“Eden… I’m going to ask very simply, one last time: are you the Sexpert?”
There’s loud music playing downstairs. Really loud. I think Leo must’ve gotten into the DJ booth. I don’t think anyone just heard our little outburst, and now we’re silent. Just staring at each other. Again.
“Look, I’m gonna be able to pinpoint the voice and match it. I get it. Pierce is an asshole and you work for him and the guy can’t even remember your name and… I get it. But, I mean, look. This is not gonna go great for you, but if you tell me why, I can help. I really can. Dude listens to me. And I know you think I’m just a rich, selfish asshole, but I promise that I really strive to see to it that only one of those things is true. And I like you. OK? I know we don’t know each other really, but I like you. And I can help. I can make it be OK. Hey, I could’ve stolen a charger from anyone sitting on the freeway that day, but I picked you. And there’s gotta be a reason for that. So just let me give you a hand. OK? Please?”
Once more, she’s not meeting my eyes. She’s looking everywhere but at me. Finally, after long moments of avoiding eye contact, she says, “Borrowed.”
“What?”
“You didn’t steal my charger. You borrowed it. You gave it back.”
I smile. “Yeah. Borrowed.”
There’s another long moment and just as I’m opening my mouth, she speaks first. “It’s not me.”
She says it so quietly, I can barely hear her.
“What?”
“It’s not me.” She says it only slightly louder than before, but I make it out this time.
“Eden—”
“It’s not, OK? It’s not.”
I look down at her. She pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose, sniffs, rubs the back of her hand across her runny nostrils again, and looks at me like she’s trying very hard not to cry. And I am reminded of something I once heard. It may have been in an art theory class, or it may have been with those guys on the peyote excursion, or it may have been somewhere else entirely, I don’t really remember. But the gist of it was:
Facts are just some shit that we all agree on.
So. I take a moment. I nod my head. And I say, “OK.”
“OK?”
“OK.”
I want to agree with her on the shit she’s telling me. And I want to believe her.
Because I really, really, really like her.
“I’m sorry I got weird,” she says in her still-small voice.
“No, hey, look, look at me.” She does. “It’s OK. The whole thing was weird. The whole first couple of days that I was here were weird. Don’t sweat it.” She nods. “Listen,” I say, “I, uh… I feel like I need to get some Band-Aids and maybe some Bactine or something. You wanna, I dunno, get out of here?”
“I have to be here. It’s mandatory team-building.”
“Well, I mean, first of all, I’m still not sure Pierce knows you work for him.” She laughs. “And second, it wasn’t specified which team you’re supposed to be working on building, was it?”
She gets a teeny smile that makes my dick jump and shakes her head. Her hair kind of shakes in front of her face with the shaking of her head. I push the strands back from her cheeks and she looks up at me. Slowly, I take her glasses off, breathe on them, wipe the lenses with the hem of my tank top, and then put them back on her face. She smiles wider.
“Do you…?” she starts, then cuts herself off, nibbling at her bottom lip. She slays me. She absolutely slays me.
“Do I what?”
“There’s this art gallery thing.”
“What art gallery thing?”
“I dunno. Some art gallery that’s supposed to be opening this week. I heard about it. I was gonna go, but I don’t really know anything about art and figured… I dunno. You’re an artist and stuff, and that maybe you’d wanna go and, like, explain stuff. Or something? And I was gonna ask you, I really was, but then I got freaked out because I like you too, I really do, and I was worried that like, maybe because I’m bad at, y’know, the stuff, the sex stuff, I mean not all of it, but the sexy mouth stuff that it would be weird and you’d be thinking about that, and then I got weird, because I think I might be weird, and… Do you think I’m weird? Know what? Don’t answer. Doesn’t matter. But so, so then, when I saw you here I got embarrassed or nervous or something, which—I know! Hard to believe! Haha. – But, so, but yeah, so anyway. So the art thing. Do you wanna go and like, teach me about, you know, art? ‘Cause…? No. Never mind. But, yes. Do you?”