Amber’s tongue thickened in her mouth. Moments ago, she’d boiled with how angry she was at the man before her. Now she flushed for a different reason.
How? How could another person have such control over her body?
Biologically speaking, it didn’t make sense. Then again, she had barely passed her high school anatomy and physiology class. Maybe she’d missed something important.
Philosophically speaking, she knew of Plato and Aristophanes’ idea of soulmates. That humans originally had four arms and four legs and were split apart by the gods, forever to seek their other half. And then the Jews had their idea ofbashert, or destiny, found in the proverb that marriages were made in heaven. Two souls predestined to be together for all time.
But those were cerebral ideas. Ones she’d learned about in the classroom and could discuss with a certain amount of distance.
This? Her quickening pulse, the tingles she felt along her scalp, the queasiness in the pit of her stomach, and the perspiration dotting behind her ears? These symptoms were not academic philosophies that she might weigh and measure their merits. These were physical displays over which it seemed she had no control, as if her body revolted against the confines of her mind, seeking its own will. And its desire was to draw closer to Seth. To breathe in his scent, musky though it may be from running practice drills all day. To trace the black lines of the tattoo that marked his bicep. Push up the sleeve of his shirt and get a good look at what he wanted to commemorate on his skin for the rest of his life.
She swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the lump that formed there and get her thoughts back on the right track. She averted her gaze as her face flamed. If anyone could see inside her mind, feel the things that hummed just under the surface of her skin, they’d kick her out of the theology program for sure. She could almost hear members of the older, stauncher faculty quoting verses about thinking only on pure and good things and not falling to the lust of the eyes or flesh.
Is that what this was? Lust?
Shame filled her, causing her chin to fall to her chest. She wanted to hide, afraid her thoughts would be written clearly across her face. She twisted the purity ring around on her finger. A physical reminder of the promise she’d made to stay chaste until marriage.
Her jaw firmed. She hadn’t done anything wrong, so why should she feel guilty? If the deep study of the Bible in her theology classes had taught her anything, it was to study the Scriptures for herself. There were too many personal interpretations found among the different denominations. Conservative. Liberal. Moderate. They each wanted to tell her something different, to get her to believe the same as they did. But she wasn’t a baby anymore, needing someone to spoon feed her doctrines and creeds.
Like a gentle spring breeze dissolving the mist, her mind cleared. In her Intermediate Hebrew course, the class had translated the first five chapters of Genesis together.“Your desire will be for your husband…”The words of God to Eve. The original word fordesirewas the HebrewTeshuqah—a rare word that was used only three times in the whole Bible—twice in Genesis and once in Song of Solomon. It meant…
“Longing.” She whispered the word. A God-given yearning between man and woman and between humankind and God.
Not lust.
Not sin.
“Amber?” Seth stepped toward her. “You okay? You look, I don’t know, lost in thought maybe?”
“Hmmm?” She raised her head to look at him, startled again by the pull in her chest. This feeling may be natural, but that didn’t necessitate that it was a good idea to pursue at the moment. “Oh, just working something out in my head.”
“Whether you think I’m a barbarian or not?”
“What?” The last tether to her internal thoughts snapped, and Seth came into complete focus. She laughed. “I don’t think you’re a barbarian. Quite the opposite really.”
He grinned. “Good.” Glancing down at his watch, he hurried to her side and moved her forward with a hand to her arm. “Now that’s worked out, we need to be going or we’ll be late.”
Her skin tingled where his palm made contact. Her feet worked on autopilot because all her focus zeroed in on those few inches. “W-where are we going?”
He glanced down at her, one corner of his lips tilting. “I was thinking about what you said yesterday, about not having many experiences. We’re going to change that.”
A trickle of dread serpentined through her middle. “How?”
Reaching the van, he opened the door for her. “Don’t look so scared. I’m not going to take you to a den of debauchery or anything.”
Her breath wheezed out. “Of course not.”
He buckled his seatbelt and started the engine. “The way I see it, you don’t actually have to do all the things you think the people you’ll be ministering to at the hospital will have done. Every experience gets imprinted on the mind based on the emotion the person feels at the time, right?”
“I guess so.”
“So, you only need to excavate your own experiences to be able to relate to the emotion the person feels.”
“Oooookay.”
He glanced her way. “You don’t sound convinced.”
“Sorry.” She held out her hands, palms up. “But how would you react if you’d just lost your wife of forty plus years and I came along and tried to console you by saying I knew how you felt because I’d once lost a pet dog that I had loved? I don’t think you’d appreciate me comparing your beloved wife with a Chihuahua.”
