11. Jacob
Jacob
I t took three days for Vince Angelini to wake up.
Another week to be released from the hospital, and two weeks after that to show up again at the steps of Saint Mary’s.
He followed me inside, knelt in front of the candle stand, and made the sign of a cross after lighting two small votives.
He reached into his pocket with a grimace and produced a hundred dollar bill, which he shoved into the offering slot.
“Two?” I asked, quietly watching him struggle to his feet.
“One for my father and one for me,” he said.
“You look very much alive,” I told him.
He turned toward me fully, his form still broad, even though he’d lost considerable weight in the past month.
“Thanks to you, it seems.”
“Divine timing, I imagine.”
Vince walked past me, taking a seat in a pew situated toward the middle of the church. I took the seat behind him, as I found most people, even out of the confessional, wanted some sense of privacy when speaking to a priest.
Though…I was hardly that.
My own secrets aside, I was hardly the reason for Vince Angelini sitting in front of me in a pew instead of a casket.
I hadn’t stopped thinking about the fiery-haired stranger who’d stripped himself half-naked to stop the bleeding.
The paramedics told me on the way to the hospital it was my quick thinking that had probably saved Vince’s life.
It was clear someone had told him the same.
Unfortunate that it hadn’t been my thinking at all.
I’d been at the altar on my knees, my cock in hand while I jerked off looking at the delicate way someone had painted the drips of blood on the ribcage of the body of Christ, making sure to finish myself off before acknowledging the desperate screams for help from the street.
“How much did you see that night?” Vince asked, and I focused on the dark hairs at the base of his neck instead of the location of my very favorite sins.
“Not much,” I said truthfully.
He rolled his neck to the side, groaned, then stopped. “I don’t remember anything,” he said.
“That’s probably better.”
“It’s likely a trauma response.”
I chuckled, shifting my weight uncomfortably in the pew. “Do you want to talk about that?”
“Therapizing now?” he asked.
“The church is a safe space for speaking things we otherwise wouldn’t,” I answered. “For thinking thoughts that have no place beyond these doors.”
“Someone tried to kill me on your front steps, Father. Just beyond those doors.” Vince made a dismissive sound in the back of his throat. “That doesn’t feel very safe.”
“Please. It’s Jacob,” I said, my own name rough in my mouth.
“That doesn’t feel very safe, Father Jacob.”
“And yet here you sit,” I said simply, “very much alive.”
“Rightly so,” he agreed, then he went still and silent.
I forced my attention away from Vince’s shoulders, looking up at the altar, the pulpit, the ridiculous ornateness of it all. A church was a stupid place to come for protection, but I’d had no say in the matter and neither had Vince.
After a long while, he stood, smoothing his hands down the front of his slacks, adjusting the cuffs of his shirt before stepping into the aisle. I didn’t get up and I didn’t look up because the weight of his stare on me was more of a burden than any of my own secrets had ever been.
“I owe you a life,” he said.
“I don’t want one.”
“It doesn’t matter what you want.” One last adjustment of his clothes and he shook it all out. “It’s what you get.”
“How about dinner?” I finally looked up at him, the collar around my throat tighter than a hand. Dinner and the backseat of a car, or an alleyway, or a bathroom.
The corner of his mouth twitched, almost imperceptibly, and I knew he had the same thoughts. I knew we were one and the same. But quick as it was there, the movement was gone, his mask of stoicism back in place.
“I’d rather a life,” he said simply. “You have my word on that.”
“Vince.”
“It’s done,” he snapped, raising a hand to stop any other protest. No matter, they all died in the back of my throat the sight of his face anyway. His mouth flicking up into a growl, his eyes narrowed like a predator ready to strike. “You don’t get to decide the reward, Priest.”
“Jacob,” I rasped my name at him a second time, and the growl on his lips softened.
“Jacob,” he repeated.
Vince walked out of the church, the heels of his shoes clacking hard and loud against the marble floors.
He stopped at the candle stand, snuffed out one of the flames he’d lit on his arrival, then walked out the doors without so much as a look behind him.
It took some kind of man to get shot in the chest and not be constantly looking over his shoulder at every turn, but I imagined that was the kind of confidence—or arrogance—that came with growing up as an Angelini.
Twisting the signet ring around my pinky, I reached up and yanked the white collar loose, fighting the top two buttons of my shirt open until I could catch my breath.
I sank down onto my knees, not bothering with the kneeler.
The sharp bite of the marble against my already bruised knees was enough to ground me in the present moment, to remind me that none of this was forever.
From dust we came and to dust we’d return.
When the pain in my knees turned to numbness, I climbed back to my feet and traced Vince’s footsteps to the front of the church.
Something was wrong with me. I’d known it for a long time.
With an ache in my knees, I was beyond hard, the glory of pain an aphrodisiac, the cursed drug that had found me in a church.
I relit the candle Vince had extinguished and offered up a prayer I knew no higher power would hear, then I pocketed his hundred dollar bill, took my cock out of my pants, and made myself come all over the flame he’d said was meant for him.