“That sounds—” Wait a second. “That sounds like exactly the amount I need. No thanks.” She brushed past the African and stomped forward on her route home.
Nice try.
THE CREATOR KNOWS NOT WHAT YOU MEAN, CHILD.
You thought I would fall for the Nigerian prince scam.
IT WAS NOT A SCAM.
You’re telling me you sent the one legit Nigerian prince to Austin to trick me?
THE LORD SAYETH NO SUCH THING.
You almost had me, but that amount was a little too on the nose. Ham-fisted, even for you. I can’t believe you thought I’d fall for it.
YOU ALMOST DID. AND YOU WOULD BE SURPRISED HOW MANY PEOPLE DO.
She ran over her options again. There was accepting God’s hand-out, which was a big fat no. There was aggressively building up her credit over the next couple years then applying for a loan again, which would require her finding a job to pay off her credit card and who knew what else. But the idea of waiting so long before being able to move forward on the bakery made her lightheaded, so that was the last resort. Then there was accepting help from strangers. That was a hell no if she didn’t want to be the Moochsiah forever. She might as well call it Moochsiah Bakery.
Damn, that’s still good.
The last option, the one Brian had suggested, might be the best she had at the moment, even if it weren’t ideal. Could she ask her friends to help her in this way? She already asked so much of her friends. First, she asked them to be friends with her, which was no easy task, she was sure. Then she asked them to publicly acknowledge they were her friends—well, she didn’t ask that of them, but they did it—and she was sure that didn’t come without its fair share of public shit-talking.
And Miranda. Why was Miranda still her friend? She wasn’t an angel. She didn’t have to keep coming back. She didn’t always have to be there when Jessica was in dark times. Yet she had always been there. She was there when Jessica smote the grackle on the playground, there when Jessica’s nerves got the best of her at her first state championship game, there to tackle Destinee and take an elbow to the face in White Light Church …
Maybe in any case other than her own, Brian’s advice made sense. But Jessica just couldn’t bring herself to ask anything else of her friends who had already done so much for her even as she offered them nothing in return.
There has to be another option that I haven’t thought of yet … I just have to think harder.
Chapter Nine
“I wish there were something I could do for Mr. Foster,” Jessica said, stirring her lo mein with her chopsticks as she and Chris lounged on her living room sofa.
“Yeah,” he said from beside her, “but you gotta focus on the bakery. Sure, you didn’t get a loan the first time you applied, but you can try again! There are more money-lending fish in the sea.”
“No, Chris. We had an in with Blanche and I was still rejected. I’ve only had a credit card for three months and apparently a four-year lucky streak of scratch-offs doesn’t count toward my FICO score. No one will lend me two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
He sucked in his noodles, chewed a few times, then said, “You don’t know that. There’s gotta be a Christian credit union or something.”
Impatience bubbled in her chest. “Please, Chris. The vast majority of Christians either actively denounce me or just pretend I don’t exist so they don’t have to take a stand one way or another. I’m not going to change their minds.”
“How do you know that? Do I have to remind you that you changed my mind?”
Jessica chuckled. “Well, sure, but that’s because you wanted to bang …”
Chris shook his head adamantly. “I mean, yes, I did want to bang you, but also, I saw what you did on the football field. I couldn’t deny what was right in front of my eyes. So maybe that’s what you gotta do. Just go into another credit union and show them you’re the daughter of God.”
She pressed her lips together, cutting off at the pass the meaner things that threatened to burst out of her mouth. “Which miracle do you suggest? Should I take them to a football field, kick an eighty yarder then turn to them and say, ‘Now you have to give me a quarter of a million dollars!’ or should I kill and then resurrect one of their interns? Oh! Or I could make bread gluten-free before their very eyes. There’s no way they would assume it was just some sleight of hand and whatever poor celiac fool I brought in wasn’t in on the trick. Or maybe I could just smite a few of their desk supplies. That definitely wouldn’t get security called on me.”
Chris listened patiently to her rant, his face pointedly devoid of a reaction. “I sense you don’t like my idea.”
“No, Chris, I love your idea.” She flopped back onto the armrest and groaned. “Sorry. Long day. God keeps tempting me with the money I need.”
“God?” Chris asked. “That sounds more like something the Devil does.”
“Right?”
“Maybe you’re misreading it. God just wants to help you.”
“Ha! Right. Because that’s a thing.”
Her phone buzzed on the coffee table and she groaned, leaning forward and opening the text message. Not surprisingly, it was Cash. She’d known it was coming; she couldn’t seem to build the habit of texting them regular updates on her life. So she responded to their request for intel with, Eating lo mein with Chris. Baked cinnamon rolls this afternoon that didn’t completely suck.
Cash quickly replied with, Pics or it didn’t happen.
“Ugh.”
“What is it?” Chris asked.
“Cash. They’re insisting I get pics of my day. Smile.” She took a quick selfie of them then sent it back.
Cash replied with, You’re one of those girls who doesn’t do the makeup thing I guess. What about the cinnamon rolls?
Damn. She was hoping the selfie would suffice since she’d forgotten to take a picture of the fresh pan.
She set down her lo mein, ran to the kitchen, pulled out one of the leftover rolls from the fridge, and brought it over to Chris. “Pretend you’re eating this.” She held up her phone for a picture.
“Can I eat it for real?”
“I mean, it’s cold, but sure.”
Chris opened his mouth wide and held the cinnamon roll up like he was about to bite into it, and Jessica snapped a few photos, sending the best one to Cash.
But when she looked back up from her phone, Chris was setting down the dessert, unbitten, on a napkin on the coffee table.
Something wasn’t right. Chris never set aside dessert. Or any food. “Is everything okay?”
“So I have big news, and maybe it’ll fix everything,” he said.
Why did he sound so nervous? “Okay.”
He adjusted on the couch cushion to face her directly, and she knew this was something big. Chris was ignoring both lo mein and a cinnamon roll to relay the news. She tried not to let that rattle her, but regardless, she was shaken.
“It’s been a really good season for me, and I’ve been talking to recruiters from the NFL. I think I might actually get an invite to the combine.”
“Wait, that’s what this is about? That’s great, Chris!”
He held up a hand, gesturing for her to reel in the enthusiasm. “It’s been my dream, yes, and if I get drafted in the first few rounds, I would have plenty of money to help you with the bakery.”
“Then why do you sound so worried?”
“It’s the NFL, Jess,” he said like that was supposed to mean something to her. “The National Football League.”
“I know what it stands—”
“What if I end up being drafted by the Seahawks and have to move across the country?”
Ah. That was a good point.
The Chinese food started to creep back up her esophagus. She grabbed his hand her hers. “I mean, we can think of something. There might be a market for a gluten-free bakery in Sacramento.”
He opened his mouth and narrowed his eyes. “Man, you still don’t know
anything about football. Seattle, Jess.”
“Sorry.”
“And maybe.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, Chris. Maybe you’ll be drafted by the Cowboys or Texans and you can stay in Texas.”
He nodded sadly. “God willing.” He met her gaze. “If I get drafted, though, would you let me help you out with the bakery?”
How could she say no when he was looking at her like that and she wanted to have dream sex with him shortly? The answer was she couldn’t. “Of course. But that’s a long way off, and with any luck, I’ll already have the bakery open by then. So let’s not worry about all that yet, okay?”
“Yeah, okay. But maybe once we’re both settled at the end of the school year and see where we are,” Chris said, “we can think about, you know, our life.”
He means marriage, doesn’t he? “Sure. Later. I mean, if we’re going to spend our lives together, what’s the hurry, right?”
Chris turned his attention to the food. “Heh. Totally.”
And so she’d bought herself another eight months at least to figure what the hell she wanted. Well, small victories.
“Let’s finish up dinner,” she suggested, and he seemed more than happy to oblige, grabbing the to-go container and forgoing the chopsticks he could hardly use by tilting it back and sucking in a mouthful of noodles.
Her phone buzzed again.
Cash, apparently, did not approve of Jessica’s photography skills: Um, are you TRYING to turn your boyfriend into a gay icon? Mouth CLOSED for food photos.
“Chris, do you want to be a gay icon?”
He shrugged. “I got no problem with that.”
“That’s what I figured.”
She texted Cash back. Chris says he’s fine being a gay icon. Send that baby into the blogosphere!
Cash quickly responded with, OMG you genuinely think blogs are still a thing. Wendy was right. You’re a complete disaster.
Jessica didn’t bother responding, instead turning on the television to ease into her impending food coma. She flipped to the six o’clock news, which was covering a list of the upcoming music festivals in October.
As the anchors rattled them off, Jessica followed Chris’s lead, scarfing noodles and lubricating her throat with copious amounts of beer to hurry along the sedation process. No matter how weird Chris’s contribution to tonight’s sexscape might be, at least she could fall back on their firm rule of no discussing real life in dreams. The diversion was worth whatever new kink she might discover about her boyfriend.
“And here’s a bit of fun news,” said Magda Masterson, the perky breasted and perkier haired anchor.
“What’s that?” asked Steve Solstice, Magda’s white-toothed and whiter skinned co-anchor.
“Looks like American Credit Union is hosting a competition next weekend at the UT football game, awarding a quarter of a million dollars to whoever can kick the longest field goal.”
“JESS!” Chris shouted pointing at the television. “What are the odds?!”
She sighed. Oh come on.
Some powerful-and-all-that beings just couldn’t take no for an answer.
Chapter Ten
“Lo mein was a good choice,” Chris said, rolling off of Jessica and falling flat onto his back in their treehouse overlooking a large swath of the Amazon Rainforest. Jessica was covered in a thick sheen of sweat from the humidity, but it wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, it had created a useful lubricant between their bodies as they expressed themselves physically in ways that, occasionally, defied physics. “We’ll be sleeping for hours.”
“Maybe we’ll never wake up,” Jess said, chuckling but also thinking about the goliath task of starting a bakery that awaited her whenever she next opened her eyes.
“How about round seventeen?”
“I think we’re at nineteen, but yes, please.”
“Please refrain,” said a perturbed male voice, and for a moment, Jessica worried it was from one of the howler monkeys that insisted on watching them and who Jessica definitely hadn’t added to this dream and Chris denied wholeheartedly was a flourish of his.
But then a much further evolved primate stepped around the troop of monkey voyeurs and walked along a branch until he reached the bridge of Chris and Jessica’s treehouse sex palace. “I’ve been trying to save this rainforest for ages, and now you’re ruining it for me,” Jesus said. “Sort of feels like it should all be control-burned to the ground after the debauchery I just witnessed.”
“You were watching?” Jessica demanded. “What the hell?”
Jesus rolled his eyes and his head along with them. “I didn’t want to. I would have interrupted before you two even got going, but this place is essentially unnavigable, even in your mind.”
“Wait,” said Chris. “You had to walk here? From where?”
“The temporal lobe.”
“Huh?”
Jessica jumped in. “You still haven’t talked to God about some workaround? It would benefit everyone if you didn’t keep walking in on us.”
“Ehh,” Jesus hedged. “I mean, I thought about it. But He just seems so busy.”
Chris grabbed a large leaf and held it over his groin. “You’re scared of God?”
“No,” Jesus said sharply, then, “although, I mean, can you blame me?”
Chris stared forlornly at his old-school savior. “What happened to you, Jesus? Growing up, I read all these stories about you where you laid a serious verbal smackdown on people and didn’t care what anyone thought about you and just kind of owned all the Pharisees until they were hellbent on killing you and even then you just shrugged it off like, ‘Come at me, bro.’ I always thought that was pretty badass. But now you’re just slinking around, creeping on our sex dreams and scared to ask God for anything, and I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
Jessica squinted at Chris then turned to her half-brother. “Wait, is what he’s saying true? You used to be kind of a badass?”
Jesus shifted on his heels and ran a hand up and down his forearm. “I mean, I still am.”
“No, you’re not,” Chris said with conviction. “You’ve lost it. You gotta get your groove back, Jesus. And I say this from a place of love.” He placed a hand over his heart to emphasize the point.
“Obviously,” Jesus said. “But let’s see you stand up to the entity that hung you up to dry, literally, as part of His plan.”
Jessica could commiserate. “Hey, come on now,” she said comfortingly, gesturing to an empty plank of wood at their feet. Jesus sat. “You’ve already been martyred. What’s worse than that? It’s not like God would get mad at you and send you to hell. Sort of ruin his story.”
Jesus placed his hands in his lap and nodded. “Yeah, and He does love His stories.”
“God would never cast down someone he loves so much.”
“But wait,” Chris said, “didn’t God cast down Luci—”
“Not helping,” Jess mumbled from the corner of her mouth. She placed a hand on Jesus’s shoulder. “I know he seems strict, but, um”—she struggled to find something else to say to comfort her half-brother and so resorted to scraping from the bottom of the barrel—“he wants to help. Even if we don’t want his help, he always offers it. For example, he keeps trying to help me finance the bakery.”
Jesus’s drooping head shot up. “Oh. No. Don’t let him help you. Trust me. His help comes at a cost. He says it doesn’t, but that’s just because he has a weird idea of what constitutes a ‘cost.’ Does it come at a cost for the greater good? No. But at a cost to you the individual? Psh. Oh yeah. If you’re okay with that, more power to you, but if I could do it all again … I just don’t know. I can’t help but think there was a less excruciating way of going about it that would have accomplished the same thing.” His attention drifted to the treetops before snapping back again. “But that’s not why I’m here.” As he stood, he knocked a large beetle from the bottom of his robe. “You have to continue progress with the bakery.
It’s important.”
“For the big picture?” Jess asked skeptically.
“Well … yeah, but, um. Just keep going, okay?”
“I’m trying, but you know the funding fell through.”
“I do know that. But think about it. Did I ever have funding from a big bank?”
“Not that I know of.”
“You bet your butt I didn’t!”
“Yeah!” Chris pumped his fist. “That’s what I’m talking about! You showed those money changers who’s boss!”
Jesus waggled a finger at Chris. “Exactly, Christopher.”
Chris whirled around to Jess. “Dude,” he said, despite her many requests not to be referred to as such right after sex, “this guy straight up punked those douchebags. Just went, BLAM! and overturned their tables.” Chris dropped his leaf to allow himself more freedom of movement as he mimed the act.
Jesus chuckled and adjusted the shoulders of his robe. “Well, someone had to show those meanies God’s way.”
Jessica wasn’t jumping on this bandwagon just yet, though. “So how did you eat? How’d you get around? How’d you feed your donkey or whatever?”
Jesus smiled triumphantly. “All good questions, Jessica. The answer is friends. My friends helped me out, and that’s who you should turn to. Your teacher was right about that.”
“Hold up.” Jessica plucked two large leaves from a nearby tree, using the fronds to cover her modestly, and stood. “You are trying to sell me on the idea of relying on friends?”
Jesus nodded, meeting her eye resolutely.
“And I’m supposed to accept that advice from the most famously betrayed-by-his-friend person in history?”
Jesus gestured vaguely with his hands, his gaze wandering around the surrounding foliage. “One might argue that Julius Caesar is more famously betrayed. Et tu Brute and all that.”
“Uh-huh.” She wasn’t convinced.
“Okay, so Judas was a meanie. Maybe even the biggest meanie of all time. That doesn’t erase the fact that I wouldn’t have survived as long as I did—which, by the way, was still fairly long for the life expectancy at the time—were it not for relying on my friends for help.”
It is Risen Page 11
