Chapter 32 Safe Word
Safe Word
It wasn’t the weed that made me sleep so well that night. It was Hudson. This wasn’t the first time we’d fallen asleep tangled up together, but it was different now.
No. I was different.
As soon as I woke up the next morning, my body instinctively rolled over in his direction.
He was still asleep—I must have really worn him out; he always got up before me—and his hair hung in rough chops across his smooth forehead.
The light from my windows poured in, casting him in ultraviolet Technicolor until he glowed.
I matched my breathing to his. I memorized his face. I listened to the reverb of the other night’s words in my ears. They thrummed in time with my relaxed heart rate. You deserved better. You deserved better. You deserved better. They kept coming back, but today, my heart answered.
I deserve you. I deserve you. I deserve you.
Hudson shifted in his sleep. Our knuckles brushed. The refrain rewrote itself.
I love you.
The thought staggered me. Every instinct told me to run. To flee this bedroom, change my identity, and run away to start anew somewhere. Texarkana sounded good. I’d probably make a passable diner waitress and look good as a boxed-dye redhead, right?
But no. The coziness of bed was too appealing. The thought of staying in it with Hudson too magnetic.
I was in love with him. With his kindness.
His sincerity. His quick laugh and easy nature.
His whip-fast wit and earnest treatment of everyone he encountered.
His perfect cock. The crease between his brows when he looked at his computer for too long.
The brush of his fingertips when they traced down my back.
His thoughtfulness. The way he opened up to me.
Defended me. Honored me. Cared about and for me.
I loved the Hudson-ness of Hudson. In all the universe, I could not imagine another man like him.
And I could not imagine myself being with another man—like him or not.
Terrifying thought.
But then again, there was the possibility that I was imagining things. After all, what scientific proof was there for the concept of love? I could be mistaking a mixture of lust and loneliness for the emotions that everyone else described as love. What a humiliation that would be.
Problem: I’m in love. Or, at least I think I am.
Proposed Solution: Find out if love is even real…and then find a way to measure whether you’re really in love with Hudson, or if this is just your overactive mind at work.
As slowly as I could, so as not to disturb him, I took my phone off my bedside table and opened up my DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) app.
I turned the brightness down—I would have been more embarrassed by Hudson seeing this than my porn search history—and let my fingers fly across the digital keyboard.
Scientific proof of love.
Steeling myself, I pressed search. The page turned over, populating dozens of peer-reviewed research papers on the subject. Apparently, like hunting for proof of God and ghosts, the questions surrounding soul mates and true love were ripe for study.
And just like those other topics, the results were inconclusive.
In my own research, I relished the idea of questions without answers.
It meant that maybe I could one day be the person to uncover a new secret of our complex universe.
It meant that in a world with millions of ready-made answers, there were still mysteries, still new things to learn.
It made our planet a bigger and more exciting place to live.
However, as Hudson slept and I read paper after paper, I suddenly hated the very idea of question marks.
Science should be able to tell me exactly what I wanted to know at that exact moment.
What was the point of all these papers and research if they couldn’t even tell me that love was real—or how to detect it if it was?
Finally, I settled on a review study that aggregated and analyzed the data of all English-language studies done over the last fifty years. Essentially, the research boiled down to three points.
One: There is no conclusive data proving the existence of love.
Two: However, if there is such a thing, its most promising evidence comes from EEG readings of the brain and hormonal studies.
Three: The only difference, it appears, between love and lust in the brain is the release of oxytocin.
Thanks, science. Really great stuff. Super helpful.
New Problem: I need to find out if I’m really in love with Hudson before I make any big decisions. Before I take any risks.
Proposed Solution: Replicate the studies I’ve read on love to see how my brain reacts to Hudson. It won’t be definitive proof that we’re in love, but it will be as close as I can get, probably.
Luckily, I happened to know someone with an EEG.
—
“You’re deranged,” Leelah said later that day when I told her my plan.
Addie didn’t agree. “You’re brilliant.”
“I’m desperate” was my only reply.
At her former job, Leelah’s expertise had been in developing portable versions of the world’s most important medical technologies.
She wanted to make rescue efforts in the wake of major disasters easier and was determined to help refugees in war zones.
One of her most promising projects? A device that looked like a wire-toothed headband, with each tooth dotted with a small sensor.
A portable proto-EEG device that, while having nowhere near the complex capabilities of a full machine, could, theoretically, give practitioners a baseline understanding of the patient’s mental makeup and neurological responses.
In short, if Leelah just let me borrow it for, like, an hour, I’d be able to put this whole Am I in love with Hudson or am I just horny and lonely question to bed.
But Leelah, contrary to her usually rom-com-pilled self, was hesitant. As we put together our bagel breakfasts in the office kitchen, she aggressively slathered hers with undue force.
“Couldn’t you just, I don’t know, look inside your heart and figure it out?”
I perked up. “Is there a way to look inside the heart for that sort of thing? I didn’t see any research like that.”
“Impossible,” she scoffed. “I thought I was working with some of the smartest people in the world, and yet you’re all talking nonsense.”
Always living for the vibes, Addie prodded: “It’s for science, Leelah. C’mon. Aren’t you even the least bit curious?”
“Right!” I concurred. “Dating is just data, after all.”
The fastest way to a girl in this office? Tease her with science.
And that’s how it was that, about an hour after BuzzCorp closed, we were locked away in Kevin, threading what I can only describe as the world’s most technologically advanced headband through my unkempt locks.
The style was very nightclub chic in the Blade Runner universe—discreet enough that I didn’t look like I was wearing a medical device, but certainly an eye-catching statement piece.
“What’d you tell Hudson about all this?” Leelah asked, adjusting the nodes so they lay flat against my skull.
“I wanted to maintain the integrity of the experiment,” I said. “So I just sort of avoided him all day.”
“Bullshit,” Addie chimed in. “You’re just afraid to face him now that you have all these feelings.”
Okay, one thing I can say for old, friendless Scout. At least back then, she didn’t get read to filth so often.
Leelah made a few last-minute adjustments. “There you go. Now, before I turn this on, we need to have an informed-consent conversation.”
“I’ve already read the research. I know what this thing can do.”
“I’m not talking medical safety here. I just…if we collect data about what your brain does every time it sees Hudson, then you can’t hide from it. It will be irrefutable proof of your care for him. Are you prepared for the consequences of that?”
The atmosphere in the small closet shifted. Oh, so that’s why Leelah was so hesitant before. She didn’t think I was ready for the truth.
“I don’t believe that there is a measurement yet devised by scientists to capture true love,” she said, ever the romantic.
“Its very essence is unknowing. Leaping into what we don’t understand, damn the consequences.
But if you’re convinced that this will help you make that decision, I’m all for it.
So long as you know what you’re getting into. ”
This apparently caught Addie’s interest. “Yeah. Say you realize you love him. Or your brain does, anyway. What do you do then?”
That one question lit the fuse on a billion of my neurons, each carrying their own renegade thought or anxiety.
I never got the chance to address any of them, much less Addie’s question, because the door to Kevin swung open, revealing Clara, standing in her Goop-beautiful glory, sipping a green smoothie.
“Ah! What are you three chickens doing in here?”
We all froze like we’d been caught looking for our Christmas gifts early.
“We were just—” Leelah squeaked.
“We’ve reappropriated some of Leelah’s old tech,” I said, gesturing to the headband. “Testing what stimuli trigger what parts of brain activity in non-sexually-intimate scenarios, so we can capture those same triggers in our toys.”
“Right,” Addie said, catching on fast. “Like, what parts of our innermost psyches are tickled by a man in a rolled-up button-down shirt? Or at a nightclub, when you’re dancing up on some cutie?
If we understand the brain’s reaction in those scenarios, we can perhaps import the data and attempt to excite those same responses by use of our toys. ”
Clara’s face positively lit up. That was the beauty of being the money and the brains rather than the scientific arm of a hardware start-up.
You could be easily distracted by shiny things, no matter how ridiculous the explanation sounded.
So what if you didn’t get it? You probably just didn’t have the technical know-how to understand.
Just keep smiling and nodding and let the geniuses get to work.
“That’s fantastic. What a fresh approach. We should put these on some of our in-house testers.”
Leelah tensed. Due to the legal headaches currently swirling around her dissolved former company after her boyfriend embezzled all their funds, this tech from her previous company technically wasn’t even supposed to see the light of day. “It’s not ready for such a mass trial yet.”
Clara quirked her head. “Is this your first time using it, Scout?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then you’re the perfect test subject. Who better than a virgin mind to research the effects of sexual stimulation on the brain? And if you’re willing, I’m happy to bankroll you all on a little fact-finding mission.”