Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 122514 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 613(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 408(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122514 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 613(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 408(@300wpm)
“Yeah, well, he feels like a dumbass.”
Pouring water into the machine, I hit brew and went to a chair across from Reese. Tugging my knees up, I hugged them to me. “What do you mean?”
“He told me in the afternoon what he’d done and wanted to apologize. The reason he did it was justified—we already knew that—but the way he did it was dickish. I went to my cabin to call you, saw your shit gone, and couldn’t find my phone. I went to find your friends and discovered them having a little meeting in the kitchen guy’s back office. They were upset.”
I swallowed over a knot. “At me?”
“They didn’t say that, but they asked if I’d be willing to speak about why you were staying in my cabin if they needed me. I told them I’d more than say a few things, and my coach too. After that, I decided just to wait till we were done, then try to bargain a deal with Coach to let me come here and get my phone.”
The coffee was starting to brew.
“You said my friends came to your cabin in the middle of the night?”
He nodded. “They had to wait until another guy showed up, the speaker dude, but they’d convened the board and had them willing to do some form of emergency meeting about your boss.”
“Keith?” I leaned forward.
The coffee was ready to pour, but I was on the edge of my seat.
How had this all gone down when I wasn’t there?! The laws of karma were not on my side.
“They were so mad about what he did to you, what he’d done to you the whole time you were there, that they got fed up.”
I might’ve been wrong about karma.
“They called the board and there was a five-am video conference. They wanted to do it before your boss got in.”
Reese’s eyes flashed, and his jaw was like cement. He leaned forward, his gaze holding mine captive. “I sat there and I listened as your friends ran through a list of shitty things your boss had done, and not just these last two weeks, but for years. And you were the subject of several of the items. The fucker sexually harassed you? You mentioned him making comments, but nothing like what I heard. How he radioed you on the camp radio where everyone could hear, asking if you were making out with your boyfriend? How you walked into a meeting with another guy behind you, and he accused you both of screwing around in the woods? I listened to your friends explain to a room of old, white fat dudes how the ‘boyfriend’ had only held your hand once, and you’d only ‘dated’ for two days, and you’d literally just walked into the meeting at the same time as the other guy. And there was more.”
His nostrils flared. Shoving back from his chair, he began to pace: around my living room, back to the kitchen, and around to the living room again. He kept moving, his hands unfisting and fisting in front of him.
“After they got through their sixteen-page fucking memo, complete with names and phone numbers and taped testimony from others, they got to me. I had to sit there and first deal with their fanning, which was fine, but then the leers. When I told them how you and I became friends, how I was at your cabin—fuck those leers. I could feel the dirtiness coming off of them. They didn’t seem to care until I told them I’d gone into your cabin. That got their fucking attention. I went to grab the rest of your stuff. Juan tried too. We both got sick. That’s what made them perk up. They seemed resigned to the shitty stuff your boss had already done, but they didn’t start sweating until they heard that two pro ball players got sick from entering a cabin that wasn’t condemned on their property.”
Icy dread lined my spine. “Did you tell them about us?”
He snorted. “Hell no. All your credibility would’ve been gone. You’d have to be a goddamn nun, do charity events twenty-four seven, openly donate all of your earnings to God, and maybe then they might give you the benefit of the doubt. I’m sorry, but that sucks. That really fucking sucks.”
I sank as far down on my chair as I could get. I was almost in a ball.
He didn’t know. He couldn’t understand what his words were doing, how I never would’ve been believed, but now I was?
I pressed my forehead to my knees, feeling tears on my face once again.
I was so sick of it.
I was so sick of life, and that hadn’t hit me until Reese laid it all out.
All of that I’d lived. All of that I still carried. All of that, alone, just on me.