Twenty-Three
Saylor
“Thank you for my birthday present,” I told Gathe as we drove back to the house he shared with his brother after our afternoon out shopping.
It had been a distraction and saved me from my mom taking me somewhere in a ruse to try and get me to talk. She was worried about me. I got that. But I didn’t want to talk about it.
“You’re welcome. That’s why I let you pick it out. I’d have never thought to purchase you a pair of tennis shoes with pearls and shit on them that look like they’ve been worn and beaten up, yet cost almost a grand. I would have gone with jewelry or something stupid like that.” The sarcasm dripping from his words got a small smile out of me.
“They’re cute.”
He cocked an eyebrow as he glanced over at me. “I’m almost positive I could have found something similar at a thrift store for ten bucks.”
“They’re Golden Gooses. You would not have found anything like them for ten dollars.”
“I know what they are. It just baffles me what women will spend money on. Slap together some shoes, put a little bling on them, then beat the hell out of them. Put a seven-hundred-dollar price tag on them in a shiny store. BAM! Females everywhere flock to get a pair.”
I rolled my eyes. “Are you about done, Papaw?”
He laughed and winked at me. “I’m kidding. I wanted you to get something that would make you smile for me again. Still waiting on the dimples, but I’ve got hope.”
At the word dimples , my decent mood plummeted. Turning to stare out the window, I watched as the trees passed and let the thoughts of Jude come crashing in like a wave I’d been struggling to hold back. Tomorrow would be a week since he’d sent me away. I missed him. Heck, I even missed Mena.
“Where did you go?” Gathe asked.
“Nowhere,” I replied.
“Liar. I said something, and you shut down on me. I was trying so hard too.”
I shook my head. I wasn’t saying his name out loud. I’d sworn I wouldn’t say it again after I unloaded on Halo on Friday night. It had helped, telling someone, but then that night, I had cried myself to sleep.
He pulled into his driveway, and relief that we were about to be out of the truck together so he would stop with the questioning came with that.
“You want to leave the bags in here or take them in to change into the beat-up shoes?”
He was trying to make me smile again. I wished I had it in me. For his sake at least.
“Just leave them in here,” I told him before climbing out.
He thought I believed his lie about stopping here so he could take a shower and change before we went to meet my parents for my birthday dinner. It was a bad lie, but I also knew him too well. Gathe was letting me walk in front of him.
Don’t be obvious or anything, bud.
“Gathe,” I said just before we reached the door.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for the party,” I told him before turning the knob and pushing open his front door.
The place erupted in, “SURPRISE!”
Hot-pink balloons fell from the ceiling over my head, silver confetti sprinkled down around me, and a massive silver 22 with rhinestones outlining it covered the far back wall.
“22” by Taylor Swift began playing over the speakers, and I turned back to Gathe.
“What gave it away?” he asked.
“You’re a bad liar,” I told him.
“Happy birthday,” rang out, and I faced the others.
Halo smiled as she stood in the center of everyone, holding a white two-tiered cake with red heart sunglasses perched on top, red lipstick prints all over it, and the words I’m Feeling 22 in more red fondant on the front.
“I helped get folks here and paid for half, but it was Halo’s idea when she found out about your birthday,” Gathe said in my ear.
My eyes prickled.
Well, Crosby, I bet you never would have guessed this was the way it would all play out. I sure as hell hadn’t.
I felt a pang in my chest at the thought of him not being here. It was my first ever birthday without Crosby Cash in attendance. Last year had looked so very different.
I made my way over to Halo. “I hear this was your idea,” I said.
A nervous smile curled her lips. “Birthdays are important. And, well, it’s twenty-two.”
The first real smile I’d been able to manage in six days felt foreign as it tugged up the corners of my mouth.
“Oh my!” Halo said, her eyes lighting up. “You have the best dimples ever.”
Bane walked up behind her and flicked a lighter and lowered it until the flames began to light the candles. When he was done, Halo held it out toward me.
“Make a wish!” she exclaimed happily.
I didn’t believe in wishes, but for her, I pretended and blew them out. Another round of cheers went through the room, and Bane took the cake from her hands.
“I have something for you, but it’s not in here,” Halo said.
She’d bought me a gift too? This night was just getting odder.
I followed her through the room, holding a fake smile and saying, “Thank you,” to those who wished me a happy birthday.
I rolled my eyes at Than’s comment about being forced to come so I’d better make sure he got extra cake. Locke gave me a chin lift, which was about the extent of his talking to me. Not that I cared. Oz was even here, and he held up two fingers and did a double flash of them, then nodded.
When we reached the patio doors, she opened them and waved a hand for me to go outside. I walked past her and didn’t get far before I saw him. Stopping, I stood there. Not moving. The click of the door closing behind me didn’t even register. I was unable to do anything but stare.
Why was he here?
The burst of joy at seeing his face was being overpowered by the anger inching its way in, along with the pain that had reared its ugly head in full force, throwing off the cover I’d tried to tamp it down with today.
“What are you doing here?” My words held no warmth.
“I came to see you,” he replied, taking a step toward me.
I backed up one, and he stopped.
“No. You don’t get to do that. Show up and act like this is normal or expected. It’s my birthday. I am trying to enjoy it.” Or suffer through it.
“I’m sorry.” Two words that did not fix anything. They didn’t even put a Band-Aid on it.
“Yeah, well, me too.” The bitterness in my tone made him wince.
The white collar standing out in the darkness against the black shirt he wore with jeans mocked me. I thought I hated it.
“When I was a freshman in high school, I met a girl,” he said.
I held up a hand and let out a hard laugh. “Uh, no thank you. I do not want story time about the girl you loved.”
He sighed, closing his eyes briefly, then looked at me. The pleading in his expression got to me, and I hated that too. I didn’t want to be weak around him.
“Please, Saylor. I need you to listen so you can understand.”
“Oh, I understand, Father. I understand that I was your first sexual experience and you wanted more. I told you the truth. I gave you my story. And you used it to send me packing. Not just from you, but also from something I enjoyed. Something that gave me a purpose and I needed that.”
He took another step toward me, and I took one back. We were keeping a distance, thank you very much. I did not want to smell him. It was my birthday, and I didn’t deserve that kind of torture. Speaking of which, Halo had sent me out here. She’d planned the party, and now, Jude was here. I took back all the nice things I’d thought about her. She was on my shit list. So was Gathe. They could all go to hell.
“I know. It has been hard to look at myself in the mirror all week. I don’t want to get up. I sure don’t want to go to my office, where I can see where you’re supposed to be. Where I want you to be. And we will get to that, but I need you to please just let me explain something to you.”
He wanted me to be there. I was foolish, and I was weak, but that one sentence had me caving in. I was going to listen to his love story. Let him take another piece of my soul and shred it. Because he wanted me there.
“Tell me,” I said, scowling.
I already loathed every word that was about to come out of his mouth.
“I met Delana. We were young. She was beautiful, sweet, kind, and I fell in love. She was it for me. I didn’t even look in another girl’s direction. My family was Catholic, but we didn’t really go to church. It was a Christmas and Easter thing we did, but that was it. Delana’s family was different. I went with her to Mass, to youth groups there. I can admit I would rather have spent more time doing other things with her, but it made her happy, and that was all I wanted.”
“Okay, I get it; she was perfect, and you loved her. Get on with it,” I snapped, tired of listening to how good she had been. Another Halo to make the males fall at her feet and worship.
“Our junior year, near Christmas, Delana started getting breathless. We would be walking in the halls to classes, and she’d get winded. It was concerning, but she would laugh it off and say she needed to get more exercise. Then, the sharp pains in her legs started, and her mom took her to the doctor. They listened to her symptoms and said it sounded like a viral infection, but if it didn’t get better in the next week, they’d run some tests.
“Four days later, she fainted while walking out to get in my car for school. Her dad picked her up, and they rushed her to the ER. I followed, and we stayed. They took blood tests, and we waited there for several hours. The doctors asked to speak to her parents, and I was left in the waiting room.” He paused and took a deep breath.
I did not want to feel anything, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to go wrap my arms around him and hold him. Comfort him over the loss of the girl he loved. Even if thinking about him loving someone like that killed me.
“She had acute myeloid leukemia; it was very advanced, and her blood platelets were dangerously low. I won’t go into details. It was bad, but she was a fighter. She was in the hospital for months. I went every day after school. When she was able to go to the chapel in the hospital, I’d go with her for Mass. We played card games. I read her books.
“That summer, she got to come home. She was in remission, and I’d thought we’d been given a miracle. Our senior year was perfect, and then two days before prom, she fainted.” He ran a hand through his hair and looked off toward the moon instead of at me for a moment.
“It was back, and she was gone within six months. In the end, when she accepted that she wasn’t going to beat it this time, she told me that she loved me. That she had been given the gift of being loved by someone as special as me and that she wanted me to live a life for both of us. Do something big. Leave a mark.
“The day they lowered her into the ground, I decided I wanted to go to seminary. That I would never love like that again. And if I became a priest, I would leave a mark she could be proud of. She had died a virgin, and I would too. My heart and body would remain faithful to her, even after her death.”
His eyes swung back to me, and I wasn’t sure how much of this I could listen to.
“Seminary is expensive. Money my parents didn’t have. Priests can’t have debt. Delana’s parents paid for it. They said it was what Delana would have wanted. That my decision to dedicate my life to God was my way of honoring their daughter and that they wanted to pay all my seminary costs to honor her as well.
“So, here I am. Ten years later. A priest. And in walks you.”
I took a step back and a deep breath. “So, I’m the problem. I’m the one getting in the way, messing things up. Ruining that plan and your grand gesture to the girl you loved,” I said, hating the way my voice wavered. “You’ve still got that virginity, Father. Take it to the grave with you.
“Now, it’s my birthday, and since you’ve shown up to share a tragic story with me that I am, in fact, the villain in, I think I’ll go inside and drink. You can find your way out.” I turned and started for the door when his fingers wrapped around my upper arm.
I jerked, and his hold tightened.
“You aren’t and were never the villain, Saylor. You didn’t let me finish,” Jude said, his tone desperate, but not as desperate as I was to get away from him and drown myself in a bottle of vodka.
“Jude, please. I cannot listen to any more.”
“I have been empty for ten years. There is nothing that makes me feel real joy. I’d gotten so accustomed to the emptiness that I didn’t even realize there was anything else. Then, you came into my life, and all of it came rushing back in. The lightness, excitement, thrill, warmth—it hit me so hard that I was rattled. Terrified. Because I was a grown man and it was different. With you also came desire, need, an all-consuming heat that I was willing to do anything to have. That didn’t make you the villain. I’m a priest. I chose this path. So, yes, it made you the ultimate temptation.
“I sent you away for two reasons. The first was your being there was putting you in danger. That scared me. The second was because I had been minutes away from…” He stopped. His breathing hitched. “You had on a sundress with easy access. I almost broke. And you were sent away, but I can tell you that I was the one who was punished for it. Because I am once again plunged into the lifeless, dark hole of life, but now, I have you to miss. You to agonize over.”
I hadn’t moved a muscle since he’d started. My breathing was quick, and my heart was slowly breaking away into tiny pieces.
“You tempt me. More than anything or anyone will ever tempt me. But you also make my days worth waking up for. The cold existence I was living is frigid now that I know how your dimples can melt every hard layer of ice that encases me. I want you in my life, Saylor. I want to see that smile. Hear your laughter. And what you did—have done—at the clothes closet, we need that. The community needs it. We need you. Your ideas to expand it. My sending you away not only hurt me, but it also hurt everyone you’ve touched, helped, with all your work.”
I sniffled and quickly reached up to wipe a tear that broke free.
“And Sister Mena refuses to speak to me now.”
A small bubble of laughter I hadn’t expected escaped me.
Jude turned me around to face him. His gaze as he stared down at me made me see things I wanted so badly, but was afraid to believe. I’d been burned too many times.
“I can’t have you. Not like that. We can’t have that kind of relationship. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want what I can have. And that’s you being a part of my life. I want you there, just next door. I can’t call it a friendship because that’d be just another lie. I will never be able to see you as a friend. You are so much more. Say you’ll come back. Please. I was wrong.”
This was going to end up destroying me. I knew it. Yet I couldn’t stand here with him this close, his eyes full of desperation, hope, uncertainty because he didn’t know how he was going to do it either.
I wanted him in my life.
Six days without him had been miserable.
If I could just stay on the right side of the line…
For him…I would try.
“Okay.” The word fell from my lips.
His shoulders relaxed, and he closed his eyes. “Thank you.”
I would use this as a lesson. Teach myself some control, self-respect. I wouldn’t fantasize over a man who didn’t choose me first. Because vows or no vows, he had a choice. We always had a choice. And I was worthy of that kind of love.
He opened his eyes, and a smile spread across his face. Then, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small box, wrapped in shiny pink paper. “Happy birthday, Dimples.”
He had bought me a present.
Silly heart, you need to chill. That is not what we are doing.
I reached for it.
“Thank you,” I said as I immediately tore off the paper, causing him to chuckle.
This was the only wrapped gift I had been given today. Everyone else in my life always took me shopping or gave me money.
I flipped open the black box I’d unwrapped. A small yellow sunshine charm dangled from a silver chain. I touched the small charm with my fingertip. Funny how the first piece of jewelry given to me by a man that I didn’t have to go pick out was from the one man I’d never call mine.
“I want you to have a reminder. That just because we can’t be more, you’re still the only one who lights up my day.”
Cue the lump in my throat.
I picked it up and unlatched it, then held it out to him. “Put it on me.”
His fingers brushed mine as he took it, and the tingle that coursed through me was familiar now. Maybe one day, that would stop, too, and I could love him the way I did Gathe.