Page 41 of Saint
But nearly bigger than the panic—than the guilt, than the still-coiling lust—is a thought that won’t stop twining around my ankles and cinching around the organs in my chest.
Elijah kissed me back.
Elijah let me pin him against a wall and make out with him until we were both weak in the knees.
I can hear the bells for vespers tolling as I unload the wood into Brother Andrew’s woodshed, stacking it the way he taught me so it can season properly, and then I go to shower and change into my habit, noticing that Elijah’s cell door is closed when I open mine.
Is he inside? At prayer?
Walking one of the paths as he talks to Jamie on the phone?
My skin feels hotter than the shower water, like I’m boiling alive from the inside out, and all of me screams forsomething—release or punishment, I don’t know. I fucked up, I know I did, but all I can think of right now is the way Elijah’s throat arched so prettily for me. Of the rain slicking the dent above his upper lip.
Of how it felt to kiss him again after all these years, and to have him kiss me back.
I’m sorry, I manage to whisper to God in my head.I’m so sorry.
By the time I’m dressed and in the refectory for dinner, I’m feeling a fresh kind of guilt, a new layer of unhappiness over the “breaking my vows” kind I’ve been feeling since Elijah left the hermitage. Because if there’s one thing living in an abbey has taught me, it’s that we are responsible for each other—we are responsible for loving each other and caring for one another. Not in the way that would make my therapist give me a pucker-face, but in the sense that we are called to present love and help and welcome.
I didn’t do that today, when I dropped my eyes to Elijah’s mouth and advanced on him. I didn’t do that when I kissed him, pushed him against a wall, bit his neck. I led someone I love into unfaithfulness to someonetheylove and I feel like shit about it.
I helped Elijah cheat—made him cheat even. On a Sunday school teacher who likes baking. Who does that?
A bad man, that’s who.
Selfish. I’m still so selfish.
Elijah’s not at dinner or at compline, and I know I have to apologize to him, I have to own up to what I did, and—and—
And it’s not only contrition driving me to his cell door after prayers, I know that. I know that because while my stomach feels heavy and hollow all at once, my heart is skipping around in my chest, forgetting how to beat properly whenever I remember Elijah’s mouth on mine. Whenever I remember his low, broken words.I can’t compete with fireflies in the cloister.
Can’t.
Present tense.
Like he still wants to try.
I tell myself the whole way to the dormitory that I’m not going to do anything about my skipping heart, that I won’t look at his mouth, or search his dark gold eyes for answers to questions I can’t ask. I’m going to apologize, sincerely, and then promise to stay away. Yes, that’s what I’ll do—I’ll stay away from him for the rest of his visit here, and then he can promise Jamie in good faith that nothing else will happen, and—
Elijah’s door is open.
Open all the way, and when I stop in the doorway, it becomes clear that he’s not inside. The bathroom door is open and the bathroom is empty; the small wardrobe is bare of everything except hangers and an ironing board. The towels and blankets have been folded neatly at the edge of the bed.
Nowhere is there luggage, clothes, charging cords, an ex-boyfriend. The cell is empty.
Elijah is gone.
* * *
“He hadsome business back home and had to leave early,” is what I’m told by the abbot.
“He tore out of here like his ass was on fire,” is what Brother Andrew says.
He left without saying goodbye, and I guess I deserve that, I deserve to know how it feels, but I’m totally lost for the next day, and the day after that. I drift from prayer to prayer, from meal to meal and work to work, my thoughts everywhere and nowhere all at once.
I didn’t get to apologize to Elijah.
I didn’t get to see him one last time.
