Page 13 of Saint
Or maybe it was that Aiden Bell could always make you feel like you were his new best friend. Like he’d been waiting for you all night, and now that you were there with him, the party could really get started.
With all the crimes I can lay at his feet—recklessness, obliviousness, a sort-of Lost Boy-ness in his refusal to finish growing up—I must not forget this. Aiden Bell would make you laugh, would make you happy. Aiden Bell would make your blood rush and your skin hum and your heart pound.
Aiden Bell would make you feel like your life was waiting for you to take it with both hands.
After we’d left the gallery, my friends still choked with laughter from a story he told them about a stolen pole-vaulting mat, a grease fire, and a fire extinguisher fight, he turned to me and said, “I have a surprise.”
We’d been dating for seven months by this point, and there were some things I’d had to adjust to while dating a millionaire. (I know, I know, poor me.)
But sometimes Aiden would say, “Let’s get a pain au chocolat” and I would think we were going to a bakery, and instead we’d go to the airport and fly to Paris for the best pain au chocolat in the world. Or sometimes he’d tell me he’d gotten me a little thing for my apartment, and it would be a painting that would have cost me an entire year’s salary, a painting that I’d mentioned liking at a gallery in New York or Montreal.
So when he said he had a surprise that night, I braced myself for some extravagance, some casually absurd display of wealth. But instead of taking me to the airport or giving me the key to a new car or something, he laced his fingers through mine, and we walked the next block over to an ice cream truck parked on the sidewalk.
I waited under a tree strung with blue-white lights as he bought our ice creams and returned to me looking as proud as if he’d taken me to a place with Michelin stars, holding his ice cream cone in one hand and a bowl for me in the other, because he knew I felt negatively about the cone experience.
We ate our ice cream on the sidewalk, city lights glittering around us, music humming from a nearby bar, traffic whooshing past.
Aiden’s eyes fluttered as he licked his bubble gum ice cream cone, moans coming from his chest as if he were eating something prepared by a renowned pastry chef and not freezer-burned ice cream from a sketchy van.
But that was Aiden Bell for you.
“Elijah,” Aiden said after a moment. His voice was serious. “Hold still a moment.”
I held still, suddenly worried I had a bug on my shirt or something, but Aiden leaned in and gently licked a stray drop of ice cream from my lower lip.
I shivered at the touch of his tongue—cold from his own ice cream—and the warmth of his breath over my mouth. He licked again, this time his tongue tracing along the seam of my lips, until I let him inside.
He tasted like bubble gum and heaven. He tasted like impulsive decisions and lust and funny stories and the rest of my life.
And when he pulled away and gave me that too-wide grin, I suddenly couldn’t imagine any other life than this one. The life before him, when he’d just been Sean’s cute but off-limits younger brother. A life after, when I wouldn’t have bubble gum kisses with the city sparkling around us.
I took another bite of my ice cream and then made a mock-pout, mostly to make him smile. “They never put enough sprinkles on my sundae.”
“I know,” he said with a smile and pulled something out of his pocket. It was a small container of sprinkles from a grocery store that he’d brought just for me. Turns out he’d been carrying those sprinkles around for weeks, just in case we went out for ice cream and they didn’t give me enough.
The thing about falling in love is that by the time you realize it’s happened, it’s already too late. Your boyfriend already has sprinkles for you in the pocket of his Tom Ford suit. You’ve already had bubble gum kisses on a warm city night.
You’ve already let him swallow your heart.
But that’s Aiden Bell for you. Or it was.
And now he spends his days without kissing, without even ice cream to take the sting out of ugly clothes and early mornings and praying to a god that doesn’t exist. Why? How?
Does he miss his old life? Does he miss being himself?
Does he miss
9
On the lastFriday of May, I take the path through the woods not to the hermitage, but to the base of the hill Mount Sergius is named for, where there is a labyrinth made of limestone rocks half sunk into the earth. In the middle of the labyrinth is a cluster of benches, and on those benches are scattered several monks. Others sit on the shady ground or lie on their backs with their eyes shut, stealing a few moments of sleep. One is pacing, his head down and his forehead furrowed, and someone else is humming what I’m reasonably certain is a Harry Styles song.
It is the last Friday of the month, and so it’s time for Lectio Lexapro.
“Ah, Brother Patrick,” Brother Matthew says. “Is that everyone?”
I scan the brothers assembled as I reach the center. Brothers Matthew, Stephen, Denis, Francis, Michael, Leander, John, Crispin, and Titus. Brother Thomas is here too, not because he’s truly part of our informal little liturgy, but because he and Titus are joined at the hip and hate doing anything apart.
“I think we’re missing Brother Peter,” I say. “But it’s still a few minutes until nine.”
