Chapter 19 Friends with No Benefits
Friends with No Benefits
Last night I’d asked Hudson how you could possibly sit across the table from a stranger, knowing you were about to have sex with them. At the time, I couldn’t imagine anything more disconsonant, that partnership of desire and pleasantry.
Turns out I was wrong. There was a weirder feeling.
“So,” Leelah said. “What did you get up to last night?”
The real worst feeling was having amazing sex and not being able to talk about it.
Today, I’d had to face Clara and feign that nothing was different.
When I’d first agreed to sex with Hudson, I didn’t tell her because it wasn’t a big deal.
It would be a one-night stand I could mention in passing sometime in the very, very distant future, when he was long gone from BuzzCorp.
Now that he would be a more semipermanent fixture in my day-to-day, I didn’t want to tell her because…
Well…
What if I failed?
What if my great attempt to balance personal affairs and work was a total bust, The Fantasy flopped, and I disappointed her?
No, I couldn’t handle it.
So I kept my mouth shut and continued to do so with Leelah that afternoon.
As promised, she and I had hit up some trendy sandwich place for lunch so I could get to know her better.
Thankfully, she’d spent much of our meal talking about herself: where she grew up (Paris, Texas—home of the Cowboy Boot Jesus, look it up), her hobbies (dance classes, volunteering), her vices (maxing out her Ulta card), her obsessions (rom-coms, hot Formula 1 drivers, and providing free medical intervention to underserved communities).
She also took the time to critique my management style, which she described as “hands-on to the extreme.”
She spoke quickly and excitedly, like she was afraid if she came up for air, she’d lose her chance to become my friend. I listened as best I could, all while trying not to think about Hudson and how badly I wanted to gush to someone about him.
Listen to me. Gush. I never gushed.
After lunch, instead of returning to the office, she dragged me to Pacific Plaza and ordered us drinks from a takeout stand near the entrance. Coffee for her, hot chocolate with whipped cream for me. It was then that she turned the conversation my way.
“Scout? I asked what you got up to.”
“Me? Oh, nothing. Had some food. Stayed up too late.”
“Doing what?”
I stifled a truthful reply with a long sip of my cocoa. “I was experimenting with some new equipment.”
God, this was killing me. How was I not supposed to scream from the rooftops that Hudson had an amazing mouth and hands and that I would let him take me right now on a park bench if he was here?
Right. Because after our morning liaison, we codified several rules of procedure.
Simple stuff, mostly. We would have a mutually beneficial sexual relationship, no strings attached.
Friends who fucked by night and coworkers by day.
We would never let our escapades interfere with our jobs or the launch of The Fantasy, and if it ever felt that we were, we would immediately end the association.
I would continue to teach him about sex toys, including during our sex sessions.
Our safe word was cosmos. We would always practice enthusiastic consent.
And once Hudson’s contract was up in six weeks, the affair would be over, too.
The rules were designed to protect us both.
Especially that last one. If we both knew that he was going to leave, then there would be no chance of us developing complicated emotions.
Like an element with a short half-life, we would enjoy what we had while we had it, then not mourn it once it was gone.
But our most important rule? Never, ever, under any circumstances, let anyone know what was going on between us. This was for my sake.
After the Lloyd Exeter thing, and after my blowup at the bar, I wanted nothing more than to put a reinforced titanium door between my work and sex.
In Jurassic Park (the book, not the movie…
the movie didn’t have enough science in it), there were these big barriers designed to keep poor, unsuspecting humans from getting trampled by ravenous monsters.
Only in this analogy, my career was the precious tourist, and my apparently insatiably horny vagina was the extinction-level threat.
Leelah clucked her tongue. “Okay. So, you didn’t hook up with Hudson last night?”
The Jurassic Park metaphor was fucked from the start. Those walls never worked on Isla Nublar. Why did I think they would work for my muff monster?
I tripped. “What? No. Why would you even say that?”
“When he walked in today, he had this super dreamy look on his face. Like he was the luckiest guy in the world—or he would be if you’d just look at him. But no matter how hard he tried, you wouldn’t even acknowledge his existence. The sexual tension was unbearable.”
“It was not!”
It was, but I thought that I was the only one who’d noticed.
“I mean,” I corrected, “there wasn’t any sexual tension. You’re seeing things.”
“You’re really trying to convince me that nothing’s going on between you two?”
Damn, she was good. Perceptive. I needed to throw her off.
“I’m the unfuckable nerd who hasn’t been able to get a guy in twenty-six years, Leelah, remember? You thought I went from that to raging sex maniac with some office rando overnight?”
This was not the first time I’d described myself as an unfuckable nerd out loud or to myself.
But it was the first time the words actually hurt.
They used to be a statement of fact. I spent all my time buried in math and gears, so nerd was accurate.
And no one had ever proven me wrong about the unfuckable thing, so… the logic was sound.
But after last night, I knew the truth. Nerd? Yes. Unfuckable? Decidedly not. And I’d wasted years not having the sex I deserved because of that insidious fallacy.
This is why you don’t accept a scientific principle without doing the research to back it up.
“Scout, I’m one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. You’re not going to gaslight me into disbelieving obvious evidence.”
“And what evidence is that? Just some accidental glances?”
“I’ll have you know that I’m extremely perceptive, Scout.
I walk into a room, I survey the landscape, and I instantly know what’s going on with people.
I may only have been at BuzzCorp for a day, but it’s obvious what’s going on between you two.
He wasn’t just looking at you. It was more than that. It was like…relief.”
The gates of the park suddenly loomed very close, which meant that our office was only a few blocks farther.
“Relief?” I asked, hating how such an idea made my heart palpitate.
“Yeah. He would focus on work for a little bit, then he would scan the room for you, then when he saw you again, his whole face would relax. Like he was worried you would disappear and was relieved every time he saw that you were still around.”
I stepped aside to let a roller skater split between Leelah and me. I was grateful for even the brief distance. She was too close—not just physically, but emotionally, too.
“What guy looks at a woman like that if he’s not gagging to get back into her pants? Well, I guess he could be in love with you, but you guys barely even talk, so I’m assuming the sex reason is more realistic.”
He could be in love with you. Not likely. I wouldn’t let it happen.
“Or,” I retorted, “what’s most realistic is that you’ve been watching too many rom-coms since your breakup and now you want to see the world through Hallmark-tinted glasses.”
Leelah rolled her eyes. “Well, then I guess I just imagined the text he sent you when you got up to get our order at lunch?”
“What text?”
I dug into my pocket for the offending iPhone. Leelah reminded me that earlier, I’d given it to her so she could watch some video of drag queens talking about our products on their podcast, but I tuned her out.
When I put in my passcode, I found the offending text immediately, spelling out my doom in thousands of pixels.
Scout, I can’t stop thinking about you—or last night. Hope you’re more focused on work than I am today. I’m finding it impossible to code when all I want is to feel you cum around me again. Dinner tonight?
There was another text, too. It had followed five minutes later.
Shit. Too much? Sorry, new to this friends-with-benefits thing. Be prepared to endure many cringey texts as I navigate this learning curve.
A million thoughts crossed my mind at once. Shock…and frustration…and a whole lot of relief.
“You didn’t catch him looking at me! You made all that up to cover up the fact that you saw this text!”
“Yes, but I had a good reason to lie! If I told you I read the texts earlier, you’d’ve totally been mad at me, stormed off back to work, and not been my friend anymore. I was trying to preserve this very new gal-pals thing we’ve got going on here!”
The air rushed out of my lungs. “I’m not mad, but you scared the hell out of me! You made me think everyone in the office already knew! I thought I was going to have to call it off with Hudson because we were being too obvious!”
Her face drew up in horror. “Don’t do that! Oh my God, you can’t do that! You two are perfect for each other. I’ve been here one day, and I already know that.”
Not this again. Even after admitting her bullshit, she was still trying to convince me we had more than sex going between us. “Leelah.”
“It’s true! You’re this stone-cold badass steminist loner and he’s this cheerful sex helpmate. He’s going to break down your walls and you’re going to, like, make him fall in love for real for the first time.”
I had a choice before me. Tell her the truth or let her walk around thinking we were in the middle of some great love story.
I chose the former. Did I want to? No, not really.
Every anxiety about mixing up sex and work bubbled to the surface.
But I didn’t have many options, either. I outlined the entire plot of casual sex and absolute (almost) secrecy.
Opening up was not my strong suit, though, so it came out in awkward fits and starts.
When it was over, a strange sense of peace washed over me. I wasn’t alone now. I wasn’t keeping a secret. This wasn’t like back in the day with Lloyd, where the lies piled up around me and I took his request for privacy as sexy gospel.
Now I was having sex with a totally amazing guy. And I just got to…tell my friend about it. Trusting someone, which had seemed unconscionable just a few minutes ago, now didn’t just feel doable. It felt vital.
When I finished, she tossed her hair smugly. “You’ve never seen a rom-com, have you, Scout?”
“I don’t watch a lot of movies. But when I do, if it doesn’t have laser swords or robots in it, I’m usually not interested.”
“Fine, then. Just know that I’ve seen this movie before.” She beamed and threw her arm around my shoulder. “I won’t spoil the ending for you. But be prepared for a few plot twists.”