Chaste (22 page)

“How’s Elijah?” I ask, sliding into the passenger’s seat.

“He wants to meet you.”

“Oh, really? What have you told him about me?”

Quinn blushes like he thinks if he says something sweet, I’ll hit him, which is absurd. I’m more likely to kiss him senseless.

“I won’t laugh,” I say.

His face lights up with a mischievous grin before he bends so his eyes are even with mine. When he cups my cheek in his hand, I get goose bumps. “You’ll just have to ask him yourself.”

As we drive, I glance at the speedometer needle, wishing I could make the car go faster, to see the leaves on the trees turn blurry as I travel farther away from Mike.

My fingers shake when I think of my ex. And Quinn, sensing there’s something wrong, slides his hand over mine.

“We need rules,” he says.

“Why?” I ask in a flustered voice. While I remember him saying something similar at the house, I hadn’t thought he was serious.

“So I don’t corrupt you.”

I laugh, because it’s funny and kind of sweet that he thinks if we have sex, he’ll crush my innocence like a dandelion gone to seed.

“Okay, first rule,” he says. “We spend our time together in public. Family events, movies, restaurants—”

“Movies sound promising.” I picture sitting in the back of a dark theater while he kisses me for hours, hands roaming every inch of my body.

“Second rule: no touching of private parts.”

I blink. There goes my fantasy! Feeling slightly dazed, I ask, “Any more rules your highness.”

“I’m not a king.”

“Well you’re acting like one, laying these down without consulting me.”

He sighs and runs a hand through his blond curls. Most girls I know would die for hair like his. Pity he doesn’t let it grow below his ears.

He takes a deep breath. “I don’t want to be difficult, Kat, but after what happened to my sister, I need to have boundaries. Maybe it’s not fair. The thing is, I’ve seen what happens when no one says no. My sister is tired, her education has suffered, time for herself is no longer an option. The last thing I want is to put you in that kind of situation.

“You should trust yourself, Quinn.”

Worry lines form between his eyes. “Third rule: no kissing or hugging after ten pm.”

I haven’t had to live by any set-in-stone rules since before Roland died. Even then my parents weren’t
this
strict. This must be about Quinn’s need to build walls.

“Eleven,” I counter.

“Fine, it’s a start,” he says, pulling up to the curb beside his house, a tiny place with peeling paint and overgrown bushes. He shuts off the engine.

“I don’t hear any music,” I say, remembering the first time I came to this house and found his father playing drums in the basement.

“There are occasional moments of silence at my house.”

I put my hand in the crook of his elbow as we walk across the grass, not sure why I feel such a need to be near him. Maybe I’m weaker than I thought.

When we enter the house, warm steam drifts around us. I smell meat cooking. A baby cries in the other room.
Elijah.
My pulse races. I’m not good with babies. I glance up at Quinn.

His mouth has fallen open.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“She’s cooking,” he says. “Tuesday night, and my sister is making dinner.”

“So?”

“Tuesday is my night to cook.”

As I follow him into the kitchen, the steam gets thicker, the smell of meat grows stronger and the baby cries louder. Quinn’s father and sister meet us at the door.

“Son, I was so worried,” the older man says. He cradles the still-crying baby in his arms. If that kid doesn’t stop screaming soon, my ears are going to burst.

“Don’t ever scare me like that again,” Amy scolds. “Next time call if you’re coming home late.”

For a few short minutes I feel invisible while Quinn’s family worries over him. I wonder if my parents would notice if I disappeared for a few days. I mean, yeah, if I got into trouble they’d notice. But what if I vanished without a trace? No struggle, no note, no drama. Would they care?

Quinn taps me on the shoulder. “I think you’ve both met Kat before,” he says to his family. “I, uh … invited her for dinner.”

They both break into matching grins. “Your physics partner, right?” Mr. Walker says. He hands the baby to Quinn before reaching out to shake my hand. For a formal gesture, it’s strangely familiar. His warm fingers squeeze mine in a firm clasp that’s neither weak nor crushingly strong.

“So you brought her home for dinner, did you?” Amy asks in a voice thick with inferred meaning. Quinn doesn’t answer, just puts his pinky into Elijah’s mouth.

The baby stops crying.

“You want to hold him?” Quinn asks, grinning from ear to ear like I’m a natural-born baby-lover.

Never mind that I’ve never held a baby in my life and don’t want to start with one that’s likely to scream if I so much as touch him.

“Nah, I might break him,” I say.

Quinn grins before leading me into the empty living room. One wall is filled with self help books—
Healing the Shame that Binds You, Bradford on The Family, The Gift of Fear.
Another with religious titles—
The Miracle of Forgiveness, Standing for Something, Teachings of Thomas S. Monson
.

“Who reads the self-help books?” I ask him, sitting smack in the middle of his denim colored couch.

“My mother,” he says, hovering above me with Elijah in his arms.

“Who reads the religious stuff?

“My mother used to,” he says. “But after reading Spencer W. Kimball’s
The
Miracle of Forgiveness
and sliding into a depression a few years back, she’s been less enthusiastic about sacred topics.”

“Your mom was depressed?” I feel my eyes widen. His family seems so functional.

“Yeah, even now she struggles with guilt and inadequacy.
The Miracle of Forgiveness
only made it worse for her. President Kimball talks about sins of omission alongside theft, adultery and murder.”

I shake my head. “What the hell is a sin of omission?”

“The sin of leaving things undone—stuff like not going to church, not sharing the gospel with neighbors, or forgetting to hold family prayer twice a day. After reading
The Miracle of Forgiveness
, my mother felt even worse about herself. She didn’t get out of bed for weeks. When she finally pulled out of her funk, she’d cry at the drop of a hat.”

“Why do you still have it?” I ask.

“Um, well.” He clears his throat uncomfortably. “Since
The Miracle of Forgiveness
states that ‘Christ cannot forgive one in sin’ and that sexual sin is especially bad, our Bishop made Amy read it as part of her repentance process about six months before Elijah was born.” He shakes his head. “She couldn’t take the bread and water for a long time. I think the humiliation of having others see she was unworthy is one reason she stopped going to church.”

In that moment my father’s voice comes into my head, “If Mormons believed in grace, they’d know we’re all unworthy. They’d know that man can’t make judgments in the name of God. And they’d be free from guilt and shame. Free to feel His love.”

“Didn’t that bother you?” I ask.

“Why would it?” he says too fast.

“You just said your sister was humiliated. How did that help her feel God’s love?”

His shoulders slump.

“I guess it did bother me a little,” he admits. “But just like Amy has moved on with her life, I’ve accepted that leaders make mistakes. I’m sure my father made his share when he was Bishop. Amy made a mistake with Ray, but we wouldn’t have Elijah otherwise.”

Quinn sits next to me on the couch and passes me the baby. The warm weight of Elijah settles into my too stiff arms. The baby’s hair bristles when it brushes against my sweater. His hands, curled into tiny fists, flail up and down when he looks at me. Oh, crap—he’s going to cry.

I freeze and get ready for the ear-shattering sound. But then he smiles and his cheeks, which have turned a delicious pink, rise up to the edges of his baby blue eyes.

They look like his uncle’s. Not just the color, but their innocence too. When I grin at Elijah, my whole body breathes. My toes heat, my cheeks feel flushed and warm, sentiment gushes through my veins like movie theatre butter. So this is why Quinn calls his nephew a blessing.

Quinn speaks. “He likes you.”

33

Quinn

I look at this softened version of Kat and know it’s the real her. Elijah knows too. I can tell by the way he coos and smiles. Her natural touch with my nephew makes me think she’s really a gentle person, that her tough-girl attitude is nothing more than an act.

Elijah wraps his tiny fingers around Kat’s pinky as she sings him a lullaby. Her voice is pure and deep. The look in her eyes full of so much tenderness, you’d think she believes this baby is hers. The air in the room seems to warm a few degrees, the sound of her voice to sweeten with each note and without thinking I put my feet on the floor, scooting toward her until our shoulders touch.

Beautiful, good-natured Kat. I see her more clearly now than ever. Her song is a reflection of her nature. And even though I feel as if I’m intruding on sacred space, her voice draws me in till I can’t pull away.

“You’re good with him,” I whisper.

She makes a dry choking sound in her throat, the kind most girls make before they start crying. Except Kat’s eyes don’t leak any tears.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Nothing,” she chokes out.

I can tell she’s guarding herself. Don’t ask me how I know. Maybe because she’s slumping, or because of the sudden weakness in her voice.

The speech my mother gave me when I turned twelve comes into my head. “We call women nurturing but men can nurture too. The priesthood helps them do good.” That day she’d gone through a list of Jesus miracles—feeding the five thousand, blessing the children, giving sight to the blind. Then she’d pointed out his gender and asked, “Was there anyone more nurturing than God?”

When Elijah squeals, the sound brings me back to reality. I put my arm around Kat and watch in awe as she relaxes into my shoulder. Does this mean she trusts me? There’s a knock at the door, but I don’t want to move. Not with Kat in the crook of my arm.

My father’s footsteps echo in the other room. I hear the door open. “Is Quinn home?”

I go stiff at the sound of Molly’s voice.

“Sure,” says my father. “Right in here.”

At a time like this I wish my parents were more like Kat’s. How did Kat get a mother who’ll spin elaborate stories, when my own dad won’t even tell a tiny lie? He walks into the room next to Molly, whose hair is piled on top of her head with long sticks.

She stops short.

“I came to warn you, Quinn” she says, narrowing her eyes at Kat, who sits up and puts space between us.

“The boogie man hasn’t lived in my closet since I was two,” I joke, trying to keep the tone light.

The last thing I want is another confrontation with Molly. My father has taken a seat by the window, which I find oddly reassuring. If having a former bishop listen in on our conversation doesn’t make Molly more polite, nothing will.

“Could we speak alone?” she asks, her eyes darting from me to Kat.

When Molly fixes my partner with a hard stare, my hands clench into fists.

“About Kat?” I ask.

She nods.

I let out a breath and run a hand through my hair. It doesn’t seem right to talk about Kat behind her back.

“Anything you can say to me you can say to Kat,” I tell Molly, making my distaste for gossip as clear as humanly possible.

“Did you have sex with Kat?” she asks.

“Excuse me?”

“There’s a rumor going around that you had sex with Kat. That’s why Mike punched you out last Monday.”

Sex with Kat? Mike punching me out?
“Please tell me you don’t believe that,” I plead, holding up my hands in defense.

“Well,” she scrapes her toe along the rug. “You did get suspended. And no one can dispute you spend an awful lot of time with your physics partner.”

“So you think I’ve discarded everything I believe?”

She shrugs. “Your sister did.”

If Molly had meant to say the worst thing possible, she’d succeeded. The next thing I know, Amy’s slamming the oven door and marching into the room to give Molly a piece of her mind.

“How dare you walk into this house and judge us,” she accuses. “I’ll have you know I went through a very long repentance process. And if God can forgive me, you can let it go!”

My redheaded ex tilts up her chin. “Says the girl who doesn’t come to church.”

“Because of people like you!” She flings a yellow potholder at Molly. “Who look down their noses at anyone human. News flash: I’m not perfect. But even
I
know better than to go around judging people. Have some compassion for once in your life.”

Ouch.
I stand and put a hand on my sister’s arm. “She came here to see me,” I whisper to Amy. “I’m sure she didn’t mean—”

“I’m sorry,” Molly cuts in. “You’re right that I shouldn’t judge you, Amy. It’s just.” She sighs. “I’m worried about Quinn. Some of these rumors are really nasty.”

From as far back as I can remember, Molly has lived for gossip. I hold up a hand to make her stop, but she keeps talking as if she doesn’t see it.

“For starters, there’s this rumor that Mike and Kat are together, but that she’s lying to you about it because she bet Tasha she could seduce a Mormon boy.”

I glance at Kat, who’s gone still as stone. How I wish I could wrap my arms around her, protect her from the slander spewing from Molly’s mouth.

“Are you listening to yourself?” I ask. “How can she be trying to sleep with me if she’s already done it? How can you believe any of this?”

“Because I see the way you look at her,” Molly says bitterly. “The way you put your arm around her when all you claim to want is
space
.”

Elijah starts fussing at the word “space,” like he hears the betrayal in Molly’s voice. Right on cue Amy crosses the floor, takes the baby and carries him to the kitchen.