She’d always wanted things she couldn’t have and had fought against her baser impulses for literal decades, but that didn’t completely explain her reaction to Patrick. Never in her life had she felt like she was on fire around another person. No one elicited the reactions that Patrick did. Nor did she understand why someone as vital and—well, virile—as Patrick would sign his life away when he was barely twenty-five.
Maybe if she understood more about him, she could demystify him in her own head and they could move on as just friends.
When he sat down, she’d resolved to ask more questions and find out more about him. “Why did you become a priest?”
He sat back in his chair, as though her question had blown him away. “Getting right down to the heart of things, are we?”
It didn’t help her lady parts situation that he winked at her. That wouldn’t do at all. “I just want to know more about you. I mean, we know each other, but like—I don’t know anything about you.”
“I guess I like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I like people telling me things.” He looked down into his glass, and she felt like she might have made a mistake. If anything, having him on the precipice of revealing himself to her made him even sexier. “And it’s hard for me to tell people about myself.”
She really shouldn’t have asked. “You don’t have to—”
But he cut her off. “It was about a girl.”
“Want me to kill her?” Any woman that could prompt this man to give up sex and romance with the degree of emphasis that he had deserved to die. For sure.
“Not necessary.” He smiled at her again. He had to stop that. “It probably wouldn’t have lasted anyway.”
“You’re going to have to elaborate if you don’t want me to track her down.”
“It was just a pedestrian romantic disappointment. Nothing for a priest to condone murder over. But it came at the right time. My mom was sick and dying, and she was more fervently religious than anyone I knew at the time.” Sasha held her breath, not daring to stop him now that he was spilling all the beans. She could hear the pain in his voice when he talked about his mother and wanted to comfort him. But that wasn’t something she could do.
It hit her then how wrong it felt that a class of people in an organization—any organization—were expected to dole out comfort and advice and spiritual succor without ever getting any in return. It was like priests were expected not to be human. But Patrick was very human. He was flesh and bone but denied himself the comforts of being human deliberately.
It was bewildering and intoxicating at the same time. Instead of saying this, she took another sip of scotch, burning the words that threatened to come up.
“And, like, I’d only directly experienced the good that the Church did. I knew about all of the bad stuff, but still believed that the faith could do some good. Hell, it felt like the only thing I could hold on to after my mom died and this girl dumped me.”
“Felt?” The way he talked about his vocation, it seemed like he didn’t feel the same way anymore. Or maybe she was just fishing around for reasons that she could try to entice him into breaking his vow of chastity and not feel as bad as she should about it.
“Yeah, some days I feel like it’s just like any other bureaucratic job. There’s a strict hierarchy, and the whole thing is more concerned about perpetuating itself and consolidating money and power at the top than it is about—helping people.”
“And helping people is the point for you?” Sasha hadn’t known a lot of people growing up who put helping anyone over money, sex, social standing, or power. It wasn’t until she’d left home and been exposed to others who came from different walks of life that she’d realized there was another way to live.
Hearing Patrick talk about wanting to help people made her feel small—in the emotional and spiritual sense. They were totally different animals, and that had to be what attracted her to him. He had all of these things inside him—depth, spirituality, altruism— that she hadn’t known until she’d made her own friends into family.
There was always this sinking feeling inside her that she wasn’t good enough to really love with the depth that Hannah and Jack loved. She felt doomed to perpetuate the bullshit façade that her parents and sisters did with their cookie-cutter perfect lives and perfect dinner parties and perfect everything with a rotted core.
She didn’t realize how long she’d been quiet, thinking her head-up-her-ass thoughts, until Patrick asked, “What are you thinking about?”
“How different we are.” That was as honest as she could get without spilling all of the ugliness inside her out on the table. Patrick took that on from everyone in his life. He didn’t need it from her.
He laughed. “We’re not that different. I think you and I have a lot in common.” Simple words, but so incredibly provocative.
“You don’t know me that well.” She prided herself on very little but keeping all the ugliness that coated her insides from everyone who saw her. When people looked at her, they saw what she wanted them to see—someone put together, competent, a consummate rule follower. They saw the daughter and sister who was almost perfect—who hadn’t gotten married yet. They saw someone who didn’t shake up the status quo, who saw how the patriarchy operated but didn’t have the juice to do anything about it. They saw someone bloodless, almost robotic—but well-meaning.
“I know more than you think.”
“Oh really?” Most people didn’t spend a long enough time thinking about her beyond how fucking basic she was. Patrick knowing more than that—thinking about her more than that—made her brain fuzzier than the scotch in her hand. It compromised her veneer so much that she asked, “What do you know about me?”
“I know that you don’t like yourself very much.”
Direct hit. “What makes you think that?”
“You’re always minimizing yourself.” Patrick paused as though he weren’t sure he should say the next thing. “You don’t trust yourself to be imperfect.”
Jesus. Maybe he really did know her. “Are you usually this confrontational in confession?”
“This isn’t a confession.” He raised his glass and took a drink. She mirrored his gesture. There was palpable electricity in the air between them. “Besides, I think you can take it.”
“I’m just a delicate flower.” She shouldn’t be teasing him. It was too close to flirting.
“Delicate flowers don’t get Michelin-starred pastry chefs to donate thousands of dollars’ worth of product for a church bake sale.”