Chapter 17
“So, how was your weekend?” Nina said, tapping her keyboard halfheartedly. It was Monday, and neither of us were ready to work yet. “You and…I’m forgetting her name.”
Nina clearly wasn’t forgetting Vi’s name, but it was cute to see her act like it.
“Vi, that’s right…did you and Vi get up to anything exciting?”
It was fun keeping all of this from Nina, and keeping Vi as a villain, an impediment in her mind.
There’s no way I could tell Nina about what I did over the weekend…
especially with Vi…and with Kim. Feeding her just enough to keep her salivating seemed like the correct strategy to make this as enjoyable for myself as possible.
“Come on, something…” Nina said, wheeling into my view, an eager and impossibly cute look on her face, “Big game hunting, international espionage…wild orgies?”
Did she…know? I don’t feel like it’s something Kim would talk about in the interview, since she’s tried to (somewhat unsuccessfully) lay down a ‘no fucking on work property’ mandate, but, that’s also a rather specific thing to bring up to me seeing that it was, in fact, exactly what I spent the weekend doing.
But it could have also been nothing at all, and Nina just chose provocative things to say because that’s the kind of adorably frustrating person she was. So I decided to play it down.
“Really, umm…oh, kind of boring.” I said. “Did nothing.”
“You’re not great at lying, you know.” Nina said with a sarcastic tilt.
“Not my strongest suit, no…” I said.
“If you don’t want to talk about your weekend, I’m OK with it, I was just curious what like people like you and Vi you get up to on their days off, Emma.”
“It was, just kind of exhausting, but, I don’t want to bore you with the details.”
“No, bore me.” A plume of smoke rose from her soldering iron as she tinkered with a motor. “I’m easily excitable.”
“Clearly.” I said, and the giggle Nina returned with sent a shiver down my spine. “Alright, I hung out with friends. Kind of a quiet little get-together.”
I mean, parts of it, when we were all blissfully recovering from having absolutely fucked each other silly, were pretty quiet.
—
A few days later, I had decided to see what could happen with Nina.
She was obviously receptive to me, and it would be very unlike me to at least try.
I kept a lid on things for a whole week and a half with Nina, which I saw as a personal achievement.
I didn’t let the gazes or touches linger, and I let her work.
I didn’t even make dirty jokes or double entendres if I could avoid them.
But, I mean, she did walk into some of them that I had to capitalize on.
But, as anyone around me would attest, for a while, I was on my best behavior.
And, being on that best behavior, I thought it was now OK for me to get closer with her, to understand who Nina was.
Maybe beyond a coworker, maybe not. As a polyamorist, of course I liked options, liked to keep doors open.
And now was the time to try the door and see if it was unlocked.
Plus, Vi had been begging me practically every day to meet Nina, so I figured at this point it had to happen.
That is, if Nina wasn’t a sullen mess who was now barely talking to me.
“You’re…really quiet.” I said, moving my chair closer to hers as she adjusted the placement of a motor in a prototype, the tiny motor buzzing against the steel workbench.
“Ahh, it’s nothing.” She said, purposefully turning away from me. Before today, she had looked at me like I was her best friend, her inspiration, her…whatever, I Just know that this was a far different Nina from the one I’d seen since she started.
“It completely looks like nothing…” I joked, hoping to break the tension. “You’re not your usually flirty self, Nina, so…color me concerned.”
Nina grinned a little at me, maybe a little relieved that I was finally acknowledging the flirting. “OK, it’s nothing you can do anything about, Emma.”
“I can do a lot of things about a lot of things, try me.”
“I’m not doing to drag down the day.”
“Yes you are, let’s go, drag away.”
“Alright…I’m depressed as shit and I don’t know what to do about it.”
“What about therapy?”
“Already in it, not much progress.”
“Tell me about it then.”
“No.”
“Yes.” I said, flexing a little domme energy, maybe just giving Nina a taste. “Tell me at least part of it, or I’ll keep bugging the shit out of you about it. And I am really capable of being annoying.”
Nina sighed, pressing her head into the workbench. “I just thought…I’d come here to LA and things would be…easier.”
“What things?”
“I don’t know, like…meeting people. Meeting women. Fuck, meeting anybody who would just give me time.” Nina looked up from her groveling, tears welling at the edges of her eyes. “I told you this was dumb.”
“It’s not dumb. If you haven’t already noticed, and I don’t know how you could miss it, I’m autistic as fuck, and it has taken me a really long time to make any kind of connection with people that didn’t fall apart the moment after I got panicked about it and said or did something stupid.
” I locked my computer, knowing that this had turned from a little conversation to a much bigger one.
“Meeting people when you’re an adult…even if you’re neurotypical…
which…are you? I’ve only known you for a couple of weeks so I don’t want to assume. ”
Nina smiled a little, sitting up, a bit of happiness in her eyes that maybe somebody was actually listening to her for the first time in a while. I sort of wondered how much money she was wasting on her therapist if they weren’t doing this exact thing for her.
“I think I might be. I mean, did well in school on specific things but couldn’t really ever…
fit in. And then after school, I mean, forget it, I would just go to work and come home.
Go out to dinner with my girlfriend a couple times a week, but that was really it.
” Nina scrunched up her mouth in a pained expression, seeming to realize how sad it sounded.
And it would have been sad to hear, I’m sure, if I had not lived exactly that. “I can’t and won’t diagnose you with anything, and…umm…maybe try to find a new therapist, but, it doesn’t sound like you’re neurotypical, so…this shit’s hard, Nina. So fucking hard.”
I wheeled over and laid my hand on her back, a touch of reassurance.
No, really, it was. I might be one of the horniest women on earth but even I knew when to cool things down.
I swept my hand across her back, calming her.
The same way Vi had calmed me when I had my little meltdown with Kim and Brenda.
Sometimes it just felt good to be touched, to just remind you that you weren’t the only person in the universe.
“It really is…god, it’s hard. And you just…you have friends. How?” Nina said.
“Lot of trying at it. And…I don’t have many friends that I don’t…
” I was going to say ‘fuck’, but, I wasn’t ready to dump that onto Nina yet, so I just let the sentence trail off.
Thankfully, she didn’t seem to pick up on the dangling phrase.
“You just have to be wrong so many times before you, maybe, find cool people to hang out with. And work with. And…do other stuff with.” I smirked.
Nina looked up at me, her eyeliner slightly streaked, her beautiful face red and puffy from the crying and smushing it into her hands. “You’re really cool, Emma.”
“I’m absolutely not. Take that back.” I said.
This seemed to turn Nina around, bringing her from desperation and worry to at least a little bit of a smile. “Fuck off…”
“Gladly, because I need to work, and, so do you.” I thought about pulling away and just going back to my tasks, but the thought entered my head.
“Hey, do you want to…hang out with Vi and me? You’ve been talking about her, and, I know I’m supposed to be all mysterious and unknowable, but…
it’s clear you need some friends now, Nina, and… I can be that, at least a little.”
“That would be…yeah…that would be really nice.”
“Alright,” I nodded. “Let me talk to Vi and…we’ll hang out. And keep your chin up.” I tapped Nina on her back.
“I know it’s just?—“
“—No, I mean literally, you came very close to burning your hair on your soldering iron, don’t lay your head on the workbench anymore.” I rolled back in front of my computer with a grin.