“You call me sounding like you’re dying and then you fail to answer the phone, I’m going to break some speed limits.” Patrick sounded exasperated but relieved.
Sasha stepped into the room. “I’m afraid any law breaking is my fault.”
Patrick’s dad didn’t appear to be in serious distress, but he was sitting on the floor with his back supported by one of the shelves of booze. There was a pile of boxes and a broken bottle of whiskey next to him. When Mr. Dooley saw her, he smiled and then winced in apparent pain. “Why would you bring a pretty girl to see me looking like this?”
“Mr. Dooley, I was just at the church.”
“If I’d get a woman who looked like you visiting me, I might have to consider the priesthood.” Sasha and Patrick both laughed, but there was tension there. Mr. Dooley didn’t seem to notice because he followed that up. “Of course it’s wasted on this one. Such potential he had.”
“I’ll leave you on the ground, old man.” Outside of yelling at the kid who’d almost run them over, Sasha had never heard Patrick be anything less than beneficent, so hearing him tell his father off was sure something. She wouldn’t admit to herself how much she liked to see this side of him. The human side.
“No, you won’t. You’re worried about going to hell.” He reached up to where Patrick was crouched. Patrick gave him his arm and helped his—not small—father to his feet almost effortlessly.
Why did he have to be so strong? If he were weak, he wouldn’t be nearly as attractive to her lizard brain. But apparently, her avaricious, lustful nature was being tested with this one.
“What happened?” Patrick asked. His father looked like he was going to wave him off, but he pressed. “Did the employee that Chris and I hired for you not show up today?”
“He’s not coming in until nine.” Mr. Dooley stuck his chin out stubbornly, and Sasha saw the son in the father right then. “My back isn’t what it used to be.”
She could see it pained the man to admit it.
“Well, he’ll be on his own since you have to go home now.”
Sasha felt like she shouldn’t be there. This was a private conversation. “I’m just going to grab some stuff to clean this up so no one cuts themselves.”
By the time she got back with a broom and dustpan, a mop, and a bucket full of soapy water, Danny Dooley was on his feet and Patrick had taken off his priestly collar to move the rest of the pile of boxes onto shelves.
Sasha’s gaze stuck on the back of his head where drops of sweat raced their way down to his neck. She could picture the muscles moving underneath the black fabric, and it made her a bit weak in the knees.
She would have stared forever, but Mr. Dooley hobbled past her saying, “Like I said, an absolute waste.”
Patrick looked at her then, and she said, “I have a broom and mop.” When he reached for the broom, Sasha snatched it back. “I’ve got it.”
“Be careful of sharps. I avoided one trip to the hospital today. I’d like to avoid it altogether,” he said, but he let her get to work.
And she was careful not to get cut. She wasn’t careful enough to let her curiosity about what she’d seen between father and son go, though. “So, what’s the deal with your dad and you being a priest?”
“My dad’s not really a God guy.”
Sasha had to laugh at that. “So, how did you become one?”
Patrick was silent for so long that she figured he wasn’t going to answer.
“My mom was really devout, and she always wanted one of us to become a priest like her brother.”
Sasha tried to imagine Chris as a priest and failed instantly. Anything that didn’t involve being a jackass wasn’t going to be Chris Dooley’s calling. He was like a relative that you couldn’t get rid of because by containing him you could keep his damage levels under control.
“After she died, I just felt called. It was so obvious to me that I should be pursuing it that I couldn’t avoid it.”
“Did you want to avoid it?” Sasha couldn’t imagine trying to parse out a religious calling from her parents’ wishes. She’d been pursuing marriage to the “right kind” of man and having children so that she’d get their approval for as long as she could remember. Her parents would probably be thrilled if she decided to enter a convent—both because it would be something that they could brag about in the lobby of their church and they wouldn’t have to worry about her shaming them anymore. But they weren’t fervent believers, and neither was Sasha. If she believed and then felt called, it would be difficult to resist.
“Not at the time, no.”
Sasha knew one thing with certainty as she finished helping Patrick clean up and then went home—assured he could get back to the Church without her staying. Her crush on him had to go away, because he was where he belonged.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“I WANT TO HAVE sex with a priest.” Sasha just said it. She wasn’t going to spend thirty minutes of their forty-five-minute session forcing her therapist to tease this dirty little secret out. Not like the time she’d admitted to lusting after her college English professor. Besides, whenever Sasha made Pam pull her deepest, darkest stuff out, Pam laughed like a drunken hyena when she got to the big reveal. Pam was an unconventional therapist, but her methods worked.
“Is this the beginning of a joke?” Pam inquired gently, after she stopped laughing. Sasha sometimes came in with jokes. Pam never laughed at those, but it helped Sasha acclimate to telling someone the truth about how she was feeling. Other than with Hannah—and not even with Hannah all the time—Sasha kept a very tight lid on her emotions.
That was what Finerghty women did. Needless to say, therapy was very difficult for her.
“No, I am infatuated with an actual priest.” Sasha wrung her sweaty hands in her lap and tapped her foot. The lust was like its own person in her body, with its own kinetic energy. The lust wanted to move.
“A Catholic priest?” Pam sounded incredulous.
The only sound Sasha could get herself to make was a squeak. Luckily, she’d been seeing Pam for a few years. She’d started seeing the septuagenarian Jungian when she’d realized that she had a habit of lying to herself and those close to her without even thinking about it. They weren’t harmful lies; they were the kinds of things she would say to make sure everyone around her was comfortable.
For example, she never told anyone that anything they were doing was a bad idea. She would tell them that she supported them and hope the concerned look on her face shone through enough for them to know that they were about to make a huge, catastrophic, gigantic, life-altering mistake.