29. So This is What Intimacy Looks Like…
Hudson
Why didI leave that damn script lying round? And who the hell recognizes a font? Seriously, dating non-geniuses is so much easier. My gut churns. This is it. The moment she’ll start to look at me differently. I don’t see it yet, but that’s because I haven’t come right out and admitted it. But as soon as I do, everything will change. She’ll have all sorts of questions about what it’s like for me to try to read and how it’s affected my life and suddenly I’ll go from being someone who’s not quite as smart as her to someone she pities. And there’s no way I can handle that.
We’re both silent while she plates up our food and brings it over to the island. Setting it down, she says, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. I was just … totally prying.”
Crap. Now I made her feel bad. “It’s fine. Let’s forget about it, okay?”
She sits next to me. “Sure. Whatever you want. It’s your thing.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that,” I say, picking up my fork and knife and slicing into the bread and egg. “This looks amazing.”
“It’s an old family recipe.”
Taking a bite, I let out an appreciative moan. “So good.”
“Thanks,” she says, taking a bite of red pepper. Her tone is flat and I know she’s not happy with the abrupt change of subject. But she’s just going to have to get over it because like she said, it’s my thing. Not hers. And I don’t want to talk about it.
We eat in silence, and other than the food being fucking delicious, there’s an awkward tension between us now that I wish I could erase. “So, what do you want to do today? I was thinking we could maybe go for a walk. There’s a little coffee shop a few blocks from here that I’ve been meaning to try.”
“Umm, yeah, maybe. I should probably go back home soon. Do some laundry, get back to work.”
“Right, big deadline and all,” I answer in a light tone.
“Exactly,” she says before popping her last bite in her mouth.
“Well maybe you could come back tonight or … tomorrow?”
“Maybe.” Allie gets up and takes her plate and cutlery to the sink.
Fuck. This is going south fast, isn’t it? Clicking my tongue a few times, I say, “Look, it’s not something I tell people, okay? Nobody knows, other than my parents and Gershwyn. Not even my agent.”
“Is that why you’re upset? Because you think I’m going to blab it all over town?” she asks, leaning against the counter and folding her arms.
“No, obviously not. I trust you,” I answer, irritated that she’d even think I’d think that of her.
“So what’s the problem?”
“I already told you, it’s not something I talk about.”
She stares at me intensely, then says, “I thought we were being honest with each other.”
“We are.”
“But not about this.”
I let out a big sigh. “Look, someone like you will never understand what it’s like to be someone … who’s got what I’ve got going on in my brain.”
She wrinkles up her nose. “Is that what you’ve decided? That I’m going to judge you or think less of you? Because if so, that’s pretty insulting.”
“Come on, put yourself in my shoes. I’m barely keeping up with you as it is. If we throw that other thing into the mix, it’s just too much.”
“Why don’t you let me decide what’s too much for me?” Pushing off the counter she starts for the bedroom. “You know what? I should go.”
I get up and follow her. “Yeah, of course you’re going. That’s exactly what I knew you’d do if you found out.”
She spins on her heel and glares at me. “Is that why you think I’m leaving? Because I think less of you?”
“Oh, come on. Are you trying to stand there and tell me you think more of me now that you know I sometimes struggle to read even a menu?”
“My nonno can’t read and he’s one of the smartest people I know,” she says, jutting out her chin.
“Yeah, in English maybe, but in Italian, I bet he’s a total whiz.”
She shakes her head. “Nope. He had to work on their farm when he was a little boy. His mom taught him just enough to be able to go shopping and take a train. And I have nothing but respect for him. He’s also the only person in my family that understands what I do for a living. Sometimes we talk about my job for hours, and he gets it.” She picks up her overnight bag and sets it on the bed. “And the people on that joint project at NASA? Brilliant. The ones with dyslexia could totally see things I couldn’t. I was completely jealous of the way their minds work.”
“Yeah, well, maybe that’s how I feel about you,” I blurt out.
Her head snaps back and she stares at me.
Shaking my head, I say, “I just … see you working on things I’ll never understand and I wish I could do that too. I’d kill to have things come so easily to me.”
“None of it came easily to me. I had to work my ass off for years to learn what I know,” she says, yanking a pair of jeans out of her bag. She pulls off her pajama bottoms, giving me the best view of her toned legs before she quickly covers them up with her Levi’s.
“It’s not the same thing, Allie. And I’m not some NASA genius who can map things out in my head. I’m just … ordinary.”
She scoffs. “Says one of the most successful, famous actors in the world. You’re anything but ordinary.” She pauses and gives me a piercing look. “You know, you’ve talked a lot about how I should learn to overcome my insecurities, but it seems to me like you should be taking your own advice.”
“It’s different.”
“It’s really not,” she answers. “We’re exactly alike—using our insecurities as an excuse not to let someone in.”
“I have let you in.”
“But only so far, right?” She gives me a sharp glare. “Maybe I’m completely naive, but after everything we’ve told each other and all the things we’ve done, I thought we were a lot closer than this.”
Oh fuck. I’m about to lose her. “We are closer. I’m closer to you than I’ve ever been to any woman in my life.” I walk over to her and take both her hands in mine. “I promise. I’ve never let someone in like this before.”
“I don’t think this is how relationships work,” she says softly. “You have to let the person in all the way.”
I let go of her hands, my palms sweaty and my gut twisting. I walk over to the bed and sit down, rubbing the back of my neck. “I know what you’re asking doesn’t sound like much, but it feels enormous to me. My whole life, I’ve just been so ashamed.”
She drops to her knees in front of me and places her hands on my thighs. “But why? So many successful people have dyslexia—Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeves. Nobody thinks less of them.”
Everything in me is shouting for me to shut this conversation down. It’s too much. I can’t do it. I won’t. But when I stare into her deep brown eyes, I can see what I’m pretty sure is love staring back at me.
She gives me a hopeful smile and whispers, “It’s okay.”
I get a lump in my throat, knowing in my heart that she means it. She’s going to accept me for me. I take a deep breath and I start to talk. For the first time in my life, I talk about it with someone who isn’t my brother. “My parents moved us to New York when I was three and Gersh was five. My dad had gotten a job as the principal of a fancy boarding school—kindergarten through senior year. The kind of place only the most elite of the elite can afford to send their kids to. At the time, they didn’t know about my affliction. Coming from a hick town in Nebraska already put my dad as an outsider from the start. He needed everything to be perfect in order to prove he could measure up to what they wanted—including my brother and me. Only I didn’t measure up. I wasn’t learning. Wasn’t hitting all the milestones, whereas Gersh was always ahead. Reading at a fifth-grade level in second grade.” I pause and shake my head. “He’d go on and on about his oldest son. He’s going to be a lawyer or a doctor someday. But with me? He’d say nothing. In first grade, my mom was tasked with ‘fixing me.’ We’d practice sight words all evening, every evening. All summer too. When all the other kids were out playing, I’d be at the kitchen table trying to memorize every word we’d learn the following year, so I wouldn’t embarrass the family.”
“Oh, Hudson,” she says. “I’m so sorry. That sounds awful.”
“It wasn’t great.” I glance at the floor, emotions swelling in my chest that I’d rather not feel. “By the time I was in seventh grade, I couldn’t take it anymore. I started to rebel and became the class clown. I spent half of my time in my dad’s office, which drove a wedge into our relationship. But the truth is, he would have been embarrassed by me either way, because by the time I was a sophomore, I was so far behind, there was no catching up.”
“But none of this makes you stupid, Hudson.”
I clench my jaw, then say, “It doesn’t exactly make me smart.”
“Of course, you’re smart, you jackass,” she says, squeezing my legs a little. “Look at how you learned to adapt. And how long you’ve kept this secret from the world, especially given your career-choice. There must be countless times you have to read out loud.”
“Gershwyn’s the genius, not me. He handles everything so I don’t have to,” I tell her, thinking maybe she’d be better off dating him. The thought makes my blood boil, and I brush it away. “He quickly picks up anything that requires reading, while I distract and redirect people. Sometimes, when they push it, I act like I have better things to do or that I can’t be bothered at the moment, but I’ll get to it.”
“You charm them.”
“Exactly,” I answer. “Once, I even stooped as low as to pretend to be high at a table reading.”
“Wow,” she says, and the look on her face terrifies me. I’m one-hundred-percent sure she’s about to tell me how disappointed she is in me, but she doesn’t. Instead, she says, “And that story has followed you for years.”
“Yeah, pretty stupid. If I had kept that up, I would’ve been out of a career real fast.” I lean down and press my forehead against hers, not wanting her to see the shame I’m feeling.
We stay like this for a minute, then she lifts her hands and places them on my cheeks. “I’m sorry you went through all of that,” she says.
I shake my head. “Half of it was self-inflicted.”
“No, I’d say your parents inflicted it on you.” She gives me a soft kiss on the lips, followed by another one, this time, more urgent. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Hudson. They’re the ones who should be ashamed of themselves.”
I kiss her back, not wanting to talk anymore. Not wanting to feel ashamed or embarrassed or less than. Pulling her up onto my lap, I kiss her harder, feeling loved and accepted. I run my hands along her waist and up her sides, feeling her breasts through the silk pajama shirt. She grinds against me, through the fabric of our clothes, and I’m suddenly desperate to have her again, to feel her skin against mine, to taste her, touch her everywhere. And I know damn well it’s what she wants too. In a frenzy of movements, we help each other get naked, and soon, I’m on top of her, with her legs wrapped around my back, as close as two people can be.
It’s everything. This moment. The two of us together like this. It’s love. I know it is. She’s showing me how she feels, that she accepts me the way I am. A distant part of my brain is telling me not to trust this. That she doesn’t know how pathetic it is when I have to read something for the first time, but I silence that thought and focus on her—on how she feels under me, how powerful I am when I’m with her like this, moving over her, bringing her as much pleasure as I’m giving myself.
When it’s over, we collapse into a heap, tangled up together, panting and satisfied. “You’ve got some serious gifts,” she tells me with a smile.
I chuckle, then kiss her again. “You do too.”
She runs her hands lazily up and down my arm while I plant kisses along her neck. After a few minutes, she says, “You know how I’m relentlessly curious?”
“It’s one of the things I love most about you.”
Grinning, she says, “I want to hear about how you learn your lines.”
“Oh, that,” I answer, surprised that I’m actually happy to talk about this. “Gersh scans my scripts and changes them to the Dyslexie font, then records himself reading them out loud. I listen to it over and over while I follow along until I’ve got the entire thing memorized.”
She stares into my eyes, and I can feel the love radiating from her. “So, you’re secretly an extremely hard-worker masquerading as an easy-going surfer dude.”
“It’s been the greatest role of my career.”
“Wow,” she says. “I’m not sure if anyone’s told you this lately, but you’re amazing.”
“You’re only saying that because you want me to shag you again.”
She lifts one hand and caresses my cheek with her fingertips. “I’m serious. You’re amazing, Hudson. What you’ve accomplished is incredible. Only someone who’s a really fast thinker could do what you’ve done.”
Shrugging, I say, “Meh, I may be fast, but I have my limits.”
She gives me a serious look. “Listen, because I’m about to say something you need to hear. Everything you’ve learned, every skill you’ve developed—it took determination and intelligence to do that. I’ve never met anyone as good at reading people as you, and that’s one of the most important skills a person can have.”
“I don’t know about that. I could never do what you do.”
“So what? You’ve built an incredible life for yourself, and it took guts and talent.”
“All right, I’ll shag you again,” I say, doing my best to sound reluctant about it.
She laughs, then says, “Oh good. But first, can I ask you one more thing?”
“Seriously? I’m offering you a mind-blowing orgasm and you want to ask more questions?”
“You knew what I was like when you got involved with me,” she answers. “Besides, I’m pretty sure the offer will still be on the table in a few minutes.”
“Oh really? Someone thinks highly of herself,” I say with a big smile.
“If I do, it’s only because you’re as hard as a rock right now,” Allie tells me.
I burst out laughing, then say, “Okay, you got me there. Now, out with it. What’s your question?”
“I know for a lot of people with dyslexia, the words seem to jump around on them. And I’m wondering if that’s what it was like for you when you were trying to learn to read.”
“You do know this is the worst pillow talk of all time.”
She winces, then says, “Scientists, right?”
I snort laugh. “You’re a strange bunch. Okay, fine. You know how there are twenty-six letters in the English language?”
“I’m familiar with the alphabet, thank you.”
“Well, those twenty-six letters make a whopping—and if you ask me, an unnecessarily confusing—forty-four sounds. So before you can learn to really read, you have to be able to figure out which combinations of letters make which sounds,” I say. “That’s hard for anyone, but imagine if you’re doing that while the letters are switching themselves around on the page, and your super-impatient father is staring over your shoulder shouting at you to ‘try harder.’”
“That sounds awful,” she says, looking like she might start to cry.
“Can we change the subject now? Because I’m definitely losing my erection.”
“Of course,” Allie answers. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”
She kisses me hard on the mouth, and within a few seconds, I’ve completely forgotten about what I was just saying, and apparently she has too, and she’s super turned on, because she just gasped and shouted, “Oh my God!”
“Wow, already?”
“No, not that,” she says, sitting up suddenly. “I definitely loved what you were just doing, but the letters and the sounds and the decoding…”
“That’s what turned you on?” I ask. “I’m not judging. I’m just asking for future reference.”
“Frank. I just realized why he hasn’t figured it out yet!”
“Seriously?”
She nods, her eyes wide with excitement. “It’s what you said about decoding the sounds. Frank’s struggling because I haven’t broken down the signals enough for him. I’ve been feeding each one as a whole unit.” She laughs a little, covering her mouth with one hand. “Sorry. I’m totally killing the mood.”
I grin at her, thrilled to see her so happy. “Don’t be sorry. You gotta go.”
“Really?”
I detangle myself from her. “Of course. We can pick this up later. Right now, you’ve got a world to change, and you’ve got a total shitbag to vanquish. Come on, let’s get dressed.”
She gets up and kisses me hard on the mouth. “Best. Boyfriend. Ever.” As soon as the words are out of her mouth, her mouth drops. “Oh, not boyfriend. Pffft. You’re leaving in a few days. I meant ‘guy I’m sleeping with.’ No, that doesn’t sound right. Friend with benefits? Best friend with benefits ever. Oh wait, that’s too much pressure, I didn’t mean you’re my best friend. Gwen is, but not with the benef?—”
I kiss her to shut her up. “If we were going to label it, I would be in favor of the word boyfriend.”
“You would?” she whispers.
“Yeah, it’s got a nice ring to it. Now, you have to get going. There’s no time to lose.”