Chapter 12
Icouldn’t escape the church grounds fast enough. At the butcher’s shop, I all but flopped onto the stool and melted into the seat.
Jerry cleared his throat awkwardly when I walked in. The female customer, waiting for her order, turned toward me and began giving me death glares.
“Hey, lady?” Jerry cleared his throat on purpose. “You want your food?”
She snatched her paper bag full of meat and ran off, still shaking her head at me.
I shouldn’t be recognizable in my hoodie and jeans.
People never saw me outside the church. Hopefully, she assumed I was just some shut-in.
The truth was, I couldn’t trust myself to be out, but right now, I needed one thing: My best friend telling me what an absolute dumbass I had been and knocking me back into shape.
“Uh, rough day, Priesty Pop?”
I grumbled into the woods of the island, letting my head fall on the counter. I could see the crack in the sky from the window. The sun was setting on the horizon, and my lame excuse to leave had Gloria and Aya doing all the work.
I was a piece of shit.
I’d been trying to strip the tension from my shoulders all day, and that was how I found myself walking down the quiet streets of Monticello and right to this damn shop.
My soul was unsettled more than it should have been for someone who’d just finished fucking Mass.
I clenched my fists, trying to shove the memory of ‘popping a fucking tent’ near an acolyte.
My acolyte.
If there was a god, I was fucked. There would be no beautiful afterlife for me. Nope, just the devil and a pinecone.
Even now, I was still semi-hard from recalling the subtle tilt of her head, and her open, ready mouth.
Stop. It. Soften, you, moron!
It hadn’t worked.
Of course, it hadn’t.
My dick had a mind of its own, and after being locked away for years, it didn’t remember how to fucking behave. I’d stroked myself to that damn shadow while in the confessional, and now this fucking acolyte wasn’t helping my problem.
I’d brought this on myself.
The butcher shop smelled of smoke and cured meat, a welcome contrast to the antiseptic scent of candles and incense I had been running from all day. Jerry was behind the counter, sharpening a knife with that calm, deliberate rhythm he always had.
I peered at him through my bangs, letting the golden locks act as a veil to shield me from his judgment. He looked up and grinned at me, using the tip of the dirty knife to flip my hair away from my face.
“The fuck!” I yelped, seeing the blade too close to my eyeball.
Jerry shook his head. “Boy, if I wanted you dead, there are a lot more creative ways of doing it.”
That wasn’t exactly comforting. I glared at him, but didn’t put my head back down. Instead, I stuck out my tongue at the brute. Sometimes his soldier mannerisms really shone through.
“Well, well, now there he is. Oh, holy Father Jedidiah Franklin, looking like the weight of God’s sins is square on his shoulders,” he said, voice rough but teasing.
“What’s got you scowling? Gloria’s kid left a lego for you to step on?
Elias did that a time or two. I got rid of those damn blocks. My foot still thanks me.”
“Nothing,” I said, though my jaw tightened at the question. “Just…the usual.”
Jerry raised an eyebrow, his notorious smirk widening. “Uh-huh. Nothing. You don’t have that ‘I’m losing my mind over some girl’ look on your face at all,” he said, laying the knife down. “What’s her name? Or should I ask your boner you scared Margaret Patrice with?”
“I don’t have a—”
I stopped, looking down at the very prominent erection in my jeans.
“Fuck you.” I groaned, rubbing the bridge of my nose and batting at my stupid dick, too bad I liked pain. “It’s not like that, okay. It’s—”
I stopped again.
Jesus, say it out loud, and it sounds stupid.
“There’s this new acolyte at the church. She…she’s driving me insane. I can’t focus, Jerry. I can’t do anything without thinking about…everything she does. Every little movement. I’m hard because I got a boner from giving her the wafer for—”
I was cut off by booming laughter. Jerry leaned back on the counter, eyes twinkling with amusement even after he stopped cackling at my dismay.
“Ohhh…I see…” he said slowly, dragging out the words, and reaching down to light a cigar. “So the good priest is…distracted by a little altar girl? And here I thought the holiest man I knew had a spine of steel. Apparently, it was your dick that was made of steel, big boy.”
“I’m not exaggerating,” I snapped, waving his wiggly eyebrows away.
I was angry, though my cheeks warmed at his teasing.
“She—she’s subtle! She is doing it on purpose, but no one else sees.
She’s making me insane. I swear she smirked at me when she saw I was getting flustered from her mouth being open so wide and using her ‘fuck me eyes’ to…
I don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t even realize it.
But every little thing she does, every way she moves…
I can’t focus on Mass, on prayers, confessions—fuck me! I can’t pay attention to anything.”
Jerry chuckled, shaking his head.
“Sounds like someone’s got a crush,” he said, using the smoke from his cigar to make a heart in the air. “This ain’t the kind you can will away in the confessional, either, Jed.”
“I’m not—” I started, but he held up a hand.
“No, no, don’t lie to me,” Jerry said, eyes gleaming. “I’ve seen you try to ‘focus’ before. Doesn’t work when you’re this…wound tight. Let me guess: every time she moves, you’re standing there, all stiff, muttering prayers you’ve already said three times, trying not to look at her. Right?”
I swallowed hard, feeling caught. “Yes. It’s ridiculous. And I hate it. I hate that I can’t…control it. Gloria even noticed and asked if I was alright. She told me to take the rest of the day off because I looked ill.”
Jerry laughed again, full-throated, like he hadn’t in months, leaving him gagging on the smoke from his cigar.
Good, asshole, choke on it.
“Oh, I don’t know, Jed,” he said, leaning on the counter and giving me that look only Jerry could get away with.
“Maybe you’re enjoying it more than you’d like to admit.
I mean, you’ve got that ‘tormented saint meets sin in plain sight’ thing going on.
It’s…hot. Hell, I can see the appeal. I’d be putty if Dawn came into my life at any point.
Fuck bein’ a holy man. I choose her, not God.
He can damn me for sayin’ so ‘cuz I love my woman.”
“I am not enjoying it, Jerod,” I said pointedly, using the legal name he hated, though the lie didn’t land with much conviction.
“Uh-huh,” Jerry said, smirking again. “Sure. You’re a pillar of discipline. Except when you’re not. Man, I love watching you squirm, I gotta say.”
I groaned, leaning against the counter.
Jerry laughed harder. “You should see your face, Jed. I could frame it: ‘The priest undone by the altar girl’. Maybe the picture can be anointing her with a Bible in her ass or something.”
“I want to throttle you,” I muttered, though a corner of my mouth twitched despite myself.
“This is serious. I can’t fuck the girl.
I have gone through too much to keep a low profile.
I am sure that plowing a woman on my altar is not exactly going to go under the radar.
Plus, I don’t think she’d go for it anyway.
She is genuinely an innocent person…I think. ”
Jerry leaned closer, lowering his voice in a mock seriousness. “Hey, listen. If she’s driving you this bonkers, that just means she’s good at what she’s doing if she knows it. You need to admit it to yourself, if not to me, that you like her and the attention.”
I glared. “She’s not—she’s just…there. That’s all. Nothing more. Stop laughing at me.”
“Nothing more,” Jerry echoed, shaking his head and smiling like I was a child who was too stupid to listen to reason. “Sure, Father. You just keep telling yourself that. Meanwhile, you’re red as a beet, pacing like a lion in a cage. I love it, but ya can’t live like this.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, groaning. “Duh, genius. Gold star, but what the fuck do I do? I can’t talk about this with anyone else. They’d think I’m…”
“Crazy? Obsessed? Already halfway to confession with a boner keeping up the collar?” Jerry finished for me, grinning. “Exactly. That was why you came to me. I get it. And I won’t judge ya. Well…not too harshly anyway.”
I shook my head. I was annoyed, yet still grateful. Jerry’s banter was like a balm and a blade at the same time. He could tease, mock, and make me feel human, all in a single sentence. It was always like that.
“Just…don’t let her see you like this. Maybe get a chastity thingy for your dick for now,” Jerry said, softer now, sincerity threading through his amusement.
“Keep your head up—the one on your shoulders. Keep your hands where they belong. And for God’s sake, Jed…
don’t let yourself get played if this lady is toying with you. ”
“I know,” I muttered, though the truth was, I wasn’t sure I could. Not with her. If she pushed even a little…
Jerry leaned back again, chucking the dead cigar behind him like it was nothing. “Well, the way I see it is you’ve got two options.”
I waited for him to continue, not knowing what I wanted him to say. I’m assuming boning the acolyte wasn’t on the list.
His knife in hand, he looked me right in the eyes and smiled. “Alright, now that I’ve thoroughly embarrassed you, want some meat for dinner? Or are you too distracted dreaming about altar girls?”
I groaned again, grabbing a slab of brisket before he could add any more fuel to the fire. “You’re going to hell, you know that?”
“Maybe,” he said, laughing as he slid the knife back into the block. “But I’ll save you a seat next to me, Father. We can wait for Jack to get his sorry ass there with us to give him the beat down the prick needs.”