I laugh, and it feels like the first honest laugh I’ve had in years.
“Me too,” I say.
Dawn lightens the bedroom. How easily my space now belongs to us both is not lost on me. Sarah is asleep on my chest, her mouth open just enough to let out a half-snore, her fingers curled like claws against my ribs. My arm is dead from her weight, but I wouldn’t move it for the world.
I watch her for a long time, let the feeling of her seep in. There’s no guilt, no shame. For the first time in years, the static in my head is gone. I trace little circles on her shoulder. Her skin is soft, except where the bruises are. She wakes up slowly, blinks at the ceiling, then turns her face to me.
“Did you sleep?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Didn’t want to waste it.”
She laughs, rolling onto her back. The sheet pools at her hips. I admire her, every line of her svelte frame, the pale rise of breasts marked by my sucking and nibbling.
“You look happy,” she says, skeptical.
“I am.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
She hesitates. “Why did you become a priest?”
I expect the question to hurt, but it doesn’t. I run my thumb over her knuckles, thinking.
“My father was a drunk,” I say. “Mean as a snake. I joined the seminary to get away from him. I thought, if I spent my life helping people, I’d be something better than him. I liked the certainty of it, the rules, the ritual.”
“Did it work?”
“For a while,” I say. “Then I started to feel like I was pretending. Like I was wearing a costume I couldn’t take off.”
She nods, and her hair brushes my chest. “So why stay?”
“Habit,” I admit.
She is silent for a minute, then says, “You don’t have to pretend with me.”
I pull her closer. “I know. That’s why you scare me.”
She pokes me in the side. “I’m not that scary.”
“You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met,” I tell her.
The air shifts. The silence is thick, but not uncomfortable.
“There’s something I should say,” I begin. “I’ve been thinking about leaving for a while. Before you ever showed up at my door. It wasn’t you that caused it. You just… gave me the courage to admit it.”
She searches my face. “What would you do? If you weren’t a priest, I mean.”
“I’d still want to help people,” I say. “Maybe social work, maybe counseling. There’s more than one way to save someone. I'm sure I'll miss parts of it, but I'm ready to let go.”
“I don’t know what happens now,” she says. “I don’t know if I want to stay in this town, or if I want to run away, or if I want to sleep for a year.”
I reach over, take her hand.
“You don’t have to know,” I say. “Not today.”
After a while, we get up, shower together, awkward and giggly. I dry her hair with a towel, and she bites my shoulder in retaliation for the roughness. When I look at myself in the bathroom mirror, I see a different man. Maybe rehabilitated, or just relieved. I'm still tired, but lighter, as if some old debt has finally been paid.
