17. Love is Kind
Deyva
“Y ou okay up there, babe?”
I suppressed an eyeroll, but let the smile shine through. I didn’t care for pet names, but Stavros tasted so happy when he called me babe, I couldn’t bear telling him to stop.
“Just fine, sugar dumpling!”
His laughter tasted bright and bubbly, like the champagne I had at a New Year’s Eve party back at the dawn of the eighteenth century. He held the ladder steady beneath me while I cleaned the dirt and grime from the stained glass windows of the church.
“Once Azariah’s wing is healed, we can just make him do this,” I suggested, adding under my breath, “He can keep his busy little hands to himself for once.”
“Have you noticed he’s healing a lot slower than you did? You know, after you and I started…”
I glanced down and Stavros waggled his eyebrows at me, deep dimples carving into his cheeks with his grin. I clutched at the top of the ladder, resisting the urge to tackle him into the ground and ride him like a county fair pony where anyone could see.
“Angels aren’t that different from my kind, I guess. He needs love to really heal, and he’s down here, not up there at home,” I said, shrugging and finishing up with the window.
“You think that’s why he went after Zach?” Stavros asked.
I frowned and sighed, slowly stepping down the ladder, smiling as Stavros refused to pull away and let me sink down between his arms. I turned and leaned against the ladder and he leaned in too, both of us wearing that same ridiculous smile. As it turned out, the human feels were kinda nice.
“Look, I’m not happy about what happened between him and Zach, mainly because I knew Az was hiding something, and Zach’s not someone who should...risk his principles for lies. But in Az’s defense, Zach’s faith and, you know, all around choir boy perfection? That had to be a beacon for the angel.”
“Was my lust a beacon for you?” Stavros asked. He was calm, nonjudgmental, and I shrugged off any defensiveness that prickled at me.
“It wasn’t your lust that called me to your dreams, Stavros.
It was how badly you craved care and affection, touch.
You needed those dreams as much as I did,” I said, leaving the rag on the ledge of the ladder and cupping Stavros’ cheeks in my hand, scratching gently into his beard and drawing him to me for a slow, drowsy kiss.
“Whatever happened back there, if you ever need to talk, you know I’m here,” Stavros whispered back. “So are Zach and Kais for that matter.”
“Like a confession?” I asked, frowning. “Pretty sure that would...take kinda a long time. I’ve been around—”
He cut me off with a kiss, pulling away with a crooked grin, deep honey eyes laughing. “Doesn’t have to be like that. Priests do more than assign Hail Marys and baptisms. Sometimes we just listen when people are having a hard time. I heard Azariah, Dey. You went through something unimaginable.”
Through centuries of it, actually, even if the worst had been more recent. Altogether it would be enough to make Stavros’ hair go gray with just a decade’s worth of unburdening.
“I wasn’t always the victim,” I admitted, biting my lip and wishing I could take the words back, fixing my stare to Stavros’ strong chin.
He just nodded. Not surprised, not disappointed, just listening.
I released a long sigh and then glanced at the church. There were people inside, praying, teaching, reflecting. And also…
“Can I show you something?” I asked.
“Of course.”
I took Stavros’ hand and led him into the church, through the gym and the halls, right up to the chapel.
Zach was in the confessional booth, listening to the murmurs of a woman who was full of spite.
Az was up in the balcony, a kind of hollow anger around him.
In the pews, a few individuals sat in prayer, wrestling with hope and hopelessness in equal measure.
And there, by the devotional altar, was a couple lighting one of the many candles that waited there.
“Tell me about them,” I whispered in Stavros’ ear.
“Those two? Uhhh, that’s Heather McCann and Jeff Byrne. She comes twice a week to light a candle for her mother and he comes with her,” Stavros answered with a shrug. “They got together this past year. Her dad isn’t a fan. Probably a lot of the town isn’t a fan.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“I guess it’s because he’s about her dad’s age. They think he’s taking advantage.”
“Do you?”
“I dunno… It’s a gap, isn’t it? And she was always fighting with her dad.”
“He loves her,” I said. “He loves her so much it terrifies him. And she loves him too, but in a steadier way. She feels safe and secure and calm with him. They feel more connected to the world around them when they’re together.
And they just give off love, constantly , unconsciously.
Most people love in specific moments, little instances where it strikes them, and they string it all together and call it being in love, but actually it’s just small bursts. These two? They love one another.”
Stavros’ hand slid up my back, and I revelled between the love of the couple standing with their backs to us, and Stavros’ own brief burst of emotion for me.
“Watch,” I said, closing my eyes.
The glow was there, warm and rich, pulsing like a heartbeat on the other side of the chapel, just shedding light on the world without asking for anything in return.
I pushed at it, taking the perfect beautiful web of emotion and wrapping it back around the couple rather than feeding off it for myself.
Stav’s breath hitched and I opened my eyes, smiling at the almost-imperceptible glow surrounding the young woman and the older man.
They turned to one another and the space between them was full and vibrant and aching, their eyes gratefully soaking each other up, remembering and savoring their own depth of feeling.
Jeff Byrne bent and kissed Heather McCann’s forehead, taking her weight as she leaned into his chest as the rest of the occupants of the room watched, all of us just a little more aware that this still existed, there was still so much love left in the world.
My eyes drifted up to the balcony and found Azariah leaning over the edge, watching the couple with all of an angel’s serenity.
I turned to Stavros, soaking up the waves of awe and gratitude, and then I broke the spell.
“That was what I was made for. But that was not how it was used in Hell. I can take pain, despair, self-loathing, endless agony, and I can force it back into a soul over and over again. It’s horrible, Stavros. It’s unforgivable.”
Stavros’ lips pressed thin as he stared back at me. Maybe I’d only said that in the hopes that he would absolve me. Or maybe I was self sabotaging and trying to scare him off.
Stav leaned in and pressed his lips to my forehead, the bridge of my nose, grazing against my top lip. In the chapel, someone gasped, but Stavros didn’t even flinch.
“I’m glad you made it here, Deyva,” Stavros said, drawing me to his chest.
I was pretending to nap, because despite Stavros’ claims, his bed was an exquisite luxury, when there was a knock on the door.
Guilt, nervousness, reluctance, shame.
“Come in, Zach,” I called.
The door cracked open and Zach’s face appeared, a little nervous twitch of his eyes as he caught me stretched out on the bed. I resisted the urge to spread myself out in invitation just to tease him, and pushed myself upright, swinging my feet down to rest on the floor.
“Hey, I didn’t mean to bother you,” Zach said, leaning in the doorway, not committing to actually joining me in Stavros’ bedroom as his eyes shied away from mine and landed anywhere else.
“You’re not bothering me. I was just avoiding Kais and his grumpy pants downstairs,” I said. Since the man couldn’t fucking take a kiss in a nice way, apparently, and I was trying not to be really sullen about it.
“He just needs to sleep. He’ll crash tonight,” Zach said, shrugging. He looked at me, away again, swallowed, and then back to me. I did my best to offer him a welcoming smile but that just seemed to make him more anxious. “I, uh… I owe you an apology, Deyva.”
Oh. “No, you don’t.” Okay, maybe he did, but I didn’t want him to have to give it.
He finally stepped inside, bare feet shuffling across the floor, his body landing heavily on the edge of the bed next to me. “Yes, I do.”
“Zach, I wasn’t really expecting you guys to roll out the welcome mat for me, you know? I get...I get why you were suspicious.”
“I wasn’t just suspicious, Deyva, I was cruel. I accused you of horrible things, I let myself be biased against the very idea of you, against everything you demonstrated yourself to be.”
“I poked at you, and I antagonized you—”
“You teased me,” he said, smiling and glancing at me. “Which...at the time I thought you were trying to shake my faith, but now I realize that you—you actually—”
“I like your faith,” I said, bumping my shoulder into his.
“It’s doing the world good, doing everyone here in this town good.
And I’m sorry if the stuff Az said yesterday changes anything for you.
I don’t think it should. I have...some comment cards I’d like to submit to Heaven, but I’ve got zero real clue what comes next, and Az doesn’t either. ”
“You don’t have to do that, you know?” Zach said. He was hunched over, staring at his hands folded on his knees as if he were praying, and he frowned at me as he turned to look up. “You don’t have to...to cover God’s ass when I’m struggling with doubt.”
“Okay, fair enough.”
Zach sat up, his frown tangling deeper. “I know everyone wants to see me as all shiny and sure and full of faith, but I’m struggling too, same as everyone else.
I’m coping with the same shit pile everyone else is and I.
..I’m struggling with...sinful urges too,” he rushed out, voice strangled and color filling his cheeks.
“I’m not the golden boy everyone wants to see me as. ”