Stay With Me (29 page)

“You’re right about me needing a shower, too. Craig
passed around these stinky, cheap cigars.”

“Well, it’s all yours as soon as I’m done.”

He didn’t know where the next words came from. He
didn’t even think them; they just flew out of his mouth. “I have a better idea.
And it will save water and time.” He yanked his shirt over his head, and added
it, his jeans, socks, and underwear to the pile on the floor.

“What’s that?”

He peeled back the shower curtain and stepped into
the shower with her.

Stunned. That was the only word for her reaction.
Her eyes darted up and down as if she didn’t know where to look. She wrapped an
arm around her midsection as if it could cover her exposed skin. He placed his
hand on her wrist, withdrawing her protective arm, and before she had a chance
to say anything, his lips were on hers.

Chris had never experienced anything so sensual in
his life. The herbal smell of her shampoo. The feel of her velvety wet skin
under his fingertips. The sound of the shower as it pattered on their bodies and
the curtain. The taste of chocolate liqueur on her lips. And most of all the
sight of her. Rebecca, wholly and completely as God had made her—utterly
beautiful.

By the time they had emerged from the shower he
knew how the night would end. He couldn’t conceive of anything other than
taking her in his arms, laying her down on her bed and making love to her. If
any contrary thought niggled its way into his brain, it quickly died of
neglect.

He led her to her bedroom where he dragged his
hands through her still damp hair, and she communicated nothing but her desire
for him. He couldn’t sense the slightest bit of hesitancy in her eyes, her
touch, or on her lips. The music from the other room poured in, its relentless
beat and frantic rhythm driving him. He couldn’t have chosen a more fitting
soundtrack if he’d tried. He’d listened to this song dozens of times and never
noticed its eroticism. The singer’s ardent falsetto was tinged with a gentle
desperation as he sang of lips, love, and crashing waves. A nebulous sense of
inevitability permeated both the music and Chris’s mind.

Rebecca breathed heavily against his face, and
moving her lips against his cheek, she asked, “Dave Matthews?”

He hadn’t even thought of it. A low laugh rumbled
through his chest as he clasped each of her hands in his, pinning them above
her head as she climbed back onto the bed. He leaned down to kiss her neck as
he answered. “Yes, Dave Matthews.”

It felt so good, so true, and so right.

Until it didn’t. He didn’t know how long they lay
there together, but when he held her in his arms, her head resting on his chest
and her arms wrapped around him, the depth of his feeling for her and what they
had shared overcame him. He kissed her head and squeezed her, smiling at the
contented sigh she released. He studied his arms protectively around her, and
as his heart rate returned to normal, his gaze settled on his hand.

It had been near perfect. Better than he had
expected in every way. With one glaring exception. And then it hit him with
full force. His bare hand. His wedding band (and its smaller companion) resided
in a small bag at the back of his sock drawer, where it would remain until his
wedding day, when he would wear it as a sign of his love for and fidelity to
Rebecca. The night would have been perfect. Save for one thing—Rebecca wasn’t
his wife.

She must have felt him tense because she lifted her
head to look at him.

“I know,” she said, and the regret that hung in her
tone told him she understood completely, and she shared his guilt.

After a few moments of silence he blurted, “I have
to go.”

Rebecca seemed startled as he pulled himself from
her embrace and sat up. She looked pained as she sat up, too, pushing her damp
hair behind her ears.

“I know it was wrong, Chris. I regret it, too, but
please, please stay with me tonight.”

“I can’t.” He didn’t like being short with her, but
he would suffocate if he didn’t get out of her apartment. He grabbed his
clothes off the bathroom floor and dressed. Rebecca, still not wearing
anything, followed him out to the living room.

“Please, Chris. Please don’t leave me tonight. I
need you here. Stay with me.”

“Why, so I can wake up in the middle of the night
and feel you next to me, and repeat everything that just happened?” He hated
how angry his voice sounded. He had to get out. Now.

“No. No, I just feel—”

“For God’s sake, Rebecca, put something on, will
you?”

She looked down, suddenly shamefaced, and tears
sprung from her eyes. She covered her mouth as a sob escaped. And instead of
taking her in his arms, holding her close, and comforting her, he turned and
ripped the quilt from the back of her couch and tossed it to her. He headed for
the door, nearly tripping on a pile of wedding presents amassed in the
entryway. It was the middle of the night, he was half drunk, and he had no idea
how he would get home. He only knew that he couldn’t stay there.

***

Rebecca had known from the sudden quiet that
something was wrong. For the last half hour, Chris had done nothing but tell
her he loved her. He couldn’t stop saying it. Then he grew silent, and she knew
he felt it, too—the guilt.

What should have been a beautiful expression of
their married love was, in hindsight, a stark contrast. It was a sin. Rebecca
felt conflicted—sorry that they had offended God, had betrayed their
convictions, and given in so easily to temptation—did they even try to resist?
But yet she felt loved—more than that, cherished. She had no idea that Chris
could be so tender yet, at the same time, so passionate. She shuddered when she
recalled the feel of his hands on her bare skin.  She thought she’d be nervous
on their wedding night, but from the moment his lips had touched hers in the
shower she hadn’t felt even a twinge of anxiety, only a compulsion to keep
going, to give herself completely, finally, to the man she loved.

She glanced at her nightstand and noticed the basal
thermometer lying there. She and Chris had been learning a natural method for
spacing children, and she had been recording her waking temperature each
morning and charting her fertility markers. They were ready for a baby right
away, but based on the suggestion of another couple at their parish, they
decided it would be easier for them to learn the method now rather than later
while she breastfed a baby. She jumped from the bed and quickly opened the
drawer, unfolded her chart and studied it. Suddenly their utter lack of control
after all these months made some sense.

She was ovulating. No wonder her resistance was so
low. He drank a few too many beers, and there she slunk around in
poorly-concealed Spandex, reeking pheromones. She drank that bottle of liqueur.
She even invited him into the shower, albeit to put out a towel, but still. So
many bad decisions. Why couldn’t she have stepped out of the shower and grabbed
a towel herself? What was a wet bath mat compared to your immortal soul?

She had to call Chris. Maybe he wouldn’t be so hard
on himself. She called, but he didn’t answer. She texted and got no response.
Six messages and more than fifty hours later, she still hadn’t heard back from
him.

24

Fool to Think

Tuesday morning, Rebecca opened the door to Abby
and her kids. “We’re dropping off a couple of wedding presents. Somehow they
keep ending up at my house. Probably Aunt Maggie’s fault.” She wrinkled her
brow and looked Rebecca up and down. “I thought you’d be at work.”

“Home sick.”

“Okay, kids. Back up.” Abby shooed her children
behind her and switched the baby to the arm farthest from Rebecca.

Rebecca sighed. “Come in. It’s more of a mental
health day. I’m not contagious.”

Giving her sister a wary glance, Abby motioned for
her kids to step in and followed them as Rebecca closed the door behind them.
Rebecca went to the bookshelf and retrieved a new puzzle she had bought for the
kids’ next visit. “Why don’t you guys take this and work on it at the kitchen
table?”

Ricky plucked it out of her hands and made a
beeline for the other room, Emma on his heels.

Rebecca took the baby from her sister’s arms and
kissed his chubby cheeks before hugging him tightly. Tears threatened to spill
out of her eyes.

“What are you making? It smells heavenly.”

“Oh, there are macaroons, marble cheesecake
brownies, and there’s a lemon Bundt cake in the oven now.”

“What the heck, Rebecca? Are you having a bake
sale? Because if you eat all that you’re never going to fit in your wedding
gown.”

The tears fell at the mention of her wedding.

Abby took the baby back, sat on the couch, and
waited for Rebecca to join her.

“So, do you want to tell me what’s got you so upset
that you’ve resorted to maniacal baking?”

Rebecca wanted to use an innocent-sounding
euphemism: “Chris spent the night” or “Chris and I slept together,” but Chris
had neither stayed nor slept. Could she say they “made love?” That’s how she
had thought of it at the time, but in the light of day when she hadn’t heard
from him since, she wasn’t so sure. Only one honest answer came to mind, and
she blurted it out.

“Chris and I had sex.”

Abby took a hard look at her. “And it was that
bad?”

“Abby.” She knew Abby’s opinions on premarital sex
all too well. In spite of that, she had hoped Abby would be supportive, not
laugh it off.

“Cause I always imagined he’d be good in bed.”

The blood drained from Rebecca’s face. Here she
sat, her heart riddled with shame, hurt, and fear and the best her sister had
to offer was either to make light of the situation or, even worse, admit she
lusted after Chris.

“Abby, he’s my fiancé. He’s going to be your
brother-in-law.” As she said it, she half-wondered if that was even true
anymore.

“I’m sorry, but you can’t bring home a guy like him
and not expect me to wonder. What’s the big deal anyway? The wedding’s in three
weeks.”

“You don’t get it at all. I thought you and Joel
waited.”

“We did. It was more his thing than mine. We had
already done everything
but
that anyway. He wanted our wedding night to
be special. It wasn’t such a big deal to me. What happened?”

“Spandex, hormones, pheromones, and alcohol.”

“You had me at Spandex. I want details.”

Rebecca sprung from the couch and started pacing
the small room. “Abby, I have no intention of discussing that with you now or
ever. It’s what happened afterward.” The tears started to fall again.

“What happened?” From Abby’s pinched expression,
Rebecca thought she had finally realized the seriousness of the matter.

“Waiting until our wedding night was important to
both of us. We’ve been very careful about it. Then Saturday night we were both
drinking and…” She debated how much she should say. “We used really poor
judgment and exercised no self-control whatsoever.”

Abby’s face sagged with disappointment at the lack
of details. Too bad.

“As soon as it hit us what we had done, Chris
emotionally withdrew. He couldn’t get out of here fast enough. I’ve been
calling and texting him since then, and he won’t respond.” Rebecca sobbed as
quietly as she could into her hands so as not to draw the attention of her
niece and nephew.

Abby’s free hand rubbed her back. “You haven’t
talked to him since?”

Rebecca shook her head and quickly grabbed the box
of tissues from the coffee table.

“That numskull.”

“Abby, what if he…if he doesn’t…he doesn’t love me
anymore? The wedding …” A fresh round of tears formed, and Abby pulled her into
a hug.

Rebecca felt a tugging on her leg.

“Aunt Becca, you crying.”

Sweet little Emma. Rebecca pulled away from her
sister and wiped her eyes. “Yes, sweetie, I’m sad.”

“Why you sad?”

“I feel like I’ve lost my best friend.”

Her little niece was supposed to say something
tender and insightful, wise beyond her years. Instead she said, “I poopy.”

Rebecca sniffed and got a whiff of the horrific
odor emanating from the little girl’s rear. Her eyes grew teary again from the
stench.

Abby excused herself to change the offending
diaper, and Rebecca sunk back into the couch. Now that she had begun to
verbalize her fears, they were all running roughshod over her wounded heart.
What if Chris didn’t want her anymore? Maybe he had lost his respect for her.
The wedding was less than three weeks away; everything was paid for and in
place. She didn’t think she could bear the embarrassment of calling it all off.

In a minute, Abby returned rubbing moisturizer into
her clean hands. “Sorry about that. The demands of motherhood stop for nothing
and no one. You’ll see.”

“Will I?”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Listen to me.” She
waited until Rebecca lifted her teary eyes to look at her, and then Abby took
both her hands in her greasy palms and squeezed them.

“I don’t know what’s going on with Chris. You guys
are both such goody-goodies it’s hard for me to imagine this happened let alone
that he is acting like such a blockhead about it. But I do know this: That man
loves you, and that doesn’t change overnight. I would bet his absence has more
to do with him than you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m guessing he initiated it, right?”

Rebecca thought back to the shock of him climbing
into the shower with her. Him leading her to her bedroom. “Yes, but I didn’t
object.”

“Doesn’t matter. He feels responsible, Rebecca.
Guilty. Probably ashamed of himself. If he was sober enough to do the deed, he
was sober enough to know what he was doing.”

Rebecca’s face heated. They had known exactly what
they were doing. He may not have been in condition to drive home from Craig’s,
but neither of them was really drunk. The alcohol obliterated their
inhibitions. No, their consciences.

Abby squeezed her hands again. “Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Then that’s it. I know it is.” Abby released her
hands and scooped Ian off the floor where he teethed on Rebecca’s dirty
flip-flop. “He’s had enough time for self-flagellation or whatever you guilt-ridden
fish eaters do behind your hair shirts.”

Leave it to Abby to offer comfort with a hearty
side of religious slurs. She reached for her purse on the floor, pulled out her
cell phone and started tapping. “This has gone on long enough. I don’t give a
hoot about his guilt trip. He needs to man up and get his keister over here.”

***

Father John pinned Chris with a solemn look. “Well,
your first sin may have been fornication, but now I think you’ve followed it up
with a total lack of charity.”

“What do you mean?”

“Chris. You made love to your fiancée, and then you
left her there when she told you she needed you. I understand you wanted some
time to sort things out, but that was two days ago. You haven’t even reached
out to her to see how she’s doing. Hasn’t she called you?”

“She’s left me six messages, but I haven’t listened
to them.”

Father John massaged his brow with his fingertips.
“Chris, set aside your own guilt and shame for a minute. Think about the
conversations we’ve had about Rebecca and the skewed view she had of sex. She
has no recollection of having two loving parents in the home, so she had no
example of married love. Her father is a verbally abusive man whose streams of
vile putdowns seem to center on Rebecca’s imperfections and baseless accusations
of ‘whore,’ slut,’ and the like. He twisted her notions of purity, chastity,
propriety, and sin at every possible turn. And to top it off, she had
well-meaning abstinence educators telling her girls who committed sexual sins
were no better than a used tissue or chewed up bubble gum.

“Now, I know she’s been tearing through Theology of
the Body books, and you’ve had a tremendous positive influence on her, but
think about this from her perspective. She finally caves. Finally falls. And
instead of you holding each other up, you leave her even when she begs you to
stay. How do you think that made her feel?”

Chris couldn’t even meet Father John’s eyes. Elbows
resting on his knees, he trained his eyes on the carpet and bit back a
four-letter word. Well, he tried, and then he let it fly as he threw his
baseball cap to the floor and crushed it under his shoe. Kicking the chair or
knocking a stack of papers off the desk would have been more satisfying, but he
couldn’t do that to Father John.

“How could I be such a thoughtless, selfish
jackass?”

Father John waited a beat. “Is that a rhetorical
question?”

“Not really. Am I going to be a terrible husband?
Maybe I’m not what she needs. What if I’m a selfish jerk?”

“I think you’re doing exactly the right thing. I hear
marriage is an excellent cure for selfishness. Add a couple kids or three or
more, and it gets even better.”

Chris didn’t say anything as he picked his
flattened cap off the floor and tried to reshape it.

Father John sighed. “Do you still love her?”

“Yes, of course, I do.”

“Do you intend to go through with the marriage?”

“Yes. If Saturday night had happened
after
our wedding, you’d be looking at the happiest man in the world.”

“I absolved you a half hour ago. You need to do
your penance, and you need to forgive yourself and Rebecca, although I think
you’ve decided to take all the blame on this. You need to move forward. You
need to be there for her. Show her the kind of husband you intend to be. Are
you going to up and leave every time there’s trouble? Because this won’t be the
last time. I dare say it won’t be the last time you struggle with sexual sin,
even in marriage. Or are you going to stay with her and get through things
together?”

Chris’s phone buzzed in his pocket.

“I think you should look at this one.”

Chris lifted his hip and slid the phone from its
holster. He swiped at it a couple of times and gave a half grin. “It’s from
Rebecca’s sister, Abby. She says, ‘Call my sister within the next ten minutes
or I’m taking a contract out on you. And not on your head.’”

Father John recoiled. “Ouch.”

“Classic Abby.”

“I’ve got to get over to the school. You can have
the office for a few minutes. Call Rebecca, and let Erica know when you leave.”

“Thanks, Father.”

“No problem.” The door shut halfway and then reopened
as Father John poked his head back in. “Chris, I know you’ve got your own
troubles, but if you could spare some prayers for Kimberly, I’d appreciate it. 
They’re taking her off the ventilator today.”

The door closed with a click, and Chris leaned back
in his chair. Damn, he really was selfish. Here they’d spent all morning
talking about his problems and what were they compared to a young woman’s life?

He swiped some more at his phone and in seconds
Rebecca’s voice filled his ears. A wave of calm swept over him. “Rebecca, we
need to talk. Where are you?”

***

“Can I come in?”

“Of course.”

The tears already leaked from her eyes, and they
welled in his eyes, too. Once she closed the door behind him, he pulled her
close to him, letting her cry against his chest while his tears fell into her
hair.

After a few minutes, he took her by the hand and
guided her to the couch, taking a seat across from her on her coffee table.

“How do we start?” she asked, clearing her throat
and wiping the tears from her cheeks.

He released his hand from hers and cupped her face
in his hands. He stared into her teary, reddened eyes, and his gaze lingered as
he aimed straight through to her soul.

“Like this.” He leaned in and kissed her. Without
rekindling the unfettered desire that had gotten them into trouble, he
reassured her neither his love nor his desire for her had wavered one bit. She
wasn’t a wadded up tissue or old gum or whatever other ridiculous thing someone
said. She was as beautiful and precious to him as ever.