23

Jodie answered the door; it was Rob.
"Where the hell have you been? I've been alone all day thanks to you."
"Are you ready yet? I've had the truck idling for fifteen minutes and the engine's starting to catch." Rob pushed his way past Jodie, squeezing her arm as he did. "You just got here, you gigantic liar." Jodie laughed; "I'll just be a few; help yourself to the cookies and lemonade in the kitchen." She stomped up the stairs, her metal legs clanging on each step. Rob's cybertronic eye gazed through the wall and saw the cookies that Jodie had referred him to. His mandibles ground together in anticipation, creating a sad, slow song that reverberated through the whole house. He stepped into the kitchen and grabbed a glass from the cabinet above the sink. He poured a glass of lemonade for himself and grabbed several cookies, his eyes bulging.
Meanwhile, Jodie had shed her skin and was sitting in the blast furnace, shuddering in delight as the heat hardened her tender underskin into a tough carapace. She certainly didn't want to flake, not tonight, when everything else was going to be so perfect. She stepped out of the furnace, and began buffing her newly formed armor. It caught the setting sun through the window in her bedroom and made it glow a deep, burnished vermilion. She pushed her hair out of her eyes and sighed in contentment. This was going to be wonderful.
Rob had finished off the cookies and was now sitting at the kitchen table, gargling the lemonade in his pincers. The lemonade tickled his mouth to the extent that he began laughing, choked, and sprayed lemonade all over the wall. Great. he thought as he grabbed a towel in one tentacle and his partially full lemonade glass in the other. He had just finished cleaning up when he heard Jodie thunder down the stairs and into the kitchen. She looked magnificent. He stood up, and finished the lemonade in one swift gulp. She moved to him.
They kiss.