Chapter 7 #3
“That’s it. I mean, my decision to stop attending church is tied to a longer story that isn’t quite befitting for the Dino Zone, but essentially, yeah.
That’s all it took for my family to turn on me and turn on me hard.
I can’t begin to express how, for a family in ministry like mine, church is the beginning and end of everything.
That outward performance and lifestyle and leadership is more important even than any internal beliefs. ”
I know that from all of my documentaries.
But hearing it from Christina—seeing that haunted look on her face, hearing her voice crystalize into a barbed whip—it’s like I’m seeing all of my documentaries in a new light.
I’ve always been angry, outraged, concerned.
But knowing that this is her story is a whole different ballgame. It’s something like … devastation.
I try to keep my voice steady when I ask, “So what was the straw that broke the social media camel’s back?”
A little chuckle slips out of her, and air refills my lungs.
“I moved in with a gay man. No casual observer would know that’s what happened from the pictures I was tagged in.
We do have to keep that super secret from Hilltop, of course.
But my family knew enough to figure it out.
” A shadow darkens her beautiful face. “To save face, they didn’t rat me out to the university. But the emails, the voicemails I got …”
She shudders. I feel it down to my bones.
“I shut it all down after that.”
I can’t move, speak. “Christina—” I croak, but she interrupts me.
“You know the worst part?” she asks, those hazel eyes tinged with a sadness that I know, with profound clarity, I would do literally anything to erase.
“I realized they didn’t love me. They loved a compliant, performing version of me.
But not me, not at my core. Because I’ve been out of that world for well over a year now, and I may do some different things.
My Sunday mornings may look very different.
But I’m the same. I have the same style of fashion.
I have the same sense of humor. I still care deeply for my friends and about goodness in the world.
I have all the same hobbies and interests.
My personality hasn’t changed. All of the church stuff didn’t make me me. But it’s the only part they loved.”
I’m surprised the camera doesn’t disintegrate with the burning rage rolling off of me.
I’m surprised this whole building doesn’t burst into flames.
But Christina doesn’t shy away from whatever she’s perceiving as I stare at her, chest heaving.
No, she seems to drink it in, like she’s trying to chase away the loss splashed across her features.
And maybe I’m starting to sink into her method of communication, because my hand slides across her lower back to rest in the small dip there.
I flex my fingers, unable to convey everything I need to with words alone.
I need her to understand that I get it too—how unfair this is.
How much more she deserved. How much more she still deserves.
That anyone who doesn’t find her worthy of love and appreciation and fucking worship … god, I’ll never understand them.
But a hoarse “I’m sorry” are the only words that come out. She’s searching my face, and I think she sees the other words there. I think she knows.
Her openness shakes something loose in me, just like it will for everyone who watches this documentary.
I slip my hold from around her waist to graze the back of her hand resting on her thigh.
She immediately turns it over to take my hand fully in hers.
The small warmth against my palm may be the most wonderful sensation that ever existed.
I can see why she touches like this; I feel like we’re aligned enough to voice previously unformed words.
“My documentary projects do still feel important,” I say, picking up the unfinished thread from earlier. “But they also feel … necessary. Like I don’t have a choice. Like they are all I am and all I have to offer.”
How long have I been carrying that crushing sentiment?
She hums in her throat. “There is something distinctly you about your work that I can feel when we’re together.
” She’s speaking slowly, and I’m once again reminded of syrup soaking into pancakes on lazy weekend mornings.
“But I didn’t know that the apatosaurus was your favorite dinosaur.
I didn’t know about the rite-of-passage cigars, or your brother Charlie who is so clearly your best friend.
” That sweet blush sweeps her cheeks but she doesn’t avert her eyes.
“I didn’t know that you could be so kind as to move in front of a camera for the first time ever just so I wouldn’t feel lonely. ”
Every word strikes me directly in the chest.
“Your documentaries don’t make you you just like church didn’t make me me,” she says firmly. I’m holding my breath when she squares her shoulders, her characteristic stance of fearlessness. “You’re a lot more than your videos, Danny.”
Bull’s-eye. How could she know how badly I needed to hear that?
I’m relieved on two counts. First, I don’t think I’ve consciously acknowledged how worried I’ve been that our connection was based on some hero worship of Danny Reeves of UNsweet Tea.
That’s clearly not what’s going on here.
But second … it’s been a long time since anyone but my immediate family seemed to care about me or see me for more than my work. And by “anyone,” I’m including myself.
Her phone buzzes in her pocket. She continues to hold my eyes with breathtaking resolve.
It buzzes again. And again. By the third time, we’re both laughing.
Eyes rolling, she pulls her phone out of her pocket, giggles with the back of her fingers against her mouth, and flashes the text thread at me as messages pour in following the dino vest picture.
Runzhou: New lock screen
Ally: My dino queen!!
Reese: Just so I understand what I’m seeing: You’re a dinosaur digging up dinosaur bones?
Ally: Clearly she’s discovering her ancient people
Reese: Autopaleontologist
Runzhou: It’s the trench coat underneath that’s doing it for me
Reese: Paleogenologist
K: BUT WHAT IS THE HOT DOCUMENTARIAN WEARING?
Reese: Archeopaleontologist
K: And what the fuck is Reese talking about??
I’m grinning even as my eyebrows rise. “Hot documentarian?”
She rolls her eyes again. “They don’t know what you look like. They just assume you’re hot.”
My eyebrows shoot higher. “Why would they assume that?”
She bites her bottom lip and I swear I feel the sting of it straight in my gut. “Something about how I described you,” she mumbles, fiddling with her phone.
I snatch up the dino vest that she’s cast aside. She whips her head up in time to see me wrangle into it as best I can, and her face is pure elation as I’m forced to prop my arms straight out and back at a ninety-degree angle to keep from ripping this thing down the middle.
“You’ll have to raise the hood,” I say.
She rises to her knees in front of me, putting her just a couple of inches taller than where I’m sitting in the sand.
Her wild smile softens a bit as she studies me, both of us suddenly aware of how close our faces are.
I’m practically drowning in her spring scent.
I wonder if she can hear my heartbeat. It’s so loud in my ears that I doubt I’d be able to hear if she speaks.
She slowly reaches over my shoulders with both arms, briefly encircling me, and raises the hood. Her wide smile pops out again at what she sees, but then she slips her delicate fingers into the sides of the hood and gently teases my hair out of it.
My eyes close without my permission. None of her sweet touches until now could have prepared me for those nimble fingers in my hair.
“Like the scientists we are,” she says, and I open my eyes to find her sitting again, phone raised and ready, “let’s give them data to base their conclusions on.”
I can only stare at her lovely smile as she snaps the photo and sends it off.
I’ve barely got the damn vest off—I’m pretty sure I tore one of the seams a little—when Christina bursts out laughing.
She flashes the screen to me again as message after message pops up:
Runzhou: Chris you sneaky sweetheart … You know exactly how hot this man is
Ally: Okaaaaay the cigar story just took on a whole different vibe
Reese: Did we know there was a species of dinosaur that could be this attractive?
K: WHO’S CALLING THE FIRE DEPARTMENT?
“Oh god,” she chuckles. “Your face is getting redder and redder.” She finally looks at the messages that have been pouring in and her head falls back in laughter.
I can only watch the long line of her throat and bask in that beautiful sound.
“The scientific method at work,” she says, as if the matter is settled.
And I’m so relieved that she has such wonderful friends, a found family that loves her and makes her laugh like this, that I find myself laughing too.
Christina places a soft hand on my wrist. “Can we build a robot now?”
By the end of the day, I feel like a kid again. I don’t think it has anything to do with the science.