Persecution: God's Other Children. Book 2
Page 21
“I’m pretty sure you’d be a great mom, but we don’t know each other well enough yet.”
“But what about contraception?” Christy asked. Angela suspected it was a question that was personally relevant. “You don’t have to get pregnant every time you do it.”
“No contraception is perfect,” John shrugged again. “And like, who wants to grow up knowing they’re unwanted?”
In the silence that fell between them, there was only the background voices from out on the patio and the other rooms to interrupt their thoughts.
“It would sure explain a lot of the misery in the world,” Christy said, breaking the reverie.
“Yeah, but most people don’t think that far ahead. They’re too selfish.” John spoke with such scorn that Angela sensed it was from personal experience.
“So what makes you the expert?” Angela narrowed her eyes with exaggerated suspicion. As she watched him, she could see that John was thinking, probably about how much he wanted to say in front of Christy. His expressions changed back and forth, like he was having a debate with himself. She liked the way he did that, thinking about what he was going to say, rather than just blurting out the first thing that came to mind.
A look of resignation stayed on his face. The same look she recognised from when he told her about his boss Eloise wanting him to father her baby. She had a feeling she was going to regret asking the question.
“Natalie, my ex,” he said for Christy’s benefit, “had different ideas about sex.”
Angela winced. She was almost certain she didn’t want to hear this, but she told herself that it was important if they were ever to be together.
“Look,” Christy put her hand on Angela’s arm to interrupt. “Maybe I should go back to the piano and leave you two to talk?”
“No, it’s okay,” John said. “I’ve got no problems with you hearing all this, if you want.”
Christy looked to Angela, who nodded her consent. Angela figured that their curiosity must be about the same.
“Nat was a college student. She lived with her mom before she moved in with me. I blame the second Global Financial Crisis, but she lost her waitressing job at Taco Bell. Things were tough for her, but she got some work modelling, swim-wear, lingerie. It was good money, but she could get better money doing nude modelling.”
“I think I know where this is going,” Christy said.
“She didn’t mind doing…that?” Angela didn’t try to hide her look of distaste.
“I think she liked the attention.” John had a thoughtful look on his face. “Maybe it was because her dad wasn’t there…”
“Or she had no moral guidance,” Angela put in.
“Yeah, that too, I guess.” A twisted smile crossed his face. “All I know was that she was popular. Maybe because she was new or because she had a…”
“Hot body?” Angela’s words dripped with sarcasm, but he didn’t appear to notice.
“An open mind,” John said in a flat tone. “Anyway, it wasn’t long before she was asked to ‘star’ in porn movies.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Angela’s face screwed up at the thought, mirroring Christy’s. “That’s so gross.”
“It’s just sex,” John imitated Nat’s voice in falsetto. “What’s the problem? They’re all tested for diseases and we’re all consenting adults.”
“And you stayed with her?” Angela asked, “even though she was doing those sorts of things with all those people?”
“I loved her.”
Angela felt his words lodge in her heart. Her chest tightened at the thought that John had loved someone else. She chided herself. The woman was dead, but the pain in his words made her feel that he must still have feelings for her.
“It’s funny, but people see all those women as some sort of ideal sex fantasy, but they forget that they’re someone’s girlfriend.”
“How did it end?” Christy asked.
John frowned ruefully. “We argued. I wanted her to stop. I told her I didn’t want to share her with anyone. She said I wasn’t being practical. She even suggested that I come along and meet the crew, that I might even get a gig myself.”
“So why didn’t you?” Christy asked.
Angela had no difficulty believing that John, with his gorgeous body, would have been right at home in that sort of environment, so much so that she had to ask, “I mean, you didn’t, did you?”
John frowned and shook his head. “No,” he scoffed, “Sex should be something special between two people who love each other, not some sort of out-there, version of extreme sport.”
Angela and Christy nodded their silent agreement.
“Besides, it took all the fun out of it when you know you’re up against professionals.” He said trying to be funny and lighten the mood, but it just made her feel sick. The thought of John being intimate with someone who had been doing all those disgusting things made her stomach churn.
Her repulsion must have shown on her face, as John hastily added, “We stopped having sex soon after she started on the set. I just couldn’t stand it. Some of the things she said she needed to practice…”
Angela felt her knees go slack. She had to sit down. In her mind, a web-like image appeared. There was John linked to this woman, Natalie. She in turn was linked to dozens, no, more likely hundreds of others, who knows? The others were linked to the rest of the world. All the vile and filth in the world were only a chastity vow away from her. She looked about for a chair, all the while the words ‘unclean, unclean’ echoed in her head. In the same way, she and Zeke were linked in perfect isolation, pure, as it was meant to be.
John and Christy helped her to a chair and took her glass away. She pushed away his hands, those strong hands, those same hands that had touched that woman, that Jezebel. That evil creature had defiled and polluted her man, made him unclean, long before Angela had even met him. Her mother had been right all along, these worldly men have no morals. She hated that her mother’s cynicism had prevailed over her hope and dreams. She knew now that her relationship with John had been doomed from the start.
Little wonder he had been so forgiving of her past with Zeke. Zeke, who had kept himself only for her, who had never been sullied by another. Compared with John’s past, hers was virtually nothing. A hot tear rolled down her cheek.
Angela looked up to see John glowering, still smarting from her rejection. “I’m sorry,” his words came out terse from a clenched jaw. “I should never have mentioned it.”
Angela ignored his self-recriminations. She would like to weep for their relationship’s lost potential, but the feeling was overcome by anger directed at John. He should have left that woman as soon as she started doing those horrible things. But he stayed because he’s too stupidly loyal. That woman must have known that and used it to her advantage. Angela could have wished her dead if she wasn’t dead already. She snapped herself out of that line of thought.
Instead, she asked, “How did she die?”
John blinked. “I thought I’d told you. It was a car crash.”
Angela kept looking at him, silently demanding him to elaborate.
His shoulders slumped and with a heavy sigh of acquiescence, he pulled another chair close by and sat heavily on it.
“We had just had another fight about her job. I felt like I was partly to blame for her having to work; not being a good enough provider, but we had enough to get by. I told her that we didn’t need that much money and that I’d be happier with less money if it meant that I didn’t have to share her with anyone else.”
John wrung his hands together, he was clearly uncomfortable but he continued, “She said I was being childish and insecure. I told her she was only doing it because she liked it.”
“So what if I do?” she said. “I like sex. Is that bad? Is enjoying your job so bad?”
“I told her that it was if it was hurting me, but she just told me to ‘grow up’.”
John lifted his head. Pain was etched on his f
ace. He was struggling to speak, but any sympathy Angela felt for him was tempered by impatience. “Go on,” she prompted.
“Those were her last words to me. She stormed out the door. It was early one Sunday morning, and she was t-boned by a drink-driver at an intersection a few blocks later.”
“I’m so sorry,” Christy said and laid her hand on his shoulder.
Angela wouldn’t let herself feel that sorry for him. ‘Divine justice’ was all she could think, and although she was shocked at the viciousness of her emotions, she was glad that the Lord had taken that monster away. She congratulated herself on not saying it out aloud.
“The other guy was coming home from a big night out and still way over the limit. We initially thought he must have run the red light, but the traffic cameras showed it was Nat.”
Angela suddenly had an image of the woman driving, at speed, away from John’s place. Her anger giving way to feelings of loss and self-recrimination as she came to understand how her actions had hurt the man who loved her. Then, finally understanding that he loved her so much and had been desperately trying to help her, had made her eyes fill with tears. With the thought that she should turn around and make it up with John filling her head, she didn’t see the red light.
Angela experienced the snapshot into Natalie’s final moments with a certainty and clarity that she knew, with equal conviction, came from a divine vision.
“Oh my God,” she was all she could say. She felt so ashamed at her earlier malicious thoughts.
“I know,” Christy gathered them all into a group hug. “It’s terrible.”
Overcome with the power of her vision, Angela didn’t say anything, she just held onto John and wondered where their relationship could go from here. Did she have it in her to accept his past? As he had told her parents, he hadn’t done anything he was ashamed of, but that was only by his standards.
John sat back, breaking the embrace. “You know, the funny thing about it is that all the money she earned went to pay for damages when the drunk sued. Lucky we weren’t married or I’d be still paying for his drinks.”
“So the drunk survived?” Christy asked.
“Oh yeah, they often do,” John slowly shook his head. “Has something to do with them being all relaxed and fluid, or so Jarred says, but I wouldn’t recommend it over seat belts.”
Christy laughed. Angela sat back and watched them with a sense of detachment. She supposed she was still in shock, but she couldn’t see how they could be so trivial and jovial.
John was starting to tell Christy all about how Jarred was his half-brother all the sordid details about his family when Christy shot her a quick, excited smile.
Maybe Christy was just being sympathetic and trying to cheer he up, but Angela suddenly had the impression that Christy was lapping up all the salacious information and storing it up for gossiping later.
She now wished that Christy wasn’t there and that she hadn’t heard all about his harlot of an ex-girlfriend, but it was too late for that. She would have to swear her to secrecy. She couldn’t let that story get about, especially for her mother to hear it, not if she ever wanted to seriously be with John. But did she want to spend the rest of her life with someone so tainted by the world?
Their conversation was cut short by crashing sounds coming from outside. Someone shouted, “Get lost freak.”
“Jarred,” John groaned. He put down his drink and rushed outside. Angela and Christy followed.
They found Jarred on the ground, sitting himself up. A throng of angry party-goers stood over him. They looked like they were just waiting for Jarred to get up or do something that would justify a lynching. They were barely held back by Aaron, who stood with his arms up trying to placate them. Jarred looked shaken but unhurt as he brushed dirt and dust from his jeans.
“What’s going on?” John shot challenging glares to the foremost individuals of the group as he helped his brother up.
“He insulted them,” Aaron put in before anyone else could.
Jarred adjusted his glasses. He had the surly expression he always wore when he had to agree to something that he didn’t think was right. “I just told them a few truths that they can’t deal with.”
Angela rolled her eyes. “Do you have absolutely no social skills at all?”
Both John and Jarred gave her the same hurt, angry look. She could see their mother in both of them.
“They started arguing about the disease outbreak in Egypt,” Aaron said by way of explanation. “Someone suggested it might be a Biblical plague and your brother laughed.”
“All I said was that they were a bunch of temporally displaced, cognitively challenged, dysfunctional anachronistic anomalies that are so insular as to be unaware that when the referendum is done, they’ll be socially, philosophically and morally totally redundant.”
He said it all so quickly that to Angela it was as if he had spoken a foreign language. She suspected it was the same for most everyone else too.
“Unfortunately,” Aaron said with a shrug, “he gave them a translation right after.”
“Yeah and that’s when your friend shoved me over,” Jarred nodded his head to indicate his attacker.
Angela saw Zeke grinning from behind a crush of male bodies. She saw that John had spotted him also and looked like he was working out how best to rip his way through the wall of people to get to him.
“Who are they anyway?” one of the terse faces demanded. “Who invited them?”
Angela felt her cheeks burn. It would be much easier to turn away and disown them, but she stepped forward. “They’re with me. I’m so sorry if they caused any trouble.” She gave Jarred a disapproving stare which he shrugged off as he rubbed his elbow. “They should be going soon.” The pack of hostile faces nodded and voiced their approval.
“Going?” John echoed.
“I think it would be best,” Libby said from the doorway. There were murmurs of agreement all round.
“But…” John pointed towards Zeke whose satisfied smirk deepened.
“I’ll be fine,” Angela said, although she didn’t have a clue what she’d do about Zeke.
“Yeah,” Zeke called out. “Don’t worry ‘bout her. We’ll look after her just fine.
Judging by the way John’s nostrils flared and his jaw muscles bulged and twitched, Angela was certain he had heard all the inferences.
She put her hand on his taut chest. His glare didn’t move from Zeke. “No,” she said in a quieter voice just for John’s ears, “I’ll be okay.
John glanced down at her. “I don’t want to leave you with…him.” He nodded savagely at Zeke.
“I can’t avoid him forever…”
“But…”
“You’ll just have to trust me.”
“Trust?”
“Yes, like I trust you with you boss, Eloise.” She said the words with a firmness that matched their calmness.
John opened his mouth to protest, but pressed his lips together and frowned.
“You going?” Zeke called out, “or do we have to call the cops?”
John shot him a murderous glare before he turned to his brother. “Come on you, were going.”
Angela watched as John steered his brother towards the door. He mumbled an apology to Libby and her parents on his way out. He left without another look back.
“The opposite of love,” Libby said quietly in her ear. She had moved to be standing beside her and nodded in Zeke’s direction, “is indifference.”
Angela forced herself to follow Libby’s gaze, but by then Zeke was already walking away, busy talking to his friends.
*
It wasn’t until later, when the speeches were over and the guests were starting to leave, that Zeke approached her.
She had been chatting with Libby, Christie in a group of girls, but the conversation suddenly stopped as their looks wandered over her shoulder. Angela turned to see Zeke approaching, his normal swagger marred after stumbling into a chair.
“Should have been us,” Zeke said when he got close. His words were heavy and slow as if he was trying not to slur them.
Angela felt the urge to slap him hard, and with a closed hand. Instead she reminded herself to breathe deeply as she gave him a cold, tight smile.
“Still could be,” she said, following her mother’s script. As much as she hated to admit it, it looked as though her mother’s machinations might come to fruition. Despite his angry tantrums, here he was. Maybe his hurt pride had been diluted by a few drinks. She hoped it had also blunted his precious attitude. Perhaps playing hard-to-get was working.
“But you blew it,” he laughed as he put his hand to his forehead, his thumb and index finger outstretched. “You lose.” He turned and staggered away. “Loser.”
Angela watched him go. Her anger told her to let him go, that she deserved to be treated better. However, the images of John being corrupted by his history made her mind squirm.
“No,” she said in a small, but firm voice that carried across the silent room. Zeke stopped at the sound of her voice.
“I’m not the one who messed up,” she said, louder, with growing conviction. “I am the one trying to do the right thing.”
“Ha!” Zeke spat. “If you call sharing body fluids with a rock ape the right thing to do.”
“We’re not…” Angela started to say, aware of her girlfriends listening to the whole exchange. “We’ve only ever kissed.”
Zeke gave her a long, scrutinizing look, but had to put a hand on a chair to steady himself. After a moment, he waved her away, declaring, “I don’t believe you.”
This time Angela didn’t interrupt his ungainly, lumbering departure.
“But it’s true,” she said at his back, but only so her friends could hear.
Libby gave her a hug. “Maybe I was wrong about him being indifferent.”
Chapter 23
Polling day arrived the next day without incident.