Chapter 3 Fly the Sexy Skies
Fly the Sexy Skies
I felt bad for Hudson.
Not as bad as I felt for myself, but still.
I felt bad.
Before this convention, I knew Hudson as a golden boy.
Always smiling, always happy, always leaving a trail of laughter behind him wherever he went.
There wasn’t a stranger he couldn’t befriend or a room he couldn’t work.
I’d never seen a guy glow before, but even from the distance I kept between us, he did just that.
But once Mr. Ose left, Hudson and I made our way to the Cleveland airport for our flight. Somewhere along the way, he surprised me.
He wilted.
It was like someone had pulled his spark plug. All his intangible energy vanished. He didn’t even try to talk to me—shocking, considering he’d barely let a minute pass between us without repeated attempts at collegial bonding.
At the beginning of the trip, I’d been thrown off balance by his questions, his jokes, his persistent chatter. Now that it was gone, I…I missed it.
Problem: The happiest guy in the world looks absolutely miserable.
Proposed Solution: ????
When I was stressed or upset, I turned to work, revising plans or rerunning calculations or cleaning my soldering irons. Hudson didn’t seem the type. He seemed like the talk about your feelings type—not my strong suit.
So as we walked through the Cleveland airport in search of our gate, I compromised. Not feelings. Not work. But a secret third thing.
“Do you…want a Cinnabon?”
Great work, Scout. Were those dynamite conversational skills what they taught you in human interaction school?
“You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to cheer me up. You clearly had a game plan with Mr. Ose, then I showed up and said all the wrong things. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not. I’m sorry. I’ll explain everything to Clara. It was my fault Mr. Ose didn’t convert.”
Part of me wanted to agree. But I couldn’t.
No, going full-frontal with the news that he’d never worked on a sex toy hadn’t been great optics.
But in retrospect, Clara’s insistence on top secrecy about The Fantasy’s designs made selling this thing nearly impossible.
Not even her best two nerds could sell it.
“I…I wasn’t exactly stellar out there either,” I admitted. “I don’t people well.”
“You’re doing fine with me.”
As we threaded our way through the hectic airport crowd, I shot him a skeptical look.
He took it in good humor. “Man, I really haven’t won you over, have I?”
“Don’t take it personally.”
“Hard not to. I’ve just always worked to be the type of guy that people like. It’s my whole thing. My superpower. And here you are…human kryptonite.”
Oh, so this was why I didn’t like him. Not because he was too sexy. Not because he knew nothing about specifically coding sex toys. And not because he contributed to the mess of a deal with Mr. Ose.
It’s because he was too nice. Most people who met me got my “Oh, she’s intense and doesn’t want to talk about anything but work and her lunch order” thing within seconds.
He was persistent. Even when he was calling me human kryptonite (which, rude but true), it didn’t feel like an insult.
It felt like a self-own—like he was disappointed in himself that he couldn’t find a way to reach me.
I had a hard time dealing with him not because I wanted to push him away, but because he made me want to keep him close. Or, you know, closer than I let other people get, anyway.
“I like to keep things professional,” I said lightly.
“Right. About that…I know it couldn’t have been easy, having me chained to your side all week.”
“What? No, it wasn’t a problem at all—”
His turn to flatten his gaze. “Scout, you had to explain to me what Ben Wa balls are. Jesus, what did you do to Clara to deserve such a cosmically bad punishment?”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. He was funny, too. Maybe it was hypocritical, coming from an engineer, but I hadn’t expected that from the computer nerd.
Not today, anyway. For some reason, I couldn’t hold back a joke of my own:
“I accidentally ate one of those twenty-dollar cookies Clara saves for her cheat day. I’m surprised she didn’t try to send me to the Hague.”
He laughed, and I felt it all the way down to my toes.
When was the last time I’d made someone besides Clara laugh? In the office, I led my team with a detached, hyperprofessional air. I kept everyone at a distance besides my boss, and I only kept her close because once upon a time, she’d met me at my worst and decided to hire me anyway.
It felt nice to make him laugh.
I shook off the feeling. Must have just been my brain’s final, lingering sex chemicals in the last flashes of their half-lives.
“Actually, I think she sent you here to help me make the sale. You were great with Mr. Ose.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah, like I said, like you’ve noticed, I need a guide dog for human interactions. You were a very good service animal.”
There I went again with another joke. Maybe Hudson was just being nice, but he laughed again.
“Maybe, except for the part where I told him the one thing he didn’t want to hear.
And I don’t think Clara sent me to guide-dog you.
Clearly she loves your work. I think she sent me along so I could learn more about the industry.
I mean, why would she send me to close with Mr. Ose? I’ve never even used a sex toy before.”
I nearly tripped into the girls’ volleyball team shuffling ahead of us. “Wait, so not only have you never worked on a sex toy before, you’ve never used a sex toy before either?”
“Nope.”
There was going to be an entire true crime docuseries about what I would do to Clara when I saw her at the office tomorrow.
“Actually,” he said, a note of optimism creeping back into his tone, “I wanted to talk to you about that.”
Don’t like the sound of that. Not one bit.
“I’m not really familiar with this stuff. This sex toy stuff,” he continued. “Not the way you are.”
My jaw dropped. His eyes widened.
“That came out wrong! I mean professionally! You’re the expert. I know nothing. I never even held a dildo until my first interview with Clara. I’m out of my depth and clearly this is too important for me to be so unlearned. So I was thinking…what if you taught me?”
“What, like sex ed? Sex Toy Ed?”
“I’m a blank slate. Everything I know about sex toys is through cultural osmosis, and if we want to make The Fantasy the greatest one that’s ever been built, I need more information.”
A half-dozen horny vignettes crossed my mind. Oh, the things I could teach Hudson Bailey about sex toys…about making a woman scream…
Dammit. If I kept this up, I’d be joining the Mile High Club—party of one—in the Airbus bathroom.
He was right, of course, that he needed instruction, and I was probably the best one to give it to him.
It would be simple enough. We could go through the BuzzCorp catalog of products, I could explain their uses to him, and show him the focus group reporting on how and why those toys were invaluable to our users.
Easy as (cream) pie.
But teaching Hudson about anything would necessitate us spending more time together. Teaching him about sex toys would necessitate me spending more time trying not to think about the sexy man at my side burying himself between my legs.
And given how important The Fantasy was to my future and my career, I just couldn’t risk the distraction. Couldn’t risk him.
“Why don’t you just watch porn?” I asked.
“Ah, porn. Depicting healthy and equitable sexual relationships since the beginning of time.”
Good point, but I had to hold my ground.
When we arrived at our gate, preflight boarding was in effect.
The two of us settled into remote seats at the edge of the carpeted space.
I purposefully put my backpack between us—to avoid any accidental touches that might lead to more horny fuel for sessions like last night’s—and settled in to get some work done on my tablet.
But I should have known it wouldn’t be that simple.
“What did he mean back there?” Hudson asked, after a pause. “Ichiro, when he mentioned your old job blowing up or whatever. What did that mean?”
Cool. Straight to the heavy stuff.
I guess I should have been grateful he wasn’t asking for more sex toy training.
I’d done a lot of work on myself to be able to talk about my pre-BuzzCorp existence. I had to. Anyone who googled me would see everything and ask me about it no matter how I felt.
“Remember the GalacticSolutions disaster?” I asked.
“Sure.”
“That was my project.”
“Oh.”
Such a small sound for a major humiliation. In my first job, I’d worked on propulsion for a rocket company, and well…it hadn’t gone according to plan.
At least he didn’t sound judgmental. That was more than people usually gave me.
“Yeah, oh. A multibillion-dollar rocket literally blew up in my face.”
“That couldn’t have been your fault.”
Not entirely, no. But still.
“It happened on my watch and under my command, which is all that matters. And it happened because I wasn’t focused on my work.
There were other…” My throat tightened the way it did every time I got to this part.
When I had to skirt the details and lie by omission.
“…things going on behind the scenes at GalacticSolutions that took my attention away from the project. If I hadn’t been so stupid, if I hadn’t let myself get distracted, then the Ilium might not have been a disaster and I might be sipping cocktails on Mars right now. ”
“Yeah, but then we wouldn’t be sharing this beautiful moment together. And how tragic that would be.”
He was the all-time Make Scout Porter Laugh scoreboard leader without even trying.