Chapter 9. Ford
The café door hasn't finished closing before I'm standing alone at the table.
The barista glances up, then away. I collect myself, and I walk to the counter to return the cups.
Because that is what a person does. You drink your coffee, you return your cups, you leave.
Simple. But my mouth has a bitter taste, and I feel like I'm about to cry, as if I made a terrible mistake, which is absolutely nonsensical.
I don't cry for mundane things like this one.
My car waits where I left it, exactly the same. Nothing has been disturbed. Except me. Except how ridiculously empty it feels.
This is what I know: Jude Piaf is a liability.
He is twenty-eight years old and possesses no sense of self-preservation.
He tracked me down through a chain of acquaintances after a single encounter at a club I barely wanted to attend, showed up at my church uninvited, manipulated me into buying him coffee, and then vanished mid-conversation with a wink and a nickname I didn't authorize.
Mr. Dom. The worst part: I chuckle at the thought.
I do not do brats. I have never done brats.
My arrangements have always been with submissives who valued order as much as I do.
Men who understood that discipline is a gift, not a game.
Men who showed up on time, followed protocols, and didn't eat chocolate bars in my car.
The last arrangement ended three years ago, amicably, when Zack relocated to Seattle for work.
We shook hands. We wished each other well. That is how these things should end.
Jude would leave residue everywhere. He would leave chocolate wrappers and chaos.
He is doing that already. I can see it clearly, the late-night calls, the boundary violations disguised as spontaneity, the inevitable moment when his recklessness collides with my need for control and someone gets hurt. Probably both of us. Probably me.
You don't know what I want. That's what he said. He called me arrogant.
A cyclist cuts in front of me without signaling, and I brake harder than necessary, my heart jumping into my throat for one stupid second before settling. I take a breath. Then another.
The problem, and I recognize this with the clarity of a man diagnosing his own illness, is that I keep hearing his voice.
The way he said I love to be on my knees to worship, standing in my church with that angelic expression on a face designed for sin.
The way his laugh broke open. The foam on his upper lip.
The chipped black polish on two fingernails, as if he'd started painting them and gotten bored halfway through.
The way his confidence flickered just once, when he admitted he didn't know what he wanted long-term, and his eyes dropped to the table, and for that single moment he looked like someone who had been hurt badly enough to stop pretending it didn't matter.
I know that look. I've worn it in mirrors I didn't mean to glance at.
I pull into the driveway and cut the engine. Why did you accept coming here with me? His question sits in my chest.
Because for twenty-seven minutes in a dimly lit café, sitting across from a man who is everything I should avoid, I felt something I haven't felt in years.
Not desire. I've felt desire. Desire is manageable, a biological function I can satisfy.
This was something else. And it shouldn't be.
We saw each other twice, for God's sake!
But it was.
I hang my keys on the hook by the door. I place my wallet on the console table. I check my phone.
No messages. Of course there are no messages, he doesn't have my number, and I don't have his, and this is how it should stay.
I set the phone down on the counter, screen facing away from me, get Angel from Marianne, and carry her to the kitchen to get her lunch.
She babbles happily against my chest, her small fingers grasping at my collar.
I press my lips to the top of her head and breathe her in.
This is what matters. This is what I built my life around.
I pour myself a glass of water and drink it standing at the kitchen window, watching the backyard where nothing moves, where everything is exactly as I arranged it.
And I do not think about him again. I refuse to think about him again.
I am very disciplined about the things I refuse to think about.
That's what I tell myself. Think about something else, remember?
The water tastes like nothing.
?
After Angel's nap, I leave her with my mother, who arrives at her usual time with her usual comments about how quiet the house is.
I don't take the bait. I gather my portfolio and drive to the church for the afternoon rehearsal, my mind fixed on the Requiem's second movement, on the tenors who still can't find the urgency in the Libera me, on anything that isn't white hair and honey eyes.
"Tenors, you're dragging," I say, lowering my baton. "Measure forty-seven. The Libera me should feel like urgency, not reluctance. Again, from the top of the phrase."
They comply. They always comply. The phrase begins again. The tenors are better. The altos weave beneath them. I'm raising my left hand to bring in the basses when the sound reaches me, a low, wooden groan from the doors at the back of the room.
My eyes betray me before my discipline can intervene.
Jude. Of course it's Jude.
The truth is closer to: thank God it's Jude. Because I thought he'd never show up again.
I push the thought away.
He's wearing a dark green jacket over a black t-shirt, jeans with a tear at the left knee, and brown boots that look like they've survived several apocalypses. He catches my eyes and has the audacity to wave.
The choir stumbles. The sopranos lose their pitch. The tenors, who had finally achieved the urgency I'd requested, collapse back into confusion. Mrs. Reyes, my most reliable alto, looks at me with an expression of gentle concern.
"Sorry," I say, recovering my grip on the baton and my grip on myself. "My fault. Let's take it from measure forty-two."
We take it from measure forty-two. I do not look at the back of the room again.
I conduct with movements sharper than usual, my corrections more clipped.
The choir responds to the shift in my energy with wariness, which makes me feel a pang of guilt.
They sing well. They sing beautifully, even. But I can feel him back there.
When I finally call an end to rehearsal, my voice sounds brittle. "Good work. We'll refine the Sanctus next time."
The choir disperses. Conversations about the week, comparisons of grandchildren's achievements, coffee that someone sets up in the hall. I busy myself with my music folder, aligning the pages, straightening the stand, overly aware that he's watching my every move.
The church empties. I wait. I am becoming disturbingly familiar with the act of waiting for a room to clear so I can confront a man I keep telling myself I don't want to see.
When I turn, Jude is leaning against the stone archway that leads to the vestibule, his arms crossed loosely over his chest. He looks entirely at ease, which is infuriating, because I feel on edge.
"You shouldn't bother coming just for me," I say, and I hear how stiff my voice sounds.
His eyebrows rise, a look of exaggerated innocence that I don't believe for a second. "Bold of you to assume I came for you." His fingers trail along the aged wooden hymnal rack mounted to the back of the nearest pew. "I told you I'm just seeking salvation."
"You don't strike me as someone in search of salvation."
"Everyone needs saving from something." He says it lightly, but something flickers behind his eyes, there and gone. Then the grin returns. "Besides, I told you I was going to start coming. I keep my promises."
"That wasn't a promise. That was a threat."
He laughs, that sound, the one that caught me off guard in the café, genuine and sharp-edged. "Potato, potahto."
I draw myself up. The flutter in my chest is something I refuse to name, so I bury it beneath professional courtesy. "The service starts in forty minutes. If you're staying, please sit quietly."
"I can be quiet when told to," he says, winking again. He's infuriating.
He stays. He sits in the third row from the back, close enough to the aisle that I can see him from the choir loft without turning my head. Which means I don't have to turn my head. Which means I can't pretend I'm not looking.
I am looking. He knows it.
Father Brennan begins the liturgy, and I cue the opening hymn, Be Thou My Vision, a straightforward piece the choir could sing in their sleep.
I come in two beats late. Mrs. Reyes covers for me, her alto steady and unflinching, and I recover before anyone else notices.
But I notice. It sounds horrible to my ears.
Jude sits with his hands folded in his lap, his posture surprisingly still for someone who seems constitutionally incapable of remaining in one position for longer than thirty seconds.
The stained glass paints his hair in shifting colors as the morning light moves, gold, then rose, then a deep violet that turns his white to something darker.
He's watching Father Brennan with attention.
I'm shocked by how well-behaved he's being.
The service ends. The congregation files out. Jude stands, stretches, and walks toward the exit without looking back.
He doesn't say goodbye. He doesn't wave. He simply leaves, and the church is suddenly too quiet, and the space he occupied in the third pew from the back looks exactly like every other empty pew, and there is no reason at all for me to stand here staring at it.
I stare at it anyway until the organist asks if I'm feeling all right, and I say yes, and I am lying.