Light and Wine (3 page)

She arched against me, and I could feel her chest barely containing beats that kicked and pushed, struggling to bring us together.

God help me, I pushed, too.

And just like that, she opened to me, and her yielding flooded my veins with heat and shock and the need for more, for all of her. As I fought every instinct to move further, her belly tightened and her hand at my back gripped more than pressed.

“M-m-m …” she stammered, “Marc …”

At hearing my name drawn from her lips, my restraint slipped. I gave her more.

“Marc, wait—”

Closing my eyes now just as I did then, I roll through physical pressure that outweighs me by innumerably blurred together and too anxious heartbeats.

Of course I waited.

Holding gently and kissing slowly, I supported my aching, dizzying weight until she finally nodded.

“Okay,” she whispered, both hands on my shoulders, lids low over pupils as wide as the day she was born. “I’m ready.”

Alone in my bed, I remember giving her the slightest fraction of my weight with eyes open.

“Wait, wait, wait—” Her voice echoed small and high while her lips dropped further open just as her legs did, effort and need and sheer impossibility burning through her.

Lost in heat, my forehead fell to her shoulder, and the muscles in my arms shook. My stomach knotted tighter, deeper, and my pulse crowded to take over everything else.

The stillness of waiting bordered on unbearable, but the thought of moving inside her before she was ready was unthinkable.

“Hold onto me, Lacie,” I whispered, the beginning of me only barely buried within the sacred warmth of her body. My voice sounded stuck in the hollow of my throat, and every synapse, every nerve ending pulsed, calling for her with need I’d never contended with before.

My love winced a small gasp, her strain evident in clenching fingers and closed-tight eyelids.

“I want to, Marc. Please, I want you to—”

“I am. Come here, I’m right here,” I promised, nuzzling and kissing her neck, ushering the most insistent natural urges away with breath and lips. “Don’t let go.”

“Please.” She swallowed a breath, “I want—” and then lifted her hips up into me, pulling all the air from my lungs.

But the whimper that it drew from her was stitched with pain.

All breath.
 
All hurt.

Sitting up in my bed, opening and closing my hands, I rest my elbows on my knees and drop my face to my palms.

“Stop,” she cried, pink cheeked and pinker lipped with embarrassment and endurance, shaking her head while her eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry, please, I’m sorry.”

“Shh, it’s okay, it’s okay,” I hushed with desperate gentleness. “You have nothing to be sorry for. It’s okay.”

Withdrawing carefully, keeping her skin touching mine everywhere else, I gathered her into my arms and sat up. Little tremors joined little cries, baby pink rosary beads rolling against my skin as she let me rock her for a few breaths.

Then she steadied herself.

Pulling her arms from mine and rubbing tears away with the back of her hand, she placed her feet flat on the floor.

“I should go.”

“Don’t—”

“It’s not …” She sighed, standing and smoothing her skirt before bending to bring black lace up her legs as I stood.

“It’s getting late. I need to finish packing.”

With a quickness that stung, she was dressed and stepping back into her shoes.

“I’ll see you.”

“Lacie, wait.”

Eager fingers paused on the doorknob. She turned to me as I crossed the room to stand between her and the door. Tilting my head to look into her downcast eyes, I found them and the need to run I could read there pitted the sting I was already feeling deeper.

I should have told her.

I should have said anything.

I shouldn’t have let her go.

“It’s fine,” she insisted, rubbing the corners of cry-pink eyelids with the heel of her hand. “I’m fine. We’re okay. I’ll see you next week.”
Meeting
my eyes for a shadow of a beat, she tried to smile, and then she left, and I let her.

I should have reached out.
I should have kept her in my arms.

I shouldn’t have let us go as far as we did.
But how could I not?

The love we carry flows with His divinity. It’s a gift and it’s more than strong. It’s tempting.
I knew she wouldn’t be in school the next day. She and her mother had been planning ten days of college visits for a month, but there were no words for the sore worry that cut through me with her absence. After years of cautioning her not to run in the hallways and tucking her hair into her bicycle helmet after school, reminding her to look both ways when she crossed the street and helping her through every struggle with fear and faith, it pained me to think I’d failed her when she needed protection from her own needs.

I prayed and prayed. I confessed to God, and clung to fleeting comfort in knowing His will be done, but I remained scared of all the ways I might have ruined the most special gift He’d ever bestowed to me.
Lacie.

Long days passed, punctured with sunrises that twisted my stomach and nights of sleepless concern. The sun rose and set, and I heard nothing from her.
 
It was one thing to go. I understood that she had to, but to not even take her phone?

I tried to distract myself in daily routines and was successful for moments at a time, but the hours were littered with helpless longing and the awful anxiety of not knowing anything of her whereabouts or well-being. Even Monsignor noted that I seemed distraught, and offered me some time off.

I declined.

I wanted to teach. I wanted the diversion. The last thing I needed was the single bed and empty walls of my room echoing with the confusion in her voice, the rustle of her clothes as she dressed in haste, and all the memories of love that I knew was mine, opened too early.

On the fourth evening, I answered the rectory phone’s shrill ring with hands red from the hot water of dishes that’d I’d taken to washing manually because it took longer.

“Saint Casilda of Toledo’s Rectory, Father Reston speaking.”

“Hi.”

My knees nearly buckled with relief.
“I have to be quiet. My mom’s asleep in the next room, but … I wanted to call …”
Closing my eyes and leaning back against the wall
, I slid to the floor where I stood.

“I know it’s kind of late … Is this okay?”
“Of course.” My voice was weak from unuse. I cleared my throat and pushed my free hand through my hair. “Of course. How are you? Are you okay?”
“I’m okay, yeah. Everything’s okay. Sarah Lawrence was okay, but RISD was great.
 
So great I probably won’t get in.” She laughed, and the sound of it made me want to weep with thanks. “I forgot my phone charger at home, and I had to wait until Mom bought me a new one. I’m sorry.”
I could practically hear her bottom lip between her teeth. I could picture her picking at her sleeves, timid and sneaking in a dark hotel room.
We didn’t talk about before, but we spoke for nearly an hour. I knew eventually we would need to, but just hearing her voice was more than I could have asked for.

She called me every night for the remaining six days of her trip. The conversations were light, kept to the day’s events, and even though I longed to hear about more than shuttle bus rides and campus radio stations, and to tell her about more than the weather and lesson plans, it was enough to know she was safe and wanted to hear my voice before she lay down for sleep.

Lacie was finally due back at school the next day, and I was awake before my alarm sounded. I was up before the sun, my heart singing joy through my veins. I didn’t know when we’d be granted time together, but she would be here.

Only, she wasn’t.

Not at first.

I passed by Sister Bernice’s English class after first period with a stack of flyers the soccer team didn’t really need this early, but served as an excuse for me to see her. As my hopeful eyes scanned the classroom though, my hazel-eyed miracle was nowhere to be found. Her seat was empty, no white peacoat hanging over the back, no open notebook to indicate she was nearby.

Pierced with disappointment and confusion, I returned to my office and paced. I shuffled papers and made a cup of tea I forgot to drink.

Lacie.

My Lacie, long-away and long-awaited.

Where was she?

When the bell rang, signaling the move to second period, I picked up my folders for Freshman Religion and dragged myself to the hall, dreading the slow pace of the day. Maybe she’d stayed home to rest after her trip, I thought, but it did little for my discouraged hopes.

And then, the sun rose.

Splendid and safe, radiant and real, my love was walking with her friends. She smiled as they talked and carried her notebook close to her chest. Long dark hair hung in a neat braid over the Saint Casilda’s Academy for Girls insignia, and the grey uniform sweater that clung to her had never looked so soft.

She looked up just in time to catch my eyes as I passed, and there were steps of space between us, but after so long apart—after the last time I’d seen her and she’d tried so hard to smile—the effortless curve of her lips and the gladness in her eyes lit me from within.

It was just like that, like stepping into sunlight.

“Salve, Father Marc,” she singsonged as she passed with her friends.

Good morning.
I contained my elation in a smile that was all hers.

“Good morning, ladies,” I returned, nodding.
Just like phone calls that were kept light, it
was more than enough.
I was far too thankful to be impatient.
Freshman Religion and the advanced Latin class afterward passed easily. I looked forward to our tutoring session at her house tomorrow afternoon, and mass Wednesday morning, and every chance I could think of seeing her again.

Standing from my bed, I cross my humble room to my window once more and stare out into the dimly lit garden of Dutch crocus and bloodroot. Early Stars of Bethlehem glow in the moonlight, decorating the dark with little yellow blooms.

After my final class of the day was finished, I returned here with exams to grade for what I thought would be my first truly restful night in ten days’ time. I was halfway through them when my phone rang.

It was Lacie’s father, and I leaned back in my chair as I answered, curious.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Theodore. How are you?”
“Afternoon, Father Marc. I’m well, I’m well. I have your field day order ready and was hoping you could come by and pick it up from the house around dinnertime? I could use a hand lifting some furniture into the van once it’s empty, if you don’t mind.”

The warm anticipation of seeing Lacie again rushed through my stomach, up into my chest and around my shoulders.
“I’d be happy to, Timothy.
 
I can leave in an hour, if that’s alright.”

“Perfect, I’ll just be heading out then. Julia and Lacie should be home if I’m a few minutes late.”

Adhering to decorum, I finished exams and grabbed my coat and scarf before I left, but even as I dressed for the early spring cold, I knew there was no way it could touch me. I was afire with the thought of being near to her in her home.

And then.
And then …

Leaning my weight against my right arm on the window frame, I rub my eyes with my left hand. Years of unfulfilled yearning stirred and strengthened by this afternoon’s confession rolls through me. Silent and unabated, it settles in my chest and palms and hips, and makes every cell of me yearn for precious love.
Moving my hands from the window frame and my eyes as I open them, I run my fingers through my hair and close them over the back of my neck. I press my lips together and pace to my desk, then back to my window, to my closet and to my desk again, keeping my fingers interlocked over the back of my neck.
The want to just press down against where longing concentrates, aches. It’s
confounding, how strong the need to touch is, but I don’t.

Leaving my coat behind, I grab my papers and walk outside just as I am.

My students’ tests rustle in the late March bluster, their fluttering and my footsteps the only sounds between here and the church.
 
The office there should be empty, and a more neutral place to focus on finishing my work.

With a deep inhale of nightfall’s frosted air, I gather the concentration to suppress physical reactions that memories of Lacie bring.
 
I pull oxygen deep into my chest, and my brightened pulse starts to slow its hum.
 
I swallow, easing my grip on the papers in my hand, and my limbs begin to relax.
 

Inside the church, the scent of frankincense lingers in the silent air.
 
Crossing myself as I approach the apse, I pass through the vestry and up a few stairs toward the back of the building. In the office, I settle myself behind the wooden desk. Back straight, red pen in hand, I redirect my eyes to exams.