Anyone else might have missed him wincing. It was a microexpression, barely perceptible. But I noticed. I also noticed the way he tried to cover it by leaning back and feigning a casual air. “Shoot.”
I should have let it go. However, I’d never known when to keep my mouth shut. To make matters worse, Hudson seemed tolikethat I never said the right thing, which only encouraged me to do it more. At least in his presence. “Why does that make you uncomfortable? Me asking you questions?”
“I like to focus on other people. I’m not very interesting.”
He said those two thoughts as though they were nested subjects, when in reality, they didn’t fit together at all. The first sentence was an oddity. The second sentence was an attempt to stave off unwanted follow-ups.
Why didn’t he want me to know about him?
No one in this world is uninteresting. That, I believed to be a scientific fact. And if anyonecouldbe uninteresting, it wasn’t him.
Hudson Bailey was the Large Hadron Collider of people. Infinitely complex, staggeringly beautiful, and incomprehensible.
I wanted to take him apart, piece by piece, and understand how he ticked. What were the gears that made up his thoughtful mind? What sort of engine powered his caring heart? What was the exact function that made up the curve of his lips?
“You’re plenty interesting to me,” I replied.
“You’re a scientist. Everything interests you. It’s in the job description.”
“Noteverything. I may be a polymath, but my interests pretty much extend to chemistry, physics, engineering, and bagels. And you. You’re interesting, Hudson.”
“Not as interesting as you.” Then he turned his attention to the table between us. “And not as interesting as these toys. What thehelldoes this thing do?”
He picked up a wand and waved it in my direction. At one end, it had a hard, black plastic handle; at the other end was a silicone sucker that might have looked like a cross between a tulip and a fish if I hadn’t given the standard toy a redesign to keep it from looking so silly.
A blowjob simulator.
Oh right. There were, like, twenty sex toys on the table between us.
However…I still had questions for him.
“You’re not getting out of this. We’ll start off easy. What do you want for dinner?”
He shrugged.
“I’m good with whatever.”
“I want Thai.”
“Sounds great.”
I frowned and ran a second test.
“Actually, pizza.”
He never lost that winning smile, not for a second. “Fantastic.”
“What doyouwant?”
“Anything you like.”
“Hudson, I’m not having sex with someone who can’t tell me what he wants. That’s not fair to you.”
“I want to make you happy. That’s it. Now, are you going to teach me or what? Thatisour deal, after all.”
A slight edge tinged the air. Desperation. Hereallydidn’t want me to know anything about him.
I let it go. If I pushed him, I might lose him, and I couldn’t lose him tonight. Not when I was so close.
