Authors: Lisa Desrochers
I
ALMOST WENT
to Easter Mass to find out what Alessandro decided, but then I realized that, if he decided to go through with the ordination, the last person he’d want to see there would be me.
But I can’t stand not knowing.
It’s Tuesday, and the hordes of summer tourists haven’t descended on Rome yet, so navigating the streets to the rectory is pretty quick. My feet stall, and my insides quiver harder when it comes into sight, just across from the church where everything started.
I know what I need to tell him if he’s there. I need to apologize for leading him on and making him question everything he believes in. I need to tell him it was horrible and selfish, and I hope he can forgive me someday. I need him to know that I was serious when I told him he would make an amazing priest. He has all the qualities of someone who can truly make a difference in this world.
Part of me hopes I get the chance to tell him all this, while another part of me hopes I don’t.
I’m shaking as I lift my hand to knock, and a few seconds later, when the door swings open, I’m wound so tight that I nearly jump out of my skin. But it’s not Alessandro. Standing there in the doorway is a very round man with a round nose and big, round, blue eyes in the middle of a round face. He’s in a full cassock and white collar.
“Can I be of assistance?” he asks with a wide smile, and instantly I recognize the sandpaper voice of Father Reynolds.
I’m afraid to speak, knowing the minute I open my mouth, he’ll have a face to go with everything I’ve confessed. “I’m . . . I’m looking for the Reverend Moretti.”
“Ah,” he says, and I can tell from the way his eyes change, widen a little, and shine brighter, that he knows who I am. “I’m sorry, but the reverend is no longer at this parish.”
“Oh . . . did he—” I’m about to ask if he was ordained on Sunday when I really hear what he just said. He called Alessandro the
reverend.
My stomach knots harder. He didn’t go through with it. “Do you know where he went?”
“He needed some more time for reflection. He asked to return to Corsica, to his family parish under Father Costa.”
“Father Costa,” I repeat with a nod. “Okay . . . good.” He went home. This is good. Maybe he’ll regroup there. Maybe he’ll be okay. “Well, thank you, Father.”
“God be with you,” he says.
“And also with you.” I back away from the rectory and move across the street to the church.
This whole experience has been sobering. The church is Alessandro’s conviction. He’s pledged his life to it, and now that he’s questioning that . . . maybe because of me, it makes me realize how little I’ve truly taken any of it to heart. Isn’t the upshot of all this just to be a better person? If I’d tried to be a better person—to live by Alessandro’s ideals—would any of this have happened?
I dip my fingers in the holy water and cross myself, then make my way to a pew up front and kneel. The place is nearly empty, a few tourists wandering the frescoes and no one else. The confessionals are roped off today.
I stare up at Jesus on the cross and breathe deep. “Dear Lord, please look after Alessandro. He’s a good man. Please help him to find his path again, whatever it is. Please let him find happiness.” I bow my head and close my eyes as a tear leaks over my lashes. “More than anyone else I know, he deserves to be happy.”
I wipe my face and pull myself up, then turn for home. And the whole way, I picture Alessandro in the restaurant on the beach at L’Île-Rousse. I imagine him looking out over the ocean and remembering why he wanted to be a priest in the first place. I picture him forgetting I ever existed. I can’t deny there’s a pang in my heart at the thought, but I also know that’s what needs to happen.
I feel a little lighter as I walk home, and for the first time in days, food is tempting. I stop at a café and pick up a few currant croissants, one of which I nibble as I stroll over the cobbles. A taxi careens past, and I jump onto the sidewalk to avoid becoming roadkill, but as I watch it go, I can’t help remembering my introduction to Rome, in the back of a different careening taxi. That feels like a lifetime ago. I’m really going to miss this place when I leave. Now, I just have to decide when that’s going to be.
I got the internship. I found out yesterday. It’s what I wanted more than anything, but now I’m not sure what to do. Because of Alessandro, I know I want to work with children. I want that kid-at-Christmas feeling every day. I want to work somewhere I can bring kids and art together. I want to make art fun for them. I want them to love art as much as I do. Nothing else I can imagine would be as awesome as helping build a collection at a children’s museum so that kids find art in a way that matters to them. This internship would be great on my resume—give me a leg up.
But without Alessandro, Rome feels a little emptier.
I didn’t realize until now how much my desire to stay in Rome was tied to him. I’m not sure my heart is really up for being here for three more months without him. I have a week to decide if I’m going to accept the internship. But if I don’t, that means I’m going home.
It’s been three days since I sent the text to Trent. Three days that I’ve been stalking my phone, waiting for something. Anything. A text. A call. So far nothing. I don’t want to believe he’s so mad or so shocked that, even after I poured my heart out to him, he can’t bring himself to respond, but that seems to be the case. Which means I’ll probably stay for the internship because I can’t go home. Not now.
I can’t go home
.
The thought sits like a cold stone in my stomach.
When I turn the corner for my apartment, I’m too preoccupied to notice the scooter parked outside my front door. But when I realize it’s parked illegally on the sidewalk, I look at the bar to see if it’s open early. I catch sight of a foot tapping on the sidewalk in the alcove of my doorway, and my breath catches in my throat.
Because I know that boot.
I round the corner and peer in, not daring to let myself believe it until I see him sitting there.
Trent is leaning back into my door in a black T-shirt and faded jeans, looking every inch as beautiful as he does every night in my dreams. He stands slowly when he sees me, and tugs the earbuds out of his ears, draping the cord around his neck, but he doesn’t move closer. The skin around his eyes tightens as he squints a question at me. “I got your text.”
I hear Lifehouse’s “All In” drifting faintly from Trent’s earbuds, and my heart kicks hard in my chest. Is he going all in? Is that why he came? “What are you doing here?” I breathe.
He shrugs and gives me that lazy smile that’s always turned me to mush. “I was hoping that was obvious.”
My thoughts and feelings are a chaotic jumble that I can’t make heads or tails of, but the one emotion that is easily distinguishable in the raging torrent is relief. An involuntary whimper leaves my chest, and I choke back the relieved sob that accompanies it. Trent steps forward and folds me into his arms.
There’s no stopping it, the urge to be close to him. I press up on my tiptoes, looping my hand around his neck, and bring him down to kiss me. His kiss is slow and sure, and only now do I realize how much I’ve longed for it. I was trying to find a substitute in Alessandro—a substitute confidant, a substitute lover, a substitute best friend. But the only person who could ever be all those things is standing right here in front of me.
We don’t break our kiss as Trent shrugs his duffel onto his shoulder, and I rifle through my purse for my key, or when I push him through the door. The stairs are a little trickier, but Trent solves the conundrum by lifting me into his arms. I wrap my legs around his waist, and he carries me up and through the door at the top.
He sets me down and looks around. I answer his unasked question by grabbing his hand and leading him to the bedroom. Our shirts are on the floor before we even make it there. He pauses just a second to drop his duffel on the floor and grab a condom out of the side pocket, and I take that second to admire his amazing, bare chest, but then we’re moving toward the bed. One of my flats comes off with my thong, but my skirt is around my waist and his jeans haven’t made it below his thighs when we flop sideways across the bed. A second later, we’re making love.
It feels like an eternal itch is finally being scratched. No one else could satisfy that itch. No one but Trent.
He teases me, pressing deep inside of me, then pulling his length back to the tip and stopping.
“Please,” I beg, pulling him closer.
He smiles into my shoulder. “Patience is a virtue, Lexie.”
I sweep my fingers down his back, drawing him deeper into me. “You know damn well I have no virtue.”
He grins and kicks off his jeans, then unzips my skirt and slides over my hips. He situates himself on his knees between my legs and looks down at me with pure hunger in his eyes. With every beat of my racing heart, I throb for him. I reach for him and squeeze, and he closes his eyes and moans. He lifts my hips and presses his length slowly inside me and I hear myself purr a moan, but then he withdraws and rubs his tip over my clit, making me gasp. He thrusts into me again, sending pulsating shock waves through my insides, and I cry out.
He teases me more, rubbing circles over my clit with his fingers until I scream with want. “God,
please.
” It comes out as a whimper, and his smile is wicked. But he gives me what I want. He slides into me, thick and hot, and pumps. Each thrust is a little faster and a little deeper, until I’m howling inhumanly with the sensations flooding through my body.
“Christ, Lexie,” he groans, all humor gone from his face. His roaming mouth finds mine, and when I open, his tongue slips through my lips. As he kisses me, he hooks his elbows through my knees and pumps against me, each thrust sending a fresh shock wave through my insides.
I cry out, one long “Ahhhh,” as the electric tingle in my belly ramps up, and all the muscles in my groin contract around him, holding on, begging for more. Pleasure pulses through me on waves of bliss as the tension builds, and he brings me to climax. I explode around him, over and over, until all coherent thought leaves me, and I dissolve into nothing but sensation. Every touch sets off sparks under my skin, every moan boils my blood, every thrust sends my body into a spin. We’re both slick with sweat half an hour later, when he growls with his last thrust and goes still, deadweight on top of me.
But the instant it’s over, the guilt hits me like a tidal wave.
As soon as my body stops shaking enough that I have control over it again, I dump him on the mattress and sit on the edge of the bed. My guts tighten into a hard knot when I think about Dad and Julie. I want this more than anything, but how? “What are we doing, Trent?”
He breathes out a long, slow breath and sits next to me. “Listen, Lexie. I’m really sorry I led with sex because that’s not what this is about.”
“Then what is it about?”
He lifts my hand off the bed and traces the lines of my palm with a fingertip. “Even before I got your text, I’d been thinking a lot about this, and I don’t think it has to be one or the other. I think we can be friends
and
lovers.”
I bury my face in my hands. “I want that so much, but I’m scared.”
His arms circle me, and he pulls me to his shoulder. “I’m scared too, but the one thing I know is I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you. This feels like forever to me, Lexie. It really does.”
I’m not usually swept away by my emotions, but, all of a sudden, I can’t contain them. It’s like everything I’ve been working so hard to suppress erupts out of me. The love, the lust, the fear, the agony, the shame, come heaving out of my soul on sobs that I can’t stop.
“I’ve got you,” Trent whispers into my hair, and at that instant, I know he does. And I know he always will.
When my sobs turn to hiccups, I pull my face out of his chest and look at him. “I love you.”
He smiles and reaches for his jeans on the floor.
“What are you going to do?” I ask with a sniffle as he pulls his BlackBerry from his pocket. “Post it on Facebook? Dad and Julie would love that.”
He pulls me back into his arms and flips through his menu. “That wasn’t in my general plan, no.” He pokes at the screen a few times with his thumb, then lays the phone on the bed next to us. “I would do this for you real time, but I was kind of in a hurry and trying to pack light,” he says as music starts.
It only takes a chord for me to know the guitar in the recording is Trent. It’s a tune I haven’t heard before. The vocals start low, and I listen as he sings about the person he trusted with his soul, and now the feeling has swallowed him whole. By the time he works up to the chorus, I already feel tears pressing at the corners of my eyes again.
You picked me up and helped me heal,
You taught me what it meant to feel.
Now I can, now I do, and everything I feel is you.
I would never do you wrong,
or let you down or lead you on.
I can’t stop now, I’ll come unglued, when everything I feel is you.
The tears start in the middle of the last verse, about how we’ve had each other’s backs for so long, and he knows it won’t be easy but that he’s lost without me, and I feel like home to him. By the time the last chord fades out and Trent shifts off the bed to fish something out of his duffel, I’m a weepy mess again.
I reach for him to pull him back to me, only knowing I need his arms around me, but when I wipe my eyes and look at him, he’s on a knee in front of me with a black velvet box in his palm. When he opens it, the diamond catches the fading light and sparkles. It’s a simple round solitaire in a thin white gold band. Not big, but it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“I came here today because when you finally realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible,” he says, nearly quoting the line from
When Harry Met Sally
that always makes me cry.