2. Olly #3
“I got a huge promotion at work today, and it includes a furnished apartment down by the waterfront that I can move into right away. They need me on-site for emergencies at the remote office, so the rent is part of my compensation. Can you afford this place on your own? Or do you want to move with me?” I tossed that offer in there.
The thought of Shepard and me not being “Shepard and me” was suddenly too scary, too lonely.
Could I really move into a gorgeous apartment in a desirable, safe neighborhood and leave him behind?
Twelve years of memories suddenly hit me like a truck, and I was once again holding in tears.
I knew I could reach out and poke at his mind a little and he’d move right along with me, but that felt too wrong to do with someone, especially when they were all I really had in the land of the living.
He let out a bark of laughter, though I don’t know if it was meant to sound cheerful or ironic.
“This palace, you mean? Yeah, I can afford it, thanks. I found two more mice today. They can start pulling their weight around here. And a promotion sounds like it’s about damn time.
You practically already ran that department.
I’m proud of you, kiddo.” And, just like how a faucet sometimes leaks, so do a person’s emotions or stray thoughts, especially when something big was happening.
Shepard was proud of me, and happy for me.
But he felt regret, too. For all the times we could have been more than what we were, and for the friendship we had built as two halves of a somewhat functional whole.
We did laundry together, cooked together, and went grocery shopping together.
All of those would become solitary activities, and in a lot of ways, both of our lives were changing, forever.
“Hey, remember in Kingston,” he began, “when four of us lived in that one and a half bedroom monstrosity so we could make rent and it was like, a rotating cast? It was always the freshman, too. They’d find their first mouse or patch of mould and be out of there with one phone call home.”
“But always you and me, no matter how tick, tick... BOOM! it would get in there,” I said, extracting one hand from our cuddle and tickling him mercilessly in the ribcage, like always.
He shrieked like a little girl, and then I laughed with him.
Shepard would be okay, and if he wasn’t, I was dragging him to the South End to live with me, and he could like it or lump it.
Now, I just needed to pack my life up into about a dozen boxes and look out for myself.
And the tiny passenger inside me.
It was just after nine o’clock when I finally remembered about Gemma’s cell phone snafu, and as Jeff had a policy that no problem is too small to touch base, I picked up my phone from the nightstand and dialed his cell.
Beside me, Shepard lay snoring like a chainsaw.
I didn’t worry about waking him. He slept like the dead.
On the third ring, I got a cheery voice saying, “Thank you for calling Aaron’s Shrimp Shack, how may I help you?
” I gave a small but legitimate laugh because Aaron was a bit of a goofball.
“Hey, Aaron? It’s Olly. Could you grab Jeff for me?
I'm in a bit of a pickle at work, and I need his advice ASAP.”
“No problem, my dear.” He then bellowed, “Jeff, your work wife wants to talk to you!”
Jeff took over the phone, and he barely got out a hello when I said plainly, “Jeff, I did not take Gemma Diaz’s cell phone.
For one thing, it looks about twenty-five years old.
I didn’t even know phones that old could text.
What am I supposed to do here when the boss orders me to hand in something I've never even touched? Where would I even have gotten it?”
“From document storage,” Jeff replied, leaving me a bit gobsmacked.
“Jeff, why would her cell phone be in document storage and not with her? I watched her use it just this morning.”
Now it was his turn to go quiet. Then he said, “Don’t worry about this anymore, Olly. I'll tell the boss that you turned it in to me, and I returned it to its box.”
“But that makes no sense, Jeff. Gemma has her phone. I watched her put it in her purse this morning.” I heard a sharp intake of breath.
“Don’t talk about this with anyone else, okay?
Meet me in the morning a half hour before work at the Wall of Excellence,” he said, in what was a carefully neutral tone.
I racked my brain trying to think of where he meant.
While I was concentrating, I initially didn’t notice the moths descending upon me, appearing out of thin air and alighting on my hand that wasn’t holding my cell phone.
They were moon moths, with beautiful shades of green marked by stark purple lines.
Each one emitted a soft green glow that I knew they never did in nature.
I lifted my head to look around and saw in the light of my bedroom lamp that while some strays were flying around the room, they were concentrated almost entirely around me, save two which fluttered around a sleeping Shepard.
They took my breath away, while at the same time, I thought, No! Not this again. Not now.
One tickled at my nose while a concerned-sounding Jeff came through the phone, as my other arm was stretched out, allowing the moths to land on me if they liked.
“Olly, are you still there?”
Knocked back to reality, I asked, “What? I mean, where?”
“You know, it's that place on the mezzanine level where the company hangs all the plaques it gets or trophies for one thing or another.
There's something in there that I think we both need to see.
Especially you, because you don't even know how creepy you sound when talking about Gemma, and me because I can't believe most of what I've heard from you about her, even though I know you’re not a liar.”
I disconnected the call, and as the last moth vanished into whatever ether had birthed it, I felt like crying.
While I grabbed an elevator to whisk me up one floor, I ignored the grumble of the other workers about just taking the stairs.
I saw that Jeff was waiting for me on the mezzanine level, having what looked like a casual stroll, but he was full of tension.
I didn’t need to be psychic to see that.
He was leaking emotions, but trying desperately not to, with his shielding.
Most people actually could shield naturally, and did, especially if they held some particular secret they didn’t want to get out.
They just didn’t realize that was what they were doing.
When he turned to do another pass in front of the glass Wall of Excellence, he spotted me and nodded.
I made my way over, giving a semi-enthusiastic wave as I went.
“Good morning, Jeff,” I greeted him, taking my briefcase shoulder bag off and setting it on the floor. I leaned it up against the wall so I could face whatever this confrontation would be about without the heaviness bogging me down.