Page 37 of Bad Habit
“So you were talking about your dad?” Mac said. “You found out something about him?”
“Not about my dad. Not directly. It was about my grandfather.”
“What about him?”
I shook my head. “This isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Sorry.”
I reached across the table. “It’s okay. I want to tell you about all that, too, but there’s something more pressing on my mind.”
“Okay.” He drank another couple of inches of his beer and then held the glass on the table, his long, thick fingers gripping the vessel like he was worried it might run away.
“I thought about it,” I said, hoping he’d understand what I meant without my saying it.
“Thought about what?”
Feeling my cheeks pink, I was grateful for the dim lighting. “About what you said the night of our date. When I wanted to… to go to the hotel room.”
His fingers slowly spun the glass on the tabletop, his index finger and thumb bending with the motion. It was nothing, what he was doing to the glass, and still my body heated, the bubbles inside me reaching a boil.
“I want you to sex me,” I blurted.
“To sex you?” His green eyes sparkled, even in the dim light.
“You’re making fun of me.”
“I’m sorry.” Reaching across the table, he took my hand, and the contact sizzled through me, reawakening all the parts of me that had first come to life when he’d kissed me.
Nerves and lust buzzed inside me, but I was more certain than ever what I wanted. “I want… I mean, if you want.”
“Oh, I want.” He studied me like I held some mystery he was trying to solve. “But have you really thought about this? What it means?”
I nodded. “It’s what I want. Especially in light of things I’ve recently learned, about myself, Mother, her father.”
“Okay…”
“I’ll tell you more about that later, I do want to talk about it with you, but what’s important is… Before I enter the convent, I need to experience more of the world, learn more about myself.”
Since my aunt’s visit, and after looking through Mother’s things, I’d been questioning all of my decisions—every desire, every single thing I’d considered important.
“I know so little of life.”
“That’s what worries me.” His thumb stroked the back of my hand.
“It worries me, too.” I half-rose from the bench and leaned on the table. “Mother made me believe I was a sinner,” I said, “but compared to most people, my life was completely without sin. No experience of it at all.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Maybe. In some ways… I just… I don’t feel like a whole person.” Mother had filled me with ideas, parts of herself, that now felt strange, foreign. And after learning about her history and pain, those parts no longer fit together. I was like a puzzle put together wrong with major sections missing. “I need to experience more of life before I know who I am. Before I feel whole. Before I feel real.”
“You don’t feel real?”
Considering his question, I traced a finger through letters carved into the pine table, H.M. + J.K. Who did these initials represent? Had they been lovers?
“I want to understand sin,” I said quietly. “All sin. Not just lust. Will you help me?”
“Are you asking me to be your sin consultant?” He tipped his head to the side. “Not sure what that says about me.”
