Chapter 7 Cock-Tails and French 69s
Clara loved team building.
“Drinks on me, everyone!”
She did it in many, many ways—resort getaways in the Dominican Republic and Hilton Head, afternoon sundae bars, excursions to bowling or rage rooms—but this was her favorite: putting her credit card down at a bar and inviting the entire company (yes, all thirty of us plus custodial and security) for “sips and snacks” on her.
The last thing I needed was a drink. I’d had an emotional roller coaster of a weekend topped off with a second, weirder roller coaster this morning, so it would have been safer all around if I had clocked out, gone home, and tried to catch up on some work. Alone.
However, unappealing as the thought of drinking or socializing was, I dutifully took an Uber with Clara to Josie’s, her favorite spot in town. Drinking might have been a distraction from work—yikes—but at least it would also be a distraction from thoughts of Lloyd and Hudson.
With its low lighting, slightly warped wall-mounted TV screens, and bottomless chips and salsa, Josie’s was a run-of-the-mill Tex-Mex joint with a solid tequila library. Usually, a fun spot. But, of course, my most annoying coworker couldn’t leave me in peace.
“Whoa, look who it is! Boss lady’s in the house!”
“Hi, Jared.”
At the bar, waiting for my second watermelon margarita, I didn’t even turn to acknowledge him—just caught him in the already hazy corners of my vision.
He sidled up beside me anyway. After our encounter this morning, I had gone out of my way to make sure our paths didn’t cross again, but he never missed out on free drinks or free food. Our meeting here was inevitable.
I glanced toward the hallway where Clara had disappeared ten minutes ago with some well-dressed silver fox she’d found drinking alone at a corner table. Damn her. Getting some and abandoning me.
“Good to finally see you at one of these little office hangs. Tell the truth: You just came because your boyfriend’s coming.”
I offered one of those halfhearted smiles women do when they want men to leave them alone. “Don’t have a boyfriend, Jared.”
“You know what I mean!”
The waitress brought my watermelon margarita; Jared ordered a tequila shot for each of us.
Normally, I wasn’t a let’s shoot tequila girl. Given the extenuating circumstances, however, I downed mine the second it was put in front of me.
“Unless you’re saving yourself,” Jared mused. “For me, right? You’re saving yourself for me? Just waiting for the right boozy opportunity to strike? C’mon, Scout. You don’t need any liquid courage where I’m concerned. I’m a sure thing.”
The worst thing about Jared—an achievement considering his docket of faults—was that he genuinely didn’t see anything wrong with what he’d said. He was always “just joking.”
I mumbled about needing the restroom, then disappeared for some peace and quiet. However, no sooner had I set myself up in front of the bathroom mirror than Addie appeared behind me.
“Jared’s such bullshit, huh?” she asked, shooting me a sympathetic look.
“He’s harmless,” I said, repeating the same thing I told myself every time we spoke.
“I know, but still. I’m sorry he talks to you like that. You should tell him to go fuck himself.”
Oh, to be twenty-one again and think the world was that simple.
“I would, but I’m afraid he’d think that was an invitation.”
Addie nodded, smacking her lips as she applied a new coat of bright purple lip gloss.
Not for the first time, I felt a sharp stab of regret.
I’d never been cool and hip, not even when I was twenty-one.
Purple lip gloss and cute miniskirts and telling asshole men to fuck off had never been in my skill set.
What kind of person would I be if I’d grown up normal like Addie, not a number-crunching savant who didn’t understand the first thing about the real world beyond her calculator and slide rule?
Satisfied with her lip gloss, she turned to me again. “Can I say just, like, one thing, though?”
“Sure.”
Her words slurred slightly, but there was a fondness to them I couldn’t deny.
“And to preface: I don’t mean it in a weirdo-Jared way, but in a drunk-girlfriends-in-a-bathroom way.
It’s just that I’ve, like, noticed that you’re not super, you know, like, outgoing or whatever.
You keep to yourself. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you go out to one of these things unless Clara forces you. And do you ever date or anything?”
“Not really. I like my job. I put most of my energy into work,” I said.
“A job isn’t a life, girl. And I think you’re crazy hot.
And smart. And accomplished and stuff. You should be, like, out there having all the sex, living it up all around town, partying with your girls.
It might take a little of the pressure off at work if you did, you know, more nights like this.
I mean, come on. You and me—we work in a boys’ club.
There aren’t a ton of female mechanical engineers out there. We’ve gotta stick together, mama.”
She gave a little shoulder shimmy that I assumed was meant to be a dance. I rolled my eyes.
“Did Clara put you up to this pep talk?”
Her face contorted and I realized I’d said the wrong thing. Shit. “Whatever. I was trying to be a friend. Sorry. Forget I said anything.”
Yet another example of why I didn’t talk to people outside the office. I couldn’t get through a simple bathroom pep talk without hurting someone.
As she stalked through the swinging door, I realized that she wasn’t talking generally. She had said all of that because she wanted to be my friend. That was why she’d been hurt. She thought I just didn’t want to be friends with her.
Steeling myself, I left the bathroom to find her and apologize.
However, the televisions in the bar were on an evening news channel. A poppy Entertainment Tonight–style show. When I glanced up at the flickering screens, a bottomless pit opened in the center of my stomach. I staggered to a stop. All thoughts of Addie and apologies flew from my mind.
The news story was, apparently, about Lloyd Exeter and a recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience.
I grabbed two tequila shots from a random table and downed them—one right after the other. Then a third for good measure.
Built like a homecoming king, Lloyd had sharp-featured, all-American good looks. Once upon a time, the sight of him filled me with butterflies. Now, alligators. Or some other scary animal with sharp teeth and predator energy.
Jared noticed me lingering at the back of the bar and waved me over to the empty seat between him and Terrence. “Hey, Scout! You used to work for him, right? Talk about a blast from your past.”
A blast from the past always sounded like a nice thing in theory, but in this case, blast meant “fiery explosion” rather than “good time.” However, with the attention of all our coworkers squarely on me, when he waved again, I had no choice but to join them.
The television volume increased, and Lloyd’s laugh filled the bar’s speakers.
Again, the laws of thermodynamics were clear on the practice of time travel.
I knew that. But as I watched, it was like I’d been transported through the years to my old self—the one who’d fallen head over heels for him… and ruined her life because of it.
“So you’re getting into the sex toy game. What’s the story there?”
“You’re gonna laugh.”
“No, man. I think it’s cool.”
“Well, there was this chick I used to fuck…”
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Clara get up from a cozy corner booth and rush back behind the bar, but I paid her no mind.
My world narrowed around the TV screen. There was nothing but Lloyd Exeter.
“Beginning of all great stories.”
“Right? And so, we used to work together at GalacticSolutions, building the Ilium. Remember that shit show? Long story short—she was the reason that the Ilium went kaboom, so we don’t work out, she gets fired, ends up working at some sex toy company.
And I sorta, you know, I don’t keep tabs on her or anything, it wasn’t that serious, but she comes across my feed every so often.
One day, I see this video of her, up on stage, at some orgasm industry conference.
At first, I ignore it, but she keeps doing these conferences and she keeps popping up.
And she keeps going on and on about pleasure. ”
“Which I’m guessing you didn’t think was her area of expertise.”
“Uh, no. Definitely not. What this girl knows about pleasure could have fit in her very, very tight holes, you know? So, anyway, I thought if someone with so little skill could make a bag doing sex stuff, then I could do it, too—only, you know, I’d be good at it.”
The clip ended and transitioned back to the ET clone commenting on it. Too late to save me, Clara finally managed to requisition the bar remote and turn the radio to Spanish-language pop hits.
The perfect soundtrack to my utter humiliation.
There wasn’t any denying that the woman in that story was me. I was, after all, the only person who’d worked for Lloyd Exeter and at a sex toy company. We all knew it.
But no one had known we’d been together. That was the new information.
“Holy shit,” Addie breathed.
“You can say that again,” Terrence said.
They had the decency to sound sympathetic. Maybe even a little sorry for me. Jared on the other hand…
“You had sex with Lloyd Exeter?”
That was when the emotions hit, smashing through my shock. He’d lied about me. Lloyd Exeter had gone on the most popular podcast in the world and lied about me. Everything else that happened between us back then, I could handle. I’d made mistakes, I’d been a fool, mea culpa and all that.
But for him to tell the world I’d slept with him?
No, that we’d fucked?
“No,” I said, my voice almost a whimper. “I didn’t have sex with Lloyd Exeter.”
“But he just said—”
“I didn’t!”
He scoffed. “You can’t just go on Joe Rogan’s show and say anything, Scout.”
“Yes, you can. It’s sort of his whole thing,” I countered.
Heat was building in my blood. A cacophonic, whining, high-pitched din filled my brain, like the sound someone would play to trigger a sleeper agent.
Fluorine Scout begged to come to the surface, go reactive, and leave this entire place in ash.
“She doesn’t want to tell you,” Addie interjected. “Leave her alone.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” I snapped.
“Oh please. Who has more reason to lie? You or him? I want to hear all the horny details. He had to be good, right—”
My anger had made me irrational, thoughtless. But he was so careless and Lloyd was so cruel and Joe Fucking Rogan should be consigned to the Hague and I felt so small and helpless and tipsy and—
Fluorine can’t be contained forever.
The words were out of me before I could stop them.
“I didn’t have sex with Lloyd Exeter, Jared, because I haven’t had sex with anyone.”
Jared’s eyes lit up. It might as well have been Christmas. “What was that?”
This isn’t happening. It can’t be happening. Shut it down. Shut it down.
Instantly, I was shy and retiring Scout again. Public Scout. I tried to claw back the girl I had been two minutes ago, before I’d let my anger get the better of me.
“Nothing. I misspoke. I’m flustered. I—”
But Jared saw right through it. They all did. I clocked understanding as it dawned on each and every face in that bar. And not just my team, either, but every BuzzCorp employee close enough to eavesdrop.
“No way,” he crowed. “You’re a virgin?”
Well, yes. In the technical sense. But in that moment, I felt well and truly fucked.