Page 56 of Saint
He left me just as I was loving him the most, just as I’d been about to declare my love in the most romantic way I could think of.
I’m not romantic by nature; that was always Aiden. Spontaneous extravagance and then boyish preening when I’d thanked him for it.
So I’d wanted to return the favor; I’d wanted to prove to him and maybe to myself that I wasn’t a silo of reserve and reproof. I’d wanted to be vulnerable and brave and poetic for him too. Isn’t that half the thrill of being in love? Being vulnerable?
Anyway, with as much as we’d fucked, traveled, and spent every waking minute together, we hadn’t told each otherI love you, and I’d known that was my fault. Because I could seeI love youin his eyes whenever he looked at me, I could hear it slipping between his words as he spoke.
He would have said it to me on that very first night if I’d let him.
But I had to be sure. I’m like that: I have to know, I have to know for certain.
(Or I used to be like that at least. Because now I don’t know what I’m doing at all, I have no certainty whatsoever, and I’ve broken up with a good man and flown halfway across the world for what is essentially total uncertainty in the shape of a monk.)
The point was I’d finally been ready to say those three words. Even though there were times Aiden blazed too bright or winked out altogether, like a phone with a dead battery. Times when he ghosted me, times when he wouldn’t show up to an event or a dinner where he was my date and then I’d get home and find him lying in the dark, like he’d decided to just hang out by himself instead of doing the thing he said he’d do.
And then there were the too-bright times, the times when he was too loud, too careless, too drunk.
None of these things happened all that often, but they happened enough to make loving Aiden like being on one of those roller coasters he loved so much. I was thrilled, dizzy, sick from loving him. I’d survive a ride, head spinning, breathless and nauseous too, but then I’d want to do it all over again.
And I was ready for that, for everything sayingI love youwould mean, and so I’d planned an elaborate dinner which I cooked myself. I dressed up, I had flowers. I would say those magic words and he would give me one of those Aiden looks, with his eyes burning and his cheeks flushing, and then I’d spend the night with him greedy and playful underneath me. And then we’d have the rest of our lives together, and I’d know that it had started with that night, with myI love you.
Except he didn’t show up. He was hours late to dinner at his own fucking house, and when he finally walked through the door, he’d had no real reason for his absence. He’d simply forgotten.
Perhaps it would have stung less if I hadn’t tried so hard to be open, to be the kind of boyfriend who did more than drag him to local art events and try to get him to read something other thanStar Warsnovels. Perhaps it would have stung less if I hadn’t decided saying those words needed to be an event, if I’d just murmured them into the dark while he gave me a handjob, like a normal person.
But it didn’t matter. Ithadstung. And the fight was a big one, the kind of fight that can end a relationship, although it hadn’t occurred to me to end anything at the time. Why would it have? I loved him. There’d been no doubt in my mind that I’d go to bed pissed and wake up still pissed, but maybe less so, and then we’d sort it out.
And then I woke up in an empty farmhouse. No truck, no boyfriend, no explanation.
And when I did finally get an explanation, it was the last thing in the entire world I expected to hear.
A monk.
Who could expect that? And from Aiden Bell, of all fucking people? The poster boy for money and sex? Maybe there’s a part of me that still can’t believe it, even though I’ve seen the transformed Aiden with my own eyes. But how can it be true?
And why am I here?
And what am I doing with him? This vowed man, this celibate man, whom I can’t seem to stop tempting—or maybe it’s him tempting me.
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
33
Somewhere after Sens,our train car empties out nearly completely, so that it’s just Elijah and me sitting across a table from each other, and a young woman fast asleep at the end of the car.
We’d had a fairly easy morning, if an early one. The brothers had already been awake for vigils when it was time for us to leave and so had given us all warm, friendly handshakes as we piled into the Renault with Brother Xavier at the helm. He’d even spoken a little—a very little—as we drove, asking how we’d enjoyed our stay and the beer.
I had joked that we’d be piping his spring water into Kansas, and he’d laughed, and then he’d told us a little about the French abbey we were visiting and the honey beer they brewed there. Apparently, it had been rated one of the best beers in the world, but they refused to make more of it than they needed to pay for their needs. And so with a very constrained supply, the demand for their beer was, in a word, nutballs.
The monks only sold it at the gates of the abbey, never to nearby liquor stores or bars, and purchasers were limited to one case at a time. Orders were only opened up once every six weeks, and the orders had to be placed over the phone, like it was the olden times or something.
The phone!
There had been instances of beer enthusiasts enduring entire spiritual retreats just to drink the beer; twice in the last five years, the offsite bottling facility had been robbed not of equipment but of the brew itself. It was the rarest beer in the world, and on the beer bucket list of thousands.
Brother Xavier confessed he was jealous since he’d never had a chance to drink the Our Lady of the Fountains beer himself. We promised to smuggle him a bottle if we could, and he thanked us profusely, shaking our hands as we decanted ourselves out of the Renault and got our things.
