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“I’m worried that if I leave for him, he still won’t have me,” I say. “And if I stay, my spirit will always hunger for him anyway.”
Brother Connor reaches down to touch my shoulder. “Many ways to the well, Brother Patrick,” he repeats. “And here you’ve named only two.”
It’s so close to what Father Jordan said to me in France—so close to his searching for something beyond the binary of vowed and unvowed—that the hair stands up on my arms. It’s like I’m hearing a bible verse I’ve never heard before, something so indelibly true that there’s no possibility of denying it.
But when I try to connect that truth to anything else—to my broken heart, to my future, to staying or leaving—nothing happens. It’s like there’s a wall between me and knowing what to do next.
“Come,” Brother Connor says, offering me a hand as the bells toll for vespers. “The well will wait.”
53
Three weeks later,and I’ve made my confessions. But the abbot has still not asked to meet with me, which would be typical for a monk who’s misbehaved as badly as I have.
I find that I don’t dread the meeting the way I would’ve before my trip. Partly it’s because the abbot seems to be just as pleasant and affectionate with me as ever and he talks to me often as I resume my duties in the office. (He’s especially affectionate after I debrief him on my brewing espionage and tell him how robust Mount Sergius’s operation is compared to the abbeys I visited.)
But also I don’t dread it because everything seems inconsequential compared to the grinding and shifting inside my soul. I feel pressed between two millstones, which are pestling me into wet, pulpy paste. Into atoms. Into nothing.
I can’t compete with fireflies in the cloister. Please don’t make me try.
But why can’t I have both, the fireflies and the cute journalist? Why iscompetethe only verb possible?
And why hasn’t he called? Or written? Or visited?
Why must I be ground into nothing alone?
“Brother Paaaaatrick,” Brother Titus calls from my office doorway that morning. “You have a visitor!” He drops his voice conspiratorially. “And he’shandsome.”
Elijah.
I don’t have the presence of mind to give him a quelling look; my entire being leaps into stuttering life with excitement—joy—lust. But then dread comes sneaking through my veins too.
As I stand and follow Brother Titus to the cloister, my thoughts crowd into my mind faster than they have in days, fueled by panic and desire both.
Okay, be quiet, be calm, I coach myself as I walk.Be a better listener than you were last time. But convince him that you love him, that you want a future together, that you can do this—
I come to a stop so fast at the entrance to the cloister that the hem of my habit swings around my feet.
It’s not Elijah.
It’s not Elijah sitting there on the bench, his arm across the back and his eyebrow arched.
It’sJamie. Of all the fucking people. With his back perfectly straight and his hands wrapped around some kind of Tupperware-looking thing.
I don’t know what pushes me forward to the bench and has me sitting down. It may be Benedictine hospitality or morbid curiosity or a mixture of both, but somehow I find myself sitting next to Elijah’s ex-fiancé.
“Muffin?” Jamie asks, holding up a container I’m certain is made from bamboo fibers or something equally responsible. The container is full of delicious-looking muffins. “I made them this morning.”
I feel like it would be rude to say no, even though eating a muffin Jamie made feels like eating the manifestation of all the ways he’s a better person than me. I take the muffin and hold it between my fingertips on my lap.
“Jamie, it’s lovely to have you here,” I say.
And I guess...I guess it’s not all the way a lie. He is very nice, and he did bring me muffins even though I kind of stole his fiancé. “But I have to wonder why you want to see me, after everything that happened.”
“I debated coming,” Jamie admits, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. They’re that sort of “vaguely unhip which makes them even hipper” style of frames, and they look great on him because of course they do. “But the only real barrier to coming was my pride, and that seemed like a really weak reason at the end of the day.”
“Pride might not be the best reason for doing or not doing things, but it’s hardly ever weak,” I say.
“Even so, I knew I’d regret not coming to see you later, and it’s better to act in a way now that doesn’t cause regret later, I think.”
