I laugh. “This was all one big recruiting mission? You are slick.”
“No, I’m innocent.” He spreads his hands and smiles at me. “But we are always shorthanded. And you’ve finished your supper.”
I look down at my plate and see that he’s right. I’ve hoovered the entire meal in a short period of time. The meal that this man brought me when he suspected I was sitting home alone today. “I’m very handy in the kitchen,” I admit. “But I won’t come if you think my parents will show up. I don’t have the stomach for that tonight.”
“Well, I don’t have a tracking device on their car. But I have never seen your parents at one of our community dinners. They’re Sunday-only Catholics, as far as I can tell.”
I realize that I have no earthly idea how my parents spend Christmas. And that makes me feel a little blue once again.
“Come on, Roderick. It’s right across the green,” Father Peters says. “You could throw a rock and hit the church.”
“That sounds like vandalism,” I say, lifting my now-empty plate off the coffee table.
“I don’t mean literally,” he scoffs. “The church disapproves of that. It’s in the rule book.”
“I’m sure it is.”
Five minutes later I’m locking the door and then heading down the driveway with the priest.
“So, is there any particular reason why today was especially hard?” he asks.
“Well, sure. I really like Vermont, but I’m not sure I can stay.”
“Why is that? Seems like you have a good job with people who care about you.”
“A fair point,” I grumble. “But see—I like people. And I need people in my life. That’s a good thing, right?”
“I’ve always thought so.”
“But it has a dark side. Before I came here, I was with a guy who wasn’t a very good guy. But I stuck with him anyway, because I don’t like to be alone. Then I came to Vermont, and I started dating a good guy. No—a great guy. But he’s not ready.”
“Ready for—?”
“For me. I’m kind of a lot to handle. I have a lot to give, but he isn’t ready to receive everything I want to offer him. And it doesn’t look like he’s going to be ready anytime soon. So unless I want to put my life on hold for the foreseeable future, I probably need to leave. This is a small town, and I don’t want to put pressure on him. But it’s just so depressing. I feel like I’m going to be bumping around from guy to guy like a drunk pinball for the rest of my pathetic little life. When all I want is to find the right man and be very good to him.”
I need a big, gulping breath of air after all that word vomit. I can’t believe I just emptied my heart to a Catholic priest, of all people. But he’s a really good listener. He’s probably trained for that.
“That does sound heartbreaking,” he says as we round the corner toward his church. “But the self-awareness you have about this problem is a precious thing. Not all of my parishioners can see their troubles as clearly as you can.”
“I’m not always this lucid,” I promise him. “I stayed with that other rat for three years.”
“And how long have you given this new guy?”
“Not long,” I hedge. “But it feels so familiar. I know he’s going to let me down. So I feel like I should just get it over with, and save us both the anguish.”
“Hmm,” he says. “And how would he feel if you did that?”
“Sad,” I say without hesitation. “But maybe relieved.”
“Uh-huh. Maybe before you deprive the greater Colebury area of those sourdough pretzels, you should find out for sure.”
I snort. “I sense a conflict of interest here.”
“It’s minor,” he says with a wave of his hand. “I won’t let it affect my judgment. My counsel is that you should take a breath. You’re afraid to put pressure on your man. But you’re putting the most pressure on yourself tonight. You wouldn’t rush a sourdough, would you?”
I shake my head. “That’s how you ruin things.”
“Step back, take a breath, leave the kitchen, Roderick. But don’t leave town, or you’ll always wonder what might have been.”
Exhaling, I look up to see people streaming into the church. But Father Peters doesn’t rush. He slows his pace on the sidewalk, just in case we’re not finished yet.
“Thank you,” I say in a low voice. “I’ll try. But even if it all works out, I could never get married in your church anyway, right?” I’m pretty conflicted about stepping over that threshold, even to serve dinner.
“Right,” he says brightly. “But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t come to your wedding. I could cheer you on from the front row. What kind of cake do you think you’d serve? Just hypothetically?”
“You are not what I expected,” I say with a laugh.
“Good. Now let’s wash up and serve some ham and inferior rolls.”
Kieran
“Are you okay?” my cousin May asks me as she deals out another hand of poker. “You’re quiet, even for you.”
“Yeah,” I say. And that’s all I say.
May shakes her head and deals two cards face up. “Then ante up.”
“Oh. Sorry.” I push a couple chips to the center of the table and try to focus on my cards.
I’m not, in fact, okay. I left things completely unsettled between me and Roddy. He should be here with us playing poker. He should have been here for Aunt Ruth’s pie, and for the game of capture-the-flag we played outside in the dark.
At least he got a good supper. It was Audrey’s idea to send him a plate with Father Peters, since the church is right across the green from our house.
It should have been me who brought it to him, though. Not that I was willing to say so out loud.
Roddy is right, of course. We have a problem, and it seems to have no solution. Before now, I never noticed how much pretending I do just to get through the day. There are conversations I don’t enter, because they’d be too revealing. (“Which model is the hottest?”) The way I listen more than I talk—even with my closest family members—is a habit I picked up so long ago that I wouldn’t know how to break it.
And there’s no way for me to suddenly be more like Rod—someone who dares the world to love him just the way he is.
I don’t like my odds. I really don’t.
Meanwhile, I wish he were here. I miss him like crazy. But I am not about to let everyone in this room know that we’re lovers. That’s just not happening. And I don’t know how to make Roddy understand why I can’t.
It’s not that I’m ashamed of him. I’m not afraid to be gay. But my privacy is basically my life’s work. And fitting in with the rest of the Shipley clan has never been easy for me. Setting myself apart on purpose would feel like peeling off my skin.
“You in or not?” Grandpa asks suddenly. “It’s ten to call. Expensive hand, boy. But you still can’t take all day deciding.”