25. Res
25
Res
I pick up the phone way too quickly considering the number that flashes on the screen. I try to pretend I don’t feel any shame about it.
“Lauressa,” Jaxson says from the other end in greeting.
“Would it kill you to say ‘Hello? Good evening? How are you?,’” I ask in response.
“Lauressa,” is Jaxson’s only reply.
I sigh and say dryly, “Hello, Jaxson.”
“How was work?”
“A riot,” I reply dryly.
“You clearly hate your job. I don’t know why you’re still there.”
“Well,” I say, “Not all of us can be the beneficiaries of generational wealth from decades and decades of scamming people through religion.”
“While that may be true, I also know that you make enough money off ads, sponsors, and merchandise to comfortably live,” he points out.
“How would you even know that?”
“I pulled up your tax return for last year. ”
“Of course, you did,” I say with a sigh. With everything Jaxson has done so far, what’s one more violation of my privacy.
“So what’s the hinderance? Money surely isn’t it.”
I shrug. “I’m just… stacking money so I have enough to live on in case things go wrong.”
“Sounds more like you’re afraid of taking a calculated risk.”
I scoff. “Coming from the man who doesn’t like breaking the Sovereignty’s rules because he’s afraid someone’s watching to report him and can jeopardize his chances to become the next Oracle.”
“I said a calculated risk. A risk worth something. Risking the Sovereignty’s ire to participate in debauchery isn’t calculated. It’s asinine. Quitting your job to pursue your passion is not.”
“I can’t quit yet anyway. I have to finish paying off all my credit cards and school loans first and that’s going to take a couple more years,” I say.
It's a lie. I could go ahead and pay most of it off, if not all of it. I don’t know what’s stopping me.
“That’s just an excuse.”
“Are you really encouraging me to pursue my passion in exposing cults while trying to convert me to the Sovereignty? Do you hear yourself?”
“Those two things are not mutually exclusive if you just avoid talking about the Sovereignty,” Jaxson points out.
I remain silent for a moment, and Jaxson doesn’t break it. Finally, I say, “I don’t even know what cogs and wheels had to turn what way in your head for you to come to that conclusion. Probably the same thing that told you that you could rule a cult and not believe its lore.”
“Cults are about control. Not the lore. That’s why, and you know this.”
Not feeling like getting into that argument, I say, “Well, if you’re going to force me to talk to you every day, you might as well tell me about what you did today? Anything interesting? Extorting a politician or enemy? Torture?”
Jaxson is silent for long enough that I think he’s not going to answer, and that’s fine with me. If he wants to sit on the phone and listen to me breathe, so be it. I just need this ten minutes to be over.
“I visited my sister and mother’s grave,” Jaxson finally answers.
Of all the things I was expecting, I wasn’t expecting that.
“Oh. Jaxson. I’m… I’m sorry.”
“What’s there for you to be sorry about?” Jaxson asks. “You didn’t kill them. Beside. My mother died a decade and a half ago and my sister even longer.”
“Doesn’t mean you’re over it.”
“There’s nothing to get over. It happened. I can’t change it. Besides, I’m happy to let my mother rot in hell.”
I can’t help but laugh at that. He wouldn’t be the first person raised in a cult who had similar feelings to their parents. Mothers included, despite most cults teaching some version of proverb that children should worship their mothers.
“Do I even want to know what she did?” I ask.
“She killed my sister,” Jaxson says, candid as ever .
I open and close my mouth, not sure what to say. Not because I have nothing to say. I have plenty to say. Plenty to ask, rather. But I have no idea where to start with that, and I’m not sure I want to start.
Finally, I say, “Well, that would certainly be a justifiable reason to be happy to let your mother rot.”
My statement isn’t clever. It’s not even particularly funny. Jaxson chuckles on the other end anyway, and I find myself smiling until I realize that I’m smiling from talking to Jaxson about him being glad his mother is dead. I’m smiling from talking to Jaxson .
“Well,” I say abruptly. “It’s been ten minutes. Actually, it’s been twelve. Do the other two minutes roll over so I only have to talk to you for eight minutes tomorrow?”
“You’re the one who asked how my day went,” Jaxson points out.
He’s right. I did.
“Well, until tomorrow,” I snarl and hang up the phone.
I toss my phone on my bed and put my head in my hands.
I’ve always been somewhat conflicted when it came to Jaxson. But conflicted about what to do about him. Conflicted in how much I’ve had to resign myself to his persistent presence in my life. But never conflicted about my own feelings toward him. Not this conflicted anyway. Or maybe that conflict has always been there, and I just haven’t wanted to face it. From the moment he hugged me and told me one day, I’d thank him and laugh at our rocky beginning.
Regardless, the conflict is worse now. Much harder to ignore when I find myself looking forward to his phone call in the evening. When I find myself hoping to see him round the corner and tease me in his own dry way when I visit Nala because he still won’t let me have my fucking cat back. When I begged him to kiss me after he took me on a date, and I actually enjoyed myself.
Logically, I know this is part of the cult conversion process. Pair the good with the bad. The abuse with the care and flattery. All to convince me that Jaxson’s not so bad if I could bring myself to enjoy myself during the good times. That the good neutralizes the bad. A million good deeds for hundreds of thousands of people can drown out one bad deed against one person. But also, a bunch of good done to someone by another makes the one bad thing they do harder to be upset about. It’s human nature to give the benefit of the doubt, after all. Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe I’ve just been conditioned that way.
I groan. Wallowing in it isn’t helping. I think about reaching out to Mara. We haven’t really talked in years, but even she’s been quiet online. Her posts becoming sporadic and farther and farther in-between. Now would be a good time to reach out to check on her. But it’s hard to be concerned about someone else when my own life is a clusterfuck.
Fuck Jaxson.
I used to be good at being alone and sitting with my own thoughts. Now, my thoughts are consumed with him and that’s the last thing I want.
I need… I need to get him out of my head. I need to get away. I… I need to get laid. Part of the reason I’m probably letting myself feel so wooed by Jaxson is that he’s the only attention I’ve had from the opposite sex lately. Now, with him gone, I’ve got a unique opportunity.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I email Taina that I’ll be working remotely for the rest of the week and message Shelly the same. In actuality, I have no intention of working at all. Then, using a burner prepaid smartphone and debit card, I rent a car for the next morning from a twenty-four-hour self-pickup rental. I bought the burner in cash just a couple of weeks after it became clear that Jaxson wasn’t going to leave me alone. Once he got hold of my phone number, he probably found a way to get access to my phone, my Wi-Fi, and all my electronic devices. So my burner has never been hooked to my Wi-Fi and is connected a custom VPN that even Jaxson with all his resources would be hard pressed to break through. I’ve been working on it since I was a bored teenager with parents who were behind on all things that had to do with technology and a brother who knew better than to bother me or else get his head bitten off.
With the car rented, I order an Uber for pickup from my job at my usual start time and then start checking hotel prices in Savannah, Clearwater, and Daytona. Places where I know the fall and winter weather haven’t set in yet. Where I don’t have to do too much looking for the night life to meet a perfect stranger or a one-night-stand to get laid.
I end up deciding on Savannah. Tybee Island, specifically, which is great. It’s not too long of a drive, and it won’t be too touristy this time of year. With my destination decided, I pack for my trip. Warm dresses, light sweaters, and jeans for the cooler evenings. Cool linens and blouses for during the day. A sexy dress or two to attract my perfect stranger.
The next morning, I get dressed, put a sharp knife in my jacket and pretend to walk to work with my carry-on. It’s the same carry-on I use when I have too much to take to work but instead of work stuff, it’s just my clothes for my impromptu vacation. But nothing out of the ordinary for Jaxson’s men in the nondescript black car that follows me. When I’m at work and they park in their usual spot, I cross the street to them. Also not an out of the ordinary occurrence. Over the last month or so, I’ve knocked multiple times on this window asking if they wanted coffee or leftover food we ordered for the office.
I don’t let them think anything is out of the ordinary as I go to the front driver window and knock on it.
The man lets the window down. He’s new. Or, rather, not new but different from the men who watched me last week. Jaxson always rotates them weekly. Probably so I can’t get attached to any of them. Good thing. Because it makes me feel better when I slash the front tire as he’s letting down the window. I slash the back tire on my way back across the street to where my Uber is waiting. I shove my carryon in the backseat with me and slide in. The driver tries to make small talk. I ignore him and tell him that I’m in a hurry and demand that he get going. It’s rude, but I’ll tip him good.
My driver takes off. Jaxson’s men probably got a picture of the license plate, but that won’t matter by the time I’ve gotten my rental, which is waiting for me as soon as my driver pulls up to the rental place. I find my car and toss my suitcase into the back seat. Riding high on having outsmarted Jaxson, I waste no time starting the car and getting on the road, determined to put miles of distance between me, Macon, and Jaxson’s men.