Chapter 26 Eating Out
Eating Out
“So, you saw tech’s massive postpandemic layoffs and decided that the best use of your talent was to sell off your company?”
Don’t look at me like that. I tried to get Hudson to back out of dinner. I told him he’d regret the decision to waste an entire evening with my parents.
He didn’t listen.
Which was as touching as it was phenomenally stupid. And though I tried to take his I want to be there for you speech at face value, it was also concerning, given his propensity toward sidelining his own emotions and needs for other people.
“To be transparent with you, Mrs. Porter, the sale of my company put me in a position where work isn’t necessary for me. It’s why I am a contractor. It gives me more control over what I do and what I make.”
Mazziano’s was an old-school Italian restaurant deep in a downtown Dallas basement.
The decor was somewhere between Goodfellas and an old-school Pizza Hut, with red-glass chandeliers, plastic-leather booths, and wineglasses that were always still slightly stained by the last user’s lipstick.
A jukebox in the corner played a rotation of Frank Sinatra’s six worst songs on a constant loop, giving the entire place an annoying It’s a Small World–style soundtrack.
I also only came here with my parents, dolled up for their inspection and their judgment, which meant that it could have been the greatest restaurant in the world, with Italian food that even the pope would love. But to me, it would always be cursed.
Even more cursed now, because it wasn’t just the site of my humiliation, but Hudson’s, too.
“If you don’t need to, then why do you work at all?” my mom probed.
Hudson just dug in deeper to his chicken parm. “I like working. I like staying busy. I like being helpful.”
Mom rolled her eyes. “What a waste. Scout, stop picking at that bread, you know our family carries our bread right in our pooches.”
I was Pavlov’s dog. I immediately put the bread down.
“I’m just surprised, is all,” my father said, after slurping back a glass of the two-hundred-dollar bottle of red wine that he’d ordered and I’d be stuck paying for. “If you could do anything, if money’s no object and you get to do whatever work you want, why sex toys?”
The waiter passing by stumbled when he heard that, but he made a valiant recovery. Hudson didn’t bat an eyelash. Instead, he subtly picked up a piece of bread from the communal bowl and set it down on my plate.
“It’s an interesting vertical. I knew nothing about it when I started. I’m industry agnostic, so when I start a new job, I want to go where I can learn and expand my skills.”
“But it’s such a ridiculous job, isn’t it? We tell people Scout works with computer chips.”
It shouldn’t have surprised me. Of course they didn’t tell people that their precious genius daughter was working in the personal pleasure industry. Still, I pointed out, “I’m not that sort of engineer, Mom.”
“We know that, but they don’t. This way we don’t have to answer humiliating questions about your work.”
Humiliating. I was humiliating. Suddenly even the bread didn’t look appetizing. “Sure. I get it.”
“I don’t,” Hudson said, shocking me right down to my core.
He didn’t ever disagree with people. At least not so openly.
“And I don’t think there’s anything ridiculous about this job.
Do you know how much good Scout’s work does for people?
Have you ever even bothered to ask her? She gives people autonomy over their own bodies.
She helps people foster healthy relationships with their sexualities and with their partners.
She’s made more people happy than the rest of us at this table combined, probably many times over. ”
My father snorted. “Son, you don’t have to flatter our daughter. We’re very realistic about her prospects and her profession. Think about your career. Are you going to put this little dalliance in the personal pleasure industry on your résumé?”
“What, that I got to work with Dr. Scout Porter, one of the most talented engineers in the country?” He nudged me. “Yeah, you bet that’s going on my résumé.”
“Darling, don’t fuss,” Mom tutted in my father’s direction. “He’s clearly just having sex with her for the professional benefits. Let him lay it on thick if he thinks it will help him.”
“Mom.”
Not very much of a protest, but it was all I could muster. Not only because I couldn’t believe she’d demanded it of Hudson, but because I couldn’t believe she thought so little of me.
“It’s better you find out now rather than later, Scout,” she said flippantly, “and I know you’re never going to ask the question because you don’t want to hear the answer.”
“I’m not his boss,” I pointed out meekly, as if saying it quietly would stem her anger at being questioned. “I don’t have hiring and firing or promoting power over him. Having sex with me wouldn’t gain him any advantage.”
“But you and Clara are close. He must know that.”
“Clara doesn’t even know he and I are together,” I said. Not explaining why—that I was afraid of failing in front of her. “We’re keeping everything low-profile.”
“Ah, yes,” my mother droned, eyes crinkling at the corners, “because that worked so well at your last job.”
Breathe…breathe…“This isn’t like that.”
“How can you be so sure? Do you really think a girl like you can handle those decisions, Scout?”
“Why do you think so low of her?” Hudson snapped, in the harshest tone he’d used all night.
This was not friendly, guy-about-town Hudson. Not the perfect boyfriend material. Dad blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You think the only reason I’d sleep with your daughter is to get something out of her. That that’s the only reason anyone would want to sleep with her.”
“That’s not what we said,” Mom hedged.
“No, but it’s what you implied, and I find that incredibly offensive.”
“Are you going to let him talk to your parents that way?”
They all turned on me. I felt the gravity of their attention shift, but I picked at my veal piccata instead of answering. After all, Dad’s response wasn’t a denial. It was an evasion.
They did think I was stupid and na?ve enough to be used that way.
To them, my brain and heart were fundamentally broken.
I was book smart but incapable of managing my own stuff.
It had been that way since I was a kid, confirmed with the terrible Lloyd Exeter debacle, and reaffirmed every time they so much as spoke to me.
And they were right. I really was incapable of managing anything but engineering projects. That was why I’d held back for so long. Even now, I wasn’t able to stand up for myself and my partner.
Failure. It might as well have been tattooed across my forehead.
After a moment of my silence, Hudson sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you—either of you. But to be totally honest, I don’t give a shit what you think or have to say. My loyalties are to Scout, and right now, you’re both treating her very badly. I’m not going to listen to it.”
Mom chuckled. “If you don’t like the way we talk to our daughter, you can leave.”
“That’s the thing, ma’am. I can’t. Because for some crazy reason, Scout listens to you, and I care about her too much to leave her in the company of people who will make her miserable.”
Mom and Dad’s stares burned holes through my curtain of hair and into my cheeks, turning them fire-red, but I didn’t look up.
Eventually, Mom threw her napkin on the table and rose. “Fine, then. We’ll go.”
They collected their things in silence. But before they went, Hudson stopped them.
“I feel sorry for you both, you know.”
My parents stilled. He tipped his wineglass in their direction, toasting their departure.
“You’ve had Scout for twenty-six years. And not once in those twenty-six years did you ever realize how special she was. Not special because of her intellect or the things she did. Just because of who she is. You missed out.”
My heart, which had sunk to the floor more and more with each passing second in my parents’ presence, suddenly lifted. It wasn’t just that Hudson liked me. I think I knew that already. And it wasn’t just that he defended me against them—though that didn’t hurt.
It was that he recognized what I’d always known but never had the strength to say.
I was a person. I wasn’t my grades or my degrees or the job I held. I was a person and my parents never got to know her.
Braving a glance up, I saw Mom’s lip curl. She pulled her jacket tight around her shoulders. Her gaze slid disgustedly from Hudson’s face to mine. “We’ll talk about this later, Scout.”
And then, they were gone. Leaving us with Frank Sinatra, half a bottle of wine, and the check.
Hudson and I finished our dinners in relative quiet. The air simmered with tension—not from me, but from him. He practically radiated with rage from his interaction with my parents, and I didn’t know how to pierce it.
Once outside, we walked to his car, which was parked at the far edge of the near-vacant parking lot.
We’d parked under the privacy of a tall, shady tree.
It had seemed almost romantic around sunset.
Now its fractal-patterned arms cast veiny shadows over Hudson’s handsome face.
Instead of ducking inside the car, though, he lingered for a moment, debating with himself. Finally, he asked me:
“Do you want to talk about what just happened in there?”
“I’m sorry about them—”
To my surprise, he flinched. “Sorry? Why the hell should you be sorry? They were horrible to you.”
Ever since meeting Hudson, I’d learned that sometimes tenderness was even more painful than cruelty. No one had ever acknowledged the way my parents treated me, much less got outraged over it on my behalf.
I couldn’t look too closely at that. I diverted to safer territory.
“I shouldn’t have let them talk to you that way.”
“We’re not talking about me, Scout. We’re talking about you. How can you let them treat you like that?”
“They’re my parents, Hudson,” I said, as if it explained anything.
It didn’t. I knew it. He knew it. And what was worse, we both realized what I wasn’t saying.
That I’d agreed with them. I didn’t trust myself. And shouldn’t. Couldn’t.
He fiddled with his glasses. “Look, I’m sorry if I made things uncomfortable for you back there. Really, I am. I hate…You know that I hate upsetting people.”
“It’s okay. I’m just sorry you broke your perfect people like me streak.”
“Scout. I need you to understand.” His gaze was ferocious. His lips curled into a snarl. He took a step forward, pinning me between his body and the car. It was the sexiest he’d ever been. “I will not apologize to them. And I do not give a shit if they like me or not.”
This was a ground shift between us.
This man was constitutionally incapable of not being liked. He did everything in his power to earn people’s love and affection. Even at his own peril.
And he’d thrown all of that away just because my parents were hurting me.
I didn’t know what to do with that revelation.
So I brushed a lock of hair away from his forehead. “I don’t want to talk about them. I want to talk about how hard you’re going to fuck me in this car right now.”