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“You mean the kiss?” he asked.
“That, and this entire embarrassing conversation. I cannot believe I just accused you of…” I closed my eyes and added, “being inappropriate. Please forgive me.”
Richard chuckled. “I would like to be able to say this is the first time I’ve been in trouble because of my brother, but it’s not.”
“You mean other women have accused you of kissing them?” I asked.
He shook his head. “He was much better at looking innocent than I was when we were kids. We could spend an entire afternoon talking about them, but I do have things I need to attend too.”
And I’ve wasted enough of your time.I had to get out of there before I made a fool of myself any more than I already had. “I should go. I’m sorry about the language and for my tone and for my accusations. I was out of line.”
“I’m just glad you confronted me in private. This might not have been easy to explain if my congregation had been present.”
I wish I could tell him that I’d been thinking about that the entire time, but the truth was I had been more concerned about myself and what they’d all think about me, not him. I hadn’t wanted to face what I had years ago. It was bad enough that my friends and half the senior class that year had believed I kissed a priest. The knowledge that I had wrongly accused him was bad enough. If I had done it publicly, it would’ve been so much worse.
“Thank you for listening to me and not judging me for sounding like a complete idiot.”
“There is one person to blame for this, and that is Robert.”
I shrugged. “And me, and my friends who dared me to kiss him.”
“Now it can all be laid to rest as a funny memory,” he stated.
“From now on, I’m not thinking about it at all,” I said.
I left his office feeling like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I couldn’t wait until Ellen and Lori came back from their honeymoon so I could tell them that I never kissed a priest. The true story wasn’t half as interesting as the old one, but I was so damn relieved.
Even as I got inside my car, I knew that just because I knew now who I really kissed, it didn’t change the fact that he still visited me in my dreams.
Will I ever forget him? Do I really want to?
That was something I still didn’t know the answer too. And fortunately, it didn’t matter. We probably won’t see each other ever again.
