“Sure, it was. It wasallyou. It wasevery last inchof you. As a matter of fact, I’ll bet it was ten inches. Felt like more. We never did do butt stuff.”
“Dree,please.”
“I understand there are all kinds of personal conflict going on up in your noggin, but that wasyou.You weren’tfakingit.”
“I wasn’t faking it, no. But it’s not who Iwantto be.”
She said into the dark, “Sure seemed like you wanted to be there.”
“That’s not what I meant. Of course, I wanted to be there. I desperately wanted to be there.”
“I’ll bet if I offered, you’d crawl right inside this mummy bag with me right now.”
His voice lowered still further. “You’re not making this easier.”
“Hey, it’s not my problem. I’m not the one who took an oath of celibacy.”
“Dree, I’m doing my best. Don’t make this more difficult, okay?”
“Hey, Mr. Deacon Father Grimaldi, you’re the one who’s supposed to be celibate. But since you can’t keep it in your pants—”
He muttered, “I can keep it in my pants. Can you keep your sleeping bag zipped?”
“Oh, I can keep my sleeping bag zipped up tight, but it doesn’t matter if I don’t. You’re the one who ‘slips’ every chance you get.”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “I do.”
His voice sounded choked.
Oh, jeez. She’d wanted to piss him off, not make him feel bad. “All right, fine. I’ll quit sexually harassing you, but the point is that Paris was not my fault. This is between you, your conscience, and the Big Guy upstairs. I’m just the woman you didn’t mention your ethics conflict to.”
“I am sorry about that,” he said, his voice low.
“You should be. I mean, I knew we didn’t have a future together, that it was just those four days and then we’d go our separate ways. You didn’t lead me on. But I think the fact that you’d taken Holy Orders, even if you’re not exactly a priest, should have been in the conversation before we knew each other ‘biblically.’”
“That first night, things were a bit of a blur.”
“Yeah,” she admitted, “and they were even blurrier for me, but you should have told me the next day. We shouldn’t havekeptdoing it. I didn’t know you were breaking sacred vows. I just thought I’d had a wonderful four days with an incredible man.”
His whisper slid through the dark and around the curls of her ear, “I think you’re incredible, too.”
Dree paused, gathering herself, and she whispered, “I don’t know why we did what we did in Paris, but I can see why you should be a priest.”
Maxence’s sleeping bag susurrated on the nylon tent floor like he was turning over. He whispered, “Why?”
“I was at the Mass on Saturday. I saw you do the Scripture reading.”
Again, silence, until he whispered even more softly, “And?”
“When I told Sister Mariam and Mother Superior that you were going to be officiating at the Saturday Mass, Mother Superior said that she would reserve the school bus so all the sisters could go. I thought it was just because you’re hot. I mean, what het-leaning woman doesn’t like to fantasize about a hot priest? It’ssonaughty. And a hot priest can take you to Heaven because he knows the way, am I right?”
“I don’t know what to say to that,” Maxence muttered.
Dree said, “But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t why they were there. When you read the Scripture, everyone wasenthralled.Your voice wentthroughus. No one couldbreathe.That’swhy they went. I couldn’tbelievewhat I was feeling. It felt like encountering God.”
She needed to gather herself.
His breathing didn’t change to the soft rhythm of sleep, and he drew in a breath like he might say something, and then sighed, and then did it again.
