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Gus comforted the old woman with a smile and a nod while Father Vasili took both chalices back to the altar table. Some of the acolytes ran behind the icon screen and came back carrying cloths and other things. Soula slid in next to me in the wooden pew.
“The communion fell,” she explained.
“Oh. Okay.”
“I hate this part.” She reached for Athena. “Want me to take her?”
“No, I never get to hold her. Why do you hate this?”
“Well, to Gus, it’s not just communion. Itisthe blood of Christ that spilled on the floor. Every bit of blood must be consumed.”
“Off the floor?”
“Every priest handles it differently. We’ll see. This doesn’t happen. Like, ever. I’ve seen it twice in my life. But yes, it should be consumed off the floor. Gross.”
The altar boys stepped back. The dark-haired one looking more and more miserable. Gus stepped down from the solea and knelt on the marble floor. His hands were flat to the ground as he bent lower and lower. Low enough to lick the pink stain off the floor.
Oh my God.It was slightly horrifying to watch, but also… not. It wasn’t for show. He didn’t make a big deal out of it. He did what needed to be done, and he did it with his usual quiet reverence. The image of him humbling himself that way, consuming the communion bread off the floor, in front of the entire church, was powerful.
The adult acolyte handed him a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, which Gus poured on the floor, then lit on fire.
“Ugh.” Soula quietly shuddered. “I knew Gus was going to go all the way. Father V would have just burned it all, but he’s an old manand his knees are bad. All those germs, though. Does he even know what’s on the bottoms of people’s shoes?”
“Shh… Soula. Gus doesn’t care about that.” I hadn’t realized I’d been gripping her arm with my talon-like nails, watching this.
I’d seen his face. Calm. Not at all put out. He didn’t try to shrink away from this moment of servitude. He quietly took charge, spiritually and logistically, to do what needed to be done.
He didn’t care about the germs, or how he looked, prostrate on the floor. This wasn’t gross to him, like it would have been to Soula or me. This was just how he served his God and his community. The deepest expression of his faith, the purest form of worship.
This was the Gus I always knew he would be.
I’d had a lot of feelings for Gus during the past two years. I liked him immediately. That first night we’d met. Like grew to lust, respect and admiration, and so much more. But I’d never thought to call it something else.
But maybe this whole time, it had all been love.
Because watching this made me realize how much I loved Gus. But it wasn’t my feelings that had changed. It was what I chose to call it.
Oh, shit. This was bad. We weren’t there yet. This wasn’t going slowly at all. He wasn’t anywhere near this stage, and I was working with half a skeleton already.
How was I supposed to go back to just waiting and seeing if he’d ever get over his past?
Now I was scared shitless that I’d never be able to go back to pretending he was just a friend. I was ready to be on my knees at his feet, doing whatever he asked of me in worship and humility. What if he never even got halfway there with me?
Gus
“You’re. In. Reyes,” Cameronpanted, skating into the box and flinging himself onto the bench, injecting water into his mouth from his Gatorade bottle. “You, too, Father. Get out there. Last shift before we pull the goalie. Don’t let anything through.
I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t stay warm. Couldn’t keep my thoughts on the game, my skating, my passing or puck handling. All I was thinking about was what I’d done to fail Decca. Yet again. Because at every turn, I was disappointing her somehow.
Since my ordination, she’d barely said two words to me. I’d tried to talk to her. Tried to ask her to be patient with me while I worked on myself.
Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. Maybe I wasn’t giving her enough space. So much had changed in the past month. My job. The house.
I’d thought I was doing her a favor by tidying the house. I thought she’d left it for so long because she hadn’t had time to emotionally sort through everything from the three-year-old dirty Kleenexes to the collection of cracked-spined paperbacks about angels andchicken soup. I thought I was making it a home for us. But all I’d done was driven another wedge between us.
Forget hockey. What I really needed to be learning was my wife.
“Stick down, Padre! Keep your stick down!” Waylon shouted, itching to come out of the penalty box and make one last attempt at a goal.Shit.The puck slid right by me. I turned and sprinted after it, but since I could barely skate, my sprint wasn’t worth much.
