Chapter Twenty-Six
“Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.”
- Hebrews 4:13 KJV
Running on nothing but fumes and what was probably considered a dangerous number of energy drinks, Illias headed to his mom’s house for his weekly visit. He took a longer than necessary route, hoping it would ease his racing mind so he didn’t blurt anything out to his mom that he didn’t want to talk about. There were at least a thousand different thoughts jumbled together, and not one needed to be said in front of his mom. He chewed on his bottom lip, deciding if he should word vomit to Charity or if it was worth the risk to keep it all to himself. As he took the familiar turn towards his childhoodsubdivision, he groaned and paused his music. He told his phone to call Charity then waited while the phone rang.
“Hey! I wasn’t expecting to hear from you until later today. What’s up?” Charity’s voice was distorted through the speaker.
“Well, I’ve probably had one too many energy drinks and now I can’t get my head to shut up, which is not a good thing considering I’m visiting my mom today.”
“You’ve got like fifteen minutes before I’ve got to hit the road for work, go for it.”
Illias took in a deep breath then began to rattle, “Okay, so like half my thoughts are about my situation with Cantrell. I’ve got like a zillion of those just kind of buzzing around up there after I realized that you are absolutely right, I do have a thing for him. Which, fuck you—”
“What did I do?” Charity exclaimed, speaker phone cutting out from how high pitched her voice went.
“Made me aware of it. Which brings me to point number two of the same topic. Holy fuck I havefeelingsfor our fuckingpriest?Who the fuck does that?”
“You do, apparently,” she snorted.
“You’re hilarious. Stop. I’m going to pee myself,” Illias deadpanned.
Charity huffed. “I am hilarious. But keep going.”
Illias rolled his eyes even though he knew she couldn’t see him. “As I was saying, who develops feelings for their priest, of all people? That makes him the most unattainable person in existence.”
“Well, clearly not. You said you two are in some sort of like no strings attachment thing, right?”
“Yeah,” he answered, gears in his brain turning.
“Which means, A, he obviously finds you attractive, and, B, is interested in you enough to entertain whatever it is you twoare doing,” she stated matter-of-factly. “So, you’re stressing over nothing.”
Illias made a noise. “I wouldn’t say nothing. It’s not like I can ask him to leave the church for me.”
“Well, yeah, I wouldn’t go that far. But you can definitely see if he’s interested in something more, ya know, more committed. Long term maybe. Plant the seed, see if it grows.”
His stomach knotted at the thought of so much as admitting out loud to Cantrell that he wanted the no-strings attachment to have strings. “Charity, I have the worst green thumb imaginable. So, the chances of anything growing is slim to none.”
Charity groaned. Illias could practically see her throwing her head back in exasperation. “I take back what I said about you not being stupid. You are the world’s largest dumbass that has ever dumbassed.”
“Wow, thank you for your unconditional love and support. I am so glad we had this talk.” Each word out of his mouth reeked of sarcasm.
“You know what? Ever since high school, you’ve acted like this. Like feelings are below you or something, but news flash, you’ve got ’em, dude. And it’s okay to feel them and not understand why or how or what to do with them. What’s not okay though, is bottling it up and pretending that they don’t exist until it becomes a massive issue. Which is what you do every single time you feel something that ismildlyinconvenient to you. So quit being so stubborn and let yourself feel. You might find out that it’s not that bad.”
A dog barked in the background, and Charity let out a groan. “I gotta go. I love you, but stop being an idiot.”
Before Illias could get another word in, Charity ended the call. He drove in silence the rest of the way to his mom’s house,stop being an idiotrepeating like a scratched record.
Sitting in the middle of his mom’s living room, surrounded by dozens of photo albums and about three dozen shoe boxes filled to the brim with photos, was not how Illias expected to spend his visit with his mom, but he couldn’t deny that it was nice revisiting the past. He picked up a photo album with the words “Our story” written across it in his mom’s handwriting. He flipped through the yellow-tinged plastic pages. The album laid out the story of how his parents got together, starting with who they were before meeting each other and ending with a picture of their wedding day. He went back a few pages to a photo of his parents standing together in front of a Ferris wheel. His dad’s arm was wrapped around his mom’s waist, and they both had the widest grins Illias had ever seen. Underneath it was a photo of them kissing.
Heat flooded Illias' cheeks as he thought about last night, how close he and Cantrell came to kissing. He brushed his thumb over the photo.Would Cantrell ever do something like this with me?
“What’s on your mind, honey?” his mom asked. “I can practically see the gears in your head turning.”
He looked over at where she sat in her recliner with her own box of photos. Her eyes, tender and full of love, were already on him. He glanced down at the photo album, cheeks on fire.“When did you realize you liked Dad?” he asked, afraid of saying the other word as childish as it was.
“I think a part of me knew from the moment I met him. I was just too stubborn and afraid to realize it. Why do you ask?”
