh Hall? There was one installed in 201. That was my brother’s room."

201 was also Justin’s room when they lived in Frosh Hall. The most scandalous thing that went on in Justin's room was skipping homework to make out.

"Oh," Tyler added, "I guess Beau might have installed it in there. I don't actually know whether that was allowed."

Keri felt no particular desire to try it, but she also would not let anybody tell her that she wasn't the type. Whether or not she was the type remained to be seen.



Tyler showed her what to do, sucking it in like he'd been doing it since before he could drive. Which was probably true.



Then Keri took her turn.

She hated it, like she thought she would.

Tyler told her, "I always figure you gotta try everything once. But not twice if you don’t like it. Why don’t we try something else that I know you’ll like?"


Her parents were away for the week, so Keri took him back to her place.

Tyler was always fun.

He was smooth and sweet and knew how to make a lady feel special.

She forgot to count all the reasons that it could never last.

—

gameplay notes: true story, he asked her on a date