Ryan offered to fix me a cup of tea, but I felt so foolish I just needed to get out of there as fast as possible. I got dressed in an awkward silence, and he called me a taxi to take me home.

“What happened?” says Hailey, as soon as she sees my face.

I walk right into her room, lean against her wall, and let my body slide down until I’m sitting crouched on the floor, with my head in my hands.

“I couldn’t do it,” I say.

“Why? What happened? He found out you’re his employee or something?”

“I don’t know,” I say slowly.

At this point in the night, I no longer feel remotely sexy. I don’t feel the way Ryan made me feel for those brief moments, when he so clearly wanted me.

“It’s the whole virgin thing? Or something else?”

I nod my head. “A little of everything,” I say. “It’s not like I’m not ready to do it, but… I don’t know. He’s hot…”

“Smolderingly hot,” adds Hailey, pretending to fan herself.

“That’s not helping,” I say.

“Sorry.”

“And he made me feel things I’ve never felt before… he’s, I don’t know, a real man.”

“You can say that again.”

“Hailey,” I say, admonishing her.

This time she’s quiet.

“I mean, I’m ready to just get this done with… That’s how I felt earlier tonight. But now, I really want it.”

“You really want to lose it?” she says. “You mean you want to finally have sex?”

I nod my head. “It must be incredible,” I say.

“If he’s good.”

“And I’m sure Ryan Hudson is extremely good. But he’s just such a dick.”

“Well it’s not like you’re going to marry him.”

“It just didn’t feel right,” I say.

“Well,” says Hailey. “That’s totally within your right. I mean, it’s good you’re sure of your feelings. I’d say you did the right thing.”

“Really? I thought you were going to give me a stern talking to, telling me that I have to march back over there and let him have his way with me.”

“No,” says Hailey, shaking her head. “Nothing like that. I think you did the right thing. Maybe this whole ‘being picked up in a bar’ thing isn’t for you.

“I’m beginning to think it isn’t,” I say.

“Don’t worry,” says Hailey. “The right guy will come along. Something will happen.”

I nod my head, but I’m thinking it won’t ever happen. Why can’t I just be like Hailey, and enjoy myself for once? What the hell is wrong with me?

“Sorry,” says Hailey as her phone buzzes.

She picks it up and a grin forms on her face as she reads the text message.

“Something funny?” I say, thinking that if I hear it, it might cheer me up.

She shakes her head. “It’s from Dan.”

Dan’s one of her late night hook ups, a friends with benefits type of situation.

Nothing could make me feel worse right now. It’s like a slap in the face, exposing my own emotional “problems” or whatever they are.

Hailey types something on her phone, and then the phone buzzes again as she receives yet another message from Dan.

This time she giggles and blushes.

“Sorry,” says Hailey. “But I think I’m going to…”

“It’s fine,” I say. “You going over to his place?”

“Yeah,” says Hailey. “But, like, I’ll totally stay if you need someone to talk to.”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “It’s completely fine. Really.” Of course, it’s not completely fine, but it’s not like I’m going to try to screw up Hailey’s life too.

“You’re the best,” says Hailey. “And it’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

Hailey’s still dressed in the skimpy dress that she wore earlier tonight at the bar.

She gets up, exposing quite a bit of leg, not to mention her breasts, grabs her purse somewhat sheepishly, and is out the door quicker than I could have imagined.

Now I’m alone.

In my room, I pull off the dress, which is somewhat wrinkled now after what it’s been through. I carefully hang it up and pull on an old t-shirt and some more normal underwear. I just have one pair of fancy underwear, and I wore that tonight—it’s not like I’m going to sleep in it.

I turn off the lights and crawl into bed, but I know the moment my head hits the pillow I won’t be able to sleep.

The night seems to keep replaying before my closed eyes—the luxurious bar, the type I never go to. Then Ryan’s luxury house, where even the garage was nice. Not that I saw much of the house at all, but everything was just super fancy, super expensive looking. Where I live must be like the polar opposite of his place.

I pick up my pillow and put it over my head, letting my head rest on the bare mattress, somehow thinking that this is going to change my thought pattern, but of course it does nothing. My head is just so full of anxiety and shame right now that nothing helps, not even trying to meditate by paying careful attention to my breathing. I could never get that trick to work anyway—my mind just wanders back to what it was thinking about before. Maybe I’m not doing it right.

And now I think about Hailey over at Dan’s house, giggling up a storm, having the time of her life on some sexy romp with no strings attached.

I was so close to having sex with Ryan, and the weird thing is I was so turned on. I can vividly remember how he made me feel, how it felt having his body so close to mine.

I need to distract myself. I can’t spend all night lying awake having an anxiety attack about how sexually attracted I am to my boss, and how I still couldn’t actually do it.

There were so many reasons not to, though. I have to remind myself of this, over and over again.

Oh, crap.

He’s my boss.

And yet, he doesn’t have any idea I’m one of his employees.

That could be wrong.

The thought that relaxes me is: he never comes to the office.

Thank God for that, that’s for sure.

I get up and flick on the light. I’m going to do what I do best: immerse myself in my work.

But I don’t mean that stupid binder they gave me. If they want to tell me I have to read crap like that all day, then that’s what I’ll do. I won’t touch a compiler at work, but at home I can do what I want, right?

Once he heard that I was really into coding, my cubicle neighbor gave me a USB drive with the code for the algorithm on it.

“Everyone has it,” he says. “Don’t worry. It’s not like it’s top secret or anything. It’s actually open, in a sense, but not open-source, because Hudson still has to make money on it.”

“So that means that if someone finds a problem with it, they could easily write their own algorithm that would directly compete with this one, right?” I asked him.

“Sure,” he said, chuckling. “But no one can. No one ever has. And that’s because it’s perfect programming. Perfect logic. No one can ever beat it. Ever.”

Well, I’d still like to take a look at it, I think to myself.

After all, one of the first things I learned when I started diving into all this is that nothing can ever be perfect. Nothing with computers, that is. People think it’s all math, and that math is all perfect. But actually, it all relies on human logic, and as I saw tonight, human logic can often be faulty.

I’m up until the early hours of the morning, completely immersed in the files on the USB drive. I have to admit that Ryan Hudson’s programming is perfect. And the algorithm… well, I can’t even begin to wrap my head around it, let alone criticize it. He does things that I’ve never seen done anywhere, things I’ve never even heard of.

It’s a strange sensation, reading the code written by the man who almost took my virginity tonight. In a way, it’s kind of like reading a book or poem he wrote. Programming, really, is a lot like writing—you have to make things consistent and precise, but they still have to all have important functions. Everything still has to do its job.

Finally, I cut the lights. I’m more confused than when I started. I thought maybe I’d learn something about the algorithm, but I’m not even sure I found the algorithm. Maybe I’m over my head with all this programming stuff. I’m certainly over my head with casual hook ups, or sex in general.