You deserved better.
“Oh please. Who do you think you’re fooling? You’re going tothrow everything away on some boy yet again, despite our best efforts to keep you from repeating history.”
The air around me turned brittle and unbreathable. Ofcourseshe would lash out like this when she was angry. I should have expected it.
But I didn’t. And it hurt more than I could have imagined, hearing her voice the one fear I’d been running from this entire time.
Why did this always happen? Did she have a sixth sense for my happiness? Every time I felt like I was getting my feet under me, she came in to smash my confidence.
“It’s not like that.” Heat built up behind my eyes. Tears formed. I tried to blink them away, but that only banished them to my cheeks. “I swear.”
“Just don’t come crawling back to us when you let him ruin you, like Lloyd did. You know how much we love to sayI told you so.”
A million protests bubbled to my lips. I swallowed them down. What would be the point? My track record for standing up for myself was abysmal. Mom ended the call, but not before making me promise to still see them for dinner when I went to New York for Manhattan’s OFest. Part of me wanted to snap. To ask why she’d evenwantto see such a terrible disappointment of a daughter.
I didn’t. I agreed.
By the time I arrived back at my apartment, I was hormonal, the Advil was wearing off, my mom’s call had gotten under my skin, and I wanted nothing more than to slide into bed and pretend that the world didn’t exist.
But there Hudson was. Bathed in light from the streetlamps, carrying several BuzzCorp-branded shopping totes.
“Oh no,” I groaned before I could stop myself.
He started. “Shit, what did I do?”
Rubbing at my face, I collected myself. My problems weren’t Hudson’s fault. It wasn’t fair to take it out on him. “Sorry, I’ve just had a shit day, and I’m not in the mood for sex. You can go home now.”
“Do you want some company?”
Annoyance gripped a knot between my shoulder blades. I punched the building code into the security box. “I just said I don’t want to have sex. I don’t want to be fucked. I don’t want you to go down on me. I don’t want to be touched—”
The door clicked open. Hudson grabbed the handle, holding it slightly ajar so it wouldn’t relock…but also, so I couldn’t pass. His eyes searched mine. “We don’thaveto have sex, Scout. You know that, right?”
That took the hot air out of my sails.
Right. Wedidn’thave to. We could just hang out together. Fuck what my mom thought. Fuck the fact that he and I should only be no-strings-attached sex buddies.
I was tired and annoyed and all I wanted in that moment was to rest in someone else. In him.
So I invited him in.
Once up in my apartment, he offered me a THC brownie. When we wanted to relax, our ritual was usually a cocktail or glass of wine to start the night. However, he explained that Addie was passing them around the office (seemed like bad business practices, but whatever, I’m not in charge of HR) and wanted to share, so I popped it without a second thought, letting the slightly earthy, totally gooey chocolate settle my frazzled nerves.
As I relaxed into the couch and let the chemicals work their way through my system, Hudson briefed me on his day. I wasn’t in the mood to talk; listening to him was enough.
How strange it was to spend time with him removed from the expectations of sex. To think that he wanted to spend time with me—no detours into my pants. And even stranger to think thatI relished his anecdotes about debugging Python code and his various, much worse, workplaces before BuzzCorp.
Half an hour later, the pain from my period was basically nonexistent, a bag of Sun Chips from my kitchen had magically transformed from a family size to a personal one, and, as we faced each other on the love seat, I couldn’t stop rubbing my legs against his. It was my turn to talk, and of course, I couldn’t very well keep the truth about Addie from him. As painful and embarrassing as it was, he deserved to know that this secret between the two of us had ballooned from three (Leelah) to five (my parents) to six (Addie) now.
“We could just go public, you know.”
I tipped the Sun Chips bag and tilted the protruding corner into my mouth to get the last of the crumbs. So attractive. “With what?”
“Whatever this is that we’re doing. If we don’t have anything to hide…we shouldn’t be hiding.”
I’d become friendly with him (broken rule), I’d masturbated over him (broken rule), had sex with him in the first place (broken rule), had sex with him several times after that (broken rule), and started sort-of dating him (broken rule). There had to be a limit. And going public with this information was it, even if it made me feel a little guilty. Lloyd kept me a secret. Was I doing the same to Hudson?
“But you’re leaving soon. What would be the point? Let’s just have fun. We don’t need to complicate things.”
