Light and Wine Read online

  Her lungs expand between my palm and my own heart as her head sways to the side. She squeezes my hand in turn, and I hear exactly what she’s saying.

  She’s welcoming me home.

  Shifting my feet along the carpet, I close my eyes, too, counting the near to trembling blessings that fit flawlessly in my arms.

  “Agna, carissima, delicia,” I whisper, lamb, beloved, darling, as I press my lips just under her ear, cradling her body with mine.

  She shakes in my arms, and for a moment it feels like she might sob, but she holds steady, breathing shallow, quick breaths into the chest that’s struggling to contain a heart that knows when love is near.

  Wholly moved, I bring my right hand over both of hers.

  “Fulfill His sacrament, love.”

  “Oh—” It comes out like a sigh, the words slipping transparent and breathless from her. “Oh, my God.”

  Lids closed, but easily now, she’s almost entirely still and just above silent.

  “I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee,” she continues, all of the tension in her against me. “I detest all of my sins because of Thy just—”

  Pausing, she swallows again, her chest rising and falling under our hands.

  “Because of Thy just punishments, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, who art good and deserving of all my love.”

  Calm covers me with her voice, washing over me like a clean breeze. I close my eyes and breathe her in, basking in perfect, plenary light. My arms relax, and I rest my forehead against the side of hers, loving.

  “I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more,” she whispers, holding on.

  Her reconciliation is full. Relief I can sense starts between her shoulders, pouring out over her chest. I feel it in each of her legs, pressed along each of mine, and I hear it compose a breath, right before she says, “Amen.”

  Bringing my arms down around her waist, I gather and hold her the way I craved to when she first sat down.

  “Through the ministry of His holy Church, I grant you pardon and absolution from your sins,” I whisper. Brushing my nose up her neck and along her cheek, I give unspoken thanks for her tender scent afresh. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and—”

  “Lacie?” her mother’s voice calls from downstairs. “Father Marc? Dinner’s ready.”

  I close my eyelids tighter instead of opening them. I know a floor below us plates are being placed next to silverware lying in wait, beside glasses of water and wine. It’s time for me to let her go, but I don’t lift my lids until nearly forgiven relaxes herself fully against my chest and nudges my jaw with her nose.

  It fills me with gratitude and brings joy to my lips.

  “And the Holy Spirit,” I whisper, kissing her temple.

  With a nod and a mindfully measured exhale, she smiles as I return my eyes to hers. There’s a tremble in her lips though, and needy unfulfillment in her eyes. She’s giving every effort inside to pull herself together, and I know that each breath bringing essential oxygen to her veins is and will be for me.

  “Wait for me?” I ask just above a whisper.

  Her nodding increases, unquestioning, and after a blink, she opens her hazel eyes once more. The glints of courage I find there feel like pleasure, privilege, and honor to me.

  As surely as I know she struggles, I know her faith is stronger, and that she’ll wait because I’ve asked her to.

  Gently shifting her next to me on her bed, I place another kiss on her crown before standing on unwilling legs. I know she’ll join me at the table in a few moments, but my heart, my hands, and my soul are all reluctant to be parted from hers.

  Stopping in her doorframe, I turn my eyes back to blushing and blessed.

  Afternoon light streams in from her windows, casting glowing marigold and coral colored hues all across her. Long hair wavy-undone, blouse crooked and creased, she slides pink rosary beads between pinker fingertips, working to steady her breathing while pinkest lips murmur prayers too soft for even me to hear.

  A sunset, a few hours, and miles later, I still can’t think of anything else.

  Saint Casilda’s rectory is quiet with rest, and I’m alone in my room. Lamp-lit and bare, save for the crucifix above my desk, taupe walls feel simultaneously confining and insubstantial, much like my body. Love and longing, missing and memories are contained here, but only just.

  Focusing my eyes on the Latin tests in front of me isn’t difficult, but concentrating is. With every beat of fresh blood, my heart sends renewed yearning coursing through my veins. I was just with the source of its weighted cadence a little while ago, but the length of days and nights before that—more than a week—is indelible. Try as I might, pray as I have, the last time we were truly together endures and unnerves even still.

  “Marc …”

  With eyes closed, I can still feel needy little whispers burning between her kisses under my ear.

  “Father … Please …”

  Lacie was on my lap in the chair I’m in now, straddling my hips. With my arms around her and my lips on her neck, too, delicately determined fingers left my hair to untuck black shirt cotton from black slacks.

  I let her.

  “I want you,” she whispered, light and hot and rocking along my body without a slip of hesitance. “Tonight. I want you tonight, please.”

  Even as I gathered her completely to myself, cradling the back of her head and kissing her pleading lips, her hands continued. With the top button of my shirt undone, her right descended for the next while her left unfastened my collar. It landed on the carpet somewhere near our feet as she pushed both sides of the fabric apart, the warmth of her touch bleeding through my black undershirt.

  Leaning back long enough for our eyes to focus and find, she pulled her blouse over her head and dropped it next to the cardigan I’d undone from her only minutes before. Black lace cupped small curves she’d grown coyly into, contrasting against softer, pale peach skin.

  “I’m ready,” she insisted, lush and courageous eyes imploring my own.

  Setting my pen on my desk, I rub both hands down my face and inhale until I can’t any hold any more air. I seek focus as I do so, but the hands pressed to my temples shake, and I can feel my pulse thrumming against my collar. I catch my reflection in my small shaving mirror, and find I look as restless as I feel. Dark-brown hair in disarray, it’s been a little too long since my last haircut, and coffee colored eyes clearly want for sleep as much as my heart does for peace.

  Standing from my desk, I sip from a glass of water before walking to my single window that faces the garden. I gaze out for a few seconds, but there’s no abatement or distraction there either. So I take another drink and lie down on my neatly made bed and stare at the ceiling. I concentrate on all my muscles and seek requiescence, but this is the very place I laid her that night.

  My back grows warmer with the realization that I’m filling her silhouette.

  When I picked Lacie up, her arms wrapped tightly around my neck. She kissed me as I carried her, and when I carefully placed her down, right here, she wrapped her legs around me, too, not letting air or sound or light anywhere between us.

  “Please, now, please …”

  Swift little hands dropped from my neck and down between us. Sliding smaller black lace out from under her skirt and down her legs, she worked with fervor as I kissed her, undoing belt and buttons until she found where I was immeasurably wanting, and slipped me free. For just a moment, hot, sensitive skin touched hotter, softer, even more sensitive skin and left us both unable to breathe.

  I close my eyes and fold my hands behind my head, abiding the impulse to palm and press against physical yearning that aches and remembers.

  With my chest covering hers, I could feel Lacie’s heart pounding to feel me where I was, between and above and sliding along for the first time. Dazed and desirous eyes opened wider under mine as I remained amazed and attentively still, and she lifted her hips up, parting he
r lips around the sound of need.

  “Oh …”

  Her breath was back and her voice was high, and I wanted to ask if she was sure. I didn’t want to open the most priceless gift either of us had ever been given until she was certain it was for me, that it had always been, but before I could find words, her right hand slid to my lower back and she pressed.

  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 w
as 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.