“Did you ever meet Father Marcellus?”
I nodded. He wasn’t a regular by any means, but you never forgot a chaplain in a town that seemed to have so much sin going around.
“Well, he got killed last night,” he said.
The news hurt, but worse, I was so used to people getting killed in this area that unless it was the death of someone close to my age or someone that I cared about, it was sadly difficult to generate serious sorrow.
“But while I’m never going to say that his death provided some good, I am going to say that I am going to find the other side of the coin with this. He told me... well, he more or less told me I needed to make peace with those who had wronged me or I had wronged. He was referring to the clubs, but I knew as soon as he said it, I needed to come to you and make things right. So. Sorry.”
And with one slow, not rushed, sip, he finished his beer. The apology only enhanced how I felt about him right now—it made me show he could own up to his errors and not just be a fun guy. He had a human side to him.
Perhaps best of all, while I still felt attraction to him—immensely so, actually—my father’s return had given me the strength to not fall back over him immediately. I was willing to play this out and see what happened.
“Well, I’m sorry for not telling you about my plans sooner,” I said.
“Remind me, when are you moving away?”
Funny thing, that...
“I don’t know,” I said, which was technically a true statement.
I think Phoenix expected me to say more, but for the sake of slow-playing things a bit, I decided to keep silent.
“Well, fuck it, since you’re still here,” Phoenix said. I leaned forward on the bar, trying to keep a straight face, but the way my lips curled up, I just knew I was giving myself away. “I want to hang out with you again. I don’t give a fuck if you just want to be friends. I owe it to myself to have a pleasant time with you and not have the last memory for either of us be me acting like a petulant idiot.”
“Is that so?” I said, but this time, I didn’t hide the smile. “You did act like a petulant idiot, but the good news for you is that I’ve got plenty of experience dealing with men who act like fools before they grow up.”
And the even better news is that sometimes, it’s not just making up. It’s making up and going to a level you haven’t been at before.
“I suppose that’s a long-winded way of saying yes,” Phoenix said, placing his finished beer on the bar. “When are you free?”
The easy answer was in two days when I had a day off.
“Why not now?”
But sometimes, the easy answer was just boring.
“I mean, sure,” Phoenix said. “I’m happy to keep chatting here—”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Phoenix’s eyes went wide.
“Here’s the thing, Phoenix, that you need to know,” I said. “My father came and visited me a couple of days ago. Completely caught me off-guard, it was unannounced. But it was an absolutely wonderful visit. And the one thing he taught me—not even taught, just him being there made me realize—was that I didn’t have to avoid things. I didn’t have to hope for things to happen. I could just... I had the knowledge that if something I tried failed, I wouldn’t be a failure or I wouldn’t lack for support. My father gives me the strength I need to move forward. And besides.”
I smirked.
“You know how much I like to take control.”
Phoenix got his own seductive smirk. Well, the good news was I think both of us were moving past the awkward dance of testing each other while secretly desperately wanting each other. The “bad” news was I didn’t want him to jump that far ahead in the process.
“So, we’ll stay here for a half-hour, and then we can go somewhere else.”
I chuckled a bit and even called Phoenix out when his smile turned into something of confusion. But his smile came back quickly, and I think he knew the same thing I did—that I didn’t just want to talk to him because I wanted to get some. I wanted to talk to him because I liked him.
And though our conversation for the next half hour didn’t go anywhere special—yeah, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt—just like with my father, it was the simple conversations about best vacations, about good hiking spots, about movies we were looking forward to seeing that put me in such a great place with Phoenix. Sometimes, the words mattered far less than the tone.
And when that half-hour ended, I decided it was time.
