Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Christina
The sounds of Sunday morning are a telling phenomenon.
I hear my friends puttering around the kitchen of my apartment, clanging pans and banging cabinets, laughter echoing in the small space.
The kitchen noises are ones I’m well used to—my mother would throw together Sunday lunch in the crockpot at the crack of dawn so it’d be ready by the time we got home from the morning’s church service.
But she would usually be stomping around the whole house in her Sunday heels already, loudly singing the music she had queued for that morning’s service, and my father would eventually yell at her to stop singing so he could review his sermon notes in peace.
I had to be up and in my Sunday best even earlier than on school days: I helped my mother set up for band and choir practice in the eerily empty sanctuary, then sang in that choir practice, then helped my older brothers lead an hour of Bible study before the official service, then attended the service—right in the front row designated for the pastor and his family.
Each of us shook hands and hugged and made overly invested small talk with every church member possible.
Then we’d all collapse into exhaustion naps after lunch so we could turn around and do it all again for Sunday evening service.
And now I live this radically different Sunday morning. I’m still in bed at 10:00 AM, and the sounds in the kitchen are happy, not harried. There’s nothing to lead, no performance to give. No expectations to live up to.
My door creaks open. I lift my head an inch to see my roommate, Runzhou, notice that I’m awake. He slips in, crosses the room in two big strides with his long legs, and slides fully under my covers, curling into my side and burying his head into my shoulder.
“You were asleep when I got home last night,” he says. I press my cheek against his silky hair. “I need to hear about your non-date excursion with the hot documentarian.”
I huff a laugh. “I never said he was hot.”
“Not explicitly,” he considers in his quiet, measured manner. “But you did mention his shoulder-length hair, leather jacket, and towering height in the four minutes we did talk about him. In Chris-speak, that translates to a very attractive man.”
“And you speak Chris?”
“I’m fluent.”
I snuggle closer into him. Runzhou and I knew we were soulmates from the moment we met at The 135 a little over a year ago.
The 135 is an off-campus house rented by a bunch of theater kids where all manner of anti-Hilltop activities take place.
Hilltop gets pretty divided between the students who are fully committed to the Community Covenant and the students who are here for other reasons and find all the puritanical rules to be a joke.
The 135 is definitely for the latter group, and I wasn’t a member of that group for a long while.
Not until halfway through junior year when I found out …
Surprise, surprise. My pastor father was not who I thought he was.
Forced to face the hypocrisy of my father’s double life head on, I could no longer bury my growing doubts about my family’s entire Evangelical message.
Because I now know the very heart of this message is an undeniably damaging one: It says I was born a sinner.
As soon as I exited the womb, my wretched, evil soul needed saving from this wretched, evil world.
All the silly (and not-so-silly) rules reflected in the Community Covenant were to set myself apart—to show that I was not of this world but worthy of the next one.
Even more damaging, in my tradition, this path to salvation was not ironclad.
The minute I broke the rules, my soul was once again in jeopardy of eternal hellfire.
A church member once asked my father if, after a completely sin-free life, someone were to commit a single sin and then die in a car crash before the chance to ask forgiveness, would they go to heaven or hell?
The answer was hell.
No wonder my father’s exposure made me question everything I had ever been taught.
And what’s worse, once I began to question, it became clear just how conditional all the love in my life was.
My family, my friends, my boyfriend … they had little use for me once I could no longer play the perfectly devout pastor’s daughter.
I was lost and alone—until I entered that first party at The 135.
I thought I had stepped into a teen drama that had always seemed a fantasy to me.
From a chair in the corner, I could merely observe the people around me dance and drink and touch and kiss and laugh and live.
I had only seen these activities in bad church skits trying to show how they actually ruin your life.
But no one at the party was in ruin. No one was lost or sad or guilty.
They were joyful. They were … themselves.
I had never felt like myself for one day of my life. I was always performing, especially on the church stage. But I was putting on an act when I was alone too. I was performing to be worthy of love, to earn my salvation.
When The 135 crowd cleared the makeshift dance floor in the living room that night for Runzhou to dance with his partner, K, I could not look away.
The dance moves were what my mother would call vulgar—and she definitely would not approve of a man dating a masculine-presenting nonbinary person—but what was happening between Runzhou and K on that makeshift dance floor was pure love and feeling and sweetness.
It was right. It was light.
And I had been raised in the dark.
I started researching therapists the next day.
If Danny thinks I’m interesting now, just wait until he learns about my family.
“Did you do the interview?” Runzhou asks.
“No, we actually didn’t get to that.”
Runzhou hums conspiratorially into my shoulder. “Do tell.”
“This is not the sexy story you think it is,” I laugh, knowing that Runzhou can detect strain in the sound.
Because there was a stretch of time at that Waffle House table when I thought maybe something was happening between Danny and me.
Runzhou is the only other person with whom I’ve ever felt such an initial connection, and maybe Runzhou’s right that my pull toward Danny also included a …
physical component. I was mesmerized when I got that real smile—rugged and reluctant—to pop out.
When I got it to edge a little wider. When I finally got that rough chuckle.
It felt like winning at the carnival.
“Did you exchange numbers?”
I grab my phone off my bedside table and flash the new contact to Runzhou: Danny Reeves (UNsweet Tea)
“He put his number in, but he didn’t take mine.
So the ball is truly one million percent in my court.
” I think he did it on purpose so I wouldn’t feel pressure to accept his documentary proposal.
Or maybe he did it so he wouldn’t be tempted to keep calling until I caved in.
Because that man looked like this documentary of me was his new, singular purpose in this life.
This is it, Christina. This is my next project. You’re my next project.
I felt like wax melting beneath the intensity of his flaming gaze.
I can’t see Runzhou’s face, but I know by his tone that his brows are scrunched: “Did he think you wouldn’t know who he was without also putting in the name of his online channel?”
“Right? It’s like this huge giant sign that the number was a professional exchange, not a personal one.”
Runzhou scoots up the pillows so he can peer down at me. “Did you want it to be a personal one?”
And that’s what it’s like to be close to Runzhou. He’s always going to ask the questions that need to be asked. Not judgmentally or superiorly. Thoughtfully.
“He called me the most interesting woman he had ever met,” I say, and Runzhou’s eyebrows rise a tick.
“I thought he meant that he was interested in dating me.” In fact, before I shared my list, I had already decided I was going to ask to see him again, maybe for a real dinner at a real dinner table.
I sigh. “But I think he meant he was interested in me as a subject. As a story to tell.”
“A story to tell?”
My bedroom door bursts open, cutting off my explanation.
“Runzhou, what did I tell you about hogging Chris all to yourself?”
Ally bounds across the room and leaps onto my bed, bouncing up to my other side. Her red hair clouds my vision, and we devolve into laughter as she wrestles herself under the covers.
Ally was my randomly assigned suitemate for a year and half when I lived on campus at Hilltop.
At first glance, we seem very different, but she had a controlled upbringing too—not based in religion but in achievement.
And yet she’s still one of the most expansive women I know, somehow equally sarcastic and sincere.
She and Runzhou had always been part of The 135 crowd instead of the Community Covenant crowd—they are primarily at this backward institution because of its world-renowned School of Music.
I scooch up the pillows so I can wind one arm around Runzhou and another around Ally. “Now, now, children. It’s not a competition.”
Ally snorts. “It is if he’s getting all the hot documentarian details.”
“I never said he was hot!”
“Mmm,” Runzhou hums knowingly. “Ally can’t be fooled, and neither can I.”
My soulmate and my best friend join arms across my front, pinning me in this little love/interrogation triangle.
While I close my eyes a moment to savor their closeness, I hear the patter of multiple footsteps and feel my mattress dip further on both sides of the bed.
“Now I know,” K drawls, running a hand over their half-shaved head and crisscrossing their legs by Runzhou, “y’all are not cuddling and gossiping in here while Reese and I make this whole damned brunch spread.”
Reese leans back on his hands opposite K and shakes his head at Ally, who is clinging to me. “Are you two fighting over Chris again?”