When I hesitated, he added, “Unless you’re done with me, that is?”
Always the gentleman. Always asking for consent in a still-sexy language we both understood.
He requisitioned my skirt and abandoned it in the trash can. Whatever I decided, I’d be walking home with a pussy full of cum and and wearing only dirty underwear and a ripped top.
“I’m not going anywhere, Hudson,” I said. “I promised you that, and I meant it.”
I slipped into his coat like a familiar hug and snuck out of the club with him right by my side.
Later that night, Leelah texted me the complete data set from our experiment.
Whatever happened after your experience in the Platinum Room, the EEG went nuts. Wanna see?
I didn’t open it. I didn’t need to. I knew the truth.
36
Come Again?
Once we left the club, he took me where we’d never gone before.
His place.
Upon arriving at his short-term corporate housing, I remembered our questions game at mini golf. He told me he didn’t like people getting too close. Yet there I was. Being let into a new dimension of his existence. Ifgetting closehad a synonym, it was walking into Hudson’s apartment.
Each time he showed me a new dimension of himself, each time he revealed some hidden element of Hudson Bailey, I felt honored. It was an exclusive club. A limited run. A highly rare element.
This home visit was no different. Except in all the ways that it was.
Because I knew now that I loved him. Empirical data or not, I knew. And this felt like proof that maybe he loved me back. Maybe if I jumped, the long fall into love wouldn’t be a lonely one.
The decor was all what I’d expected from a place you could rent by the month. Clean, comfortable, and inoffensive. But everywhere I looked, there were new pieces of Hudson lore waitingto be uncovered. Stacks of secondhand western paperbacks on the bedside table. Graphic tees peeking out from a laundry hamper. Franken Berry cereal on the counter.
I felt both like a stranger in this place and perfectly at home. The entire experience was a microcosmic encapsulation of my relationship with Hudson. Familiar and alien all at once. I wanted to dive through everything, to unpack these fragments of him.
He gestured me to get comfortable on a kitchen barstool while he hunted through the cabinets.
“Are you hungry?”
“Starved,” I admitted.
We’d been in such a rush to get to the strip club that we’d not eaten anything before arriving. I eyed the Franken Berry on the counter. Fruity, fun cereals were not in my household growing up; I coveted them, especially on a sloshing-booze stomach. “I’ll throw some dinner together,” he said, as if answering my unspoken request.
“You can cook?”
“Basic skill.”
“You’d be shocked how few people understand basic skills,” I mumbled, fully aware that I was one of those people. I could cook a takeout menu and popcorn—and sometimes, depending on the microwave, not even popcorn.
“Ramen?”
Men. I hadn’t had much experience with them, but saying “I can cook” when what they meant was “I’m a bachelor who can throw noodles in a pan” seemed typical.
My reaction must have been written all over my face, because he waved not a bag of instant ramen at me, but the fancy box I’d only seen in specialty grocery stores.
“This is the good stuff. You’re going to love it. Did you know there’s a Japanese word for the slurping you make when you eat ramen?Zuzutto.” He mimicked the sound. I smirked.
“Sort of sounds like the noise you make when you go down on me.”
