Page 33 of Midnight Mass (Priest 1.50)
She rubbed self-consciously at her arms, hugging herself. “I’m scared, Tyler. I’m scared of being a mother. I’m scared of the baby taking time away from my foundation or my foundation taking time away from the baby. I’m scared of the baby changing us and the way we love each other.” Her tears started falling, hard and fast now. “I mean, look at us! This baby has already changed us and hurt us! What if I’ve ruined everything by becoming pregnant?”
I sat up, crushing her to my chest. Her tears began to still as we sat together, her heartbeat slowly matching to mine. “Everything is going to change,” I said. “And some of those changes are going to be hard. But there are going to be good things too, beautiful things, and I will be right here with you. I will be right here loving you and raising this child. And we will fuck up inevitably, with our child and with each other, but as long as we hold each other as close as God holds us to His heart, we will make it. I promise.”
She sniffled. “Okay.”
I kissed the top of her head, and we stayed there the rest of the night, cuddling and apologizing and promising and teasing, eventually stripping each other bare and sharing our joy the way we knew best.
“Are you Tyler Bell?”
I glanced over to the person standing next to me. I’d promised Poppy a peppermint steamer while we did the rest of our Christmas decorating together, and so I’d gone out to the local cafe to get one, not expecting to be recognized. I’d half-expected the person to be another Tylerette (sadly, the Hot Priest memes had not lost momentum after I left the clergy,) but it was an older Hispanic woman instead, possibly in her late fifties, with a sharply fashionable suit and leather laptop bag.
“I am Tyler,” I answered warily. “How can I help?”
She smiled. “A friend of mine was on your dissertation board. He did me the favor of letting me read a copy. It was very, very impressive.”
“Thank you,” I said, still wary. Because this was weird.
“I have to ask, have you ever thought about publishing a book?”
I blinked. “No.”
“I think your personal story is so compelling and raw. It would make an amazing memoir. But I also think that you have a gift for translating theology and religious history into something relatable, and that you should consider putting that work on a wider stage than just Princeton’s house publisher. You could change a lot of lives, Mr. Bell, if you wanted to.” She handed me her business card, which had Maureen Reyes: Executive Editor embossed in shiny black letters, and underneath it, the name of a very large New York publishing house.
I looked up at her, and she shouldered her bag with another smile. “Think about it. I’m happy to hear from you any time about any ideas you might have.”
Holy shit, I thought after she left, turning the card over and over in my fingers, as if expecting it to vanish like leprechaun gold. Holy shit.
I got my coffee and Poppy’s froufrou caffeine-free thing and headed out onto the snowy street, a giant grin stretching my face. I couldn’t wait to tell Poppy; I mean, it was sudden and unexpected, but it made so much sense now that I thought about it. Writing something—a memoir or a book about modern theology or even church history—all of those options felt exciting and possible and personal. I wouldn’t be able to hide behind anything if I wrote my memoir. Poppy would like that.
I rushed home, the cold world suddenly magical and alive and perfect, the holiday lights brighter and the garlands greener. I was having a baby and maybe I was going to publish a book and Poppy would be so excited and then I would be excited all over again and then we’d both think about the baby and get even more excited—on and on our happiness would loop, wider and stronger until we had no choice but to drop our decorating and go to the bed, where we’d spend the night making love.
I burst through the front door. “Poppy! Poppy! This crazy thing happened in the coffeeshop—”
I stopped. The miniature Christmas tree that we put on the kitchen table was half out of its box, tiny ornaments scattered on the floor around it. Her water bottle lay overturned on the table, water leaking slowly out of the open nozzle. Silence filled the townhouse, and I realized that the Christmas playlist had probably run out.
“Poppy?” I called, cautiously this time, my mind flashing to home intruders and serial killers. But then I stepped forward and saw the open door to our bedroom, and her kneeling by the bed. For a strange moment, I thought she might be praying…and then I heard the noise, the choked moan, and it was the same noise Morales had made in her office.
A pain noise.
A labor noise.
I set the drinks on the counter and jogged into the room, dropping to my knees next to her. “Lamb?” I asked, concerned, taking her hands in mine.
She looked up, her eyes distant and confused, her lips bloodless. “It hurts,” she whispered. “I think…I think something’s wrong with the baby.”
Had I ever known what real fear was until this moment? Real pain? Every other experience in my life paled in comparison to this, sepia-toned facsimiles of terror bled dry of any real meaning, because now I knew what actual fear was. The way it dug its razored claws into your stomach and refused to let go, the way it pounded through your blood with that harsh, ceaseless neediness.
I’d only felt this way once before, when I’d gone into my parents’ garage looking for batteries and instead saw my sister’s feet suspended in the air. That horrible mixture of fear and helplessness galvanized by panic. I let it take me for one second, two seconds, three seconds; I let it hold me under and drown me.
And then I surfaced, squeezing her hands and using my other hand to smooth the hair away from her face.
“We have to go to the hospital,” I said calmly, with the same confidence and possessiveness that I used with her in bed.
Her eyes cleared a little, finally focusing on me. “Okay,” she replied weakly. “Will you take me?”
The pleading, childlike way she asked that broke my heart. “Oh, lamb.” I gathered her into my arms and carefully embraced her. “I’m not leaving your side ever again.”
She stiffened as another pain—could it be called a labor pain?—took her and I gentled her back and thighs and murmured reassurances and love into her ear until it passed.
