And of course, Krysten laid into me on more than one occasion, including when she and I both stayed long after office closing hours with her compiling a backlog of project reports and me handling correspondence for a million different people, which, I was still confused about how I was in professional contact with this many people.
“You and Helena do work very closely together these days,” she said.
I knew what she was getting at, and I didn’t want to address it. “I told you she’s good.”
“You will drown in an ocean of denial.”
I hunched my shoulders, still focusing on the shitty beat-up laptop I’d gotten secondhand online. “I’d say I won’t, but that feels like it proves your point.”
“Do you intend to ever tell her the truth?”
“Yeah, I will. I will. Just… once… once this is settled,” I mumbled, looking away up at the ceiling. “I don’t want to mess up this event with my whole…”
“You carry a smoldering powder keg and promise it will wait for a good time to go up in flames.”
“Look, just go ahead and call me stupid.”
“You are stupid.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I thought that would be more cathartic than it was.”
“But for being stupid, you are quite a smart one. I believe you can work this out.” She closed her laptop, standing up. “You must make sure to sleep tonight, or you will keel over and die.”
“I know. I will. Home sweet home before long.” Back to see Harold, my OG guy, the one who had been there since the beginning.
Or at least I thought so, because I got back to the complex at eleven, texting Helena on the way there and wondering what was bothering her since her tone felt a little off when she replied, but my Helena-related anxieties disappeared when I got to the door and my key wouldn’t turn in the lock.
“The fuck?” I rattled my key a bit more, and it was only then that I realized there was a different door handle than usual, shiny and polished and new. They changed the locks. My stomach dropped. “Shit,” I said, quietly, to the night air here in this smelly back road, and I rested my forehead against the door as I texted my landlord.
JULIE
Hey, someone changed the locks, and my key won’t fit. Can you come get me a new key?
The fucker responded immediately. Like he’d been waiting but didn’t want to reach out first.
LANDLORD
Sorry, you’re not in my tenants list. I think you have the wrong number.
Jesus fucking Christ. I felt a cold flush in my face, standing there clutching the phone with no sensation in my fingertips.
Shit.The authorities must have caught him leasing the place out, and… and what? If he was pretending he didn’t know me, he must have played it off as a squatter.
Which meant I was out of luck.
JULIE
Dude, don’t play dumb. I’ve got payment records to you, text logs.
I’ll bring this to the housing authority
Are you just going to ignore me?
He was just going to ignore me. Shit. All of the messages marked as read, no reply.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I groaned, banging my head on the door. All my fucking stuff was in there.
That fucking suit I’d paid so fucking much for. I was fucked. I was so far beyond fucked.
