15. Res
15
Res
T he thing about working in accounting and auditing is that I get a decent salary and my schedule is flexible. So if I’m caught up on my work, I can take days, even weeks, off from work with my unlimited PTO. But when there is work to do, it means long twelve, thirteen, fourteen, maybe up to sixteen hour days of working. Rare, since I tend to get all my work done quickly, but it happens.
Today is one of those days that it happened.
Shelly and I left the office hours ago and are sitting in her modest apartment. But we’re still working on finishing the data model that we’re going to use as a basis to collect and analyze the information from our audit.
It’s not particularly due any time soon, but we’re at that part of the project where we’re in a groove and haven’t found a good stopping point, so we might as well keep going. Normally, at almost ten o’clock, I would have called it a night and gone to bed. But at worst, I can just take tomorrow off seeing as I don’t have any meetings. Besides, it’s not like I can sleep, and I could use the distraction from my fucked up life .
I thought I was doing a good job of hiding it, but Shelly finally says, “Okay. I’ve been humoring you all day. But I’m not going to let you be a workaholic to cope with your issues any longer when there are better ways like late-night pizza.”
“I don’t have any issues,” I mutter.
“Sure you don’t. You’ve just gone from checking your phone every five minutes earlier today to studiously ignoring it for no reason,” Shelly says, reaching over and closing my laptop. Or, she tries at least, but my fingers on the keys keep that from happening. I open it the rest of the way and continue working.
“Nope,” Shelly says, getting up and taking the laptop right off my lap instead. She closes it and stacks it with her own laptop on a table next to the door.
“This isn’t how you treat a guest,” I whine.
“I think making sure a guest doesn’t work until midnight is exactly how you treat a guest. Now. Pizza. I’ve got four cheese and pepperoni. Got a preference?”
“Pepperoni,” I mutter.
Shelly puts both pizzas in the toaster oven. While we wait, I check my podcast emails. I’m behind on setting up and doing interviews. But it’s approaching the holiday season, and that’s always tricky. Not to mention, I’m not in any mood to interview people about their experiences in cults when I’m dealing with a stalker cult leader. Maybe I should just take the rest of the year off from interviews. I’ve got enough interviews already recorded and edited to meet my once-a-week upload schedule and my Patreon obligations for the next six months.
God. I really need to quit my job. I don’t even need it. But my job is just about the only human interaction I get besides One Humanity stuff. My podcast could solve that issue, but that would mean going public. And I’m not ready to risk what little social life I have remaining and my relationship with my mother, the only person I can somewhat enjoy from my family, to do that.
Shelly hands me the personal pizza. I tear it apart, allowing myself to take joy in seeing that it’s stuffed crust since I’m certainly not getting any joy in my personal life.
“So. Spill. What is it?” Shelly asks.
“Nothing. I don’t want to burden you with my issues.”
“Nonsense. That’s what friends are for.”
I’ve only known Shelly for a month, hardly enough time for me to consider her a friend. A good acquaintance at best. But she seems like she could be a good friend. I would like her to become a good friend, at least.
“It’s guy stuff.”
“Ugh,” Shelly groans dramatically. “We need more than frozen pizza for this. I don’t have alcohol, but I’ve got root beer. Or ginger beer.”
“Root beer,” I sigh.
Shelly goes and comes back with a glass bottle of root beer for both of us.
“Go ahead,” she urges.
“I don’t even know where to start.”
“The beginning is usually a great place.”
“Well, for starters, it’s not just one guy. It’s two. ”
“Don’t tell me they’re fighting over you and making your life difficult.”
“Not exactly, but that’s sort of what happened? There’s this guy—I’ll call him X—I’m working with for One Humanity, and he came by to discuss work stuff Friday. My boyfriend came in and got the wrong idea, and X didn’t help because he really does like me.”
Saying Jaxson likes me is the understatement of the century, but the vaguer I am the better. No need getting Shelly wrapped up in something she has nothing to do with.
“Anyway, my boyfriend said some things he didn’t mean, and when it looked like I was defending X he stormed off. Then I told X to leave, and now I haven’t heard from either of them since,” I explain.
“They ghosted you?” Shelly asked.
“Well… my boyfriend did. But that’s not the first time he’s done that. It’s just that he was so angry, and—”
“What do you mean it’s not the first time he’s ghosted you?”
“What it means,” I begin, “is that it’s not the first time. If I make him mad or have to miss a date because of one of my events, or he’s doing a total deep dive in creating his music, he just… doesn’t answer my calls or texts for a few days. Sometimes weeks.”
Shelly gives me an unimpressed look.
Said out loud to someone else, it sounds terrible. So maybe Jaxson was right, and Zach wouldn’t be a great loss to my life.
“I know. I know. But do you know how hard dating is nowadays? It seems like you have good vibes and good conversation and then they ghost you. For no fucking reason. Or they want to talk about sex in the first conversation. And… Fuck. I just want someone I can actually talk to and who supports me and maybe some good sex now and then. Is that too much to ask?” I groan.
“Well, you know the saying. You need to throw away the trash to make room for new,” Shelly says with a shrug.
“What if I throw away the trash and the new never comes?”
“You’re left with a clean, peaceful house,” Shelly answers.
We exchange a glance and then burst into giggles.
“But what about this other guy. X? He ghost you too?” Shelly asks.
“I don’t know that I know him like that enough to say he ghosted me. But he did send me a text, apologizing for ruining my night right afterward and that he’d make it up to me,” I say.
“Then I think we have a winner. Toss the trash and bring in the new,” Shelly declares.
“Just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s good,” I mutter.
“What do you mean by that?”
In that moment, I seriously contemplate telling her about Jaxson. Telling her that he’s probably stalking me. That he wants to convert me to his cult that he doesn’t believe in. That he assaulted me and then hugged me and made me feel safe with him in the very next moment. But the less people who know about all this and my issues, the better. There’s too much at stake. So I decide to omit a few facts.
“We have… conflicting religious beliefs,” I say.
“How conflicting?”
“Like, I’m borderline atheist and anti-organized religion, and he’s… not?” But that’s not really the truth at all .
Jaxson is pretty much atheist himself. He doesn’t believe in the Sovereignty’s teachings. In that sense, our beliefs aren’t conflicting all. It’s what we’ve both chosen to do about it that’s the difference. He’s decided to fake it in the pursuit of power. I’ve decided I want to see it all torn down. Even if I’m not the one to do it. If there’s a real anti-Christ, I’m rooting for him.
“You know what they say. Love knows no bounds. If you like him, what does his religion matter?” Shelly asks.
“It’ll matter to how I raise my kids one day. It matters to how I want my life to look like. I don’t want my every decision dictated by what a religion says I can and can’t do,” I insist.
I’ll never go back to that. I ran from that. After I was made to stand up under the altar of a cross depicting the crucifixion of Christ himself to confess my shameful sin. The sin of seducing the eighteen-year-old youth deacon of community outreach into fucking me when I was only seventeen.
“But it doesn’t have to be,” Shelly points out. “Look at me. I’m doing what I want. Living the life I want. My religion isn’t controlling what I do.”
Except by virtue of her following a religion. But I get it. I’ve been there. I would have believed and said the same thing before I left Loving Eden. So I decide not to comment.
Shelly can clearly tell I still don’t agree.
“Maybe you should talk to X. Ask him what he expects of you. Maybe you catastrophizing,” Shelly says softly.
I sigh. “Look. I know and respect the fact that religion and God is really important to you and has given you purpose. But the only thing it’s ever brought me is hell and misery. The last thing I want to do is have hell and misery in my romance life.”
“Not to be dismissive, but… you already do,” Shelly points out.
This woman.
I groan.
“You just can’t fucking sugarcoat anything, can you?” I ask, but my smile betrays me.
“So I’ve been told. But you know what will make you feel better?” she asks. “Watching other people’s drama.”
“Oh my God. Not more 2010s reality television,” I say with a roll of my eyes.
Shelly has an obsession with that era of TV. Something to do with her strict religious father not letting her watch any of it when she was a teen because he thought it was harmful. Or some silly justification like that.
“2010’s reality television,” she confirms.
I arrive home at a little after four a.m., drop my keys on the floor along with my bag, strip off all my clothes on the way to my room, and fall into bed. Shelly offered to let me have her pullout bed rather than leaving so late. But it’s only a ten-minute drive home, and there’s nothing like my own bed.
I still have the same issues when I fall into bed as I did before I talked with Shelly, but something about getting the chance to vent and watching terrible reality shows from the late 2000s and 2010s makes my issues feel light. Thus, for the first time in almost a week, I’m dead to the world when my head hits the pillow...
Only to be awoken five minutes later by my phone vibrating.
“Who…?”
I answer blindly, figuring a call at this time of morning probably means someone really needs me. That or it’s Shelly calling to make sure I got in because I definitely forgot to text her that I was home.
“Lauressa Kleen?” a woman’s voice says.
“Depends on who’s asking and why they want to know,” I say sleepily.
“It’s my son. Zachary… I…”
The woman on the other end bursts into tears.
“What happened? Is Zach okay?” I ask.
A man’s voice takes over.
“He’s alive,” he says in a tone like that’s not a good thing. “He’s asking for you, Lauressa. God. It’s…”
“What hospital are you at?” I demand because that’s the only place they can be if it’s this serious.
“I’ll… I’ll text you the details,” the man—Zach’s father I’m assuming—chokes.
I waste no time looking for new, clean clothes. I throw back on the clothes I just stripped off, even if they are wrinkly and stale from wearing all day yesterday.
Then I plug the address Zach’s father texts me into the GPS and am headed to their location.