My cheeks flush.
Patrick settles on a low couch in the corner. It's turned away from the other men. Private, but not as private as the booth in the bar.
Is he daring me? Fucking with me? Trying to carve space for actual conversation?
No. That can't be it.
What man turns down a blow job for conversation?
"I took a class last year." In the middle of everything. Maybe that was it. I was trying to punish myself. Or I was trying to be the person my parents wanted me to be. I don't know anymore.
"It, uh—" This is not a sexy topic. I need to move back to a sexy topic. Or at least a less fraught one. "I wish I did like accounting. Or something else more practical. Wouldn't that be nice, to have a passion for computer programing?"
"Economics seems pretty in demand."
"Not in the same way, but it is."
"Do you ever think about writing?"
Do I talk about it that much?
"I bet you're good."
"Based on what?"
"How you text."
"That seems like a flimsy basis."
"I'm not the scientist."
I smile. "As much as I love the feeling of losing myself in words, I love this too. I love being a scientist. And I don't really want to make a creative passion my career. I don't know how you do it, actually."
"Work as a tattoo artist?"
"Take something yours and sell it. Not that there's something wrong with selling it—"
"But you couldn't do that with your writing?"
I nod. "I'm not judging."
"I didn't think you were."
Right. He doesn't jump to that assumption the way other people do. I like that about him. "You're curious about people."
"About you."
"It's very scientific of you."
"The scientific people I know aren't curious," he says. "Only Luna. The others are nerdy guys who think they know everything, because they're more educated than I am."
"I know that kind of guy."
"In your classes?"
"Everywhere, yeah." I like that he isn't that way. "Don't you have to apprentice to work as a tattoo artist?"
"For about two years, yeah."