“I might take you up on that offer.” She sits down and pulls her hair into a clip. “Are you inviting Ben?”
I make a face. “I don’t know.”
“Why not? I think it’s safe to say he likes you after the office booty call yesterday.”
I smile. “True. He likes having sex with me, I know that. But I still can’t decide if he likes me.”
Erin waves her hand in the air. “You’re too hard on yourself. Why wouldn’t he like you? My best friend is awesome.”
“Thanks. And I don’t know … It’s just a feeling? He said he dates other women, remember? I assume he goes out with plenty of other chicks who are…” I trail off, not wanting to voice my concerns out loud, not even to my BFF of over ten years. Compared to anyone else Ben is dating, seeing, fucking—whatever, I’m just not going to measure up. I want to believe I can, but the realistic part of me wins this one.
“We’ll just see,” I conclude. “He’s busy a lot anyway. That weekend might be big for art shows.”
“Sure,” Erin says with a roll of her eyes. Something clatters inside her house and David shouts. Erin lets out a slow breath, trying to stay calm. “I should never have let him get a puppy,” she says through gritted teeth. “Yeah, the little pooch is adorable, but my house, and my sanity, cannot handle this.”
I laugh. “Aren’t huskies like super high-energy dogs?”
“Yes,” she says. “But that’s what he wanted. Something that reminded him of Balto.” She shakes her head and I laugh again. “I better go see what kind of trouble they got into now. And clean up the mess. I swear, David is such a child himself he cannot take care of a dog. It’s a good thing neither of us want kids any time in the near future. Or ever.” Erin isn’t a “kid person.” It surprised me when she let her hubs get the dog, honestly. She’s laid back and so fun, but she likes things neat and orderly in her house.
“Just call him Grey Wind and pretend he’s a dire wolf in training? That doesn’t get his head cut off,” I suggest.
“Maybe.” She shakes her head. “Bye, Liss.”
We end the Skype call and I go about working on the top of my femme Batman costume until I can hardly keep my eyes open anymore. Instead of putting away my sewing gear, I close the door to the spare room, aka my work room, to keep Ser Pounce from stepping on pins or fucking with my material. That asshole likes to fuck with my material.
I shower, realize I haven’t eaten since lunch, and bring a bowl of Fruit Loops to bed, too tired to make anything else. I flip through channels and grab my phone, wanting to meaninglessly scroll through Facebook as I eat. I have a text from Ben, sent over two hours ago. Whoops. I didn’t hear my phone dinging from the other room.
He wants to know if we can meet for lunch or dinner tomorrow. Or both. He says he misses me. I’m smiling as I respond, telling him that both would be nice. He responds quickly, telling me to let him know when I’m taking my lunch break. We plan to meet at the cafe again.
I drift to sleep with Ben on my mind, eager to see him in the morning.
*
“Hey,” I greet Ben as I step into the cafe. It’s lunch time and crowded, and if Ben hadn’t gotten here early, we wouldn’t have gotten a table. He gives me a hug and a kiss, then we sit. I put my purse and umbrella on the chair across from Ben and slide in next to him on the booth seat.
“I ordered already,” he says, arm going around me. “Same thing as before. Hope that’s okay. It was getting busy and I know you’re on limited time.”
“Thank you,” I say, eyeballing the long line and the frazzled girl behind the counter.
“It should be here soon. Hopefully. I’m starving.”
“I usually am,” I say. “But there was a birthday at the office so we all got cake.”
“Nice.”
A college-aged boy brings us two iced coffees and says the food should be out soon. I peel the wrapper off the straw and stick it inside the cold mocha.
“I heard something interesting today,” Ben says, taking a drink of his own coffee.
“And what is that?”
His eyes narrow just a bit. “Mindy said you two had a class together in college. I know she’s not smart enough to get into MIT.”
Crap. Shit. Busted.
Fuck.
“Yeah … we did.” I grab my straw wrapper and start twisting it between my fingers, heart hammering.
“So you didn’t go to MIT?”
“I did,” I say and let out a breath. “But I didn’t graduate from there.”
“Why do I get the feeling there is a story behind this?”
“Because there is, but it’s not a good one. Trust me.” I tie a knot in the wrapper and pull it until it breaks. I still feel sick about it, the fact that I was so close to getting a degree from one of the best tech schools in the country. I still feel humiliated that I was dumb enough to let someone control me, manipulate me, trick me into doing something that could have ruined my whole life.
He was the first guy to tell me he loved me, that he didn’t want to live without me, that we were meant to be.
And I fucking believed him. I trusted him. I loved him. He was my first long-term boyfriend, and finding out I’d been used caused all the confidence I’d gained since high school to crash and burn into a pile of oblivion, not to resurface until adulthood. Hell, I’m still trying to get some of it back, still trying to have faith in the people of the world not to bend me over and screw me in the ass with no lube.
I take a breath, drop the straw wrapper, and look up at Ben. “This guy, Micah, I was dating convinced me to hack into the grade book and save him from failing pretty much all his classes.” Ben doesn’t say anything. His face is neutral and he patiently waits for me to keep going. “It was untraceable, but one professor noticed his grade went from a 48% to an 84%. And then something was said and the other professors noticed and called Micah out on it. He didn’t even hesitate to tell them I did it.”
I run my finger down the outside of the plastic coffee cup, collecting condensation on my finger. “The dean and the head of the tech department were actually impressed at my hacking skills—they didn’t word it that way though—and were disappointed I did something so stupid my last year. They let me transfer my credits instead of kicking me out. Hence the degree from the local college. I was young, and I made the mistake of believing Micah when he said he loved me. Live and learn, right?”
A few seconds of silence tick by. Then Ben reaches out and puts his hand on mine. “You’re a hacker?”
I tip my head up. “Only by night.”
Ben chuckles. “That is impressive, actually.”
“You’re one of the few to think so,” I say. “But thanks. It fucking sucked, but I was, and maybe still am, a little proud of being able to get into the system.”
“Have you hacked other sites before?” he asks.
“Maybe,” I say. “But I never really did anything bad like that again. I swore to use my superpowers only for good after that. A few were just to see if I could do it. And once was to change my best friend’s ex-boyfriend’s Facebook page. But I don’t consider that really a hack. It’s so easy.”
“I don’t know how to do it,” he tells me and leans back in his chair.
“Not many people do,” I say. “Which is good.” I shrug. “Cybercrime is still a crime, ya know? I don’t want to get caught—again—and screw myself again. I got lucky with MIT. I probably won’t get lucky again.” I wipe the condensation from my cup. “So … that’s the story.”
“It’s not that bad of a story,” he says and puts his hand on mine. “And I think it’s fair to say you went to MIT. You said you were one semester away from graduating?”
“Ugh, yes. I can’t bring this up to my parents yet either. They’re still pissed at me.”
“I’d still consider you an MIT graduate, even though you lack the degree.”