Chapter 8 Beat around My Bush
Beat Around My Bush
It was like a scene in a movie—all conversation, clinking of ice in glasses, all clattering of silverware ceased immediately. Everyone stared. Record-scratch moment.
When we were together, Lloyd hadn’t known I was a virgin. That was good, because at least he hadn’t told Rogan about that. For a moment, I’d had a scrap of dignity.
But I had to go and screw it up by blurting it out in front of everyone.
So there I was, surrounded by my employees and coworkers, not to mention the poor, unsuspecting bar staff, having just admitted that I, the sex toy engineer heralded by my boss as the future of the industry, had never actually had sex before.
“I have to go.”
“Scout—”
That was Clara, approaching me, but I couldn’t answer her. Not now. I knew she would be sweet and sympathetic, and I just knew that if I looked at her, I’d start crying.
I couldn’t be a crier and a virgin in front of my colleagues. One of those was bad enough. Both of them? Beyond humiliating.
As I collected my things, I tried to dredge my thoughts from my devastated alcoholic fugue state and put them in order.
Okay. Everyone knows you’re a virgin. Lloyd Exeter is spreading lies about you online.
And you’re probably never going to be the same after this.
But there’s a silver lining, I guess. At least Hudson didn’t hear all of this.
Except…he did.
When I turned around to leave, I discovered that he’d been sitting there, down the bar from me, for at least a few minutes. He still had his backpack slung over one shoulder, like he’d come in but froze when the fireworks started.
Fuck this.
Dropping his gaze, I stormed out of the bar, too drunk and too anxious to care about the mess I left behind me.
My steps out onto the darkening Dallas streets were shaky. It was hard to see the street signs through the haze of tears threatening to spill over onto my cheeks; the tequila brain didn’t help either. But I let muscle memory guide me home.
I only got a couple of blocks before a voice rang out behind me, just like it did the day before when he cornered me for that accidental kiss.
“Scout! Scout, wait!”
Hudson materialized beside me, his cologne haunting my nose like the last, lingering magnesium carbonate from erased classroom chalk. I hated how that smell immediately made a few of the knots in my shoulders relax. How it reminded me of the soft, comforting embrace of the sweatshirt he’d lent me.
“I don’t need you to try and make me feel better,” I said, desperate to dispel the feeling.
“Ah, the bar’s not really my scene anyway. I figured I could use the walk.”
I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
We walked in silence. It was…surprisingly nice, to have his presence there. Nonjudgmental. Noncurious. Just there for me.
“Well,” he said eventually, breaking the silence. “Look at it this way. At least no one thinks we’re sleeping together anymore. Or if they do, then they’re not talking about it anymore.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Big mistake, though, because a few tears leaked out as I did.
“Do you want to talk?” he asked gently.
“So you did come out here to try and make me feel better.”
“I’ve sort of noticed that you keep people at arm’s length. Except for Clara, but you can’t exactly talk about your virginity with your boss.”
“What, so you thought I’d talk about it with a total stranger instead?”
“We’re not total strangers. Remember, you kissed me yesterday.
” I opened my mouth to retort, but he cut me off.
“And anyway, I thought, hey, if I was in her shoes, I’d want someone to talk to.
Sorry if it was the wrong call. I just didn’t want you to be alone.
Especially when you’re drunk and it’s dark out. ”
“I’m not drunk,” I said before immediately stumbling over my feet.
“You’re right. Sober as a judge. Here.” He offered his arm. I eyed it for a beat. “C’mon. We can’t have our best engineer twisting her ankle. Let me walk you home?”
“Fine. But no feelings talk. And I’m not taking your arm.”
Tossing my chin with defiant I’m-a-bad-bitch-who-don’t-need-a-man energy, I went back to walking…and tripped over my feet yet again.
Damn feet. Who kept putting them there? And why wouldn’t the sidewalk just stay put?
He offered me his arm again, a twinkle of humor in his eyes. This time, I took it, placing my hand in the crook of his elbow.
His surprisingly muscular crook.
“You can talk about your feelings, too,” he said, once we got under way.
“If you want. I mean, what’s the risk? My contract with BuzzCorp is up in six weeks.
You’ll never see me again after that. I’m like…
a self-destructing tape. You put all your feelings and thoughts into me, and then in six weeks… bam. Gone.”
Maybe I was drunk, but this struck me as sound logic. I hadn’t thought of it from that perspective. My two big worries about people? Them distracting me from my work and them bailing once they realize what an unsocialized loser I am.
Problem: I’m so, so isolated from other people. A weirdo, a freak who can’t get through a normal conversation without humiliating herself.
Proposed Solution: Make a friend who won’t judge you. And whose opinion doesn’t matter anyway, because in six weeks, he’ll be gone.
“I don’t even know where to start,” I muttered, taking my first tentative steps onto the friendship ledge.
“Are you…interested in sex?” Hudson asked.
From anyone else, it might have sounded like a creepy come-on, but from him, it was a genuine question. Asexuality was valid as hell, but unfortunately, I was afflicted with the curse of sexual desire. Every time I so much as smelled Hudson’s cologne, I was reminded of that.
And now, with our bodies pressed against each other and the swirl of alcohol in my brain, I felt that sexual desire more potently than I could remember in a long, long time.
“Yes, I’m interested. The timing just never worked out.
I mean, I was a child prodigy. I graduated high school at thirteen.
I was out of college by my seventeenth birthday.
I had my master’s by the time I was twenty.
Dual PhDs after that. My parents worked hard to get me through the best schools, to help me make the most of myself.
So I was always studying. Always trying to make them proud.
I didn’t have time for anything but work.
And even if I had the time, who would I have had sex with?
Studies show that most first-time sexual encounters are engaged in during the college years.
Well, how do you lose it when you’re a fifteen-year-old in a class of nerds in their midtwenties? ”
I was rambling, but he didn’t seem to care. I continued.
“Then, after that, there was Lloyd. We didn’t sleep together, but we had a thing and it ended badly.”
“And he’s why you blame yourself for the explosion.”
He didn’t phrase that like a question, so I didn’t answer it. In truth, I didn’t blame Lloyd. I blamed myself. But that was an emotional equation to balance another day, so I merely replied:
“I never wanted to let what happened at GalacticSolutions happen again. I didn’t want anything to mess with my concentration. So sex just…I just haven’t done it yet. I guess I’ve been waiting.”
“For what?”
With a small tug on his arm, I indicated that we should stop. He lingered with me outside my little apartment building, looking like he belonged there. Like, if this was a scene in a movie, he’d guide me up the steps and into my apartment for some PG-13-rated, romantically scored escapades.
What was I waiting for? I turned the question over in my head.
When would be the right time?
Who would be the right guy?
Why not Hudson?
Slipping out of his grip, I gave a little shrug.
I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m waiting for.
It was the only answer I had for him. And the only answer I had for me.
“There you have it. That’s what happened—mostly. So what’s the diagnosis?” I asked. “Exactly how pathetic am I?”
“Nothing pathetic about you. You can have sex. Or you don’t have sex, who cares?
I just…” He toyed idly with a piece of broken glass on the ground, then used his boot to guide it into the gutter, where it couldn’t hurt anyone.
“I wonder if you’re letting this Lloyd-GalacticSolutions thing stand in the way of you being happy.
Not just about sex, but everything. I know you like your work, but are you so wrapped up in it because you want to be, or because you’re hiding behind it? ”
I blinked. Hudson visibly paled, then nervously fiddled with his spectacles.
“Sorry, I overstepped. I didn’t mean to—”
“No, no,” I replied, soft but firm. The words were almost whispered.
It was surprisingly difficult to articulate full sentences when sloshed on tequila and seen straight through by the most handsome man in the world.
The truth was…he was right. I’d just never let myself understand it that way.
“You’re…surprisingly insightful, Hudson Bailey. ”
He chuckled. “What a pair we make, huh? The sex toy engineer who’s never had sex and the sex toy app designer who’s never used a sex toy.”
“Clara always says that she’s not in the sex toy business. She’s in the people business. Getting the correct people together and letting them work their magic. I guess she had to horribly fail sometime.”
His dimple appeared as his grin widened. “Fail? I don’t know, Scout. I think we’re a win so far.”
It was so romantic. The stirrings of good to come, if only I would let myself have it.
If only I hadn’t ruined it by immediately throwing up all that tequila right on his shoes.