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“True,” I said. “But I almost feel like money would keep me from falling for them. I would always have to ask myself whether I was really with them for them or if the money was a factor. Like, I’m not sure I could trust my own feelings around them.”
“Well, at least you can say you’ve already had sex with a man who has more money than all the men I’ve been with combined.”
We shared a laugh. This was getting too weird, even for me. But Kayley was making some valid points. She was one of the goofiest, but also one of the smartest people I knew.
Kayley grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge. She handed one of them to me. “I just don’t know if I should be doing this,” I said. “I feel like I’m leading him on.”
“You aren’t. You discussed everything with him before this. You told him how you really feel. There is nothing left to talk about. Now, it’s just going with the flow. Why are you so scared of putting a label on something, or of doing something that could conceivably be labeled?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. But it’s this weird fear, almost like shame, has me right by my throat and it won’t let go. No matter how hard I try, it just keeps messing with me. It’s constantly tapping me on the shoulder. Should I be doing this? Should I be thinking this? I don’t know if it will ever go away.”
“That’s tough,” she replied. “You should just embrace it and realize it is a part of you. And then you can just tell it to go to hell. Ignore it and it will go away. Or it will just become a part of you. The best thing you can do is to do what you want to do without any regards to it. To overcome a fear, you have to constantly expose yourself to that fear until it no longer has any meaning to you.
“I agree,” I said. “That’s why I think I’m going to go for this. I will still be afraid, because it is such an antithesis of what I told myself I was going to do with my life, but eventually I’m hoping it will be the right thing and then that fear and anxiety will go away.”
“That’s right,” she replied.
We turned on a funny movie and lost ourselves in it. As I watched and relaxed a bit, I thought about how bad the day actually was. I did not have a good day in the slightest. In fact, Jenna yelled at me all day and told me what a piece of crap I was right to my face. I was tempted to contact someone about this harassment. No one had a right to speak to me that way. As an employee I had some rights. But I knew that I would lose if I did go to the Better Business Bureau or contacted a lawyer about unfair employee treatment. I was hoping that maybe one of our clients would overhear and say something, but so far, they’d all been pretty tight lipped.
I hated that job and I that stupid bitch. I’d nearly let her have it today. I was so close to telling her to go to hell. She needed to be told off and good, then she needed her damn head slapped off. That’s what she really needed. I wanted to be the one to do that to her so badly, but as of right now I was stuck.
We finished the movie and I went to bed. As I got ready for bed, I realized that the one thing really keeping me going was the fact that I had softball tryouts in a few days. I felt I might actually have a shot at making the team. I’d been practicing when I could. Typically, I would get up early in the morning and I would go to the fields in the park near my place. There I would practice pitching into the backstop and hitting off the tea into the fence. I was getting the feel back for things, but I needed someone to really practice with if I was going to get my form back. I might not have that kind of time before the tryouts, though.
I wondered if Lance would be interested in helping me. That could be a good possibility. He was athletic and I was sure he’d love to help me with anything I asked him too.
Lance… I’d gone almost ten minutes without thinking about him. I was gushing so hard over this man. He was amazing and I couldn’t hide the fact that I wanted him more and more all the time. But I had to play it cool and just see how things moved along. I didn’t really know him yet. And I didn’t know quite yet how we would work as a couple.
I laid down and closed my eyes, dreading the next day at work, but looking forward to the evening with Lance. Maybe a miracle would happen, and I could just drop this job soon. I needed a miracle alright.
Chapter Thirteen
Lance
“Wow, that was amazing,” Kat said as she pushed herself back from the table.
I smiled and poured her another glass of wine. “I’m glad you thought so.”
“Where did you learn to cook like that?” she asked me.
“I am actually self-taught. I picked it up during high school when I started playing competitive sports, and most notably started to do martial arts. I decided I needed to take much better care of my body and be careful about what I put in it, so I just started messing around in the kitchen bit. Technically, our personal chef Albert taught me a few basics, but my father put a stop to it because he didn’t want me to fancy any careers in the culinary arts.”
“So, he would have been devastated if you’d wanted to be a chef?”
“Oh, he would have gone ballistic. That’s just the way he is. He hates the fact I’m a firefighter, but at least it’s a masculine pursuit in his eyes. Being a chef, not so much.”
“I see,” she said. “So, how has that been? Work hectic lately?”
“Not too bad actually,” I replied. “I’ve been keeping myself pretty busy. Yesterday I had the day off, but I spent it being busy.”
“Yeah, you were telling me about some of your interests and pursuits. That’s awesome. I don’t see how you find the time or the energy.”
“Well, you have to make the time,” I said. “You have to feed your body right, exercise properly, rest well, and make sure you don’t let anyone, or anything waste your time. Life is far too short, and most people spend the majority of their time with people and things who waste it.”
“That’s pretty insightful,” Kat said. “I like that philosophy.”
It made me happy to hear that she thought I had something to say that would make her think a bit or look at life a different way. This was only because I had a way of spending far too much time inside of my own head. I often sat around when I was younger musing about things and just trying to wrap my head around how life worked, and how I could make mine better. I already decided at an early age that I did not need money to make me happy, but I now found it ironic that I was so upset by the prospect of not receiving my inheritance. Then again, that was more about the injustice of being cut out then it was about the actual money. Hell, I would probably give a lot of it to charity, or maybe use it to invest in some worthwhile startups and give some up-and-comers a chance to show the world what they could do.
I wasn’t sure how to bring up this subject, but now that we’d eaten, I figure I might as well get it out of the way. “Would you like some ice cream for dessert? A sundae perhaps?”
