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It’s my turn to say, “Wow.”
“Dramatic? Maybe. But all true. So… I was gonna offer you your job back—“
“No!”
“—before I came over here and you told me about your new business. But now… Eden… Can I… Will you… let me be one of your clients? Please?” He holds his hand together like he’s praying. “Pretty please with sugar on top?”
I scrutinize him. Because this feels too good to be true. And since when do kings say pretty please? “What about the Sexpert?”
“She’s yours.” And then he laughs. “No, like literally, she’s you. It doesn’t matter if I get the name. The Sexpert is all you. You earned it. And…” He does a little bow, his hand waving around in that little flourish thing hands do when people bow. “And well done, sugar princess. Well done. You win.”
I cross my arms over my chest and breathe through my nose as I take this all in. “OK,” I say. “You send us an offer in writing and my partner and I will discuss it.”
A smile creeps up his face until it’s wide and his eyes are sparkling with hope.
Wow. I thought I knew how all this was gonna end, but it just goes to show you… a new day can bring anything.
“Now about Andrew and how that was all my fault.”
My heart speeds up again. Because I know I’m gonna lose this battle. No one gets two good things in one day.
Example A. The day I met Andrew on the freeway and the Sexpert went viral.
So I’m expecting something pretty terrible to come out of the second half of our conversation.
But I listen to Pierce tell his side of the story anyway. Andrew’s side. And hear what he’s saying. He tells me of their shared past, and what they mean to each other, and we sit down on my stupid tiny loveseat and have tea and cupcakes.
It’s weird, I think. Just so weird how just when you’re ready to move on and let the old things go, the old can still surprise you.
And by the time Pierce is done telling his story and he’s kissing my hand and thanking me for a lovely afternoon, I’m planning one last Sexpert video.
Because I might just get to have my cake and eat it too.
Sexpert Advice
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT – ANDREW
“Andrew, thank you, the Director is very happy.” That’s Carrie from Justice. I finally stopped dodging her calls and emails and had Dev deliver the app to the government.
“Don’t thank me. It’s all Dev.”
“Is he there?” she asks.
“Yeah, I’m here. Hey, Carrie.”
“Dev, great job.”
“Thanks. Sorry it took a minute. We needed to make certain all the bugs were worked out.” He raises his eyebrows at me as if to say, We didn’t really, but my boss was preoccupied with a girl and he didn’t want to know the truth about her because he unexpectedly fell for her and didn’t want to have to choose between her and his friend, and besides, we weren’t going to tell you that we were planning on using taxpayer money to run voice recognition on a pair of boobs on the internet anyway.
Maybe that’s not exactly what his raised eyebrows are trying to say to me, but it’s along those lines, I feel like.
“So, Carrie,” I start.
“Yeah?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t be asking, but you guys are just gonna use this for, like, surveillance and to, y’know, ID potential terrorist activity and stuff, right?”
There’s a long pause before she says, “What else would we use it for?”
“I dunno. What else would you use it for?”
“Andrew, you’re not implying that we would spy on US citizens, are you?”
“I dunno. Is that an implication I should be making?”
Another long pause.
Finally, “Don’t be silly.”
“Oooooo-kay,” I say.
“Seriously, Andrew, don’t worry. You’ve done a good thing and you’ve helped your country. Just go take a swim in your private pool and sleep easy tonight knowing you’re one of the good guys.”
“How do you know I have a private—?” But she hangs up. And while that should be the most disturbing part of her sentence, the part that actually upsets me is that she called me “one of the good guys.” Because, as much as I try to be and as much as I really want to be, I’m not sure I am right now.
“Well, that was fucking creepy,” says Dev.
“Yup.”
“OK, well, cool. I’m glad that’s done. I wanna get back to playing around with Theme-Attack.” (It’s a thing that takes the rhythms of your own vocal patterns and converts it into musical notes so that you have your own, personalized theme song. It’s pretty cool. But…)
“We gotta come up with a new name,” I say.
“I like it. Thematic, Theme-Attack, I think it works.”
“It’s terrible.”
“Yeah, is it worse than AVATAR?”
“I wish I had never told you about that.”
“Hey, man,” he says, rounding my desk and slapping my knee, “I love that you were once a young, idealistic artist. I think it’s sweet.”
