Page 111 of Sinner (Priest 2)
I help her clean up with some Kleenex, and I help her rearrange her panties, her dress, her hair, until the only evidence of what just happened is the barely perceptible blush on her cheeks and chest, and the spill of me inside her, invisible to everyone except God.
And then there are no more excuses. It’s time for her to go to her vows, and it’s time for me to leave.
I give her a final kiss, long and lingering, her soft lips yielding under mine and then I straighten up. “I love you,” I tell her. “I’ll always love you.”
“You’re not staying?” she asks, her lips trembling. “You won’t stay?”
“I think I’ve been very patient, all things considering,” I say. “But watch you forswear your love for me and pledge your heart to another? Even if that other person is God? I can’t bear it, Zenny. I can’t do it.”
A tear spills over, followed by another and another. “I haven’t been good to you, have I?”
I look away. “You’ve been very good—”
She shakes her head, forcing a rueful smile through her tears. “No. I haven’t. I don’t know if I can say sorry for all of the times—I don’t believe they were wrong—but I know sometimes I was…deeply inconsistent. Hot and cold.”
“You had reasons to be wary,” I say tiredly. “You wanted something transactional between us, and I broke that.”
“But I broke it too,” she confesses. “I couldn’t tell you because I was terrified of feeding it…this fire inside my chest. But, oh Sean, every time you said one of those things—”
“Things?”
She waves a hand. “You know what I mean. Or whenever your voice would get low and rough, or whenever your eyes would get so big and open, like a sky after rain… Every time, I would feel that fire trying to burn and claw its way free. You do that to me. You tear me open and it was all I could do to hold on to the edges of my soul as you did. I loved you and I was scared, and if I had been honest…well.” She sucks in a deep breath and takes my hand in hers, pressing it to her heart. “Maybe this wouldn’t hurt so much.”
Her heart thumps quietly inside her chest, a tired and mournful bird, and I can’t help it, just one more kiss, one final brush of lips and one final taste of her.
“
It was always going to hurt, Zenny-bug,” I whisper against her lips. “Always.”
I soak in a last vision—dark, shining eyes and a tart little nose and a sweep of lush, ticklish curls—and then I surrender her to the hands of God and her sisters. I close the door to the waiting room behind me, effectively slicing our love apart for good, and as I do, my heart breaks
one
last
time.
Chapter Thirty-Four
I can’t get out of the monastery fast enough, half-running through the central hallway to the front door and pushing through that as if I were running out of air.
I am. I am running out. I’m choking on my own pain, my own bittersweet regrets. And I can’t even summon the strength to listen to the singing and praying echoing from inside; I hurl myself down the stairs and onto the old, broken sidewalk, willing the city noise of traffic and wind to drown out the melody of Zenny’s marriage to Christ.
Why did you do this to me? I demand of God. What possible reason could there be for this?
There’s no answer, and of course there’s not. If there’s anything I’ve learned during my detente with God this week it’s that He very rarely answers fussy prayers right away.
Although He better get used to them. I’m much more Jacob than I am Abraham, ready to fight and wrestle with God at a moment’s notice; I’m much more Jonah with his dead plant and his surly I’m so angry I wish I were dead. But I’m beginning to think that’s okay now. That honesty and angst and rage and all the other messy human feelings are preferable to lifeless piety.
So I think sullen, hurting thoughts up to God, which turn into sad, lonely thoughts as I get closer to my car at the edge of the block.
I’m never not going to love her, I think with sorrow. She’s the only one my heart will ever hold inside itself, for as long as I’m alive.
God finally sees fit to answer, and Kesha erupts noisily from my phone. I don’t recognize the number offhand, and my chest deflates so fast my ribs crack, which is stupid. Like I really thought Zenny was going to call me in the middle of her ceremony? What kind of sad idiot am I?
I answer, not bothering to muffle my mopeful tone. “Sean Bell.”
“Sean Bell,” a creaky voice says back. An old woman’s voice. A familiar voice. “I think you’d better slow down.”
