Page 51 of Saint
Elijah takes his sunglasses off and looks around the dim, cool forest surrounding us. The occasional ray of sunlight glints off the amber and copper in his eyes. “We’re lost.”
“We can’t be lost. They said it was less than a mile away. Let me see that map.”
Heaving a profound sigh, Elijah holds up the map for me to look at but doesn’t let go of it. Our shoulders bump as I trace my fingers over Brother Xavier’s hand-drawn landmarks and twisty paths.
Because the ruins haven’t been structurally evaluated, the abbey discourages most visitors and tourists from milling around them, but Brother Xavier has invited us to explore so long as we take care around the unstable walls and the old well. It also means the path there isn’t very well-trodden, and easy to lose.
“I think we need to go back to the boulder and veer left from there.”
“This isFlood Plainall over again,” Elijah grumbles. “Do you remember that?”
“Was that the art installation down by the river?” I ask as we start walking again.
“We got lost. Bit by mosquitos. Saw a dead deer. And by the time we got to actual site of the installation, all the wine was gone.”
“I had a good time though,” I say, as I recall that night.
Elijah scoffs. “Yeah, because I blew you in the car afterward.”
“Like I said. A good time!”
The boulder is coming into view now and we curve around it. A faint ribbon of a path reveals itself through the trees, and we strike towards it. In the distance, I think I glimpse gray stone among all the swaying green leaves.
“I dragged you to a lot of random art events, didn’t I?” he muses.
“You did,” I reply. “What was that one where it was like a short film of people sticking safety pins into a peach or something?”
“It wasUnpinning the Pit #7!” Elijah says, laughing. “It was an examination of the destabilizing effects of new media!”
“It was gross,” I say forlornly. “That peach was fucked up by the end.”
“Yeah, but how many boring corporate events did I drag you to?” Elijah asks. “That’s right, none.”
“No, you just planned them for yourday joband made me listen to how the printers had gotten the cardstock wrong or something.”
He’s laughing hard enough now that he’s scrubbing at his face, and I wish I could watch him laugh forever. I wish we could stay just like this—remembering the funny things, the good times. As if our year together was just sex and terrible local art and vacations and dirty games that ate up all our hours with sighs and sweat, and there’d been nothing hard about loving each other, nothing painful at all.
“We had fun at those work events though,” he says. And then, as if he’s able to read my thoughts, he says, casually, “Remember the games we used to play at them?”
What if...
“Well. We used to play games everywhere,” I say, and my voice is low, a little hoarser than it should be.
“We did,” he says, and his voice is low too, almost a whisper. Like we don’t want to be overheard, even though we’re half a mile away from the abbey and that abbey is miles and miles away from the rest of the world.
We are totally and completely alone, and we are still whispering.
“Do you ever think of them?” I ask, and I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t ask that. It’s dangerous forme, it’s dangerous forhim.
We shouldn’t be talking about this.
For a moment, I think Elijah isn’t going to answer. His face is turned away, and as we step into the clearing filled with half-broken arches and small cloisters now choked with ferns and moss, he doesn’t say anything at all.
That’s good. That’s a good thing. A smart thing.
Healthy, even.
And I shouldn’t have even spoken the words aloud, becausedo you ever think of themis the same asI think of them all the time,and he doesn’t need to know that, it’s not fair to make him know that when he’s engaged and I’m still married to Christ.
