I was preaching to myself today, every word a knife to my gut. I lifted my gaze briefly, eyes sweeping over the congregation again until they stopped on someone who hadn’t been there before.
For a heartbeat, everything tilted.
Alessio stood near the back, half in the shadows with his hands in his jeans pockets, watching me. Listening. The shock I felt at seeing him here when he never came to mass hit me so hard that my breath caught in my throat.
For a long time I couldn’t speak, still staring at him as he stared back. It wasn’t until someone in the front row coughed that the spell was broken, and I quickly looked back down at my notes.
“For the good we wish to do, we do not always do,” I said softly, my heart pounding so loud I wondered if the microphone picked it up. “And the wrong we wish to avoid has a way of finding us anyway.”
Finding us even in the one place we feel safe,I thought, forcing myself not to look at Alessio.
“So when temptation comes,” I continued, “we do not shame ourselves for feeling it. We acknowledge it. We face it. And we choose—” I stopped before I stumbled over what I had to say next and swallowed hard. “And we choose, again and again, who we are called to be. Not because it’s easy. But…because it matters.”
My chest squeezed tight, not only at the way those words seared through me, but also because Alessio was there, hearing them, and I could only imagine what he was thinking and feeling.
A wave of panic seized me then before I could stop it, pulling me back in time…
“WHAT TIME DID you say your parents were getting home?”
“I didn’t,” Alessio said as he tossed a flat packet of popcorn in the microwave and shut the door. “It’s some boring work function at Dad’s company, though, so probably late. You know how those corporate dudes like to drone on and on about how good they are to each other.”
I shook my head and leaned against the doorframe of his parents’ kitchen as he punched in the time on the microwave and hit start.
Alessio had always been one to buck the system. First, as boys in church, then school, and now as our parents were starting to ask questions about what we wanted to do with our future and where we were going to go to do it. It seemed the more questions they had, the more he rebelled against it.Always one to walk to the beat of his own drum, Alessio turned his nose up at anything that felt too uniform, too…corporate. He was the kind of guy who wanted to strike out on his own, forge his own path. Not be a part of some “lemming-filled machine,” as he liked to call it.
“You do know it’s those ‘corporate types’ who hire guys good with computers and tech, right? Maybe if you’re nice to your dad, he could get you an in at his company.”
“Fuck that.” Alessio leaned against the counter. “Last thing I want to do is spend my days in some cubicle wearing a suit and tie, designing some boring-as-hell security wall for a company that won’t pay me shit.”
“Gee, why don’t you tell me how you really feel.”
Alessio chuckled and ran his eyes down over me, and heat immediately flooded my body.
“Ifeellike you’re standing too far away from me.” He grinned and held a hand out to me. “So why don’t you get your ass over here?”
“Alessio—”
“What? No one’s here,” he said crooking a finger at me, and man, why did he have to be so hot? “You know you want to.”
“That’s not the point.”
“No? Then what is?” The popcorn began to pop slowly, one kernel at a time in the microwave. “Because it’s been way too long since we?—”
“I know,” I rushed out, knowing if he said the words I’d have no hope of resisting him. But between school, church, and studying, we really hadn’t had much time alone lately. So when he told me his parents had a work function tonight, I’d jumped at the idea of spending time with him.
Now that I was here, though, I was nervous. It was stupid to feel that way, I knew that. This was Alessio. My best friend. My boyfriend. We’d been together at least a year now, but the more time we spent together, the more I felt…conflicted.
The two of us had been raised Catholic, had met and connected as altar boys, and while I’d always been the more devout of the two of us, lately that devotion had been shifting.Instead of thinking about God and what He wanted from me, I found myself thinking of Alessio.
Always Alessio.
When would I see him? What would he be wearing? Would he come and find me after class? Would I get to touch him today? Kiss him?
He was always on my mind, and as he pushed off the counter and walked across the kitchen toward me, my pulse pounded in time with the rapid firing of the popcorn.
“I missed you this week,” he said, reaching out and hooking a finger into the waist of my jeans, and my dick immediately took notice, just like it always did. “Missed kissing you.”
God, I couldn’t think when he talked to me like that. And when he was this close, when he was touching me, and I could smell the cologne he’d just recently started to wear? I was a total goner.
