I went straight home and took the coldest shower I could stand, staying under the water until my thoughts were clear and my erection finally, finally relented. Although, if recent events were any indication, it would return the moment I saw Poppy again.
Okay, so maybe I couldn’t expunge this desire from myself, but I could exercise more self-control. No more fantasies. No more waking up to find that I’d fucked my mattress dreaming of her. And maybe talking to her would be exactly the thing I needed—I would see her as a person, a lost lamb seeking her God, and not just as sex on legs.
Perfect legs.
I pulled a pair of slacks over my boxer briefs and put on a fresh black shirt, rolling the long sleeves up to the elbows as I usually did. I didn’t hesitate before I reached for the collar. It would be a much-needed reminder. A reminder to practice self-denial and also a reminder of why I practice self-denial in the first place.
I do it for my God.
I do it for my parish.
I do it for my sister.
And that was why Poppy Danforth was so upsetting. I wanted to be the epitome of sexual purity for my congregation. I wanted them to trust the Church again; I wanted to erase the marks made on God’s name by awful men.
And I wanted some way to remember Lizzy without my heart shredding apart with guilt and regret and powerlessness.
You know what? I was making a big deal out of nothing. It was all going to be fine. I ran a hand through my hair, taking a deep breath. One woman, no matter how hot, was not going to unravel everything I held sacred about the priesthood. She was not going to destroy everything I’d worked so hard to create.
I don’t always go home on my Thursdays off, even though my parents live less than an hour away, but I did this week, mentally and physically strained from avoiding Poppy during my morning runs and also from taking approximately twenty cold showers over the space of two days.
I just wanted to go someplace—without the collar—and play some Arkham Knight and eat food that my mom had made. I wanted to have a beer (or six or seven) with Dad and listen to my teenage brother mope about whatever girl he was being “friend-zoned” by this month. Someplace where the Church and Poppy and the rest of my life was muffled and I could just relax.
Mom and Dad’s didn’t disappoint. My other two brothers were there as well—even though they all had places and lives of their own—drawn by Mom’s cooking and that unquantifiable comfort that comes with being at home.
After dinner, Sean and Aidan whipped my ass at the latest Call of Duty while Ryan texted the latest girl on his phone, and the house still smelled like lasagna and garlic bread. A picture of Lizzy watched us all from above the television, a pretty girl forever memorialized in 2003 with side bangs and dyed-blonde hair and a wide smile that hid all the things we didn’t know until it was too late.
I stared at that picture for a long time while Sean and Aidan chattered about their jobs—they’re both in investments—and while Mom and Dad played Candy Crush in their side-by-side recliners.
I’m sorry, Lizzy. I’m sorry for everything.
Logically, I knew there’s nothing I could have done back then, but logic didn’t erase the memory of her pale, bluish lips or the blood vessels that had exploded in her eyes.
Of walking into the garage looking for flashlight batteries and instead finding the cold body of my only sister.
Sean’s low voice seeped into my grim reverie, and I gradually came back to the moment, listening to the squeaking of Dad’s recliner and Sean’s words.
“…invitation only,” he said. “I’ve heard rumors of it for years, but it wasn’t until I got the letter that I thought it was actually real.”
“Are you going to go?” Aidan was speaking quietly too.
“Fuck yes, I’m going.”
“Going where?” I asked.
“You wouldn’t care, priest boy.”
“Is it the invitation-only Chucky Cheese? I’m so proud of you.”
Sean rolled his eyes, but Aidan leaned in. “Maybe Tyler should know about it. He probably needs to work off a little excess…energy.”
“It’s invitation only, dick-hole,” Sean said. “Which means he can’t go.”
“It’s supposed to be like the world’s best strip club,” Aidan continued, unfazed by Sean’s insult. “But no one knows what it’s called or where it is, not until you’re personally invited. Word is that they don’t let you come until your annual clears a million a year.”
“Then why is Sean getting invited?” I asked. Sean, although three years older than me, was still working his way up through his firm. He made a very healthy salary (fucking incredible, from my standpoint) but he was nowhere near a million dollars a year. Not yet.
“Because—douchenozzle—I know people. Being connected is a more reliable form of currency than a salary.”
Aidan’s voice was a little too loud when he spoke. “Especially if it gets you choice puss—”
“Boys,” Dad said automatically, not looking up from his phone. “Your mother is here.”
“Sorry, Mom,” we said in unison.
She waved us off. Thirty-plus years of four boys had made her immune to pretty much everything.
Ryan sloped into the room, mumbling something to Dad about wanting the car keys, and Sean and Aidan leaned closer again.
“I’m going next week,” Sean confided. “I’ll tell you everything.”
Aidan, younger than me by a couple years and still very much a junior in the business world, sighed. “I want to be you when I grow up.”
“Better me than Mr. Celibacy over here. Tell me, Tyler, you got carpal tunnel in your right hand yet?”
I tossed a throw pillow at his head. “You volunteering to come help me out?”
Sean dodged the pillow easily. “Name the time, sugar. I bet I could put some of that anointing-of-the-sick oil to good use.”
I groaned. “You’re going to hell.”
“Tyler!” Dad said. “No telling your brother he’s going to hell.” He still didn’t look up from his phone.
“What’s the use of all those lonely nights if you can’t condemn someone once in a while, eh?” Aidan asked, reaching for remote.
“You know, TinkerBell, maybe I should find a way to take you to the club. There’s nothing wrong with looking at the menu, so long as you don’t order anything, right?”
“Sean, I’m not going to a strip club with you. No matter how fancy it is.”
“Fine. I guess you and your St. Augustine poster can spend next Friday night alone together. Again.”
I threw another pillow at him.
The Business Brothers left around ten, driving back to their tie racks and home espresso machines, and Ryan was still out doing whatever thing he had needed the car so badly for. Dad was asleep in his recliner, and I was stretched out on the couch, watching Jimmy Fallon and thinking about what movie to pick for the middle school lock-in next month, when I heard the sink running in the kitchen.
I frowned. The Business Brothers and I (and a complaining Ryan) had done all the dishes after dinner expressly so that Mom wouldn’t have to. But when I got up to see if I could help, I saw that she was scrubbing the stainless steel in savage circles, steam clouding around her.
“Mom?”
She turned and I could immediately see that she’d been crying. She gave me a quick smile and then shut the water off, swiping at her tears. “Sorry, hon. Just cleaning.”
It was Lizzy. I knew it was. Whenever we were all together, the whole Bell brood, I could see that look in her eyes, the way she was picturing the table with one more setting, the sink with one more set of dirty dishes.
Lizzy’s death had nearly killed me. But it had killed Mom. And every day after that, it was like we kept Mom artificially alive with hugs and jokes and visits now that we were older, but every now and again, you could see that a part of her had never fully healed, never really resurrected, and our church had been a huge part of that, first driving Lizzy to kill herself and then turning their backs on us when the story went public.
Sometimes I felt like I was fighting for the wrong side. But who would make it better if I didn’t?
I pulled Mom into a hug, her face crumpling as I wrapped my arms around her. “She’s with God now,” I murmured, half-priest, half-son, some chimera of both. “God has her, I promise.”
“I know,” she sniffled. “I know. But sometimes I wonder…”
I knew what she wondered. I wondered it too, in my darkest hours, what signs I missed, what I should have noticed, all the times she seemed about to tell me something, but then sank into a fog of silence instead.
“I think there’s no way we can’t wonder,” I said quietly. “But you don’t have to feel this pain alone. I want to share it with you. I know Dad would too.”
She nodded into my chest and we stayed like that a long time, swaying gently together, both of our thoughts twelve years away and in a cemetery down the road.
It wasn’t until I was driving back home, listening to my usual cocktail of brooding hipster songs and Britney Spears, that I made the connection between Sean’s club and Poppy’s confession. She had mentioned a club, mentioned that most people would classify it as sinful. Could that be it?
Jealousy slithered inside of me, and I refused to acknowledge it, clenching my jaw as I maneuvered my truck onto the interstate. I didn’t care that Sean would get to see this club, this place where Poppy had possibly exposed her body. No, I didn’t.
And that jealousy had nothing to do with my sudden, out-of-the-blue decision to find her the next day and follow up on her request for a conversation during my office hours. It was because I was worried about her, I reassured myself. It was because I wanted to welcome her to our church and give her comfort and guidance, because I sensed that she was someone who was not easily lost, not easily broken, and for something to send her into a strange confession booth and bring her to tears…well, no one should have to bear those kinds of burdens alone.
Especially someone as sexy as Poppy.
Stop it.
It wasn’t too hard to find Poppy again. In fact, I did literally nothing except jog past the open tobacco barn on my morning run and collide into her as she rounded the corner. She stumbled, and I managed to stop her fall by pinning her between my chest and my arm.
“Shit,” I said, yanking the earbuds out of my ears. “I’m so sorry! Are you okay?”
She nodded, tilting her head up and giving me a small smile that gave me chills; it was so perfectly imperfect with her two front teeth peeking behind her lips and a sheen of sweat covering her face. At the same time, we both realized how we were standing, with my arms wrapped around her and her only in a sports bra and me without a shirt. I dropped my arms, immediately missing the way she felt there. Missed the way her tits pushed against my naked chest.
In the future: only sideways hugs, I told myself. I was already seeing another cold shower in my future.
She put her hand on my chest, casually, innocently, still giving me that small smile. “I would have fallen if it wasn’t for you.”
“If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have been at risk of falling at all.”
“And yet I still wouldn’t change a thing.” Her touch, her words, that smile—was she flirting? But then her smile widened, and I saw that she was just teasing, in that safe, playful way that girls do with their gay friends. She saw me as safe, and why shouldn’t she? I was a man of the cloth, after all, bound by God to be a caregiver of his flock. Of course, she would assume that she could tease me, touch me, without bothering my priestly composure. How could she know what her words and voice did to me? How could she know that her hand was currently searing its outline onto my chest?
Her hazel eyes flickered up to mine, green and brown pools of curiosity and intelligent energy, green and brown pools that reflected grief and confusion if you cared to look long enough. I recognized it because I had worn such a look for years after Lizzy’s death, except in Poppy’s case, I suspected that the person she was grieving—the person she’d lost—was herself.
Let me help this woman, I prayed silently. Let me help her find her way.
“I’m glad I saw you,” I said, straightening up as her hand fell away from my skin. “You said earlier this week that you wanted to meet?”
She nodded enthusiastically. “I did. I mean, I do.”
“How about my office in, say, half an hour?”
She gave me a mock salute. “See you there, Father.”
I tried not to watch her run away, I really did, but I promise I only looked for a second, an infinitely long second, a second long enough to catalog the gleam of sweat and sunscreen on her toned shoulders, the taunting movements of her ass.
Definitely a cold shower then.
