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“Except me.” I ignored the attraction that was always rising up inside me, threatening to spill over at the worst moments. I hadn’t been able to keep it at bay since the first time I’d seen him in his high-necked, floor-length black robe he’d worn to the hospital when his dad had just been diagnosed with leukemia. It was one of the most shameful moments of my life.
We’d all been huddled in one of the waiting rooms. All the Smythes and soon-to-be Smythes. And me. Unaffiliated, but inserting myself anyway. I wasframily, though. That counted for something.
Bethany and I had snuck away to the nurses’ station when Gus swept toward us in his cassock, and I was struck dumb by his appearance. Like some Old Testament prophet. Except my eyes hadn’t encountered God or one of their angels, but a lowly servant of the Lord. Suddenly, I understood Mary Magdalene’s desire to wash Jesus’ feet. Although she probably didn’t have the same instinct to crawl into Jesus’s lap and perform explicit acts.
Now Gus wore jeans and an olive plaid shirt, and though the green flannel didn’t quite elicit the same scandalous desire in me as the sober black crepe, it looked really good stretched across his straight, broad shoulders. The color did wonderful things to the golden flecks in his rich brown eyes and the chestnut tones in hishair and beard. And his thighs in those jeans… yeah, Laymen Gus was every bit as hot as Priest Gus.
It was hard to pull myself away from those eyes, but if I didn’t, I’d never be able to get through tonight, let alone the rest of our marriage.
I turned my attention back to Barry, who’d been a good boy, patiently waiting. “I’m still examining the fragments for any signs of disease or injury. After that I’ll put his bones in a cramped plastic box, take him to the office, and leave him on a shelf to sit in the basement for eternity. At least here he has a little breathing room.”
“He can’t be buried?”
“No one’s claimed him, and I haven’t been able to identify him.”
“It’s actually better than what I grew up with. I much prefer old bones to fresh bodies any day. And it’s not like there’s a skull staring at us.”
“Yeah, no. I wish we had the skull, but what can you do?”
“Right.” He nodded and put his hands in his pockets. We both stood still, waiting for the other to talk. God, this was awkward. We were never awkward as friends.
Instead of prolonging the awkwardness, I led us back into the kitchen and focused on dinner.
“I hope wine’s okay?”
Gus stepped behind me and peered into the sparse fridge over my shoulder. My mind windmilled in an attempt to explain. “I’m never home for long enough. I buy food only for it to rot in the crisper. I have flour, salt, and butter on hand at all times for biscuits. Cornmeal and dehydrated buttermilk in the pantry. If I’m home for more than a day, I’ll fix a mess of soup beans with a frozen ham hock, but…”
When I turned around, there was a glint in his eye as he listened patiently to my meal prep strategy.
“How about you tell me where the glasses are? Might as well start getting the lay of the land, right?”
Right. The lay of the land. This was going to be his house. Gus. Kosta. Constantinos Smythe was going to be living in Granny’s house.
I pointed to an upper cabinet. The kitchen was small, its footprint taken up with additional cupboards and bookshelves that housed dusty jars of Granny’s homegrown herbs and home-brewed remedies: oils and salves, poultice blends and tinctures. Most of which were so old, they needed to be thrown out, but like everything else in this house, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
He pulled two glasses down and held them by the stems, looking at me thoughtfully.
“Thanks, Dec. This means a lot.”
“It does. Mean a lot. For me, too. I guess I should probably give you an explanation. I had one prepared that night I came to see you, but I don’t know if I should... nothing makes any logical sense in our age anyway. Maybe it comes from my anthro training. My undergrad was in cultural anthropology, and I still love exploring rites-of-passages and rituals of people groups and civilizations, especially the ways they dealt with marriage and the family unit.”
“Dec—”
“And of course I’ve considered that, throughout history, most humans were not conceived inside of a loving, partnered marriage, and I’ve very strongly considered that remaining single might be the primary way our future society progresses, but I don’t like that... for me.”
“Decca—”
“And then I think of my own parents, and my grandparents, who had somewhat unorthodox relationships, sure, but they werealso traditional in their own way. And it’s not like marriage didn’t exist outside Abrahamic faiths, even in the Patriarchal era, not that Jewish or Islamic archeology is anywhere near my field. Look at Mesopotamia. It predates Christianity, anyway, and they signified marriage with a legal written contract, and I do very much value the ethos of rule-abiding. The Code of Hammurabi—“
“Decca.”
“I’m babbling. I know.” I squeezed my temples with my cold hands, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. “I’m nervous. And I don’t know where to go from here, now that we’ve made such a huge decision.”
Gus put the glasses on the counter and closed his hands around mine, pulling us together. I’d just been talking and talking and filling up the space between us with words. But his face was earnest and warm. He closed the gap.
“I just meant dinner. It smells fantastic and I appreciate that you put so much effort into it. It means a lot, and I appreciate it.”
“Oh.” Yeah, not the proposal. I’d totally jumped the gun on that.
