Rage

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Adam

P otluck Sundays are my favorite. After church, everyone comes together in the recreation hall, arms laden with dishes to share. It's usually casseroles. I love casseroles. They're like comfort on a plate, happiness and love in a baking dish, warmed to share with others. And no one, and I mean no one, makes better casseroles than southern church ladies. It's common knowledge.

I don't even care how hard I'm going to have to hit the gym tomorrow, I make sure to get a little bit of each and every dish that the women of our congregation have set out buffet style. It's probably a little gluttonous, but I don't skip even one dish. What if sweet Mrs. Kelse asks me how I liked her cheesy potato bake, and I didn't have any of it? It's not like I could lie to her, and I couldn't bear to hurt her feelings. Surely my gluttony is justified if I’m trying to make others happy.

With a heavily laden plate of delicious comfort food, I make my way across the room to find somewhere to sit. I avoid my father’s judgmental stare from the front of the room, where he is sitting with Pastor Reynard and the other church officials, like he normally does. As an upcoming member of the clergy, I should probably go sit with them. They probably expect me to. But the youth group is close to my heart. And Levi is here somewhere…

My mouth dries up when I see him sitting at a long table towards the back of the room. He's talking to Leah, a girl in our youth group who is a few years younger. She's petite and gorgeous, with tanned skin and long, dark hair that reaches her waist. Thick, dark eyelashes frame her amber eyes. It's a sharp contrast to Levi's wavy blond locks and bright blue eyes. Sometimes I think everything about him is made of light. God's light.

Seeing him always makes me feel strange. You'd think I'd be used to him by now, but my skin tingles whenever he's near me. I don't see anyone but him until I notice his hand on Leah's back. They're leaning their heads together, whispering like they have a secret. She seems upset. Levi is down on a knee next to her chair, rubbing her back.

"Leah? Are you okay?"

She sniffs and looks up at me, then shares a look with Levi. Like they know something I don't.

Levi clears his throat and resumes rubbing her back. I barely hear what he's saying through the blood rushing in my ears as my eyes zero in on the casual way he touches her. I have to shake my head out of it, remembering that he's trying to comfort the younger woman.

"Leah's mother is being deported. It's the same issue Mr. Alba had," he says solemnly.

Leah's father had to move back to Guatemala a couple of years ago because of an issue with his work visa.

I look at Leah. "How is that possible? You were born here. Doesn’t that mean your parents can stay?”

Leah shakes her head. “That’s not how it works.”

“That seems wrong.”

Leah scoffs and stands up, wiping her face. Her back straightens. “Why don't you ask your father about it?"

What does that mean? I glance over to my father's table, noticing the way he watches Leah flee the room. I can't quite read the expression on his face from here, but my stomach clenches all the same. He has never been as welcoming to the Alba family as he should, never giving them the same kindness and respect as the other members of our congregation.

One of the few times I've ever talked back to my father was around the time that Mr. Alba was deported. I was still in high school, and my father had made an offhanded comment about having “illegals” in the congregation. Considering we have very few church members of color, it wasn't hard to guess what family he was referring to. I'd mentioned that they were good people, hard workers, and active members of the church. He told me I was too young to understand how this country works and gave me a lecture about how illegal immigration was harmful to the economy and dangerous for crime rates.

The Albas were here legally, paid taxes, and were upstanding members of our community. When I pointed that out, he brushed me off as disrespectful and sent me to my room to pray for forgiveness and understanding that he was protecting our way of life. After all, shouldn't I defer to him, as both the head of our household and an elected representative of the government, to make the right choices for us?

I prayed on it, but I never came to the conclusion he wanted me to. Instead, my prayers led me to find quiet ways to help the Alba family where I could. Including writing a letter of recommendation to the university that I recently graduated from. With Leah's excellent grades and extra-curricular work that she does with our youth ministry, she was offered a full scholarship. What happens to that scholarship if her mother's immigration status is challenged, or if her mother has to leave the country before she graduates high school this year? Will she have to leave too? She doesn't have any other family in the states that I'm aware of, and she's only seventeen.

My father's disapproving gaze locks on mine, and I force some pleasantry into my steely expression. I nod in his direction, and he smiles. A little hope unfurls in my chest.

"Maybe I can talk to my dad, see if there's anything he can do." Maybe now that he won the senate race, he could help Leah's family. Surely after all this time he knows they're good people and wouldn't want their family to be separated. All it would take is a letter from him to the immigration offices, I'm sure of it.

Levi lets out a small scoff, prompting me to turn my attention to look at him. "What?" I ask softly. I don't think I said anything funny.

With a small shake of his head, he takes a seat at the table. I pull out the chair directly across from him and sit, trying not to stare too obviously at his face. He's just so beautiful. I know I shouldn't think that way, but he is. So much so that I completely lose control of myself whenever he's too close. I keep letting him?—

"You're thinking about it," he says softly, eyes glittering.

A shiver runs through me. It’s uncanny how he always seems to know what I’m thinking. If I hadn't seen the evidence of his goodness myself, I'd worry that he's an agent of the Devil, sent to trick me into wickedness. Sometimes I still worry, but the warm feeling I get in my chest when I see him can't be a trick. And this wickedness inside me has always been there. It's something I've never been able to rid myself of, no matter how much I pray. When I begged God for a light when I was feeling trapped in the darkness of my own thoughts, he showed up.

I'll never absolve myself of the sins I've committed since meeting Levi. And today, in our house of God, of all places…

"It was wrong."

"Was it?"

"We were in church. Pastor Reynard was leading prayer less than twenty feet away!" I hiss, angrier at myself than I am at him.

Not only is it wrong, but we could have been caught. Anyone could have walked around the corner and seen us like that. With Levi on his knees and me… in his mouth.

"You were praying plenty," Levi purrs. I choke on my own spit, reaching for my glass of lemonade and gulping it down as the seats fill up around us.

Levi's eyes lock with mine, a smirk pulling his lips up on one side.

The kids from the youth group close in around us, talking excitedly about today's performance. I try to clear my nerves so I can engage with them, but I'm too flustered to make any sense.

Jesus.

A shiver races down my spine. The starched fabric of my pants becomes uncomfortably tight.

Tearing my eyes away from Levi's mouth is painful, but I manage to pull myself together enough to look away before my situation gets much, much worse.

"I want these pretty lips around my cock…"

Levi Asher has touched me, more than once, and in more than one way. He's done things to my body that I'm ashamed to admit has me considering that I've been wrong about what it means to commune with God. His hands and mouth have made me forget who I am and the values I grew up with. For goodness’ sake, I forgot I was in church this morning when he dropped to his knees and looked up at me with those clear blue eyes.

He's touched me, but I've yet to reciprocate. I've been afraid to. More than that, I've been ashamed of how much I want to. Even now, as much as it scares me to admit to even myself, my mouth fills with saliva at the thought of putting him in my mouth. Kissing him felt like the most salacious act only weeks ago, when Levi showed up seemingly out of nowhere. I was immediately intrigued by him. I couldn't tear my eyes away from how absolutely beautiful he is.

Levi clears his throat and smiles, like he knows the direction my thoughts have fallen. I swallow deeply, clenching my hands where I've rested them in my lap.

"Dessert?" Levi asks, and I nod.

He excuses himself from the table, wishing the youth group luck with their performance this afternoon. They fawn over him, begging him to come with us, but he smiles and makes excuses about visiting his sister.

I've never met his sister. I think she might live outside of town, but not too far, because Levi visits her often. He’s staying with his mom while he takes a break from school, before starting a graduate program in the fall.

After giving him a few minutes, I get up from the table, too. We have almost two hours before we have to get on the bus, but we need time to get far away from here.

I nearly collide with my father on the way out. "Where's the fire?"

Did he see Levi leave? Does he suspect that I'm following him?

Surely not. I'd be shipped off to Deliverance Summit in a heartbeat. Reparative therapy for wayward boys experiencing identity confusion and unnatural predilections . I flat out heard my father said they torture the patients, to break them and reprogram them. Something my father believes is warranted and necessary.

I idolized my father growing up, always believed he was a good man. He's an official in the church, and was a respected lawyer before serving on the local city council for over a decade. There is a lot we don’t see eye-to-eye on, though. He's very old-fashioned. But I still thought he was a good person.

That is until I started listening and noticing more.

Despite being the son of a politician, I never much paid attention to politics. I've dedicated my life to church, family, and sports, in that order. I graduated with my bachelor's degree in Christian Studies a few months ago, and I'm headed to Seminary this summer. There's never been much room in my head for all the squabbling and taking sides worse than sports rivalries. But the events of the past few years, from the George Floyd protests to the Capitol riot in Washington, DC, have opened my eyes to the world around me. I began to notice things, like how the people closest to me treated people who look, love, think, or worship differently than we do. I began to notice that the so-called “traditional values” I grew up with weren't the right path for everyone. I started to see the imbalance in our own home and started paying attention to what kind of world my father was advocating for.

I didn't vote for my father. And I didn't vote for the man he thinks of as a messiah for bringing America back to Christian values. Never mind that he's a convicted felon who, by his actions, seems to be the antithesis of Christian values.

As I stood in the gymnasium of our town community center, I watched my father hover behind my mother while she made her choices. I looked around and saw several couples standing in similar positions. I don't think I would have noticed it before, but just weeks before, there had been a social media advertisement that my father had just about lost his mind over. It was about wives being able to vote however they like, and that their husbands would never know otherwise. Pastor Reynard stood on the pulpit that next Sunday and preached that men are the heads of the household and that the responsibility of decision making should lie on their shoulders as God intended. Wives, he said, should vote as their husbands direct them to, that they are bound by their union to be as one in all things. It's the first time I ever wanted to stand up and walk out, to disagree with the man that I considered my mentor, and who will eventually become my boss once I'm through with Seminary and come to work at the church officially.

On voting day, I strongly considered causing a scene. I wanted to demand that the tall tables with partitions didn't provide enough privacy, that there should be more space between them, that people shouldn't be able to congregate together, even as families, to vote. Because I know if I had been standing next to my parents rather than across from them, my father would have looked at and tried to influence my ballot the way I know he was doing to my mother.

I'm sure he trusted that I was voting the way he'd coached me. Admittedly, it's how I made my decisions the first few elections I voted in. Before I started to pay attention. Back when I trusted that my father had good intentions and cared about his constituents.

"Son?"

I jolt out of my thoughts, remembering that I was trying to come up with an excuse for my hasty retreat.

"Sorry, sir. I'm just a little embarrassed. I got some of Mrs. Mill's chicken pot pie dropped right in my lap, and we're heading to the retirement home soon. I thought I'd just pop home real quick to change. I'll be gone before you and mom get home, but I'll be home for dinner later,” I add on, rambling like an idiot.

"We have plans this evening and likely won't be home until late," he reminds me, staring at me a little too intently. Like he knows I'm lying. I've been holding my jacket in front of my pants to hide the stain from my earlier indiscretions, and I take the opportunity to show him now, hoping the spot that I scrubbed at with flimsy paper towels and hand soap will pass as a food slip and not bodily fluids leftover from being drained within an inch of my life. My face flames, and I think it's enough to convince my father. He shakes his head and dismisses me with a remark about being a twenty-three-year-old man child that needs a bib.