Chapter 26
NOVA
Ieyed my omelet waiting for me on the kitchen counter. After three seconds of inner turmoil, I grabbed a fork and obeyed Wes.
Hudson stood. “No,” he said at the same time Delilah said, “Of course!”
They both watched me shovel omelet into my mouth.
“It’s the Joe from You method,” Delilah explained to Bradley, who had shaken off his previous discomfort and was back to his easy, cheery demeanor.
“Oh, sick,” he said, still not understanding. Not a single thought in that beautiful head.
“Do you need one of my mustaches?” Delilah offered.
I considered this. “No. I’ll stay out of sight. And I think I’m allergic to adhesive glue. Band-Aids fuck me up.”
“Nova…” Hudson said. “What are you doing?”
“Spying on Wes to see if he can be trusted. It was basically your idea.”
Hudson put a hand on his hip. “My point was for you to stay out of danger. This is exactly the opposite of my advice.”
“It’s bright out! Nothing bad can happen to people in broad daylight.”
“That is just not true.”
Delilah returned from her bedroom and cheerfully handed me her black cap, which said baby in tiny white cursive. This was actually Lorelei’s hat she’d left behind, but I’d let Delilah keep it. I shoved memories of my ex-best-friend away to stay focused.
Hudson put his hands up. “You know what? Fine. I need to live by example and heed my own wisdom. Do whatever you want, Nova. I have performed enough gay labor for today.”
Delilah and I cocked our heads, waiting for him to elaborate on gay labor.
“Gay labor is spending inordinate amounts of energy trying to keep your straight friend from main charactering herself onto an episode of a Netflix true crime docuseries.” Hudson uncrossed his arms. “And I am not a tropey side character.”
Hudson stared at the hand I placed on his shoulder, both of us mildly uncomfortable with the physical contact.
“Of course, you’re not. You contain multitudes.” I meant it earnestly, but the longer I peered into Hudson’s eyes, the more our lips began to twitch.
We broke into laughter at the same time, though Hudson didn’t look pleased about it.
He shrugged away from my hand. “Oh, fuck off.”
“Love you too,” I called as I headed out the door.
I stood on the Greenpoint-Williamsburg border in my fool-proof disguise. My target was across the street, sitting in the same diner booth where he’d first eavesdropped on me. That encounter was feeling far more suspicious than serendipitous now.
I moved behind a white truck to stay out of sight, only glancing at Wes and the unsub across from him periodically to make sure they weren’t on the move. They kept looking down at paperwork, or maybe books, sitting with their coffee and food.
I never should’ve doubted my instincts. Men who were attracted to dominance weren’t to be trusted.
They were all misogynists with Cluster B personality disorders, nothing like the dominant heroes written by women in fictional novels.
The only safe way to engage with my unwanted, fucked-up kinks was in the privacy of my own fantasies.
I, of all people, should’ve known better.
An older woman eyed me suspiciously, and I threw her my best mind your own business look. She kept walking.
After another thirty minutes, Wes and the bald, older Black man were on the move. I’d never followed anyone before, so I perhaps waited too long to start walking after them, which made me almost lose them completely.
I found them again on Manhattan Avenue. They were both in casual clothing, which threw me off a bit. The unsub was smoking a cigarette, and I watched him laugh at something Wes said as they waited at a crosswalk.
At the slightest turn of Wes’s head, I turned too, knowing I looked nothing like myself in my baggy clothing and ponytail-ballcap situation.
I wouldn’t be recognized unless he saw me head-on.
An irritated woman almost collided with me, and I apologized.
As a fast walker who loathed anyone who disobeyed New York’s unspoken foot traffic rules, I felt a great amount of shame for my faux pas.
I wanted to tell the stranger this was unlike me, that I was usually a perfect walker, a true star in the pedestrian community.
“Fuck,” I muttered, realizing I’d lost them again. I picked up my pace, scanning the side street at the next intersection.
I spotted them. I quickly jaywalked, dodging City Bikes and an irritated Nissan driver.
They approached the back of a tall, red brick building I quickly realized was St. Anthony’s church. I’d only ever seen its beautiful 19th century splendor from the front.
Oh my God, St. Anthony’s is a front for The Circle?
How many churches had they bought and deconsecrated to use for degeneracy?
I was hot with both anger and the scorching afternoon sun as I waited for Wes and the unsub to disappear inside the back of the church.
The coast was clear ahead of me, but before I could look behind me, a woman just over my shoulder muttered, “Shit, we’re late.”
I froze. Two women walked right past me, ignoring me as if my black cap had truly rendered me invisible to onlookers.
They were late to what? A gathering of the inner circle? And what were elections for?
Before I could second-guess myself, I beelined for the door, opened it, and descended into another layer of hell. I kept each step on the stairs as soft as possible.
When I reached the bottom of a dim basement, illuminated by string lights and a single fluorescent panel at the front, I had no fucking idea what to make of what I saw.
There was a table with an old coffee machine, paper plates, and donuts to my left.
In front of me was a group of thirty people in cheap metal chairs facing the front of the room, where five more people in cheap metal chairs sat next to a big poster with a culty triangle symbol and a numbered list of what I could only assume was cult propaganda.
I quickly averted my eyes. My legs moved me forward, toward the table of food. Because, for whatever reason, that was where I felt most safe at cult gatherings. This got the three women and two men I didn’t recognize at the front to stop staring at me.
What kind of cult was this?
“I’ve asked a friend to read How It Works,” a man at the front said.
Wait. Were they doing scientology in St Anthony’s church? Was Wes a Scientologist?
“Wes, Alcoholic.”
“Hi, Wes,” the room said as one.
My brain short-circuited.
“How it works,” Wes said, his back to me.
He held a laminated sheet of white paper in front of his face.
“Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty.”
I finally found my ability to fucking read. The poster at the front of the room said The Twelve Steps.
Wes continued speaking. My heart pounded. Oh my God. Oh my fucking God. A bead of sweat trailed all the way down my spine. My hand shook as I busied myself pouring water from a jug into a cheap paper cup.
“Remember, we deal with alcohol—cunning, baffling, powerful.”
When the room said those last three words as a unit, I nearly jumped out of my skin.
Okay, cool, cool, cool. This was my bad, truly. I was big enough to admit I had made a grave error.
It had now become time to get the hell out of here and take this whole shameful ordeal with me to the grave.
“Without help, it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power—that One is God. May you find Him now. Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon. Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery. One: we admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.”
I chugged the water and threw the cup in the trash next to the table.
“Two. Came to believe a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
I slowly backed away.
“Three. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”
My back collided with a body and something cool and hard. I couldn’t stop my startled, pained noise from escaping. Something screeched against the floor.
“Oh shit, sorry,” a man said, who was carrying a metal chair.
Wes stopped reading. His head turned, along with the rest of the room. My vision became blurry, tunneled. All I could do now was bolt. Each step up the stairs felt like it was happening in slow motion, my feet filled with lead.
I squinted the moment I reentered the bright world above.
I made it ten strides away from the door before I had to stop to catch my breath.
My legs were wobbly, my stomach twisted into impossible knots.
My face was a shade of what I could only guess was beet red as a full-body, deep-seated cringe shook my soul.
“Nova.”
God above, please just take me out of my misery, I prayed.
My deliverance had not been granted. Wes now stood before me, after I’d made it clear I was currently frozen with no intention of changing states.
“Are you… an alcoholic?” he asked in confusion.
I stared at him, forcing short, shallow breaths into my lungs. I slowly shook my head. “Much, much worse.”
Wes’s brows rose, performing a quick calculation. “I see.”
“Do you?” I squeaked.
He nodded. “You’re obsessed with me.”
A startled laugh escaped my lips. I thought he was going to be angry. I thought he was going to tell me he never wanted to see me again.
Instead, he saved me from drowning in my ocean of humiliation with a fucking joke.