Chapter 40 New York, I Love You, but You’re Bringing Me Down
New York, I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down
“I love pussy.”
Yeah, not those three little words.
“I love it, but you’d just never see me sitting up there with a camera shoved in my face, proclaiming to the world how much I love it and why.”
The next day, we found ourselves at the taping of a focus group.
Led by our marketing team, they interviewed some of BuzzCorp’s most loyal customers so that their footage could be used in our big marketing hype video before The Fantasy debut talk I would give later this week.
Apparently, our male testers felt the same way, because they were steadfastly, to the man, refusing to appear on camera.
Hudson couldn’t tear his eyes away from the two-way mirror dividing us from the user panel. He was fascinated by their candor and ease. Totally lost in the moment.
I, on the other hand, couldn’t stop thinking about the night before.
We’d gone for a sunset walk, a slice of pizza, and people-watching on the High Line. Without a doubt, the best date ever. Maybe the best thing ever. And I know that this is neither a keen, nor original, nor astute observation, but there was a magic about New York City in the fall.
Especially when one was in love.
And I was. I absolutely was.
But was Hudson?
I’d tossed off all my personal and professional obligations the night before in the hopes that Hudson would finally make a move.
That he would finally crack under the pressure of his upcoming departure from BuzzCorp and sweep me up into his arms, shouting that he knew I’d wanted to keep things professional, that we always had a deadline to this relationship, that he understood my fears about intimacy, but he didn’t care.
His heart was on the line, and it was mine for the taking. All I had to do was say yes.
Only…none of that happened. The next morning, I was thoroughly sated after a long night of hotel sex, full of breakfast bagels delivered by my oh-so-handsome bed companion, and ready to face a day of BuzzCorp work…but I was no closer to Hudson telling me he loved me.
My pre-departure anxiety came rushing back to me.
I’d been to New York a few times for conferences like this one, and back in high school and college, I’d attended (and won, thank you very much) more academic contests and quiz bowls than I could count.
Back then, I hadn’t thought much of the city.
Even for someone as studiously disciplined as I was, the constant, inescapable cacophony of bumper-kissing cars and yapping sidewalk strutters and rattling construction drove me to the brink of distraction.
An unsettling feeling for someone who’d been able to bury her head in a book and escape the world anywhere else.
In short, in times past, I’d always come to New York with a timer on my heart, counting down until the very blissful second when I got to finally leave.
Now I wanted time to slow. To defy all laws of physics and slow—just to give us a little more time. Surely if we had just a little more time, he’d open up.
Right?
“Scout, what do you think?”
“Hm?”
Yanked from my internal stewing, I returned to the moment at hand.
Hudson gestured to the glass in front of us, through which we could see the diverse group of twenty or so testers being candidly interviewed by Addie and several other members of the marketing team.
The conversation was lively—laughter and jokes abounded.
It wasn’t surprising to see the envy in Hudson’s eyes, and I felt for him.
I really did. He was terrified of that sort of openness.
Terrified of the rejection that might come with it.
“It’s just that they’re very brave. I know the men don’t want to talk on camera and that’s a problem for the marketing team, but still. They’re very brave to even talk about it in this setting,” he said by way of explanation. “What do you think?”
“I don’t think we should be scared of what we want. Ever,” I said, hoping the pointed tone might somehow get through to him. “I mean…what would you say if you weren’t afraid of how people would react?”
We both tore our gazes away from the focus group and met somewhere in the middle. His eyes brimmed with promise. Was this the moment? Was he finally going to—
Crash.
The suite door slammed open. Clara stood there, framed by the blue metal, her hair out of place for the first time…I want to say ever?
“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked, flailing wildly.
I frowned. “Observing the focus group.”
A knot tightened in my stomach. Clara was never out of sorts. Never allowed herself to be flapped. If she was like this, then we must be in a DEFCON 1.
“Haven’t you checked your phone?”
“No, it died last night and—”
Unwilling to finish that sentence with I was in Hudson’s room and since he has a stupid Android, I didn’t have anything to charge it with, I trailed off.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Jared is claiming to own a patent on the slip-stick wire coupling we use in The Fantasy’s major control systems. He somehow got into our storage yesterday and looked at the final prototypes.
No idea how the hell he did that, but he’s ready to sic Lloyd’s legal dogs on us. ”
I knew how he did it.
When Hudson and I returned the test unit we’d “borrowed” yesterday, we must not have locked the door behind us. I’d been so wrapped up in my flirtations and my feelings and my stupid dream of a New York City rom-com moment that I’d forgotten the most basic thing about a top-secret product rollout.
Double-check all the locks.
“It’s not his design, though,” Hudson said. “Right?”
“No, of course not. That’s not the point.
They’re just saying this to spike our launch.
Which means that if we’re going to make all of this go away by then, we’re going to need to find a new coupling to use.
Which means we need to update the prototypes, adjust the costings, revise the specs we give to investors.
It’s fractions of a dollar per unit, but we must be up front with them. ”
My world narrowed around me. I barely had the breath to reply:
“Okay.”
Two hands wrapped around my shoulders. Clara steadied me. “Four days. It’s going to be rough, but you can handle this. I know you can. I believe in you.”
You shouldn’t, I thought. No one should.
“Tell Addie and Terrence and Leelah to meet me in our HQ. I’ll be there in ten.”
With a nod, Clara evacuated the room, leaving me to spiral.
My existence abided by Newton’s “universal” law of gravity. (Shut up, science nerds—I know about Einstein’s theories of relativity, but I’m trying to make a simple point for the normies.)
What goes up, must come down. That is the basic, observable principle. A pendulum abides by that principle, yes. But there’s an arc to it. A rising action and a similarly arcing decline. A slow burn of movement. A downward curve that gives one time to prepare for the lowest point.
I was a brick dropped from a twenty-story window. A crushing drop straight to the unforgiving pavement below.
I’d fucked up.
Again.
And in the exact same way as the last time.
I’d trusted myself.
Rookie mistake. Everyone knew that Fluorine Scout couldn’t be trusted. Not with men. Not with business. Not with keys, apparently. And certainly not with her own heart or future.
Moving without seeing, I shoved my things into my backpack, saying nothing until Hudson appeared at my side, extending my drafting tablet in uncertain hands.
“What can I do to help?”
“You’ve done enough, thanks,” I said tersely.
He recoiled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
The guilt that flooded me was almost as sharp as the bitterness. “No. I’m sorry. You’re right. This wasn’t your fault. It was mine. Totally mine. I should have known better.”
“Scout. What is going on?”
“What’s going on is that I did it again. I did what I wanted, I chased after some guy, and I put everything at risk. And for what? For some sex? For a little bit of fun? For the hope that you might…”
“Might what?”
“Nothing. I gotta go.”
I shoved my bag over my shoulder and started for the door. He followed.
“I’ll help you.”
“No, you fucking won’t. Because this is what I’m good at.
My work. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at.
And this is what happens when I let something get in the way of that.
I’m not cut out for romance or friendship or anything else, and it’s time I remembered that.
I’m sorry, Hudson. But I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be with you anymore.”
They were the hardest words I’d ever forced myself to say. They were inevitable, though, weren’t they? I’d been living in a fantasy world, buying Hudson’s bullshit about me being able to handle myself, about me not being a total failure in everything that isn’t STEM. It was time to wake up.
Hudson scoffed.
“I can’t believe this.”
“Can’t believe what?”
Circling me with long strides, he put himself between me and the door, blocking my path.
His face contorted with emotion in ways I’d never seen before.
Gone was happy-mask Hudson. Gone was vulnerable Hudson.
This was someone else. Fluorine Hudson, perhaps.
More reminiscent of his takedown of my parents than anything else we’d been through so far.
“That you’re just going to give up. That you’re running away at the first sign of minor trouble.
You always do this, Scout. You didn’t fight after the GalacticSolutions disaster.
You don’t stand up to your parents, to Lloyd, to Jared, even.
You didn’t lose your virginity, for God’s sake, until you were twenty-six.
Entropy, entropy, entropy. It’s all bullshit.
What you really mean is that you’re scared and you’re letting it hold you back.
You’re running away from everything real. Including us.”
“There is no us,” I snapped, thinking of every missed opportunity he’d had to tell me there was one. “You’ve made that perfectly clear.”
“No. You’ve made it perfectly clear. You keep reminding me that I’m leaving at the end of my contract.
You refused to let our relationship get deep.
You couldn’t even decide if you liked me enough to keep seeing me until you hooked yourself up to a goddamn EEG machine.
And now you’re running. All because you hate yourself too much to let yourself live a little. ”
Until those words, my temperature and my volume had been rising with my rage. But he’d thrown a bucket of liquid nitrogen over me.
You hate yourself.
“No, I…No, I don’t.”
He wouldn’t be deterred. “Yes, you do. You hate yourself so much that you sabotage every chance you have to be happy. Relationships, work, your friends. The man who nearly destroyed you showed up and you didn’t even have the strength to hold your head up when he talked to you, much less give him a piece of your mind.
And when I try to care about you, when I try to get you to see that you’re not the worthless nobody you seem to think that you are, you run.
I have made it clear that I want there to be an us, but you don’t know how to let someone love you because you can’t fathom it being real.
You despise yourself, deep down, all the way to the core, and assume that everyone else should, too. ”
And I’d not realized it until now.
I did hate myself.
Maybe because of the way I’d been treated as a child, maybe because of those years of loneliness growing up, maybe because of Lloyd and what happened at GalacticSolutions.
I didn’t know. But…yeah, I hated myself.
Deeply. Abidingly. Maybe it was the only thing I’d been able to count on.
I wore that self-hatred like a winter coat, clutching it tighter whenever the wind got too sharp, and sweating in it through the summers.
I hated myself. Constantly. Immovably. And yet I hadn’t ever been able to face that reality before.
Now I had nowhere else to look. And the truth stared back at me with big, wide, understanding, loving eyes.
And I hated him for it.
“Don’t stand there and claim you want to protect me when you’re not even man enough to admit you love me.”
“What?”
“I went out with you last night, totally abandoning my work responsibilities, because I thought you’d finally say it.
That you didn’t care about your contract ending or our agreement.
That you want to be with me for more than just sex.
I was so sure you would…but you didn’t. And now everything’s fucked up because of me and my stupid lack of judgment.
Chasing after some guy who doesn’t even love me. ”
I spit out every last word like it was poison. The hurt of the last week and a half, of waiting for a confession that might never come, bubbled to the surface.
Hudson reeled, falling back a few steps.
“Is that what you think?” he asked.
“Yes.”
This time, it was his turn to spit the words. “You don’t know anything.”
That was, I’m sure you’ve noticed, not a denial. It wasn’t a love declaration. And it wasn’t what I wanted to hear from him.
“I know how to replace complex couplings,” I said. “So, if you don’t mind, I’m going to do that.”
A sigh. Long and labored. He pinched his nose, rubbing a few soothing circles over it. “If that’s what you want.”
No. It wasn’t what I wanted.
I wanted him to hold me and force me to understand that this wasn’t worth throwing us away over. That it was a small mistake. Fixable. That I wasn’t a failure. That I was lovable. That there was more value to me than my work.
I wanted him to fight for me.
I wanted him to love me.
Since I never got what I wanted, though, I retreated from the room, trying not to think about how the color went out from my world almost as soon as he did.