Chapter 13 The Entrance Inter-You
The Entrance Inter-You
The next morning, a question shattered me awake and I bolted upright in bed.
It’s a Wednesday. Do people even have sex on a Wednesday?
A remarkably stupid question. Of course people had sex on Wednesdays. Wednesday was not a particularly unhorny day, and even if it was, there were probably some deranged sex freaks who would do it anyway. Statistically speaking, Wednesday sex was a mathematical certainty.
But that was how the day was for me. Whether I was building a rocket ship or a vibrating butt plug, I would never enter a high-status task without doing the research, asking probing (haha) questions, or having all the facts. My questions stacked up.
Should I wear lingerie? Or is that too try-hard?
Do I even own virginity-loss-worthy lingerie?
Should I google where the nearest lingerie store is?
What if he’s not into lingerie? What if he is into lingerie, but he wants to be the one wearing it?
I’m not judging, I just need to know what to do in that case.
Like, would he bring his own lingerie or am I expected to provide it?
What size does he even wear? And where would I even get men’s lingerie at this time of day on a Wednesday?
It was…a lot. Too much for a transaction that should have been simple. Meet boy. Like boy. Fuck boy. Never think of him again.
That last point was imperative. Hudson may have been comfortable with casual sex for the next five weeks, three workdays of his contract, and while I agreed with, well, everyone that I could stand to loosen up, loosening up didn’t mean letting go completely.
One night of freedom would be fine. Manageable, then right back to work.
Blow off some steam. Prove to myself that I wasn’t unfuckable and I wasn’t incapable of human contact.
Five weeks, three workdays, though? The same five weeks, three workdays during which I needed to finish the prototype of the next generation of sex toy?
Impossible.
No matter how much I might want it. Our work was too important, and my Fluorine Scout propensity for letting my personal affairs interfere with my professional ones too strong.
So there I was, worrying over my impending virginity loss when Clara popped her head into the kitchen, where I’d been mindlessly searching for caffeine reinforcements.
“Scout?”
“Hm?”
“There’s a young woman in your office. I’ve hired her to replace Jared.”
Jesus, Clara. Again?
“That was fast,” I said, when what I really wanted to say was And you didn’t even consult me on hiring someone for my own damn team?
She did this all the time. I loved Clara like she was family, and she’d done more for me than my actual family, but for all the ranting and raving she did about me taking the back seat on decision-making, she sure did love to requisition the wheel at work.
Clara nodded and clucked her tongue. “She’s really been put through the wringer. Her medtech start-up folded when her now ex-boyfriend embezzled the company’s entire savings. She’s brilliant, though. Aside from giving over her books to such a wanker, obviously.”
“Is BuzzCorp just a rehab for wayward women in STEM now?”
“Someone’s got to look out for you ladies. Might as well be me.”
Five minutes later, I had an employment dossier, a huge tumbler of Diet Dr Pepper, and a Miss Leelah St. James at my desk.
Leelah was tall, stacked like a tennis player, and clearly terrified.
“Hi there,” I offered by way of greeting.
“Hi,” she replied, voice shaky. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“You, too. So. I’m sure Clara warned you that this was going to be a very rigorous entrance interview.”
“She made me sharpen my pencils just in case.”
Once again, I glanced over Leelah’s résumé and Clara’s notes. There were all the important things there—she was a Rhodes Scholar and UT Austin graduate, had founded a company before she turned twenty-one, was a few years older than me, had been featured in Forbes…
Her medtech company had made a name for itself by creating portable devices that could be taken anywhere—war zones, natural disaster areas. An EEG that weighed less than the average Stephen King novel was her signature invention.
Shit, I thought, what the hell is this girl doing at BuzzCorp?
A small voice in the back of my head, one that sounded like Hudson’s, replied: What the hell are you doing at BuzzCorp?
I shook the thought free, though. I liked working at BuzzCorp, and not just because I’d been blacklisted everywhere else.
Not because it was my last resort after the GalacticSolutions disaster.
I found my work fulfilling. And not just because the dildos I took home to test after work were long and generously girthed.
Again, the little voice came back. But maybe work and dildos shouldn’t be the only fulfilling things in your life. Maybe it’s a good thing that Jared’s gone. Maybe you could open yourself up a little bit more. After all, you’re about to have sex for the first time. Maybe finding friends is next.
I scanned the rest of her intake forms. She ran dance classes on Saturdays in the park and spent a not-inconsiderable amount of her former fortune buying up original Britney Spears tour costumes. And her nails were painted like little Monet lilies.
She seemed fun. This office needed fun.
So did I.
But…
Problem: I don’t have any friends.
Proposed Solution: Find some.
Test: Try befriending the new girl. She seems fun.
Could I do that? Surely one friend wouldn’t distract me too badly from work. Besides, she would be a work friend. And work friends get shit done.
Look at me, engaging in some personal growth. I guess that’s just what crisis does to a person—makes them do crazy things like make friends and have sex.
“Usually, I’d put you through some tests, but…I’m going to be honest with you, Leelah. You’re overqualified and the culture’s not good here right now. And I just need to know that I have someone in my corner. Can you be that person?”
“What do you mean?”
I told her the truth about the Jared Blotcher/Lloyd Exeter situation.
What the hell did I have to lose? She’d find out within a few days of working here anyway.
Besides, she knew what it was like to be screwed over by an ex-boyfriend.
Might as well start this friendship with a little trauma bonding.
“How awful,” she muttered when my tale concluded. “That guy’s a dick.”
“That’s insulting to dicks. At least dicks are useful.”
“Some of the time. I mean, they’re clearly very replaceable.” She gestured to the dildo I’d crafted last night. Damn. I really needed to put that thing away. “But I guess you’re right. Sometimes you can’t beat the real thing.”
“Being a virgin and all, I wouldn’t know, but I’ll take your word for it.”
Just like that, Leelah became an entirely different person.
A light sparked inside her, and the tension withdrew from her body.
If Clara was cool and I was neurotic and Addie was spunky, Leelah was excitable.
Perky. “God, this makes me feel so much better. I was terrified to come in here. You know, you’re terrifying? Everyone says so.”
“Do they?”
“Yeah. Clara said not to be surprised if you don’t even look at me.”
How weird—I knew that about myself, that I wasn’t effusive or anything. But I’d never thought people were afraid of me. “Let’s just say I’m turning over a new leaf. Or trying to, anyway. Maybe the sky won’t fall if I come out of my shell a little bit.”
“Why? I mean, why come out of your shell now?”
Because the hot guy in the office got a boner while looking at me once and then everything went to shit.
“A lot of reasons. But…when I started here, I probably looked a lot like you did a few minutes ago. Clara welcomed me. She made me feel like I was more than what happened to me. She was—and is—my friend. I think it’d be nice to have more friends in the office. ”
Leelah nodded, practically bouncing in her seat now. “I can’t remember the last time I had a friend. People always say that I come on too strong, that I should just keep my head down, but I don’t think that’s any way to live. I mean, what’s even the point?”
If I’d developed a friend in the lab, I couldn’t have created a friend more unlike me. She was enthusiastic, beaming, and more interested in socializing than crunching numbers or working with tech.
In short, she was perfect. If I was going to try and make friends, I might as well go for broke, right? She could teach me a thing or two about peopling.
“This is just so exciting, Scout. I can’t wait—should we do lunch today?”
Lunch. A friend was asking me to lunch. “We have a prototypes meeting over lunch today, but maybe tomorrow?”
“Awesome. You’ve told me so much about yourself, but I’ve got to get you caught up on all my lore!”
“Sounds great. Go ahead and look at these specs. They’ll help you get ready for the meeting this afternoon.”
I passed some papers her way. She took them and deflated. I guess it must have finally dawned on her where she was working—not just a friendly place with a newly friendly boss, but a place that built sex toys instead of the medical tech she’d been developing for years.
I knew that look. I still saw it sometimes when I looked at myself in the mirror.
“The pacemakers I was creating at my firm were going to change the entire way we treat sick people. My portable EEGs were going to save lives,” she muttered.
I shrugged. “So you’re going from helping the medically fucked-over to letting the helpless get fucked. How exciting for you.”
A little of her old grin returned. “You know, I think I’m going to like working here. Thanks for everything.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Leelah. Glad to have you on the team.”
And I was. I really was.
Not just because she seemed fun. A little intense, but very fun. It was also because, for the last twenty minutes, I’d barely thought about giving Hudson my virginity at all.
Then, of course, the man had to ruin the streak by walking past my office’s glass wall. He didn’t look in my direction, but as he walked, I leaned back in my chair and let my eyes oh-so-subtly follow him as he went.
Everything else in my world, like dildo prototypes and new friendships and questions about sex, disappeared. All I could think about was his ass in those jeans.
God, he had a good one.
I couldn’t wait to see it for myself tonight.