LVI

THERE SHALL COME IN THE LAST DAYS SCOFFERS WALKING AFTER THEIR OWN LUSTS

2 PETER 3:3

ZELLA La STELLA (FRIEND and ROMANTIC INTEREST OF SEVEN SALLIE)

“I have a confession,” I heard myself say and instantly regretted it. I could feel Seven squirm behind me. He didn’t deserve it after the despicable thing I did to him the previous night. I’m sure he thought I was about to reveal what happened between us. It did play a big role in the desperation I was feeling, but I wasn’t going to throw him under the bus. What happened was my fault, not his.

I was at an informal gathering, a study on Bible prophecy. There were not quite two dozen people congregated. Seven’s daughter Sevenia Sallie was holding court just as beautifully as the young woman she was.

“Okay, Zella,” Sevenia said sweetly.

“I fear I’ve blasphemed the Holy Spirit,” I said, and then bowed my head, not knowing what to say. I lifted my head and looked at Sevenia. She gazed at me with such love and compassion that I couldn’t stop my lower lip from quivering and a tear leaking out of my eye.

“Do you know why I don’t believe that’s true?” she asked with a pleasant smile.

“Why?” I asked with a frown.

“Because you wouldn’t be here if you had truly done that.”

“How do you know I haven’t come here as a scoffer?”

“Have you?”

“Well, no. Maybe sort of though. I mean, nothing seems to penetrate my hard heart.”

“This may be a dumb question, but have you given your heart to Christ?”

“That’s just it,” I replied. “I can’t seem to get myself to believe like you all do. Every time I do, doubts creep in. So called sin creeps in. I guess that’s why I’m here. I’m hoping your study will enlighten me. Cause me to truly believe and have faith in the Bible. But I fear that I won’t and I will go away an even bigger skeptic. If I do, I fear I will permanently slip back into the darkness of my nihilistic beliefs that I’ve held most of my life.”

“See!” Sevenia blurted cheerily. “You said slip back. That means you’re still searching, and active searching is the place we need to be, whether we are a new seeker for truth or a long time believer.”

Her optimism was contagious. I felt the more hopeful than I had in a long time, and it was only one day after I had done possibly the most appalling thing of my life. I turned to look at Seven. He was looking at me with a shell shocked countenance. But then he managed a smile. This gave me another boost of hopefulness. I feared I had ruined our friendship. Not only had Seven become a dear friend of mine, he had saved my life two years ago.

Seven and I also were both in attendance at the demon possession ordeal of Lexi Gomez. What we witnessed had a big impact on our lives. It awakened our minds to spiritual realities. First the extremely dark side, and then overwhelmingly light and love.  As a result, Seven became a born again Christian, and I was frightened into giving up my psychic reading business.

However, Lexi’s ordeal wasn’t my first go around with a, for lack of a better word, miraculous life change. I was housemates for several years with a beautiful woman named Willa Waconia. Willa and I first met on the west coast when we were both aspiring models. I was in an abusive relationship at the time, and her personal life wasn’t any better.

After Willa lamented posing incredibly nude in a famous magazine, the only advancing results being that she should do porn, she decided she wanted to go home. At the same time I was severely stressing over being the subject of a boyfriend control freak I could never satisfy. So I fled with her two thousand miles away to a state where she had relatives, Iowa.

She and I then went in together, buying an old Victorian house. I opened an herb store on the first floor with a psychic reading room in the back. Willa got into a strange form of prostitution. Her notoriety as a centerfold had given her a decent internet following. She became a dominatrix and developed a rather lucrative clientele of well to do men that wanted to be, well, punished by a hot, sexy, semi famous centerfold.

I never had a problem with any of her customers. I often thought that they were sick, perverse, and twisted. But they were always polite and respectful for the most part. Then a man named Billy Bob Booker entered her domain. He was definitely not her typical Jon.

When I say I did psychic readings, I should clarify that I’m not clairvoyant. I don’t even believe in it, just like my current struggles with the opposing belief system. As a psychic, I was mostly a con. Yet I justified it by believing I was highly intuitive. What I intuited about Billy Bob was that he was different. Very different! (The story of Willa and Billy Bob can be read in the e-book ‘Billy Bob Booker and the Hooker).

I volunteer at an animal shelter. I also had a chocolate lab of my own that had been traumatized by a man or men. Anyway, my dog Free hated men. When Billy Bob was a new client of Willa’s, I didn’t think much of him. Except he seemed to be more, for a lack of a better word, more peaceable than the average man. I thought he had a great aura.

As he waited for Willa in my store, he wandered toward the back room, which was actually off limits unless I was doing a reading for someone. Willa and I had personal pictures on the wall back there. He asked about one of Willa on a horse when she was quite young. At the time I couldn’t remember what I told him because my dog Free growled at him. He wanted to pet her, but I emphatically warned him to keep his distance. I told him that she didn’t like men and would bite.

I get busy with something and the next thing I knew, he was scratching Free’s belly! He was talking softly to her as if he was an angel or something. When he and Willa finished their business and he left, I asked her about him. Willa was absolutely stunned! Not only that I asked about one of her guys, which I had never done, but because Free let him scratch her belly. Like I said, Free hated men! And Billy Bob Booker is a big, muscular guy. Not quite as ripped as Brock Storm or as handsome, but at a glance, tough looking.

Willa told me that he wanted to hire her to go to a wedding his ex-fiancée and her current beau would be attending. She told me that she had declined. I explained to her in more detail about what transpired between Free and Billy Bob. She looked at my beloved chocolate Lab that hated men with awe. She ended up calling Billy Bob and telling him she would go with him.

Willa became close friends with Billy Bob, even though he had second thoughts about using her services. Billy Bob ended up rekindling his romance with his ex-fiancée. But even more surprising, his influence led Willa to become a born again Christian. Willa gave up her practice as a well-paid dominatrix. She is now a mother and a committed, conservative Christian. She traded her leather and whips for long dresses and a Holy Bible.

Fast forward to Seven and me. Like I said, after the Lexi deliverance ordeal, Seven became a Christian convert himself. I floundered as I searched and stumbled. But he and I still became good, close friends. We also had an attraction that began before the Lexi Gomez ordeal and wouldn’t go away.

Seven and I would have these amazingly deep spiritual discussions. Yet he tended to be on the side of faith while I was on the side of doubt. We also had deep personal conversations. With these, I tended to be vague while Seven was quite revealing. I also made it known that when it came to romance, I would be moving at a snail’s pace. Seven made it known that any future intimate partner of his would have to share his spiritual beliefs.

Since he told me everything, I had known that he had strong feelings for his first love, Salena. The previous night he told me regarding Salena that he was overcoming his feelings of jealousy and rejection. He said that she was also beginning to embrace his spiritual beliefs. He told me that since it was probably never going to work between him and me, he was considering marrying Salena! The moderate jealousy I had always felt over Salena turned extreme and became overpowering.

That’s when I did the biggest con job of my life. Afterwards Seven knew it. His words of rebuke still echoed in my head. Yet right here, right now, a day afterwards, he had just given me a reassuring smile. I was so pleased with this that I forgot my secret arch nemesis was part of this group. Then she spoke and forgive me, but my skin crawled.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Salena said coldly. “But is this meeting going to be about Bible prophecy or personal problems?”

Poor Sevenia looked as if she had just been slapped. Her mouth opened, and then closed. I, in turn, wished I could crawl under a rock. I hadn’t felt this embarrassed since I had an incident as high school freshman with my menstrual cycle. Sevenia’s mouth opened and closed a second time. She looked at her father with anxious eyes. Seven stood, and this man that became famous and well to do by speaking began to stammer.

“We, ah, I, ah, see no reason why we can’t, um, do like Sevenia had said at the start,” he managed to say. “Understanding prophecy isn’t gonna do us much good if our souls aren’t nurtured in the process.”

“Right,” Salena said with a phony smile and a fake calmness to her voice. “So maybe you could have two separate studies. One to iron out the love of sin, and one to analyze so called prophecy.”

My embarrassment was replaced by anger. If this woman was beginning to share Seven’s spiritual beliefs, I had him all wrong. I wanted nothing to do with these Pharisees. I realized that my hand had reflexively gone into my purse and my thumb was stroking the smooth worry stone I had in there.

I stood and tossed the worry stone to Salena. “Let she that is without sin cast the first stone.”

I then walked briskly from the room. I heard even faster footsteps behind me. Was it Sevenia? Destiny? Please, oh please, Lord, let it be Seven I thought. Let him tell me he forgives me, loves me, wants me to not leave.

“Zella,” Salena said with croak. I turned and looked at the pregnant woman. Tears spilled from her pretty brown, almond shaped eyes. “I’m sorry. Your point was taken, and well deserved. If anyone should leave, it’s me.”

She put her face in her hands and sobbed. I stepped toward her and put a hand on her shoulder. “I forgive you.”

She lifted her head and her lower jaw stretched as she delicately wiped tears with both index fingers. She looked at me and forced a sad smile. “It’s just women’s intuition kicked in. I noticed the way you and Seven were looking at each other, and I became overwhelmed with jealousy.”

“I know the feeling,” I replied, forcing a sad smile of my own.

“Even though I’m pregnant by a brief, foolish, sinful fling with his brother,” she explained “He admitted to me the other day that he was in love with both you and me. He also said that my spiritual beliefs were more in line with his than yours are. He said he chose me if I would have them. I told him I would indeed have him.”

Suddenly, Salena looked horrified and pressed her hands to her cheeks.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, thinking maybe she was having a problem with her baby. She wasn’t exactly young to be having a baby.

“I assumed you already knew this right?” she asked.

“I did.”

“Good,” she said, letting out a breath with relief. “I thought so. That’s why I became so jealous. Seven said he needed to talk to you. That he needed to tell you his feelings and intentions. He was supposed to call me before the study tonight. He never did. Then I see the looks going on between you two.”

“What  kind  of  looks?” I asked slowly, not realizing how obvious the tension between Seven and me must have been. Did Sevenia and Destiny pick up on it as well?

“I don’t know,” Salena said with a shrug and a sigh. “It was like a look between forbidden lovers.”

I was thankful for my ebony skin. I could feel my face and neck get hot.

“It was, wasn’t it?” she inquired.

I cleared my throat. “Excuse me.”

“I think the opposite of him telling you he chose me over you happened,” she said softly.

“No, he told me. But to be honest, I tried to make a claim on him. But he rejected me. Angrily even, and I don’t blame him.”

“What happened?”

“I’m not saying,” I said with a sigh. “He’ll have to tell you.”

“Do you love him?” she asked.

“I do,” I groaned. “Immensely.”

“Me too,” she said with a sigh and a sad smile. Then to my surprise she offered her hand for me to shake. “May the best girl claim his affections. With no hard feelings?”

“Actually, I concede,” I replied humbly. “After what I did last night, I’m sure he’s more confirmed in his decision for you.”

“What happened?” She asked again, frowning.

“Like I said,” I replied calmly “That will be up to him to tell you. If he does, then I’ll tell you my side of the story. If you want to hear it, that is.”

“Okay, fair enough,” she said nodding, but looking confused. “But will you please come back to the study? I intend on apologizing to you in front of the rest of the group. I’d like to blame my behavior on pregnancy changing my hormones. But your rebuke hit home. I simply felt like a woman scorned.”

“You know, I didn’t like you just because, but you’re actually really awesome,” I laughed. “It’s no wonder Seven chose you over a wishy washy former psychic.”

“Are you kidding?” She chuckled nervously. “You’re gorgeous! You look like a combination of Halle Berry and Naomi Campbell.”

“You weren’t exactly wacked with an ugly stick,” I replied giggling.

We had a brief moment of enjoying our truce. Then before awkward silence ensued, Salena petitioned with a smile and a second offered hand, “Friends?”

“Friends,” I replied affectionately, ignoring her hand and gently hugging her.

“Will you come back in with me then?” she asked me. “I’ll apologize to the group and take blame for the drama.”

“Yes,” I croaked.

We turned to go back in. She took my hand in hers, and we grinned at each other and took a step toward the study room. We had only taken three steps when Seven came out the door. He stopped in his tracks. Looked at Salena and me hand in hand. He looked beyond confused as he ran a  hand through his hair.

“I don’t know if this is good or bad,” he mumbled almost to himself.

“It’s all good,” Salena and I said at the same time.

“But probably not for you,” Sevenia said sympathetically as she stepped beside her father.