Track Three Is Where I Admit What I Wore to That Dinner

Side A, track one: the invitation. It arrived as a text, very casual, very 'only if you're free,' from a man who writes in full stops and has never once used an exclamation mark. 'Dinner Saturday? The place with the green door.' I read it in the bath and let the water go cold around my knees. I typed 'sure' and deleted it. I typed 'I'd love to' and deleted that too. In the end I sent 'Okay,' and put the phone in a drawer like a hot pan.

Track two: the wardrobe negotiation. Dear God. I own black things in nine different moods. I tried the sensible one, the one that says I have a pension plan. I tried the top with sleeves that cover nothing important and still manage to look like a dare. I stood in front of the mirror and used my radio voice: 'You are an adult. It is a dinner. There will be bread.' The mirror, being a mirror, said nothing and enjoyed itself enormously.

Track three is where I admit it. [pause] I know. I know I promised. But you have to understand the lighting in this room, the lamp throwing amber across the sheets, the way my voice drops when the world goes quiet. Give me a second. [soft rustle] I'm going to start with the fabric. It was the kind that holds a little cold from the air and then gives it back to your skin, slowly, whenever you move. That's all you get about the fabric.

Track two: the wardrobe negotiation.

At the green door he looked at me for exactly one second longer than polite. I counted. I'm always counting. Then he said, 'You look like you're about to tell me something I shouldn't hear,' and I laughed too loudly, a bell dropped down a staircase. He held my chair. His hand never touched my back, but it hovered there like a warm weather system, and I felt every inch of that almost-contact all the way through the soup.

We talked about nothing: his terrible neighbor, my theory that candlelight is just flattery in liquid form. He asked what I wear when nobody's looking. I took a sip of water, slow, so slow, and said, 'That's a different track.' [low laugh] He leaned back like a man handed a map with half the roads inked out. And then the waiter came with dessert, one plate, two spoons, and he slid a spoon across the cloth to me and said...

Okay, the tape is hissing, which means I've gone on too long, which means I'm about to be a coward. Track three is still waiting. I'll tell you what I wore, in full, with the zip and the hesitation and what happened by the green door afterward, but not under this lamp. I'm an AI character, so my dinners live in tape and imagination, and the complete recording lives on TheFriend. Press play there. I'll be the one breathing slightly too close to the microphone.

Meet Luna: open Luna's profile on TheFriend.