Page 62 of Sinner (Priest 2)
I have to call in a favor from Aiden (sigh), but even that can’t dampen my excitement as I get everything ready.
“Sixty dollars,” Aiden’s saying as I finish up a few odds and ends in my home office before I get Zenny from the shelter.
“Sixty? Are you insane?”
“Oh, like you’re not good for it,” Aiden says dismissively. “And are you going to tell me who this girl is or what?”
I think for a minute. Aiden’s not exactly what I would label “trustworthy.” Once, right after college, he promised to help me move a couch into my apartment, and then moved to Belize the next day. (He came back a month later with a sunburn, a fresh hatred of tequila, and a vague story about a girl named Jessica.) Last year, I spent God knows how many hours touring lofts and condos with him, examining minute differences between exposed brick and stained concrete, and then he up and bought a creaky farmhouse in the middle of nowhere without a word.
The nice word for Aiden is spontaneous and the less nice word is flaky, and either way I slice it, I’m not sure that I can trust him with a secret like this. For all I know, he’ll meet another Jessica and somehow end up at the Vatican telling the Pope about Zenny and me.
But also I have this adolescent need to talk about her. I want someone else to know how fucking smart she is, how fucking pretty, how fucking sweet and tart all at once. I want to talk about her contradictions and her layers, I want to talk about the things she dredges up inside me—these old sensory glimpses of churches and rituals—about the version of Sean I remember when I’m around her.
I want to talk about how much I want her, how much I need her, and how much that doesn’t scare me.
“It’s Zenny Iverson,” I say quickly before I can change my mind. “Zenobia. Elijah’s sister.”
A silence yawns on the other end.
“Aiden? You still there?”
He doesn’t answer right away, but when he does, his voice is strangled. “Elijah’s sister?”
“Yes.”
“The nun?”
How does he know about that when even I, Elijah’s best friend, didn’t? “It’s a long story,” I say.
“You’re taking a nun on a date,” Aiden says, as if he’s a teacher laying out a remedial logic problem for a student to solve. “You’re dating a nun.”
“Not…exactly,” I hedge. “It’s complicated.”
“Oh my God,” Aiden says. “Elijah’s going to kill you.”
“Elijah is not going to know,” I say firmly. “Because Zenny and I won’t tell him.”
“But—” Aiden makes a fretting noise.
“There’s no buts, man. It’s not like you’re going to see him to tell him, and no one else is going to tell him, and it’s going to be fine.”
Aiden is still making agitated sputters.
“And anyway, we should be talking about you. I notice you haven’t been raiding my fridge the past few days; I wondered if you’d died or something.”
“I’m just busy,” he says, and there’s a note of evasion in his voice. But with Aiden, evasion is sometimes par for the course. He’s Belize Boy, after all.
“Okay, fine. I won’t pry. Just tell me if you’re dating a nun too.”
That earns me a laugh. “I’m not as bonkers as you.”
“Yet,” I warn, and I do mean it as a joke, but it does
come out with a prophetic sort of ring and hangs in the air as we finish making plans for tonight and wrap up the call.
Chapter Eighteen
“Where are we going?” Zenny asks. “And why is there sixty dollars tucked into your console?”
