Page 23

“On…what, exactly?” I try not to let myself stare too long at the cut of his jawline, or the deep brown color of his eyes, or the way his lips are perfectly bowed.Technically, he’s not a priest,says the voice at the back of my mind, which may or may not be Annoth trying to convince me to sin.

“All this,” he says, waving his hand around at my disaster of an apartment: empty picture frames, containers of Thai food littering the coffee table, a few dead plants by the window, the layer of dust. At least I managed to do laundry this morning.

All I can do is sigh. “I’ve been in a bad spot for a couple months, and she says that’s what made me vulnerable to…possession. She couldn’t find an ‘emotional foothold’ though, and she got pissed about it, so she tried to bring you in. That obviously didn’t work–”

“Wait,she’sthe one who found me?”

“Yeah. She got on my phone while I was asleep and looked you up somehow. What platform do you normally use to scam little old Catholic ladies anyway? Craigslist is a bit old-fashioned.”

Ben frowns. “Look, I’m not here to be judged by a man who doesn’t even use a bag in his trash can.”

I can’t help but laugh. “I told you: rough spot for a few months.”

“Fair enough. What happened to get you into that spot?”

“What are you, a shrink?” I ask, echoing his taunt from earlier.

“Well,Theo,” he says slowly. God, I hate how good my name sounds coming out of his mouth. “You’ve got me trapped in your health hazard apartment with an incredibly unstable but sexy demon lady and a couple of cats, so I think, maybe, I have a right to know what I’ve been thrown into here.” His smile is softer now, but no less dazzling.Fuck, what haveIgottenmyselfinto?

“Ok,” I relent. “About two months ago, my girlfriend and I broke up. It wasn’t bad. It was…a mutual thing, but we’ve been together since junior year of college, and I was saving up money for a ring, so it hurt. I was doing fine, but then a week after she left, I also got laid off, and…just hit a downward spiral since then.”

Ben runs a hand over his stubbled chin.

“Alright, well, thanks for being honest with me. I’ll do what I can to help. Now, I hate to ask this, but…could I…use your shower?” He pretends to sniff his own shirt. “Been sleeping in my car for a couple weeks.”

“As much as I’d love to hear the story of why my new roommate, the con-man ex-priest, has been sleeping in his car, I think I’ll enjoy it more once you’re not stinking up my apartment,” I say with a wry smile, trying to show him that I do, in fact, have a sense of humor hidden under all this stress and angst.

He grins. “Unfortunately, your apartment smells worse than my car.”

I show him the bathroom and he grabs some clothes and toiletries out of his duffel bag. Once I hear the water running, I search the bag myself to make sure he doesn’t have anything I need to be concerned about. There’s nothing in here except some wrinkled clothes, his clerical collar, a worn-out, dog-earedBible, a rosary, a wallet, a flask full of what smells like tequila, and a few other random items. No weapons, thank God, so I take the nearly-expired driver’s license out of his wallet. He’s two years older than me and his full name is Mateo Benjamin Cardenas de la Cruz. I pull out my laptop and sit at the counter, then type his full name into the state’s criminal record database. Petty theft, possession of alcohol, and trespassing when he was seventeen and eighteen. He did community service for it. Next, I put his name into the Sex Offender Registry. Nothing. So far, so good.

“What are you doing, Theodore?” says a smooth voice behind me. I nearly jump out of my skin and turn to see Annoth standing incredibly close, looking over my shoulder. I didn’t even hear her come out of the bedroom.

“Jesus fucking Christ, don’t do that!”

“Might we dispense with that particular curse?” she says, going to sit on the couch.

“Can you dispense with calling me Theodore?” I grumble as I get up to put Ben’s ID back in his bag. “My mom doesn’t even call me that.”

“Very well,Theo. I would like to watch more films now.”

“What’s the magic word?” I say with a smirk. She simply stares at me, then picks up the remote and turns the TV on.

“There is no magical incantation required,” she says with a straight face. I think I might pull my hair out. If I have to live with someone who has absolutely no sense of humor, I’ll go nuts. At least Ben seems funny…not to mention insanely hot.Stop it right now,I tell myself.

“What are you gonna watch?” I ask Annoth.

“I should like to watch moreStar Wars.”

“Ah, no, come on!” says Ben, who’s now standing in the hall, wearing only a towel that’s wrappedverylow around his hips and drying his hair with the Green Day t-shirt he had on earlier. “Let’s watch something good, at least! Have you shown herThe Exorcist?” He chuckles at his own joke, and it’s all I can do to keep my eyes on his face rather than letting them roam lower.

“She watched someStar Wars, someFriends, and a couple Disney movies,” I tell him. “And hey, what’s your problem withStar Wars?”

He shrugs. “Eh, just not my thing, I guess. I only ever watched half of the first one. Or is it the fourth? The 70s one.”

“You’ve…you’ve never seenStar Wars?” I think my eyes might have bugged out of my head. Ben runs the t-shirt over his face and I let myself look for a moment. He’s thick and muscular everywhere, like a rugby player, with dark curly hair covering his chest and stomach and a happy trail running beneath the towel. Around his neck is a silver chain with a pendant that looks like some kind of Saint, but I can’t identify it from here. I move my eyes back up and…oh, fuck. His face splits into a sly grin.

“Maybe she should watchBrokeback Mountain,” he suggests. I think I might melt into a puddle on the floor.