Chapter 22 Sex on the First Date
Sex on the First Date
“So how did you come up with the idea for this little outing?” I asked, staring up at the faux UFO looming overhead.
“Easy. I thought to myself, hey, what’s the least sexy first date? And thus, mini golf.”
Minnie’s Golf was a kitschy roadside attraction–inspired mini golf course tucked away in a Dallas suburb. With holes themed to everything from dinosaurs to kaiju battles to alien invasions to giant robot attacks, it was basically built for someone like me.
Only one small problem.
“I’ve never golfed before. Miniature or otherwise.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, believe it or not, my parents didn’t exactly consider knocking a ball into the Creature from the Black Lagoon’s mouth vital to my education.”
“You don’t talk about them much. What were they like?”
There was a reason I didn’t talk about my parents. Actually, there were countless reasons. So I offered the bare minimum. Lied by omission. “They’re great. I wouldn’t be where I am today without them.”
“That doesn’t sound like the whole story. What’s going on behind those very nice, very sanitized words, I wonder?”
“They put me through school and spent every spare second they had helping me go over flash cards or rushing me to extra classes or buying me more books,” I said, my defensive hackles rising. No one had ever called me out on my bullshit about my family before. “I’m only this person because of them.”
“And that person is brilliant. But she’s never mini-golfed before.”
Despite his breezy tone, the meaning was clear.
They’d given me an education. But they hadn’t necessarily given me a life.
I’d always known that. But hearing it reflected to me in Hudson’s understated way nearly knocked me on my ass.
Remembering Leelah’s experiment suggestion, I filed away this emotional information for later examination. It was more data. That’s all.
“Come on, then,” I said, smiling. “Show me how it’s done.”
He led me over to the check-in booth, which, in keeping with the retro theme, was styled like an old drive-in movie ticket stand.
The lady behind the counter, with her long silver braids and collection of mood rings on every finger and her name tag with Minnie written on it, looked exactly like you’d expect an eccentric mini-golf-owning lady to look… but she wasn’t smiling.
As he booked our game, though, I watched his small talk slowly open Minnie up. By the time she disappeared behind a door to retrieve our clubs and balls, she wasn’t just smiling. She was beaming.
Hudson, I realized, was a friendship whisperer. I’d never seen him meet a stranger, never seen him treat anyone with anything less than extreme kindness. It was uncanny, his way of making people feel at home with him.
“You’re staring,” Hudson said, as we waited for our clubs.
“You’re hot,” I replied.
“Why thank you. But that’s not why you’re staring.”
No, it wasn’t. I was staring because I’d never met anyone like him, and I didn’t think I ever would meet anyone like him again.
And the knowledge of him leaving at the end of this contract suddenly felt not like a fail-safe, but like a threat.
Picking another line of inquiry, I followed my curiosity about him to safer discourse. How did a person become a Hudson Bailey?
I had no idea. But for the first time, I wanted more than sex from him. I wanted…him. This didn’t feel like before, when I wanted to pick him apart and dissect him to better understand him as a subject of scientific fascination. This felt personal. Intimate.
“I just don’t really know you. Like, anything about you.”
“You know plenty.”
“Not really. You are so good at making me feel like it’s okay to talk about myself, but you never talk about yourself.”
His gaze shifted.
“What would you like to know?”
“Everything.”
He shrugged. “Sounds very personal, Scout. I thought you weren’t into the personal stuff.”
“I told you. I’m experimenting.”
It wasn’t an argument or anything, but his resistance to telling me more was clear.
He brightened, though, when Minnie returned to the booth with our pink and green golf clubs and their corresponding, color-coordinated balls.
“I got good news and bad news for you kids,” she said. “Good news is, these are brand-new clubs. Bad news is, they’ve got a slight bend in ’em, so I’m going to have to send them back. I tossed the old ones, so these are the only ones we got. Sorry ’bout that.”
We both dismissed the apology. After all, it was only a game. I took green. Hudson took pink.
It was instinctive, as if we both knew that the other was going to pick the non-obvious choice.
After collecting the tools of our temporary trade, we wandered to the practice hole so I could get my bearings.
This was a simple one with less theming than its official counterparts.
At one end was a clown head with sharp teeth, very Killer Klowns from Outer Space.
Hudson went first, showing off so I could observe his technique.
“What’s with the sudden change of heart?” he asked, lining up his first shot. “You seemed pretty keen on keeping me at arm’s length.”
“I’m trying to look at myself like a project. Giving myself permission to stretch and learn more about myself.”
“Clever.”
He bent over to place the ball on the green, then positioned himself with his club. I made no secret of the fact that I was checking out his ass the entire time.
But…I also couldn’t let his perfect, carved-by-Michelangelo ass distract me from my goal.
Plu-doonk. The ball landed perfectly in the hole. Was that a birdie? An eagle? What was with the confusing names?
Then it was my turn. I prepared to shoot, but Hudson came up behind me, slipping his hands down my arms. He stood close enough that if this were a real golf school and he a real teacher, he definitely would have gotten complaints from the husbands of his desperate-housewife clientele.
Unbidden, my back arched so my ass brushed more firmly against him. My mind temporarily blanked.
This was what we in the scientific research industry called an unexpected setback. His touch was enough to distract me from almost anything.
Not that you could blame me. Our bodies fit perfectly together. To borrow another scientific framing, for two perfectly matched people to find each other on a planet of almost eight billion people was an anomaly, and such an anomaly required extensive study.
With a flex of our bodies, we tapped my neon-green golf club against my ball, sending it sailing…straight into the water feature of the next closest hole.
Okay, so maybe couples weren’t meant to mini-golf together. We stepped apart, and the sudden post-touch clarity got me.
“You know, you’re hiding just as much as I am,” I insisted. “Maybe even more. Being nice and pleasant is not a substitute for being you. Let me see you. I’ve been trying to do that. With you and Leelah. Maybe you should try it, too.”
“Why? You want to ditch me when my contract is up?”
Every so often, he got this air about him. A melancholy that pierced his otherwise sunshiny persona.
“That doesn’t mean we can’t have fun now.”
“And what if you don’t like me once you know more about me?” he said quietly.
I promised myself I wouldn’t let my heart complicate this fling with Hudson. And I stood by that.
However, I also didn’t fail.
Failing would be to let this man think I didn’t like him. If he walked away from our relationship—such that it was—truly believing someone couldn’t both see him and care for him, I wouldn’t just fail. I would consider myself a failure.
“That’s it. I’m instituting new mini-golf rules,” I said. “Winner of each hole gets a prize.”
“I’m listening. What’s at stake? Sexual favors?”
“Information. I get lowest score, you have to tell me a fact about you. Of my choosing.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And what do I win?”
It was nearing six o’clock, which meant the course was switching from family friendly to adults only. A gaggle of kicking and screaming children passed us on their way out, so I whispered my filthy suggestion. His face lit up.
“All right, you’re on.”