Page 19 of Saint
“Who were they?” Elijah asks as we emerge into the covered walkway on the other side.
“It’s a Knights of Columbus conference this weekend, I believe.”
I’m walking fast, I realize, my strides long enough to send my habit fluttering around my ankles. I want to get Elijah settled in the guesthouse, and then I need to—I don’t even know yet. Press my face against a tree and scream.
Elijah, though an inch or two shorter than me, keeps pace easily as we get to the guesthouse door, and even reaches for the door handle before I do, pulling it open for me. I see a flash of his tattoo—an abstract collage of grids, buildings, and trees with two small words underneath—and then the subtle flex of his forearm muscles underneath it as he pulls on the handle. And then the door is open and also so is the hole in my chest. It’s hard to think pure thoughts when his forearm muscles do that.
But Ichosethis life.
I chose it I chose it I chose it—
“Brother Patrick,” Elijah says. We’re inside the guesthouse now, in the spacious, wood-beamed lobby, and the guest services director Claudia is nowhere in sight. It’s just us and I have no reason to keep us moving, no reason not to stop.
I stop. Misery and something else—something worse—churns through me. I can’t look at him, I just can’t, because he’ll know. I can’t look anywhere but straight ahead.
“Brother Patrick,” he says again, quietly this time. “Aiden.”
If only Claudia would come. If only Claudia would come and get him a key and some scratchy towels and then I could run away—
“Look at me.”
His voice is still quiet, but it’s husky too, and low. Hearing it burns a little, like drinking a peated scotch or smoking a clove cigarette. “Look at me,” he repeats, and I can’t take it anymore, I can’t. The need for him now is stronger than any survival instinct I’ve ever had.
I look.
12
“Isit really so awful having me here?” he asks.
I don’t know if I can even speak to answer that question.
Not only becauseyes—yes, it’s so fucking awful—but because all the strength to speak has left my body at the first, full sight of him. At the stylish, monochrome outfit clinging to the curves of his arms and the muscles of his thighs. At his gorgeous eyes and his mouth framed so lickably by stubble.
Abruptly, I want to tell him everything. I want to say,here’s the reason I left, and have it mean something, have it be worth all the miserable days and weeks I caused us both. Have it clarify its own delay, because the reason I left is the same reason I couldn’t tell him why I left. I was still too fucked up for a long time to face the idea of explaining things. And then even after I slowly unfucked myself, I began to feel that I didn’t deserve to tell him. I didn’t deserve a—I don’t even know. An apologia. A rebuttal of the worst things he must have thought of me. I deserved his anger, his disgust. Even his hatred.
I maybe deserved that most of all.
But I shouldn’t be thinking about what I deserve, but about what he deserves. I’ve been nothing but selfish and careless with him since the moment I dragged him onto a barely lit balcony at a fundraiser and pushed my mouth against his. And maybe I was careless even before that—yearsbefore—when I was in high school and college and romping around like a puppy, goading and teasing him whenever I saw him with Sean, desperate for him to see me as something other than Sean’s little brother, for reasons I didn’t entirely understand at the time.
I had been selfish with him for so long that it seemed like the only way to stop was to leave.
So what does he deserve from me now? Everything, of course, everything under the sun, but I can start with this.
“It’s not awful having you here,” I tell him. (It’s a lie, but it’s the kind of lie I think God will forgive.)
The corner of his mouth deepens, like he knows I’m lying. But he doesn’t call me on it. Thank fuck. “So you’ll help me this week?” he asks instead. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“It’s my job to be of service,” I reply with a duck of my head. And then I desperately cast around for anything to say that’s not related to how he makes me feel. “I’m surprisedModefinds monastic life interesting enough to feature,” I say. “It’s not very fashionable here.”
Elijah lifts a shoulder, and I try to ignore the way the fabric of the T-shirt pulls around him as he does. “They do their fair share of broader feature pieces, and they were really excited about this pitch. Monks who make beer and refuse to answer emails. You know, living the dream. Oh hello,” Elijah says to the woman bustling over to us.
It’s Claudia, with spots of bright red high in her medium tan cheeks and her clothes spattered with water. And I’m very, very relieved, even when she scowls at us both, because I’m not sure how much longer I can listen to Elijah speak in that husky voice without needing to go find my chastity device.
“You’re bringing me another guest right now?” Claudia demands. “Right now? On this day?”
“Yes?” I offer hesitantly, and she shakes her head hard enough that her shoulders move too.
“No, Brother Patrick, you are not. A water pipe ruptured upstairs and now half my rooms are flooded, and I’ve already had to move eleven Knights of Columbus over to the dormitory. So your guest is going to have to stay in the dormitory too.”
