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“Care to tell me why the fuck you’re thinking about her?”
“She never…” He looks up at me, a vulnerability in those gorgeous brown eyes as he chews on his bottom lip nervously. “I never…”
Understanding dawns on me, and I school my features into something more tender. “You never felt like this with her?”
“No. Our sex life was mediocre at best.”
“She cheated on you, didn’t she?”
His head snaps up as his jaw drops. “How do you know that?”
“Word gets around,” I answer with a shrug, feeling bad because I probably wasn’t supposed to know that. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he says, sighing as he kisses my chest. “But yeah, she did. I caught her in the act.”
He seems so calm, and I feel angry for him. I’ve seen how optimistic Jarred is, how kind he is to the campers and counselors, and how hard he works to make sure everything is perfect. He doesn’t only have a beautiful body, but a beautiful mind. I can’t imagine why anybody wouldn’t want him the way I do.
“That must have been rough.”
“It was but after I thought about it, I felt almost relieved.” He shakes his head and smiles. “She gave me my twins, so I’ll always love her for that, but we were just two strangers living together after they’d left home.”
“Tell me about your kids,” I say, wanting to know more about them, especially since they make his eyes light up the way they are.
“Mary and Parker. They’re both twenty-five now.”
I resist the urge to make a cheeky comment about the fact that his kids are six years older than I am. “What do they do?”
“Mary teaches third grade in Asheville and just had a baby. Parker is an architect,” he says, and I have to smile at the pride in his voice.
“That’s cool,” I say honestly. “So, you started this camp for them?”
“Yeah. Jenny and I wanted them to grow up with a close bond with God. I wanted to make it a positive experience for them,” he says but then something dark passes over his face. Something poisonous and corrupting. “Not everyone is that lucky.”
I chew on my lip as my hands twitch for a cigarette. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything, baby,” he says, smiling sweetly at me.
The endearment lights me up.Baby. It’s such a simple word, but it’s everything to me. It’s just another little step in the long process of having him realize that what he is and what he wants isn’t something to pray away.
It’s what furthers my resolve and makes me ask a burning question I have for him. “What we do…why do you think it’s so wrong?”
I can feel his harsh gulp against my shoulder. “It’s a sin.”
“But it’s 2023,” I argue gently. “Even the Pope is sort of cool with it.”
“My father wasn’t,” he says through gritted teeth, distracting himself by playing with my nipple piercing. “He made that perfectly clear growing up.”
Well, that makes sense. Parents can fuck a person up. They can make them think things that aren’t true. They can instill beliefs that are plain harmful. My parents taught me that I was worthless without God. His parents probably told him the same thing.
But then why do we have such fundamentally different views about who we are?
“So, it’s because of your dad,” I say. “I’m going to assume he’s long gone now.”
He takes a second before speaking again. I don’t know when it started, but he’s trembling against me. I rub my hands up and down his back as he gathers his courage, the fingers that are playing with my piercing halting in their movements. “When I was thirteen, he caught me kissing a boy. He…”
This makes me sit up, dragging him with me. “What did he do to you?”
“He b-beat me,” he says, stuttering through his words, his cheeks going pale.
