Page 104 of Total Obsession

Each day it felt more and more like the walls were closing in on me and by Tuesday of the second week, I had to get out.

“Where’s my coat?” I asked Axe, looking around for the garment. I’d hidden it behind one of the chairs because it had been stained in blood and still smelled like that man in the alleyway, and I didn’t want to look at it.

“I washed it,” Axe said. “It’s hanging on the back of the bathroom door.”

I paused for a moment at hearing his words.

“You washed it?”

He nodded.

I was about to say “thank you,” but I stopped myself. I still wasn’t ready to forgive him. If I’d ever be ready.

I made my way over to the bathroom and grabbed it off the hanger on the back of the door. I looked it over and it had probably never been so clean in its life. There was absolutely no trace of blood on it and it smelled like a fresh load of laundry.

“I guess you’re good at getting blood out of clothing,” I mumbled as I made my way out to the main part of the room.

“Where are you going?” Axe asked, turning off the television.

“Out,” I said to him.

He stood, and I could see that he was still very much in pain from his injuries.

“Absolutely not,” he replied.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said to him. “But, when did you suddenly become the boss of me?”

“Zoey,” he said with a pleading look. “I’m trying to watch out for your safety. I know that we can’t stay here forever, but at least for right now we’re safe. I’m trying to figure everything out.”

“I don’t care about being safe when I feel dead, Axe,” I spat. “I’m not just going to hole myself up here for weeks on end, eating take out and wasting away.”

“If you go out, I’m going with you,” he said, trying to limp over to wear his own jacket was.

“You do what you want,” I snarled. “But, I’m not waiting around for you.”

I pulled on a paper medical mask that I had stuffed in my coat pocket out, put on my sunglasses, and slammed the door behind me. I walked briskly away from the room, because I really did not want him following me.

Given his track record, though, I had no doubt that Axe would figure out where I was within a few minutes, even in his injured state.

It was around ten in the morning and the air was crisp and clear. Even through the mask it felt good to breathe something other than stale motel air. As the sun shone down on me, I tried to organize my thoughts about Axe and about what I was doing here.

Why was I staying?

Well, the first answer was because I had no money and nowhere to go. It was either stay at this motel or be homeless.

I realized that if I didn’t want to rely on Axe for the rest of my life, I would need to find a job. I shook my head in defeat. I wasn’t sure what sort of job, other than pornstar, would be available to me now in the fashion or film industry.

Maybe I could waitress for a bit. I’d done it when I’d moved out to Los Angeles years ago. It was good money and if you worked at the right restaurant, no one really asked questions about who you were or where you were from. They were just happy for the help.

I decided that that was what I was going to do. Find a diner, work as many hours as I could, save up as much as I could, and then figure it out from there. I walked out to the main road and looked left and then right. We were already in a fairly rundown part of town, over by Newark Airport it seemed. I figured it shouldn’t be too hard to find a place.

I decided to start walking right, because it seemed like more of the restaurants were that way. After a few minutes of walking, I spotted a sign for a diner in the distance, and for the first time in over a week, I felt excitement.

It was a pathetic thing to feel excited about, but it was also something that I had control over. If everything Axe had said could be believed, I hadn’t been in control of my life for the past fifteen years. Even if it meant that I started over at the bottom, at least I would be the one calling the shots from now on.

Just was I was about to walk into the diner, I heard his voice behind me. “Zoey.”

He sounded winded and out of breath. I knew it was Axe that had somehow caught up with me, but I didn’t turn around to look at him. I just walked through the door, leaving him out in the cold.

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