Chapter 41 Cutesy Titles Are So Pre-Breakup of Me
Cutesy Titles Are so Pre-Breakup of Me
Believe it or not, I didn’t sleep very well that night.
Shock of the century, I know.
I tinkered on The Fantasy prototypes at the Javits Center until around two a.m., when a janitor alerted me he’d be calling security if I didn’t vacate the premises.
Then I returned to my hotel room, which I hadn’t yet stayed in, as I’d been sleeping in Hudson’s.
I stared at the ceiling for hours, running over my to-do list for the next day and trying not to think about the way he looked when I walked away this afternoon.
The inability to sleep ran so deep that I didn’t even reach for my travel vibrators, which usually knocked me out five minutes after use.
I briefly considered using my Hudson dildo, but what was the point?
It wouldn’t be like my night in the Cleveland hotel, gleefully getting off to the thought of him until I collapsed in ecstatic exhaustion.
I would have been left unsatisfied. I wouldn’t have been able to cum, and I wouldn’t have been able to sleep, and I would have been frustrated by both realities, and the combination of both things would have been enough to make my chest-racking sobs even worse than they already were.
When my alarm went off at six in the morning, I was already staring at my phone, counting down the seconds until I could crawl out of bed without hating myself even more.
I tried to remind myself that I’d done the right thing. Without Hudson in my life, I was safe. I had been foolish to try and change things these last few weeks, and I should not be crying over a man who wouldn’t tell me he loved me.
It was all for the best, reverting to my old self.
And if I kept repeating that, maybe one day I would convince myself that it was true.
As soon as I knew the doors would be open, I went back to the Javits Center, where I refused to speak to anyone, kept my distance from Hudson, and tried to get my parents to cancel our family dinner tonight.
To no avail.
Whatever. It’s not like I could feel any worse.
We met at a dimly lit French bistro somewhere in the Village. They were already two cocktails deep by the time I arrived. Not that I was late or anything. They probably just wanted drinks on my tab and arrived early to maximize their get.
I tried to play it cool, all while my heart felt like breaking. “Hey, Mom. Dad.”
“Scout. How are you?”
“Great, thanks,” I lied like I’d never lied before. “Glad you could make the trip down to the city.”
I took my seat. The wall of conversation built up around me until I was insulated by it from everything else.
“It was a nightmare,” Mom said. “Tell her about the train—”
“The train! We really should have just brought the car down.”
Her face tightened. “But then we’d’ve had to park. We talked about this.”
“I know we did. But the delay at Williams Bridge…”
Their bickering turned to white noise. Not difficult to do, as I’d endured a billion of these arguments before. The white noise, though, turned my thoughts to Hudson. What was he doing tonight, I wondered. Did he miss me?
And what about that love question? Did he not have guts enough to say it? Or did he just…not love me? Had I misread the signs and now he was embarrassed for me? What did he mean when he said You don’t know anything?
The questions hollowed me out. The waiter eventually put me out of my one-track mental spiral. I blankly asked for the first thing I saw on the menu. My parents ordered four appetizers, an extra basket of bread, and the two market price specials.
“So,” my dad said over his cocktail once the waiter vanished. “I’m glad to see that you’ve dumped the dead weight.”
Great. Love talk. Perfect timing. “He wasn’t dead weight. But no. We’re no longer together.”
My mom clucked her tongue. Her sympathetic tone grated against my ears. “Ah. Then we were right. It was a mistake from the start, you two. Oh, I do so hate it when we’re right.”
“It’s better that way. Now you won’t have any distractions. You can finally put yourself fully into finding a new job. Out of the sex toy industry. Into a career worth your time. One I can tell the guys at golf about—finally.”
“We’ve been over this, dear,” Mom countered. “She can’t get another job.”
“Ah, yes. That’s right. My apologies.”
The bread basket refresher arrived. They both dug in as though they hadn’t just brushed me off without a moment’s consideration.
Hudson’s voice played in my head, louder than their chewing, louder than the din of the restaurant, louder than the music slipping through the tastefully hidden speakers.
I want you to work on whatever will make you happy. You’d be an asset anywhere you went.
He’d told me that the night he’d tried to get me to call his old work buddy, the one who ran one of GalacticSolutions’s competitors. The card with his info was still in my purse, tucked between my insurance card and a frequent-buyer card from my favorite bagel place.
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.
Oh God.
A black hole of realization swallowed me.
All my parents ever did was belittle my work. They wanted me to leave because they were embarrassed of me. They wanted me to keep my world small so I didn’t make any more costly mistakes. They wanted to constantly be in my business, so I never stepped out of line.
That was the treatment I’d gotten used to accepting from people who were supposed to love me.
That wasn’t love, though, was it?
No. It couldn’t be. Because Hudson was never once embarrassed of me.
He took me seriously. He championed me. He listened to me.
He trusted me. He encouraged my impulses.
He suggested I leave BuzzCorp not because he resented my work there, but because he believed in my potential and my dreams of getting to space.
He showed me, time and time again, that I wasn’t a failure.
And even if I did botch things, I could always fix them.
Maybe he couldn’t say he loved me. Maybe he didn’t love me. Maybe we wouldn’t be together after all.
But he’d shown me what being loved felt like.
I’d changed so much since my last dinner with them.
When I thought about the progress I’d made since I shrank from their every word, when I needed Hudson to stand up for me, I knew I could never go back.
Hiding in my shell, protecting myself from the world and everyone who could love me, was no longer an option.
I could not be a lab creature, contained and chained to my work.
I could not be the Scout I was six weeks ago.
I was a new creation, changed by my brief experiment with love.
“I could get a job,” I said, gently pushing back on my parents’ discourse. It came out more like a question than a statement, but still. It was a start. “If I wanted to.”
“You were blacklisted, honey. Your father’s right. No use in setting yourself a goal you can’t meet.”
“Exactly. As much as I hate to admit it, I think you’re better off where you are.”
That was two years ago. Surely someone needed an engineer with experience, fresh ideas, and a (mostly) winning track record.
Hudson was right. My talent spoke for itself.
My parents talked around that problem, as though the blacklisting was an afterthought. Like I wasn’t even enough to get hired no matter what.
“But I’m…” I twisted my napkin in my hand, losing myself in the strange designs, distracting myself from the terrifying implications of standing up for myself for the very first time.
“I’m really smart. And I’m good at my job.
I’ve created bestselling products. I’ve made my customers happy.
I’m a competent manager. BuzzCorp is lucky to have me.
I think, you know, maybe, any business would be lucky to have me. ”
I’d been sabotaging myself, hiding myself, all because I was terrified of trying. Terrified of anything good happening.
My voice was very small. “I just haven’t tried.”
“Scout, really. Don’t be dramatic. You know you can’t leave BuzzCorp. It’s silly to even discuss it. I’m sorry we ever brought it up.”
The double act continued, trampling over any intermission I tried to insert.
“Besides, all you ever do is castigate us for not appreciating the, I’m sure, world-changing work you’re doing at your little sex toy operation.
Why now, all of a sudden, are we public enemy number one for not thinking you can do better? ”
I didn’t blame her for that last little snipe.
No wonder she was taken aback. I’d always let them bully me, shove me in little boxes and throw away the key.
Bowing and scraping and apologizing for things that weren’t my fault, doing their bidding no matter what they asked, picking up the checks and dropping my ego at the door.
Of course they would be surprised when I showed the tiniest hint of a spine.
“You really don’t think I could do anything else?” I asked.
I made that small distinction. Anything else, not better.
Buzz Corp was wonderful. I just wondered…
was it not for me anymore? And more than that, if I succeeded in selling The Fantasy to the masses, in making the next leap in sex toy innovation, hadn’t I achieved my objectives there? What more could I accomplish?
I still had my dreams of space. So much there I still wanted to do. Maybe it was time to try and go back to it.
My mother grew tired of this back-and-forth.
“My dear. We gave you everything a girl could ask for. We got you into the best programs, the best schools, took you across the world to further your progress. There’s no doubt that you’re smart.
But businesses—the businesses you left behind—need strong, straightforward, clear-minded people at their helm.
Not silly little girls who let their vaginas think for them.
Come to think of it, you are in the right profession. It’s the only one that suits you.”
“That’s not fair.”
She rolled her eyes. “You are moping at this table like a half-drowned kitten because that man had the good sense to dump you. It’s more than fair: It’s accurate.”
“You really don’t believe in me,” I muttered.
“We’re realistic about what, and who, you are,” my father conceded bloodlessly. “That’s the only way to really love a child.”
If someone had asked me two months ago if I had a bad childhood, I would have emphatically said no. My parents kept a roof over my head, they pushed me to greatness, they were always there, they stayed together, our situation was stable…all things I’d associated with a “good childhood.”
But now I realized there was more than one way to have a bad childhood.
Like, for example, they could withhold all affection from you except when you aced a test or skipped a grade or got an advanced degree…
leading you to feel like you’re only worthwhile to other people if you’re perfect.
And, since you know you can never be perfect, you isolate yourself until you’re completely alone in the world.
Yeah. There was more than one way for your parents to screw you up forever.
And oh boy, had my parents screwed me up.
I analyzed the situation.
Problem: Being around my parents makes me miserable, reinforces all my worst fears about myself, and leaves me feeling unloved and unlovable.
Proposed Solution: Detach from the parental units.
Engage Primary Experiment.
“I need the two of you to listen to me,” I said. “And I need you to not interrupt. Can you do that?”
“We’re not stupid, Scout.” This time, it was Dad’s turn to roll his eyes. “Don’t talk to us as if we—”
Deep breath. Here goes everything.
“Yes, you gave me an education. Yes, you worked hard so I could fulfill my academic potential. But you also robbed me of a life. When was I supposed to make friends between lectures and studying? I don’t know how to cook.
I can barely make friends. Navigating relationships?
Forget it. And after the Lloyd Exeter thing, you made me feel like I was a broken machine that I could never fix.
But you raised me that way. You made me ignorant about the world.
You made me not understand. You put me in a position to be taken advantage of… only because I didn’t know any better.”
They both spluttered, trying to break their no interrupting agreement. I raised my voice and powered on until they stopped.
“I hate myself. You made me hate myself. And I can’t begin to describe how exhausting it’s been, sabotaging and holding myself back at every turn because I don’t think I deserve anything better.
Here’s the thing, though. I can change that.
I have that power. Starting right now. Because I don’t hate myself enough to sit here and listen to this anymore. ”
I reached for my jacket. Mom and Dad entered panic mode. Their threats bounced off and burned away like pebbles against a rocket booster.
“Scout. Scout, don’t you dare get up from this table. After all we’ve done for you—”
“You’re not thinking this through. If you leave now, we may not come back.”
I left without any hesitation. Once I was in my taxi uptown, the adrenaline subsided, giving me just enough brain space to evaluate that little experiment.
Experiment complete.
Result: Immediate relief.
Supplemental Notes: I wish I could tell Hudson about this.