“How would you like to go on a canoe trip this weekend? It’s an annual thing that the church puts on. I still have room in my boat.”
“That actually sounds like fun. Sure, I’d like that.”
“Good, it’s a date.”
Chapter Twenty
Daphne
I was sitting underneath the solar bus shelter next to the giant statue of the strangest looking toucan I’d ever seen and thinking about how screwed up my life was.
I was waiting for Carla’s bus to come in. She was coming to spend the weekend with me, and I couldn’t wait to see her. I hadn’t even realized how lonely I was until I thought about actually having a live human in my home to talk to for a few days.
You would think all of the excitement over that would distract me, but it didn’t, really. I still couldn’t get Jace off my mind. Or as I should have been calling him, Father Jace.
Each time I had a carnal thought about him, I’d say a prayer begging God to forgive me. I’m not sure if that was going to do me any good or not, though, because it was never more than a few minutes after I finished the prayer that I was having another one. It was so weird that I hung on to my virginity for so long, and then, boom! I had sex with one man and I was hooked.
Maybe it’s like taking meth or heroin, and one taste causes you to become addicted. Or maybe it’s just Jace. Maybe there should be guidelines about what priests are supposed to look like. Jace doesn’t look like a priest. Even in his cassock, he looks way too young, but then when he takes that off and he’s wearing regular clothes…Jesus! The man is just way too sexy to be a priest!
I blame him for this entire mess. Not just because of his sexiness, I guess he really can’t help that, but because he never told me who he was before I slept with him. Then afterwards, he only admitted it because he had to…and then the worst part of it all… I came onto him again, knowing the full story. I’m so disgusted with myself and embarrassed. He walked away that time. Why the hell couldn’t he have just done that in the first place?
“Daphne!” I’d been wrapped in my thoughts and hadn’t even noticed that Carla’s bus had arrived.
“Hey!” I ran over to her as she dropped her bags to wrap me in a hug.
Carla and I were about the same height, but she was way curvier than me. She doesn’t even border on being fat; she just curves in all of the right places. The boys followed her around with their tongues hanging out in high school because she was the only freshman with porn star-sized boobs. “I’m so happy you’re here!” I told her.
She finally let go of me and said, “I’m so happy to be here. Besides missing you like crazy, I had to see you in the flesh and make sure you’re okay. You’ve sounded pretty torn up on the phone lately. But damn, if you aren’t still gorgeous.”
I laughed. She was always telling me she wished that she had my pale skin and blonde hair. I was always thinking that I’d trade my soul for her pretty olive skin and jet black hair. I guess you always want what you don’t have.
“Come on,” I said, picking up one of her bags. “Let’s go get you settled at the apartment and then we’ll go get some dinner.”
“Good, I’m starving,” she said. I laughed again. She was always starving. Maybe that’s why her boobs were so big. She didn’t really have any other evidence of it on her body.
After we dropped off her bags and I gave her the two-cent tour of my humble little abode, I drove us downtown to a seafood restaurant I’d been hearing good things about. It was before the dinner rush so we were seated right away. We ordered a pitcher of pomegranate margaritas and launched right into conversation, gossip, and giggles like we’d just seen each other hours before.
“So, Laura hooked up with Robert Black. Do you remember him?”
“The guy who worked at Lowe’s?”
“Yes!”
“Isn’t he married?”
“Yes! And, he has like four kids, I think.”
“Wow, what is Laura thinking?” I should call her and say, “Hello pot, this is kettle, I’m black.”
“I think she was drunk the first time. She told me that she ran into him at Adolph’s, the bar out on the Interstate. She knew him, kind of, from church of all places…” She must have noticed my face and realized what she’d said. “Oh shit! I’m sorry!”
I gave her a nervous laugh and the wave of my palm. “Please, don’t walk on eggshells with me. Go on.”
“Okay, so anyways, she said she gave him a blow job in the parking lot that night-”
“Oh my God! She just told you that?” I don’t know why I was surprised. Nothing shocks Carla, and she’s the kind of person that people want to tell everything to.