“Flove,” she said with awe.
Her genuine reply, her enthusiasm, made me smile and soothed my soul.
We talked until my eyelids were tugging shut, and I desperately wanted her here with me as much as I did Elliot.
She made me hang up, so I could work tomorrow, and promised to call me back in the afternoon,
The next couple of days passed in a manic blur of working during the day, texting Elliot after I got home, just a quickhey, and then talking to Fallyn the rest of the night.
Thursday morning, I was feeling the strain of the highs and lows. I skipped arm day at the gym, and headed straight for Loading Java for coffee and carbs instead.
As I was walking out, I brushed past Bryce, who was heading in.
“Link. Hey.” He surprised me by stopping and spinning to face me. In the three years since we’d fired him, I’d never heard of anyone running into him near the offices.
No reason to get into anything with him here, he had as much a right to Lyn’s chocolate croissants as anyone. “Hey, Bryce.”
“How are things?” His tone was almost genuine but something more sinister cut underneath.
Unfortunately, I was too polite to just brush him off. “Good. You?”
“Yeah? Good? I saw the game crashed a few times. Is the guy you got running security any good at his job?”
Bryce was friends with Chris. It was likely he knew exactly who we had working on game security. “She’s the best. Can’t stop all the assholes all the time.”
“I guess you can’t.” He smirked. “Anyway. I’ll let you get back to it.”
I was happy to walk away, but the brief encounter lingered in my thoughts as I headed across the street to the office.
27/
fallyn
The conversations at night with Link kept me sane. Every night I fell for him a little harder. I couldn’t ignore that he was connected to Elliot, but at least ET Howard never came up in conversation.
The rest of life wasn’t so great. Thursday morning I was staring at my streaming rig, trying to convince myself thattodaywould be the day I made a video. That after so much time away, I’d get back to work today.
I needed to. My revenue was rapidly falling off. If I wasn’t putting out new content, the algorithms stopped showinganyof my content to people, and I was losing the financial subscribers as well, thanks to the gossip about what had happened with Elliot and Link.
The denials we all put out didn’t do much of anything. Go figure.
It was about that time when something else should happen on the internet, crisis-wise and move people on to a new topic, right?
But apparently not.
I’d always prided myself on running a one-woman operation, but I’d let the admin slide off too. I couldn’t look at my inbox,or the comments on posts. I couldn’t face the number of people calling me names. I’d tried Tuesday night, and I had to shut everything down.
Apparently it didn’t take me long to reach my limit being called a slut, people telling me I was an embarrassment to empowered women everywhere, hearing that I was disgusting and pathetic, oh, and that I deserved to be raped until I was dead.
Even thinking about facing that again made my stomach churn.
I got a text from the place where my PO Box was located, letting me know the box was full and I needed to empty it.
That was something I could do. Getting out, getting some air, reminding myself that the entire world wasn’t insane, would be good for me.
Driving my Rav4 was nothing compared to Elliot’s Bentley, but it was mine, it was comfortable, and it was the perfect shade of red.
I took my time sifting through my mailbox, separating out junk to throw away, letters, and the little slips that said I had packages. Usually I looked forward to fan mail, but today I was dreading it. It hadn’t been long enough for people to be sending me physical hate, though. I needed to calm down. Living in fear forever wouldn’t serve me.