Still, the same part of her that had thrilled to Patrick’s reaction to someone almost mowing them down in the parking lot wanted to witness how he would react to seeing her with a man who wasn’t prevented from fucking her by sacrament.
If he’d just been placating her with the words that were quickly forming a tattoo on her soul, then he might not even react. He’d be friendly, avuncular even.
But if his reaction to the teen driver was an indication of more complicated feelings about her, then she could imagine his nostrils flaring like an angry bull’s when she introduced Nathan at the bake sale.
She didn’t want to use Nathan. But she also kind of did. That’s why she’d felt so dirty after their date that she’d taken a shower before wrapping herself in a towel and rubbing in all of her lotions. Self-care was important, after all.
It was why she had traces of darkness under her eyes once she’d washed her makeup off. Her obsession with Patrick Dooley was messing with her sleep.
If only her brain would perform the same acrobatics with Nathan. After all, there was nothing wrong with him. And on their first date and second date and third date (before she ruined it), he’d really seemed like he wanted to get to know her.
If only that were an aphrodisiac in the same way that unavailability was.
She put on her silk jammies and flopped back on her pink-festooned bed—a birthday gift from her parents. She would have chosen differently, but she’d always had to choose her battles with Moira. Exchanging the bedding would have been a whole lot of drama.
Ready to pass out after a date that was probably more emotionally taxing for Nathan than it was for her, she closed her eyes. Her phone buzzed on the nightstand, and she pried her eyes open and dragged her hand over to pick it up, expecting to see “Mom” flashing on the screen in the text notification.
Instead, it was Patrick. Even though they were on several group chats together, he’d never texted her directly before. She really should just leave it until the morning. Texting with a man late at night gave men late-at-night ideas. And, when it was Patrick, it gave her more late-at-night ideas than she’d previously had. A lot of late-night ideas.
She threw her arm over her face and took ten deep breaths and attempted to remind herself that she was going to keep acting the part of the good girl, even if that really wasn’t what she wanted to do.
And even though Nathan would never ask her out again, she wasn’t going to indulge in any flirtation with Father Patrick. He was committed to God and the Church.
She was never going to let her mind dwell on the way that his body had felt as he’d pressed her into the green grass. She couldn’t allow herself to remember how massive he’d felt in comparison to her or how gentle his touch had been. She wouldn’t catalogue the way his face had turned from relief at her safety to anger at the person who had put her in danger.
And, even as she told herself that she wouldn’t allow it, her fingers drifted from her collarbone, where she’d felt his heavy breath against her skin, to her cheekbone, where his lips had brushed accidentally as he’d knocked her to the ground.
She tried to push thoughts of him away, but after about ten minutes of mooning, she realized that it wasn’t going to stop until she picked up the phone. Her curiosity about what he could possibly have to say to her at this time of night won out over her vow to herself to behave.
Patrick: How are you feeling? Sore at all?
Sasha snorted a bit of laughter. She usually received a text message like that in a very different context. She doubted that Patrick even knew that there could be another meaning to his words. Even though he hadn’t always been a priest—a statement that continued to plague her—he’d been one for long enough that he wouldn’t have thought about how she could have taken that text.
Sasha: I’m just fine. No long-lasting damage.
She put the phone down, not expecting him to answer. They were friends. That was established, but it felt weird to be texting him. She could barely picture him working a cell phone, for some reason. Part of the point of being a priest was maintaining status as a luddite, and it muddied her mental picture of Patrick to see him using a phone.
Patrick: Thank God.
Patrick had looked like an avenging angel when he stared down at her on the ground. A dark avenging angel. It was hard to picture him differently now. She’d never viewed him as sexless, like the pastor of the church her parents attended at home. But after he’d pushed her to the ground to save her from a speeding car, she could only imagine him in the context of romantic hero.
Still, she should have left it alone. But her kink for authority figures wouldn’t let her.
Sasha: No, thanks to you.
Patrick: What are you doing up so late?
Him asking after her well-being turned her on even more.
Sasha: Are you scolding me?
She’d like for him to scold her for more than her bedtime. If he only knew that she’d cast him as the hero of one of her favorite books, he would have a whole lot to punish her for. She’d like to kneel in front of him. The idea filled her with unruly, untamed lust.
However, she saw the ellipsis form in the text bubble on her phone, and she would not touch herself thinking about him while she was talking to him. It would be some sort of rude, nonconsensual thing, and it was a line that she would not cross.
Patrick: Scolding you?
Sasha: Yeah, shouldn’t you be in bed, too? Don’t you have an early day of preaching?
Patrick: I don’t sleep much.
Was he up all night thinking about God and all the ways he’d failed? He probably had some sort of medical condition that made him an insomniac. She had to stop romanticizing him. There was nothing romantic about their relationship.
She was caught off guard by his next question.
Patrick: Do you believe in God?
Sasha wasn’t quite sure what to say. If her parents asked, she definitely believed in God. But, when no one was looking, she didn’t think there was anything beyond the present moment. She wasn’t sure whether to give the honest answer or the answer that Patrick was probably looking for.
He definitely believed in God. Would he try to convert her if she told him that she doubted that God was anything beyond a fantastic human imagining to stave off the certainty and finality of death?
In the dark, it seemed like the right thing to do to tell the truth.
Sasha: Not really.
Patrick: I shouldn’t be saying this, but that’s comforting.
Sasha didn’t dare say anything to him after that. And he didn’t elaborate. If insomnia spread like a contagion, she would have been infected by that one ambiguous statement. What did he mean?