6. Levi
six
Thea promised me that she’d bring some cannabis edibles to my hotel room tonight. She’d insisted that she wouldn’t miss this moment for anything. I couldn’t pretend to be mad about that. Spending time with Thea had been the highlight of my trip.
I jumped at the knock on my door. Nervous and excited energy raced through my body, and I hurried to pull open the heavy hotel door.
Thea’s long hair flowed free around her gorgeous face. She usually wore it pulled back, but it looked incredible this way. She wore a black, hooded jacket over a low-cut, white tank top. I tried not to notice the black bra showing through her shirt. I pushed down any feelings of arousal like I’d been trained my entire life to do. My eyes dropped from her chest, and I saw that she had swipes of dried paint on her hands and a canvas tucked under her arm.
I stepped back to let her into my room and pointed at the canvas. “What did you paint?”
“You.” She pressed the canvas into my chest without looking at me and made her way to the small sofa in my room. Thea yanked the curtains open and looked down at the night street below. “Huh. I’ve never seen Durango from this vantage point before.” She removed her jacket while observing her hometown from a hotel room window.
I tore my eyes away from her silhouette and turned over the canvas she’d given me. Shades of gray all in a line, followed by an incredible burst of color. Me. Obviously. The only thought I had was that the explosion of color should have been more purple.
“Holy shit, Thea,” I mumbled. “You painted me.”
Thea laughed. “That’s what I said, dude.”
“This is incredible.” I met her stunning green gaze and felt zapped by lightning. I’d never been understood this way before. Every person I’d known in my life saw my gray, but Thea saw the color.
“Glad you like it. Now, come and sit. Let’s get this party started.” I obeyed. I set the painting on the bed and made my way to the sofa.
Thea ripped open the package of gummy edibles with her teeth. “Start with one, big guy.” She plucked a peach ring from the bag, pressed it into my mouth, and patted my cheek while I chewed. “You’ll be feeling that in about an hour.” She popped one in her mouth, too.
I needed to stop staring at her lips while she chewed.
“Let me see your list.” She held out her hand, and I noticed the smudge of yellow on her wrist. I don’t know why I found it sexy. Maybe it was because she’d painted me, or maybe it was because everything Thea did was sexy.
Shit. I was in trouble here. She’d already made it clear that she wasn’t attracted to me and was strictly interested in being my friend for two weeks. Leave it to me to be the na?ve idiot who fell for the first woman he met after a divorce.
I walked over to my bed, gathered the napkin from my nightstand, and delivered it to Thea’s outstretched palm. “Okay.” Her eyes scanned the list. “Getting addicted to coffee is easy and a little boring. Have it every morning for a week. Bam. Done.”
I smiled. “I can probably do that one on my own.”
Thea nodded, eyes still on the list. “Let’s do your tattoo next. I know a crazy talented guy who owes me big time, so he’ll fit you into his schedule whenever I say.” Her eyes flicked back up to meet mine. “Thursday? I’m free Thursday, and we need to do this before you leave on Sunday.”
I nodded, heart racing at the thought of my family seeing me with permanent ink on my skin. They’d be shocked and outraged. They’d lump me into every awful stereotype about Ex-Mormons that had ever been uttered. Wicked. Lazy. Deceitful. Lost. Devoid of light. Angry. Selfish. The list of ugly adjectives could go on for miles.
I tried to tell myself that I didn’t care what my family thought, but I did, and it hurt.
“You okay?” Thea studied my face.
I shrugged and tried to smile. “I guess I’m worried about the tattoo thing. All of the other stuff on my list can be kept private from my family, and I can avoid their judgment. I can’t hide a tattoo, though. I’m already imagining making my mom cry and the passive-aggressive way my siblings will avoid me even more than they already do.” I sighed. “And my boss is Mormon, too. This could hurt me at work.”
Thea raised both eyebrows. “Seriously? All that trouble for a piece of art printed on your body?”
I nodded, staring down at my hands.
“I’m sorry.” Thea’s voice sounded softer than I’d ever heard it. “Look, Levi, you don’t have to get a tattoo because other people have them. You don’t have to do all of this stuff,” she gestured to my list, “in two weeks because I said so. You’re on your own timeline.” She paused, and when she spoke again, her softness disappeared. “But I mean, above all, it sounds like your family needs to back off. And maybe you need a new job. You said yourself that you don’t like accounting anyway.”
“You’re right. I do hate accounting. Also, I think I need a new everything in my life, but that is one daunting task.”
Thea nodded. “To wake up one day and realize that you don’t want the life you have can crush a person.” Thea’s expression looked as if she’d slipped behind a wall of ice.
“Or it can free a person,” I suggested. “Freedom can be a lot of work, but I hear it’s worth it in the end.”
“The end. What does that mean anyway?” Thea narrowed her eyes. “Does it mean when we die? Is it some afterlife? Is it the end of a phase?” She cleared her throat and laughed. “Ha! I’m not even high yet, and I’m getting all weird and philosophical.”
I smiled back at her. “I’m okay with weird and philosophical.”
She half-smiled and changed the subject. “So, music. Tell me your bands.”
I laughed, “If my mom asks, I only ever listened to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Janice Kapp Perry. But you know, when I was alone in my car, I blasted My Chemical Romance, The Used, Angels and Airwaves, Black Veil Brides, Anberlin, Taking Back Sunday, I Prevail, and maybe a little of the softer stuff like Dashboard Confessional, Simple Plan, and Yellowcard.”
Thea’s eyes lit up. “Yes! Don’t be a sexist asshole, though. We need to add Paramore to the list. Hayley Williams is a badass for breaking the glass ceiling in such a male-dominated genre.”
“Yes, Paramore deserves a spot on the list, obviously.”
“Misery Business is my favorite Paramore song.” Thea found the song on her phone and tapped play.
I listened and shrugged. “I don’t know this one. It must have come out while I was on my mission.”
Thea’s mouth dropped open, and she smacked my arm. “You promised you would tell me all about the mission! Is now that time?” She turned down the volume on her phone but left the music playing.
“You mean, you want to hear about the trauma and brainwashing that occurs on a Mormon mission?” I smiled, but it wasn’t a joke. I still had nightmares about my two years of service for the church in Honduras. They didn’t come often, but occasionally, I’d wake up in a panic. I never told Gina what the dreams were about when she’d wake up with me at night. I’d tell her they were about a strange place where no one could understand me, that I was trapped and abandoned. She would rub my back and comfort me like a good wife, and then we’d go back to sleep.
I could only imagine Gina’s reaction if I’d told her the strange place was Honduras or that my “best two years” were a nightmare.
Thea nodded and leaned forward. “I need this story tonight.”
“Okay, this story starts in Cedar City, Utah, on a beautiful summer night. Brigham Levi Thompson had recently turned nineteen and would be the third Thompson boy to receive his mission call from the Lord. His parents were filled with pride and joy for their righteous sons—”
“Wait, wait, wait!” Thea stopped me. “Are we doing this whole story in the third person?”
“Thea, don’t interrupt.” I placed my finger against her full lips as she giggled. My finger may or may not have tingled a little when I removed it. Maybe the weed had already taken effect. I wasn’t so pathetic that touching women made me tingle.
I shook off the feeling and continued my story. “Brigham received his call to serve the Lord in Honduras and would report to the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah in exactly six months.”
I paused for dramatic effect. “Nothing would ever be the same for young Brigham. He thought he knew his beloved church, but he was little prepared for the full immersion of doctrine. He wasn’t prepared to be sent to one of the world’s most dangerous cities to share the gospel in a language he didn’t know. But he had faith that the Lord would provide.”
I struggled to put into words what my mission did to me psychologically. I let out a deep breath and continued, “Brigham’s name changed to Elder Thompson, and he spent the next two years living, breathing, drinking in every word of Mormon doctrine, both the beautiful and the poisonous, in one gulp.
“He was cut off from the outside world, including family, friends, and any form of pop culture. He cried in his sleep when no one could understand him until, at long last, the Lord helped him learn the Spanish language. Then, Elder Thompson became a force to be reckoned with as the power of God flowed through him and touched the hearts of hundreds.”
Thea covered her mouth and snorted, shoulders shaking from her laughter. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
I grinned at her. “About what exactly? The hundreds of people I regret baptizing?”
“No.” She shook her head, still laughing. “The power of God that flowed through you.”
“Ah, yes. Men in the church receive the priesthood, which is God’s actual power. You get your first taste of it at twelve, and I have to tell you, it’s intoxicating.” I tried to keep a straight face. “Thea,” I held my hands out to her, “Would you like to touch the hands that once held the power of God?”
Thea laughed even harder and smacked my hands away.
“Did you feel it?” I teased with a smirk. “God’s power?”
“Shut up! And only men get this power in the church?”
I nodded. “There is no priesthood for women, like not even Hayley Williams could have it if she converted to Mormonism. But the women’s job is even more important. They get to support the priesthood, Thea.”
“Ew!”
I laughed out loud. It all sounded so ridiculous as I tried to explain it to Thea. How did I once buy into all of this bullshit? How could I have wasted so much of my life on the church?
Instead of the regret and anger that used to fill me to the brim when I asked myself these questions, I felt calm. I felt so light that I thought maybe I could float away. “Whoa.” I leaned back on the sofa as the room gently tilted to the left.
Thea laughed. “You’re starting to feel it, aren’t you? Relax and let it come, bro.”
Suddenly, I had an uncontrollable urge to touch Thea’s hair. I reached over and ran my fingers through her purplish-black silk. “Whoa,” I giggled, or something weird like that. “Your hair feels like unicorn clouds.”
Thea snorted and patted my cheek again. I caught her hand in mine before she could pull it away. “Your skin is so soft, Thea!” I couldn’t mask my enthusiasm. I ran my fingers over her black nail polish, mesmerized by how the lamplight caught the hidden metallic shimmer.
“Everything feels really good with a nice high, doesn’t it?” Thea smiled at me and placed my hand back in my lap, but underneath her calm, she looked rattled by my touching her. Was it a good kind of rattled? The air between us felt like it crackled with electricity. Did she feel it, too?
Before I could ask, she pushed the conversation past the change in the air. “You should try masturbating now. High orgasms are life-changing.” She narrowed her gorgeous eyes at me, all playfulness. “You sure you’ve never jerked yourself off? It seems impossible to survive the teenage years without a little self-love. I’ve never met a single guy that doesn’t masturbate weekly.”
I shrugged, willing to let Thea change the subject. I’d probably imagined whatever happened between us. “I guess I’m your first. Also, Mormons call that self-harm instead of self-love. Fun fact: if you masturbate or engage in any self-pleasure, you have to report it to your bishop and go through the repentance process. There was this one kid in my ward who used to masturbate, and we always knew when his mom caught him because suddenly, he wasn’t allowed to bless, pass, or take the sacrament for six months. He didn’t go on a mission either. He was unworthy. Unworthy dudes don’t get girls.” I burst out laughing. There was nothing particularly funny about my anecdote, but I couldn’t stop laughing. For some reason, the fact that Jeremy Jefferson couldn’t get girls because he stroked his own dick had me in peals of doubled-over laughter.
Thea watched me with a single eyebrow raised, but the corner of her mouth twitched like she was fighting off a smile. Finally, she succumbed to the laugh.
The music on Thea’s phone still played, moving on from Paramore drama to Yellowcard angst. Our eyes met, lit with excitement, when Only One began to play. We both started belting out the lyrics, laughing between phrases.
“You’re a terrible singer!” Thea laughed so hard she had tears in her eyes.
I shoved her shoulder, singing louder. I paused to say, “You’re a terrible singer!”
Thea also sang louder in response, flipping me off, and we spent the next who knows how long laughing our asses off over nothing.
But all of that nothing felt like everything.