Chapter Eighteen - The Quiet Before the Next Storm

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Quiet Before the Next Storm

WHEN I GOT back to Ohio, everything went quiet.

Not in the peaceful, reflective way. More like the what now kind of quiet. The kind where days blur and nothing’s really moving. I wasn’t working. I wasn’t writing yet. I wasn’t doing anything except breathing, eating, and trying to shake off the PTSD of that past month. And honestly?

I needed it.

I didn’t realize how cooked I was until I stopped moving. It was like I collapsed emotionally after weeks of running on caffeine and adrenaline and blind hope. So I just paused. For the first time in months, I let myself stall. I let myself rest.

Not too long after, Zack and Chris also came home. They couldn’t keep doing it either. I think they lasted just about a week longer than Caleb and I. It was nice to know that I wasn’t irrational for suddenly leaving.

That’s also around the time my dog’s health started declining. He’s an almost 12-year-old Great Dane. A big old stubborn, goofy, majestic fart machine. And I love him. So my days became quiet for a new reason: I was taking care of him. Walking slow. Feeding him. Carrying his back legs when they didn’t work. Loving the hell out of him while I still could.

And somewhere in all that stillness, something cracked open.

I wrote a book.

It wasn’t very good.

It’s already gone now. Deleted, unpublished, and memory-holed. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that I did it. I’ve wanted to write a book for years. And I finally did. And it didn’t change the world, but it cracked the door open.

A few weeks later, I wrote another one.

And then another.

And another.

One of them was a full anonymous breakdown of everything that happened with the company. Names changed, details tweaked, the whole thing sanitized enough to publish without getting lawyers involved. I called it The High Road. That’s the one I referenced in the prologue. It ended at the writing of the book itself.

And then came the turning point.

I wrote If I Were Evil.

A fictional satire. A playbook. A hypothetical “what I’d do if I wanted to start a manipulative sales empire.” Completely unrelated, of course. Totally theoretical. Nothing to do with any real companies or people or events. Anyway.

But I’ll be real with you, I was proud of it. Because it wasn’t just funny. It was accurate. It was cutting. And it made something click.

So I sent it to Tyler.

That and The High Road.

I figured, hey, maybe he’d appreciate the perspective. He’d been the most involved of the three owners. The one who played a role in the game. I wasn’t looking for anything, I just wanted to see if it landed.

And surprisingly, he responded.

He thanked me. He said he’d check them out. He even offered me twenty bucks to fill out some feedback form, which I ignored. But the next day, he messaged again.

He had read The High Road.

And his words?

“A lot of things I’m seeing that Jacob and Connor could have done better. Some of it is just flat-out embarrassing to read. Sorry you had to go through that whole experience.”

That meant something.

Because I finally had a company owner admit that what happened to me wasn’t okay. No deflection. No gaslighting. Just acknowledgment.

He read If I Were Evil the next day. That one hit differently.

He didn’t love it. He said he wasn’t sure how to interpret it. But he appreciated the effort and offered to hop on a call. He offered to show me the real sales figures, commission payouts, everything the “evil” company supposedly wouldn’t.

I declined.

I wasn’t trying to dig up receipts anymore. I just wanted to close the loop.

Or so I thought.

Because then the back-and-forth started.

At first it was polite. Then it got long. Paragraphs. Essays. Wall after wall of defensive logic and semi-apologies. He took more issue with If I Were Evil than The High Road, which was telling. He said the licensing exam was necessary. He agreed the $6 Twin Peaks meal was dumb, but believed it. He acknowledged the rain gear issue.

He even tried to justify the weird Google reviews.

And look, I’m not saying they were fake. I’m just saying they were weird. Robotic. Copy-paste tone. One was about HVAC repairs, which made no sense. One was from my own manager, thanking the company for “great service.” Which… I mean, I saw that job. There was a mud-dauber nest in the eaves.

Anyway, we went back and forth. He kept messaging. I kept responding. But it was like shouting through a fog.

Eventually, it faded.

Then a couple months later, I reached out again.

This part might sound crazy, but I was actually interested in selling again. Not for the company. Not because I believed in the mission. But because I’d signed a cruise agreement.

See, they said if we went on the cruise and didn’t hit a certain revenue quota, we’d owe them back. And I didn’t want that debt hanging over me. So I figured, screw it. Let me make a few sales. I had a lead ready. My dad wanted pest control. I could do that.

But when I opened the sales app? Locked out.

So I texted Tyler and asked about it.

He said they didn’t have an Ohio office and asked if I wanted to work with someone else.

I reminded him I was an independent contractor. That I could sell wherever I wanted.

He said no.

I asked again.

He finally said,

“Don’t worry about the cruise money. Just consider our sales contractor relationship terminated. Sorry it didn’t work out.”

And that was the last thing I ever heard from him.

Connor unadded me on Snap at some point after I sent him the books. Never heard anything back.

That’s how it all ended.

Or rather, that’s how it ended then.

Because now? It’s different.

Now it’s months later. I’ve written dozens of books. I’ve researched. I’ve reflected. I’ve stood on the other side of that storm long enough to see it clearly.

And I’m not afraid anymore.

Like that one scene in Home Alone where Kevin’s standing outside yelling into the dark.

“I’m not afraid anymore!”

That’s how it feels now.

Because I wrote a book about Nike and put the swoosh on the front. I learned how nominative fair use works. I learned what I’m allowed to say and what they can’t silence.

So now?

We’re going names.
Real names.
This time, it’s all on the record.

And this time, I’m not writing to survive.
I’m writing to end the cycle.