chapter 15
Decca, First Communion
“How does it feel, the collar?” I leaned back against the kitchen counter and sipped my tea as Gus slipped the plastic tab into his slot of his black shirt for the first time.
“Stiff. Uncomfortable. Like everyone’s going to be looking at me.”
“They will be. I will be. This is your day, Gus. Your first Divine Liturgy, first communion… This is what you were born for, Father Constantinos.” I smirked.
Oh, those words felt good in my mouth. Warm and cozy. Spine tingling.
Over his clerical blacks, he donned his anderí. I put my cup down and stepped closer to him, reaching around him to tie it at the waist.
“I’m proud of you,” I said. “I know it’s not my place to feel that way.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Because, I don’t know. I came in on the ground floor. I had nothing to do with your accomplishments. Devoting your life in the service of your faith… that’s powerful. Maybe I should say I respect you, but that doesn’t completely cover it.”
And you’ve never looked more handsome in that collar and robe.
My heart hurt looking at my husband in his priest clothes for the first time. I ran my fingers across the tab at his throat and he swallowed heavily. He’d nicked the base of his neck shaving, and a tiny scab had formed on his smooth, olive skin. It took everything I had not to lean in and kiss that little wound better. Not to run my fingers through his long hair and rake them down his beard.
“I don’t know if I would have graduated without you, Dec. You kept me going.”
“Yeah, right. You had a roommate, friends, spiritual leaders.”
He pulled my hands away from him and squeezed them in his. His gaze was insistent. “It was lonely. Once I met you, it was lonely. After that night on Waylon’s porch, where we talked for hours, and it felt like we were the only two people in the world,” his eyes searched mine, begging me to believe him.
He paused, like he didn’t know how much was okay to say. “I almost didn’t go back. It didn’t seem worth it anymore, if I couldn’t have you in my life. But you stayed with me. And even if it was only over a screen, that little bit of you made all this feel possible. So if it’s pride you feel, you have every right to those feelings. This day belongs to you. You are my wife. I’m humbled and awed to belong to you.”
He stopped again, his eyes skating across my face. “If you could hear the prayers of thanks I offer God every day. For you. I know I’m not much of a husband to you. But don’t mistake my shame for disinterest. I’m still trying to find the bones, Decca. It’s just a little harder than I thought it’d be.”
Front pew. Right next to the aisle.
It wasn’t exactly the inconspicuous middle row I preferred, but as presvytera, I had a role to perform, almost as much as Gus.
I had to support my husband’s ministry. Somehow.
I wasn’t quite sure what that would look like yet. Supporting his faith while retaining my own would be a balancing act. Maybe the parishioners would never accept me. It was entirely possible that everyone seated behind me right now was staring daggers at the back of my head, cursing me with the máti, or the evil eye (which was witchcraft, by the way—not that they wanted to be told that) but at least the family was here with me. And Raynie was a matriarch in the church.
I’d read a lot of Gus’s books. I didn’t disbelieve anything about his faith. Except maybe the thing about communion being the literal body and blood of Christ. I believed in a sort of God. But “god” was too small of a word for such a vast concept. It was like trying to fence in the universe.
I was raised going to various protestant churches, never liking anything they had to offer. Granny had been a Christian as much as she was a folk witch. Nothing was spiritually incompatible in the religions in my world. It was the cultural differences I didn’t want to appropriate.
I was from a tiny mountain town where churches were in rundown strip malls with grape juice communion and neon signs out front. I loved participating in his Greek Orthodox customs in his gilt and marble church, but I would never truly belong here.
My jaw was slack, watching Gus become Father Constantinos. A different man. Not even a man. A vessel.
Gus moved differently in his vestments. All the layers. The length of the robes restricted him from doing anything quickly. The way he offered blessings, the way he turned, or walked, or moved even a single muscle was slow and studied. Some of the things he’d told me about were clicking into place.
It was designed to happen this way. Every cell in his body was in a state of prayer and worship.
Raynie sat next to me, offering nuggets of knowledge throughout the service. “This is the Cheruviko, the hymn is beautiful, but here, read the prayer.“ She pointed to the book in my hands. Under the slow, almost mournful hymn sung by the choir, Gus intoned a low prayer, asking the Holy Spirit to bless the Eucharist. As far-fetched as it was, it was beautiful.
Beautiful to watch my husband living this life he was born to live, and beautiful to watch all these people here this morning, practicing their own craft together.
Wasn’t that what we all were… witches? Coming together to worship a deity with rituals.
When communion began, both Gus and Father Vasili served, but almost everyone had vied for a spot in Gus’s line.
He didn’t even look nervous. He only glanced at me once, and it was more to tell me to step aside to let his family pass by me in the pew on their way up.
Waylon, Bethany, Jim, and I stayed back while I held my soon-to-be, unofficial Goddaughter, Athena.
Gus said the same thing when each person stepped close to the chalice. Raynie was the first to receive Holy Communion from her son.
“The servant of god, Ourania…”
Then Soula, then George.
“The servant of God, Athanasia. The servant of God, Georgios…”
After he spooned the communion into their mouths, he continued the prayer as they blotted their lips with the red cloth and stepped carefully, crossing themselves again.
“…partakes of the Precious and All-Holy Body and Blood of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, unto the forgiveness of sins and unto life everlasting,” Gus’s voice would occasionally cut through my thoughts as he repeated the blessing for each person.
My eyes grew hot. I pressed my fingers against my sinuses, trying not to be so emotional. People were watching me. Wondering about time as they passed. The non-Orthodox woman who’d stolen the prize of their parish.
I won’t take him away from you. I promise!
We were relieved he was assigned to his home parish. Father V had worked it out for Gus to remain local, taking over as head presbyter after Vasili retired next year, but technically, the bishop could have been a dick, and Gus could have been sent to serve in Alaska, or worse, Florida—and having done it, I’d prefer not to spend the rest of my career exhuming remains from the alligator-infested Everglades.
An elderly woman, still walking in heels with her smart black suit and perfectly brushed silver hair, was up next in line.
“O doulos tou Theou, Ioanna,”Gus said in Greek.
Athena was drooling onto her dress as she gnawed on my knuckle. I asked Waylon for a burp cloth and three seconds later, when I looked up again, something had happened.
People were looking around. All noise ceased, except for the choir chanting the communion hymn.
“Ah,oxi. Signomi, I’m so sorry, Father.“ The woman crossed herself again as someone took her by the shoulders and led her into the pew opposite me.
The dark-haired altar boy to Gus’s right dropped the cloth he’d been holding under the chalice and stepped back. Clearly, the teenage boy had made some kind of blunder, because his face was white as a ghost.
The communion line stopped moving. It was like the entire world had stopped.
Gus comforted the old woman with a smile and a nod while Father Vasili took both chalices back to the altar table. Some of the acolytes ran behind the icon screen and came back carrying cloths and other things. Soula slid in next to me in the wooden pew.
“The communion fell,” she explained.
“Oh. Okay.”
“I hate this part.” She reached for Athena. “Want me to take her?”
“No, I never get to hold her. Why do you hate this?”
“Well, to Gus, it’s not just communion. It is the blood of Christ that spilled on the floor. Every bit of blood must be consumed.”
“Off the floor?”
“Every priest handles it differently. We’ll see. This doesn’t happen. Like, ever. I’ve seen it twice in my life. But yes, it should be consumed off the floor. Gross.”
The altar boys stepped back. The dark-haired one looking more and more miserable. Gus stepped down from the solea and knelt on the marble floor. His hands were flat to the ground as he bent lower and lower. Low enough to lick the pink stain off the floor.
Oh my God.It was slightly horrifying to watch, but also… not. It wasn’t for show. He didn’t make a big deal out of it. He did what needed to be done, and he did it with his usual quiet reverence. The image of him humbling himself that way, consuming the communion bread off the floor, in front of the entire church, was powerful.
The adult acolyte handed him a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, which Gus poured on the floor, then lit on fire.
“Ugh.” Soula quietly shuddered. “I knew Gus was going to go all the way. Father V would have just burned it all, but he’s an old man and his knees are bad. All those germs, though. Does he even know what’s on the bottoms of people’s shoes?”
“Shh… Soula. Gus doesn’t care about that.” I hadn’t realized I’d been gripping her arm with my talon-like nails, watching this.
I’d seen his face. Calm. Not at all put out. He didn’t try to shrink away from this moment of servitude. He quietly took charge, spiritually and logistically, to do what needed to be done.
He didn’t care about the germs, or how he looked, prostrate on the floor. This wasn’t gross to him, like it would have been to Soula or me. This was just how he served his God and his community. The deepest expression of his faith, the purest form of worship.
This was the Gus I always knew he would be.
I’d had a lot of feelings for Gus during the past two years. I liked him immediately. That first night we’d met. Like grew to lust, respect and admiration, and so much more. But I’d never thought to call it something else.
But maybe this whole time, it had all been love.
Because watching this made me realize how much I loved Gus. But it wasn’t my feelings that had changed. It was what I chose to call it.
Oh, shit. This was bad. We weren’t there yet. This wasn’t going slowly at all. He wasn’t anywhere near this stage, and I was working with half a skeleton already.
How was I supposed to go back to just waiting and seeing if he’d ever get over his past?
Now I was scared shitless that I’d never be able to go back to pretending he was just a friend. I was ready to be on my knees at his feet, doing whatever he asked of me in worship and humility. What if he never even got halfway there with me?