Here’s the first chapter of Our Own Way 2!
If you want to read the second chapter, you can do so right here on my Patreon.
More chapters are coming to early access for my 3$/month Patrons.
“We should probably discuss what organizing our new life together actually looks like,” Ellen said as she slipped her robe on.
It was one of the few things she’d salvaged from her previous life.
“Yeah,” Gabe agreed, belting his jeans and then grabbing his t-shirt.
Their excitement had naturally led to a different kind of excitement and they had just finished showering from that.
He pulled his shirt into place. “What does it look like to you?”
Ellen laughed and then sighed, tying her robe belt just above her broad hips. “Of course you ask me first. I don’t know. And the problem is that I’m still too...I don’t know, I’m still recovering and mired in my job. I feel like I’ll have a better capacity to really dig into it when I finally get fired. I know it has something to do with visual design. I like art.”
“Is there a reason you don’t want to quit?” he asked.
“Yes. Absolutely. When you get higher up into salaried positions with a bit more security, traditionally, if a company has to let you go or fire you, they typically like to protect themselves from any sort of repercussions. And in my experience, the chances of that happening go up if they treated you like shit. Which they have.”
“So...what, they’ll bribe you not to start shit?” he asked.
“Essentially, yes. Typically in comes in the form of a ‘severance package’ that you must sign a legally binding agreement to get. And that agreement says: I won’t sue you.”
“Could you sue them?”
She pursed her lips. “Possibly. There’s definitely some shit they’ve pulled. But in truth, I don’t want to deal with a drawn out lawsuit and lawyers and all the fucking hassle that the American ‘justice system’ entails. It’s a gamble anyway. They have very good lawyers, and they can afford to wait me out.”
“Huh. Interesting. And depressing. But all right, that makes sense. So, you want to get fired, take a vacation, and then, once the mental and emotional dust finally settles, you want to reexamine yourself and your life to determine a path forward.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“Okay.”
He was still formulating his own response, because there was a lot to consider, or at least it felt that way, when she frowned and sat down at the foot of the bed.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Mostly, just...are you really okay with this? I mean, are you truly okay with having an out-of-work girlfriend?”
Gabe resisted his instinct to immediately say yes and really thought about it for a moment. Was he? He sure felt like that. They had money, in that Ellen had a fair amount of money, and they were in a living situation that they could sustain theoretically for years.
Half a decade even. That was a really long time.
“Unless I’m missing something really obvious: yes, I am okay with that. I’m happy with it,” he replied. “Are you comfortable with it?”
“I...mostly am? The problem is the fear. I know that some of this is me just being terrified of the idea of going against what is essentially my core ideology. I feel like I’m trying to leave a cult. Which I guess I kind of am? We basically worship jobs and work and careers and overachieving and working yourself to fucking death.”
“That’s true,” he muttered.
“And I’ve been doing it since I was in high school. You’d think it’d be easy to just stop, but I’m afraid. I’m not even sure why I’m afraid.”
“I think you’re worried that you aren’t sure how much of you will be left after you remove this massive part of yourself you’ve been building for two decades.”
She looked up finally, staring at him, almost startled. “I...yes. That actually makes a lot of sense. Which sounds horrifying and stupid. Why is so much of my identity wrapped up in my goddamned job?”
“Because you, like most of the rest of us, were forced into it. People roll their eyes at phrases like ‘capitalist propaganda’ but we are literally indoctrinated with actual, real propaganda designed by real people and blasted twenty four seven at us since birth. We are indoctrinated into worshiping hard work and money and status. They’re capitalizing on a biological impulse, several of them, and twisting them into something seriously fucked up.”
“Is it that bad?” she murmured.
“Yes! When the average job is treated as: ‘you should be thanking me for the opportunity to be abused and exploited as you work yourself to death while surviving on the most minimum possible resources’, yes, that is absolutely screwed beyond belief.”
“...yeah. That makes sense. And the fact that people actually defend that...yeah.” She shifted uncomfortably. “I just don’t want you to think I’m a lazy bitch who’s only with you for money.”
“How could I possibly think that?! I mean, first of all, you have all the money.”
“Yeah, right now. But that will change naturally as time goes on. If I’m not bringing any in, and you are, then you’d end up being the one making financial decisions because you’re the one with the money. And I don’t know the statistics of how likely you are to succeed at writing, but I think the odds are in your favor.”
“Maybe. We’ll see about that. But I don’t think that, and I won’t. Even if we end up in a situation where I’m bringing in loads of cash and you’re bringing in nothing, it’s not like I’d make all the financial decisions with an iron fist.”
“Why?” she asked. “You’d have absolute power in that situation.”
“I wouldn’t because this is a relationship, as in a partnership. I mean, even practically speaking I know that you are smarter than me. In general, but very specifically with relation to finances. Why wouldn’t I get your advice? But more significantly, I don’t want to just make unilateral decisions in the relationship.
“Not unless it falls under something you just don’t want any input on. We’re still separate people and, to a certain degree, we still have our own lives, but we are now making the decision to entwine our lives together. What I do affects you and vice versa. Trying to make huge decisions, let alone huge financial ones, without your input, would be not just stupid, but cruel.”
Ellen stared at him for a long time, not saying anything. He waited, wondering if he’d hit some nerve or crossed some line without realizing it.
Finally, she blinked a few times and gave her head a little shake. “Wow.”
“What?” he asked.
“I’m just...it’s actually coming to me just how different you are from everyone else I’ve dated or really known. I don’t think any man I’ve ever dated before would even be able to successfully articulate that, let alone actually tell it to me. The best I’ve ever gotten is: let’s keep our finances separate. You do you and I’ll do me,” she replied.
“That’s not a terrible idea.”
“No, but it’s safe. In a very individualistic way. It’s safe from the other person. I don’t want to be safe from you, Gabe. I want to be safe with you. And I want you to feel safe with me.”
“I do.”
“I know...and I feel the same way. But it’s just-this keeps happening. I keep realizing that you’re not just a great boyfriend but an amazing one. And I keep looking back and wondering how the hell I ended up in such awful relationships…” She sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment, closing her eyes, then dropped her hand and took a deep breath.
Letting it out it, she opened her eyes back. “But we need to focus. What I was saying is that I’m frightened of the future. If I get fired from my job and I don’t go seeking another one pretty quickly, I could be destroying a career that I’ve been building for over a decade now. Because let’s say I stop working and everything goes well for a decade, but then we get screwed over and I need to find a job again. I can’t just go back to the level I’m at now, almost certainly. A ten year gap in employment? I’d be virtually unemployable.”
“And that’s terrifying,” he murmured, sitting beside her now.
“Yes. It is. What if I’m throwing away everything on a whim? I could theoretically fuck myself over for the rest of my life.”
“I think…” He hesitated, looking down at the floor between his feet.
“What? You might as well just be real with me.”
“All right. I think this is coming from a place of fear. Which you’ve admitted, but I think this is coming from a place of irrational fear. Or...more to the point: not-quite-rational fear. I think you aren’t necessarily wrong about this stuff, but I do think you’re making it out as worse to be than it really will be. I think you’re smart enough and motivated enough that if it came down to it, you could and would find some way to make it work.”
She chuckled a little grimly. “You sure that’s not just coming from a place of worship? You called me an apex predator of a girlfriend and a goddess more than once. Clearly you’re biased.”
He laughed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah...I am. But I say that with as much lack of bias as I can. Maybe this will help, though: whatever happens, I think we can make it work. Five years from now, ten, twenty, fifty, we can figure it out.”
“Man, fifty? Sounds like you’re proposing to me,” she murmured, putting her hand over the back of his.
“I, uh…”
Ellen laughed. “Wow that really threw you just right off your game, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I was just teasing. But you’re right. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I believe in us. And I need to remember that, especially in the face of terror.” She was silent for a moment, contemplating. “You’re right. I should trust myself, and I should trust you, and us. It’s a leap of faith, but I’m willing to take it. And I shouldn’t not take it just because I’m familiar with a certain level of misery. Now, you go. We’ve established I’m a mess and I will be until I get fired. Your turn,” she said, turning to face him more.
“All right. Obviously, I want to tackle my job harder and take it more seriously. Produce more, faster. And you have offered to help, and I want to take it. You offered to give everything a more serious edit and also to help me with the cover art. Are we still on for that?” he asked.
“Very much so, yes. What I’ve done so far has been fun. So, give me all the most recent versions of all your work that is finished and I will give it a serious, more thorough edit and send it back. I will also start putting together cover art for you. I have ideas and we can work together on that.”
“Perfect. Thank you. It is deeply appreciated.” He paused, then grinned. “I never really thought I’d have a girlfriend who would actively participate in my writing.”
“I am very happy to.”
“So am I. Okay, next thing. I need to sit down and actually make more of a plan for the future. Figure out what I want to do. But basically, I know I want to keep doing this. I want to keep writing erotica and romantic stuff and publishing it myself. I want to set up more of my own little corner of the internet, but that’s what I want to do,” he said.
“Perfect,” she replied.
“You don’t think I should be more ambitious? Have backups?”
“I think those things would be smart but...I also think you should live your life how you want and within your means. And right now, our means are very forgiving. Three hundred bucks a month plus gas and groceries and internet? We can survive on probably five hundred a month if we really have to. That’s amazing. I think we should work on whittling down our debt as fast as we can, but that can wait for now. And I think we’ve pretty much nailed down the pertinent facts. And…” She smiled suddenly. “I think I want to go on a date with you today. We haven’t really done that. Unless there’s something else you want to do.”
“We haven’t really done a traditional date,” he replied. Gabe smirked suddenly and slipped a hand along her thigh, beneath the robe. “There is something else I’d like to do…”
“Gabe!” she cried, laughing and grabbing his hand. “Oh my God-how are you this horny? We just did it!”
“I’m dating you,” he replied, opening up her robe a bit, “I mean just look at you.”
She sighed heavily and blushed, pulling her robe closed. “I appreciate it but-seriously! How are you this horny? After what we did, and everything you did with Holly!?”
“I have a lot of catching up to do,” he replied with a shrug.
“Fine. Fair enough. But I’m serious, let’s have a date. And we can end it with some more personal fun in this bed. Not before, though. I need...a little break.”
He kissed her forehead. “All right. What do you want to do?”
She pursed her lips in consideration for a moment, then her eyes lit up abruptly. “You know what? You decide. That’s what I want. I want you to make this date happen.”
Gabe thought about it for a moment, wondering briefly, almost instinctively, if this was a ‘you’d better guess what I want’ situation, but he passed that out of hand.
Ellen was not that kind of woman.
“I’ll make it happen.”