Chapter 6 #2
“He got offered a scholarship for grad school in California and he said he’d turn it down if I wanted him to.
” She shrugged, unable to hide the grimace at the memory.
“I thought it was romantic. I thought we were in love. But really, as time went on, it became clear he resented me for asking him to stay. The regret…it broke us. Maybe we would have broken anyway.”
“He didn’t deserve you.”
“You didn’t know him.”
“I know you.”
She looked away, and cleared her throat, the sound breaking whatever spell he’d been under. “What about you, Father? Truth or Dare?”
“I also always pick Truth,” he admitted.
“So what you’re telling me is we’re really playing Twenty Questions.
I can work with that.” She shifted on the couch and her robe slid open further at her neckline, just enough to give him a glimpse of her clavicle, the small cluster of freckles at the edge of her neckline above the swell of her breasts.
Stop thinking about her breasts.
He took a sip of his hot chocolate and focused his attention on the heat of the mug seeping into his palms. “We could pick another game,” he offered.
“Nope. Too late. I already have my first question.”
He bit back a smile. “Then by all means.”
“Favorite Christmas tradition?” she asked.
“When I was a kid, we used to make gingerbread houses every year. Gavin and I would each get to choose what kind of house we wanted to make. We were supposed to pick something to represent our hopes for the coming year. My mom would spend days baking all the pieces. She made templates from Cheerios boxes and kept them in the junk drawer in the kitchen,” he said, chuckling.
“I haven’t thought about those in years.
The week before Christmas, we’d go to the store and buy all the candy we could carry and then we’d spend a whole night assembling and decorating while we listened to the John Denver Muppet Christmas album on vinyl on repeat. ”
She settled against the back of the couch, leaning a bit closer to him. “What was your favorite house?”
“The year we made the farm. Hands down. Gavin made the farmhouse, and I made the barn. Mom even cut out pieces to make a grain silo and cows and sheep. We used shredded wheat bricks for hay bales and pretzel rods to build a fence around the pasture, and so much red icing. When it was done, Mom said she wasn’t sure what dream we were trying to manifest, but the best she could do was a trip to Longfield Farm in the spring.
” He paused, a bittersweet happiness settling over him at the memory.
“We haven’t done it since I left for college. ”
“Why not? You should revive the tradition!”
“We’re adults now—”
“You’re adults who get together with your friends to play competitive games of Monopoly and Uno. I think you could make gingerbread houses without worrying about it being too childish.”
He laughed. “You have a point.” He took the last sip of his hot cocoa and, as he placed the empty mug on the coffee table, wondered if the warmth flowing through his extremities was because of the fireplace, the alcohol, or her.
“I’ve never made a gingerbread house,” she admitted.
“You haven’t? I thought everyone made them as kids.”
“Just the ones with graham crackers and milk cartons you make in elementary school. My mom made amazing gingerbread cookies, but we weren’t allowed to make houses from them. She said it was wasteful.”
“Then that settles it. We’ll have to revive the tradition when we get back to Aster Bay. Everyone should make at least one gingerbread house in their lifetime.”
“Think we can convince the gang to forego a board game night in favor of gingerbread?”
“Not a chance,” he said, “But I think we can convince them to tack it onto the next game night.”
“Sounds like a plan. I might even try making my mom’s recipe. I haven’t made it in years.”
He twisted to face her more fully. “What’s your favorite Christmas tradition?”
“When I was little, every year on Christmas Eve, my dad and I would lie on the floor under the Christmas tree and he would read me Santa Mouse. Do you know it?”
“No, I can’t say I do.”
“It’s a children’s picture book about a mouse who doesn’t have any family or even a name.
He puts out a piece of cheese for Santa on Christmas Eve and Santa is so moved by it, he gives the mouse a name and invites him to join him on his journey to deliver presents.
” She smiled to herself as she finished her hot cocoa and set the mug down.
“Every year, we’d read the book and then we’d put out cookies for Santa and a little piece of cheese for Santa Mouse, but not the slices of American cheese or blocks of cheddar we usually had in the fridge.
Dad would go to the store and buy a wedge of brie or gouda or Manchego.
Something special. The pine needles would fall into the cheese and we’d steal little slices off the edge while Dad read.
But then I got older and we stopped reading and Mom got tired of vacuuming up the pine needles.
I don’t think I’ve had a real Christmas tree since I was a teenager.
” She paused, and when she spoke again, it was as though she were speaking to herself and not him.
“Someday, I’m going to buy fancy cheese and read books to my kids under a real Christmas tree. ”
His heart thudded painfully at the idea of Molly with children, with a husband, a family he had no part of. “You’ll be an amazing mom.”
“Did you ever want kids? Before you…” She waved her hand at him as though that completed her sentence.
“I was only twenty when I began my formation.” He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck and glanced away. “Honestly, before that, I was more concerned with not getting a girl pregnant.”
She gasped, her eyes widening, and pressed a mock-scandalized hand to her chest. “Father West, are you not a virgin?”
He wanted to press his lips to the hollow of her throat. “I am not, Ms. Proulx.”
“Damn.” She let out a slow breath as she melted back against the couch, leaning her head back even as she kept her eyes on him. “I really wish I didn’t know that.”
His skin buzzed, electrified by her nearness and the distracting sliver of skin at her neckline and the soft sort of longing in her voice—or had he imagined that?
If he were any other man, he would reach across the space between them and trace her smile with his tongue.
He’d let the desire and frustration clouding his senses take over.
It would be the most natural thing in the world to kiss her, to touch her.
Far more so than the immense effort he was expending to stay on his side of the couch.
But when she looked at him like that, her eyes warm and a little sad, like she knew exactly how wonderful they could be together and had already mourned the impossibility of it, when she looked at him like she saw the man beneath the vestments, like she cared for him not because of his vocation but perhaps in spite of it…
If he were any other man, he could make her happy. He was sure of it.
“I guess I always assumed, in order to give something like that up, you must never have experienced it,” she said.
The standard reply was out of his mouth before he’d even really considered it. “Sexuality is such a small part of who we are.”
“But don’t you ever miss it? Sometimes I just need to be touched, to connect with another person.”
“You can have connection without taking your clothes off,” he said, though his skin had heated at her words, desire washing over him. Careful. “We’re connecting right now.”
She shook her head. “That’s different. That’s— Oh.” She broke off, as though she’d solved some hidden puzzle. “I see.”
“What do you see, Ms. Proulx?” he asked, a teasing lilt slipping into his tone.
“Nothing. Forget it,” she said, sitting up straight.
“Say it. Unless you’re choosing dare?” He arched an eyebrow at her expectantly.
“Dare,” she whispered.
“I dare you to tell me.”
He could practically see the wheels turning in her head, the debate she was having with herself. At last, she looked him dead in the eyes, and said, “You may not be a virgin, but you’ve never had good sex.”
“I have had plenty of—”
She barreled on, a lift at the corner of her lips as though she had him all figured out. “Not just sex that feels good, but sex that rewrites your DNA.”
All teasing fell away. “What do you mean?”
She closed her eyes, her hands hovering over her heart, as she spoke.
“Being with someone like that, it’s not just because you’re chasing a release.
You’re inviting them to become a part of you.
When you can’t get close enough, and they become a part of every cell, rewiring every atom.
When each touch, each breath, grounds you more in your body.
Somehow, being as close to another person as physically possible becomes about so much more than bodies.
It’s recognizing the light in another person, understanding that alone we aren’t complete…
” She opened her eyes, sighing dreamily.
“Sex like that… I can’t imagine giving that up. ”
He struggled to swallow, his throat constricted. “And you have had sex like that?”
The sadness in her eyes at whatever memory she was recalling broke his heart and made him unreasonably jealous all at the same time. “Almost. Once. But I believe I’ll find it again, and this time I’ll get to keep it.”
In the other room, the oven timer dinged. Caleb cleared his throat and got to his feet, suddenly hot and itchy all over, like his skin was too tight. “That’ll be our dinner,” he mumbled as he hurried from the room, her words echoing in his mind.
She was right. He’d never had sex like that.
The fumblings of his teenage years hadn’t prepared him for the possibility sex could be more than a physical give and take, but his blood hummed in recognition as she’d spoken.
An involuntary acknowledgment of the truth in her words, a painful awareness of this entire aspect of human existence he had never experienced, would never experience—and why?
How did this sacrifice, this artificial constraint on his humanity, glorify God?
What if the Church was wrong?
He closed his eyes and pressed his hands over his heart as Molly had done, breathing into the ache behind his sternum, the emptiness growing day after day, the loneliness no amount of prayer had assuaged.
What if all this time the problem hadn’t been his faith or his temptations?
What if sex wasn’t merely a biological impulse, but was actually the greatest moment of connection—to each other and to God—man could experience in this life?
And what if Caleb wanted to experience it too?