Page 108 of When We Were Enemies
“A wardrobe change or a title change isn’t important to me. I thought you’d have known that.”
“I know, but ...,” he says, unable to finish the sentence coherently. I tilt my head, confused.
“If you knew, then, why’d you stay away so long?” I thought he was focused on his spiritual life. I thought I was helping him avoid temptation or whatever people like Father Ignatius might call the glowing embers of what we had together.
He sighs, readjusts in his seat, and then leans in toward my chair.
“When you left the church that night, I went after you. You don’t know that, but I did. When I got to the hotel, though, Hunter was in your room and told me you were gone. He said he knew the pictures were embellished and tried to act like you’d reconciled. I only halfway bought it, but it did take some wind out of my sails. I went back to the rectory, and I’m not kidding when I say I was about to buy a ticket to New York.”
“You were?” It sounds ridiculously close to the end of a cheesy romcom, but even so, I find it touching.
“I did,” he says, reticent, a touch of pink coloring his cheeks. “Then Father Ignatius came to speak with me, convinced me to not throw away everything I’d been working toward. He said, ‘If it’s God’s will today, then it will still be his will tomorrow’ and asked me to not make a rash decision. So, I didn’t transfer. And every day I’d pray, and every day Father Ignatius would ask if I’d decided to stay, and I’d say I didn’t know. And then one day he said, ‘If you’re still asking God the same question after all this time, you know your answer.’ And I knew he was right. I hadn’t gone one day without thinking of you. Not one. And that’s a lot to say to someone without, you know, freaking them out,” he acknowledges sheepishly.
“You left the priesthood because of me?” I stare at him, taking in his confession, not sure what it all means but also feeling like I’d just figured out the final puzzle onWheel of Fortunewith only a few vowels and consonants in the right place.
He looks uncomfortable with my chosen wording.
“I stayed away because Ididn’twant to leave ‘because of you.’ I wanted to make sure I was leaving because it was right forme. And that’s why I’m here looking for a job instead of calling you with”—he gyrates his hands in the air, symbolically—“other intentions.”
Two years is a long time. I’ve been through a major breakup, a total career change, family drama, and multiple public relations nightmares. I’m not the same person I was two years ago, and neither is he. And I think that’s a good thing.
“I can’t hire you,” I say matter-of-factly, which I can tell surprises him after he revealed his emotional vulnerability.
“All right, I understand,” he says after a brief pause, folding up his notepad and placing the envelope in the crease.
“Hey, no, wait. I’m not asking you to leave.” I touch his sleeve, wishing I had the courage to take his hand, but I can’t, not yet. “I’m saying I can’t be involved in hiring you because I’m”—I search for the right word—“biased.”
“Good biased or bad biased?” he asks, placing the notepad back on the table.
“It’s not bad. It just means I have a vested interest in your doing well, so it’s not fair to everyone else.” I bite my lip and say the thought that’s flashed into my mind. “But you’re too skilled to lose that easily, and we don’t have an art program here ...” I let the suggestion trail off, allowing him to fill in the gaps of my impromptu proposal.
“That sounds amazing,” he responds, taking out his résumé again.
“It might take some time to get funding. I’ll have to pass it by the board and the rest of the executives. And we’ll need to come up with a strong proposal.”
“I have time, and I have mad PowerPoint skills,” Patrick says, his face lighting up. I laugh.
“I’m not even going to ask how you honed those skills in your last job,” I say as I text Oscar and Ciara to come back into the room. They’ll be the first ones we’ll need to pitch the idea to.
“Let’s just say my liturgy was audio and visual,” he clarifies.
I’ve missed this. Him. All of it.
“Sounds like all we need to do now is shake on it,” I say, standing up and offering my right hand, the one with Nonna’s ring. It looks small and white in the space between us. He gets up from his seat and we shake, my fingertips dragging across his palm. And though it’s been two years since I first felt it, his touch has not lost its charge. The sensation is so intense, I instinctively draw away, and so does Patrick.
The boardroom door swings open, and Ciara and Oscar take their assigned seats. Patrick clenches and unclenches his fist like he’s checking for damage.
Unless my board sees something I don’t, I’m positive there’s a place here for Patrick Kelly. And I think it’s clear neither of us is ready to dive into this connection without looking. I know one thing for certain—Patrick Kelly, this man with the electric touch, is back in my life, this time without the barrier of religious office and clerical collar. And I am without the specter of fame and the expectations that accompany it. It’s possible we’ll get used to the electricity between us or that it’ll go away entirely, but there’s also the chance that we’ll discover a new power source that’ll change lives, including our own.