“Do you want to talk?” he asked gently.
“So youdidcome out here to try and make me feel better.”
“I’ve sort of noticed that you keep people at arm’s length. Except for Clara, but you can’t exactly talk about your virginity with your boss.”
“What, so you thought I’d talk about it with a total stranger instead?”
“We’re nottotalstrangers. Remember, you kissed me yesterday.” I opened my mouth to retort, but he cut me off. “And anyway, I thought, hey, if I was in her shoes, I’d want someone to talk to. Sorry if it was the wrong call. I just didn’t want you to be alone. Especially when you’re drunk and it’s dark out.”
“I’m not drunk,” I said beforeimmediatelystumbling over my feet.
“You’re right. Sober as a judge. Here.” He offered his arm. I eyed it for a beat. “C’mon. We can’t have our best engineer twisting her ankle. Let me walk you home?”
“Fine. But no feelings talk. And I’mnottaking your arm.”
Tossing my chin with defiant I’m-a-bad-bitch-who-don’t-need-a-man energy, I went back to walking…and tripped over my feet yet again.
Damn feet. Who kept putting them there? And why wouldn’t the sidewalk just stay put?
He offered me his arm again, a twinkle of humor in his eyes. This time, I took it, placing my hand in the crook of his elbow.
His surprisingly muscular crook.
“You can talk about your feelings, too,” he said, once we got under way. “If you want. I mean, what’s the risk? My contract with BuzzCorp is up in six weeks. You’ll never see me again after that. I’m like…a self-destructing tape. You put all your feelings and thoughts into me, and then in six weeks…bam. Gone.”
Maybe I was drunk, but this struck me as sound logic. I hadn’t thought of it from that perspective. My two big worries about people? Them distracting me from my work and them bailing once they realize what an unsocialized loser I am.
Problem: I’m so,soisolated from other people. A weirdo, a freak who can’t get through a normal conversation without humiliating herself.
Proposed Solution: Make a friend who won’t judge you. And whose opinion doesn’t matter anyway, because in six weeks, he’ll be gone.
“I don’t even know where to start,” I muttered, taking my first tentative steps onto the friendship ledge.
“Are you…interested in sex?” Hudson asked.
From anyone else, it might have sounded like a creepy come-on, but from him, it was a genuine question. Asexuality was valid as hell, but unfortunately, I was afflicted with the curse of sexual desire. Every time I so much as smelled Hudson’s cologne, I was reminded of that.
And now, with our bodies pressed against each other and the swirl of alcohol in my brain, I felt that sexual desire more potently than I could remember in a long, long time.
“Yes, I’m interested. The timing just never worked out. I mean, I was a child prodigy. I graduated high school at thirteen. I was out of college by my seventeenth birthday. I had my master’s by the time I was twenty. Dual PhDs after that. My parents worked hard to get me through the best schools, to help me make the most of myself. So I was always studying. Always trying to make them proud. I didn’t have time for anything but work. And evenif I had the time, who would I have had sex with? Studies show that most first-time sexual encounters are engaged in during the college years. Well, how do you lose it when you’re a fifteen-year-old in a class of nerds in their midtwenties?”
I was rambling, but he didn’t seem to care. I continued.
“Then, after that, there was Lloyd. We didn’t sleep together, but we had a thing and it ended badly.”
“And he’s why you blame yourself for the explosion.”
He didn’t phrase that like a question, so I didn’t answer it. In truth, I didn’t blame Lloyd. I blamed myself. But that was an emotional equation to balance another day, so I merely replied:
“I never wanted to let what happened at GalacticSolutions happen again. I didn’t want anything to mess with my concentration. So sex just…I just haven’t done it yet. I guess I’ve been waiting.”
“For what?”
With a small tug on his arm, I indicated that we should stop. He lingered with me outside my little apartment building, looking like he belonged there. Like, if this was a scene in a movie, he’d guide me up the steps and into my apartment for some PG-13-rated, romantically scored escapades.
WhatwasI waiting for? I turned the question over in my head.
Whenwouldbe the right time?
