I closed in despite it, and said, quoting him from a couple of days past, “I could strip you naked, fuck you on this very table, and all they would do is look away.”
For a heartbeat, the room went absolutely still. His eyes narrowed, darkened to that impossible shade that made me forget my name, my purpose, everything except the weight of his gaze. Then his hand moved from my leg to my throat.
“You’re learning too fast,” he murmured, his voice pitched low enough that only I could hear it. “And you’re enjoying it too much.”
The coffee machine behind me gurgled its completion, filling the small room with the rich scent of dark roast. Neither of us moved.
The sound of Darlene’s sensible heels clicked down the hallway, growing louder. Judah stepped back smoothly, creatinga respectable distance between us just as she appeared in the doorway.
“Oh! Pastor, there you are,” she said right as Judah was reaching for a mug to fill it with coffee. “There’s a pair come to talk about a wedding.”
He nodded, already moving toward the door. “I’m going.” He sipped from the mug, and added, “The Tureaud memorial committee wants to meet Thursday. Can you check my calendar?”
“Of course.” She stepped aside to let him pass, watching him go, and then turned back to the room.
I was very busy with my freshly poured coffee cup.
Darlene looked at the counter. At me. At the space where he'd been standing.
“The Henderson forms,” she said finally.
“Done,” I said.
She nodded once, slowly, poured her coffee and left without another word.
I took a long, shaky breath.
Iwaslearning fast.
The rule about Judah’s door had never been stated out loud.
That was how his rules worked — they didn't arrive as instructions; they arrived as facts you discovered by observing what happened when they were violated. Or in this case, what didn't happen. Nobody knocked on a closed door in this building. Not Darlene, not Sister Ruth, not the deacons who'dbeen coming to this office for ten years. The closed door was a language everyone spoke fluently and nobody had taught me.
I'd learned it by watching.
So when he appeared in the doorway of the food bank office at two in the afternoon and said, “Mercy. My office,” and walked back without waiting — I knew what the closed door meant before I'd even stood up.
Darlene was on the phone. She glanced at me over the receiver, something passing through her expression too quickly to name, and looked back at her desk.
I closed my laptop and went, the heels of my shoes echoing in my wake.
His office was at the end of the hall, past the meeting room, past the small prayer alcove with its perpetual candle. The door was open when I got there. He was at his desk, not looking up, reading something —completely still, total absorption, the rest of the world paused and waiting.
I came in, feeling the lace shift against my skin under my clothes. Anticipation. I knew what this would be.
“Close the door,” he instructed without looking up.
I did.
The sound of it — that soft, final click — did something immediate to the air in the room. The hallway sounds disappeared. The printer down the corridor, Darlene's voice on the phone — a building full of people doing ordinary things — all of it gone. Just the room. Only him. And the lace against my skin.
He set the paper down and looked at me.
“Come here,” he said.
I hesitated, walking to the shelve with books instead. It appeared being a brat came naturally to me — my father’s fear materialized.
I ran my fingers along the spines of theology books, feeling his eyes on me like a physical touch. I selected one, pulled it out, and examined the cover as though it were the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen.
