Stay With Me (7 page)

She kept the car at fifteen miles an hour as she
drove the short distance to the campsite. A ranger’s vehicle and a golf cart
idled in their parking area. She didn’t bother attempting to back Alan’s car in
since she knew Chris would be heading to the showers next. As she closed the
door, she noticed a couple of rangers at the empty walk-in site closest to the
parking lot. Chris sat on a stump next to the ranger. A first aid kit lay open
on the ground next to him, and he held an ice pack to the left side of his
face.

Her breath caught. She jogged over to the site and
stopped short of the fire pit in front of Chris. Had there been some kind of
accident? “What happened?”

Chris lifted the pack from his face and raised his
gaze to her, but before he could say anything, the ranger asked, “Is this her?”

Rebecca’s eyes widened as she scanned Chris’s face.
The left side of his lips swelled, and it looked as if his upper lip had been
bleeding. The eye on the same side was nearly swollen shut.

“Yes, this is Rebecca,” Chris said. His voice
sounded slurred either from the swelling around his lips or the numbness caused
by the ice pack.

The ranger spoke again, this time to her. “Your
friend here took a little heat for defending your virtue.”

Rebecca looked from the ranger to Chris and back to
the ranger again. “My virtue?”

“Apparently your neighbor took a
less-than-wholesome interest in you. Your boyfriend took a blow to the face
defending you.”

Her boyfriend?
She squelched her
desire to quibble with the ranger over terminology and turned back to Chris.
“Someone hit you? Who? Why?”

Again before Chris could answer, the ranger spoke,
and she started to get perturbed.

“Excuse me,” the ranger said, “I’m going to escort
our unwelcome guests out of the park.”

Finally. Maybe now she could get some answers. For
the first time, Rebecca noticed the men who had been camping in the walk-in
site closest to them hauling out their gear while another park ranger kept
close tabs on their progress. One of them, the big guy that had leered at her
and made some dumb remark on her way to the showers this morning, glared at
her.

Rebecca stepped around the fire pit and sunk to the
ground in front of Chris. She ignored the muddy earth sticking to her knees.
“Was it one of them?”

Chris removed the ice pack again, and she saw that
his skin had bruised already.

“Yeah. The big dude with the flannel shirt.
Darryl.”

“Why? And what did this have to do with me?”

Chris shifted on the log and leaned his elbows on
his knees.

Why did he seem reluctant to tell her?

“After you left, he came over to ask if he could
have our extra wood. I said yes. Then he…he said some things…some disrespectful
things about you.” He looked up at her then, and his blue eyes held a fierce
determination. “I told him to take the wood and leave, and he wouldn’t. He
didn’t back off, and then it degenerated into a fight.”

“Did you hurt him?”

Chris attempted a smile. “He’s got a matching fat
lip. I did a little damage, but I think he got the better of me. Or he would
have if the ranger hadn’t broken it up.”

She folded her hands over his and turned them over,
opening them so she could press her palms against his.

“Thank you. I hate to break it to you, but I’m not
the kind of girl guys throw fists over.” She tried not to get emotional, but
tears stung her eyes, and her voice quavered. No one ever came to her defense.
Not since John, the first boy who had ever kissed her.

“My face, fist, and ribs beg to differ.” Somehow he
smiled about it.

“Your ribs?”

“He kicked me when I fell.”

“Oh, Chris. I’m so sorry.” He was hurting because
of her. Bleeding. Her heart ached for him, and she wished she could take away
his pain. How could this have happened?

“Hey, not your boot in my side.”

She let her hands fall away from his, stood up and
turned toward the fire pit. She brushed at the dirt and dried grass caked to
her knees. “No, but this is my fault. Obviously I did something or, I don’t
know, somehow I gave them the impression that…”

She heard Chris stand, and one of his hands slid
into hers while he used the other to angle her shoulder back toward him. His
brow pinched, and his eyes had that determined look again.

“Hey—none of this is your fault. You understand
that, don’t you? There’s nothing you said or did—there’s nothing you could say
or do—that would justify that jerk’s behavior.”

It was sweet that he didn’t want her to feel
responsible. She may not have intended it, but there had to have been
something. She tried to think of what she had worn, what she had said this
morning. She realized Chris still stared at her.

“You really think you provoked this somehow, don’t
you?” He wanted her to say no and mean it. She knew that, but she couldn’t deny
she felt responsible. Somehow, some way she had given Daryl the wrong idea. Her
silence turned out to be all the answer Chris needed.

Chris captured her face between both his hands, and
she couldn’t avoid the earnest intensity in his eyes. He spoke each word slowly
and with emphasis as if it could make them true.

“You . . . are not . . . responsible for this.
Okay?”

She nodded her head. She wanted to believe him.

His hands fells from her face. “Our stuff is all on
the table. I’m going to go take a shower, and then we can pack it into the
car.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think we’re going
to make the church service now.”

She waved her hand in front of him. “Don’t worry
about that. Go get cleaned up. I’ll make sure everything is ready to go in the
car.”

Nodding, he grabbed his bag of toiletries and some
clean clothes she hadn’t noticed were resting beside the log, and headed for
the parking lot. For the next half hour, Rebecca stacked their gear on the
table and bear box, leaving only their camp chairs out in case they wanted to
sit. Now that they’d missed the church service, she didn’t know what they would
do for the remainder of the morning. She had an idea though, if Chris was
willing.

“Looks like you got everything together,” Chris
said as he took a seat in the camp chair and tied his boot laces. His wet hair
appeared several shades darker—almost black—and made the contrast with his blue
eyes more pronounced. Well, it contrasted to the one eye that remained fully
opened. The left eye remained shut, but at least his lips looked better.

He grimaced and reached for his side as he stood. “So,
I guess we might as well pack up and head out if you’re ready.”

She hesitated for a second, not knowing how he
would take her request. “I noticed a guitar case in the back of the car. Is it
yours?”

Chris shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. “Yep.”

He didn’t offer any other explanation, so she
continued. “Were you going to play it?”

He started smoothing out the dirt with the sole of
his boot. “I thought maybe it would be nice to play something around the
campfire last night, but then I forgot. I’m not very good anyhow. I’ve been
watching YouTube videos, trying to teach myself to play.”

“Would you play something for me? I’d love to hear
it.”

His foot stopped and his hands came out of his
pockets. He flexed and released the fingers on his right hand a few times. That
must have been the hand that delivered the blow to Darryl’s face.

“You know, I never considered that slugging someone
like I did would hurt me as much as him.”

“Do you think you could still play?” She had to
admit she was enamored with the idea of hearing him sing to her. Didn’t every
girl dream of being serenaded like that?

Lucky for her he must have found her enthusiasm
more charming than annoying, and he agreed to give it a try despite the lingering
stiffness in his hand. When he returned from the car with his instrument, he
strummed a few minutes and tried to loosen up his fingers.

“Okay, I’m going to give this a go. Like I said,
I’m not very good to begin with, but at least now I have an excuse for being
mediocre.” He looked up from the guitar and grinned. If only she could
freeze-frame that moment. With his body angled away from her to accommodate the
guitar, his swollen eye was hidden from view. The words “devastatingly
handsome” clogged her thinking and made her heart stutter. Thank goodness she
needn’t speak as he began to play.

Rebecca only caught snippets of what he sang as he
moved back and forth from singing to her and watching his hands as they moved
over the strings. The chorus consisted mostly of “it’s always better when we’re
together,” and she assumed that or something close to it must be the title of
the song. His right hand, swollen and stiff, still picked out the appropriate
strings with only an occasional sour note finding her ears.

His smooth, resonant voice wouldn’t rival any
superstar’s, but it was good, and it was his, and like everything about Chris,
it exuded sincerity.

She thought he must be closing in on the end of the
song when he smiled and rested his hand over the strings. He slowed his rhythm
and sang
a cappella
, “and when I wake up, you look so pretty sleeping
next to me.” Her cheeks warmed, and she wondered if he had chosen this song for
those lines or whether it had snuck up on him as it had her. She knew she wore
a ridiculous, ear-splitting grin, and she didn’t care.

Rebecca had no experience with real relationships,
but this sure felt like one. Regardless of whether this thing with Chris lasted
another week, another month, or the rest of their lives, she knew she would
treasure this memory. Chris was attractive in and of himself, but it was the
way he made her feel about herself that wowed her.

For most of her life, Rebecca had felt like a
millstone dragging people down. Chris buoyed her. He acted as if he didn’t even
see her rough edges, and she felt for the first time as if she might be worth
something, not for what she did—or when it came to sex—
didn’t do
, but
for who she was.

Chris laid his hand over the strings, and she
applauded. “Thank you so much. That was great.”

“You make a good audience.” He placed the guitar
back in its case.

“I liked the song. By any chance could it be a Dave
Matthews song?” This had become their inside joke. She’d almost be sorry when
she finally stumbled upon a correct song and guessed right.

“Nope. Jack Johnson.” He closed the guitar case and
set it on the picnic table. He turned back toward her and looked at his watch.
“We should probably get out of here. It’s getting close to check-out time. I
thought, since we missed the service this morning, maybe you’d like to come to
church with me this evening. What do you think?”

She realized saying yes would extend the weekend a
little longer and give her a little more time with Chris. Plus, she knew next
to nothing about how he worshipped, and attending services with him might help
her understand what he believed. It was an easy question to answer. “Sure. That
sounds great.”

7

Water Into Wine

Rebecca struggled to keep up as Chris led her
toward the church with two minutes to spare before Mass began. The classical
columns made the building look more like a monument than a place of worship.
Like many other buildings in Gettysburg, this one had been used as a field
hospital after the battle. They climbed the steps and came to a stop inside the
double doors as people made their way into the church. Chris dropped her hand
and reached across her to a small bowl of water mounted to the wall. She looked
from the bowl to him as he blessed himself with the water. Should she do the
same? The exact sequence of touching her head, chest, and shoulders confused
her. Chris’s hand, with fingers still wet, grasped hers again as he led her
along the back of the church and up the aisle to an empty seat.

Chris chose a pew and stepped aside, allowing her
to enter first. She started in, but when she turned back to ask him how far in
she should go, he was still in the aisle, down on one knee blessing himself
again. In a moment, he was beside her. After giving her a quick kiss on the
cheek, he reached down and lowered a narrow, padded board behind the pew. She
wasn’t entirely sure of its purpose until Chris knelt on it, and she noticed
others around them kneeling as well.

“Should I—”

“You can sit. Whatever you’re comfortable with,
Rebecca. There’s kind of a lot of up and down. I should’ve given you a better
idea of what to expect.” Chris turned back toward the front and bowed his head,
letting it rest on his hands.

The humility of his actions struck her. Chris was
out of her league. Handsome, intelligent, and capable in every way. To see him
here, head bowed and eyes closed in prayer, did funny things to her heart. The
juxtaposition of strength and weakness was—she felt guilty even thinking it in
church—downright sexy. Suddenly conscious that she had been staring, she looked
away, embarrassed.

A minute later, a pipe organ blared from behind and
everyone stood. Chris grabbed a hymnal from the rack on the back of the pew and
thumbed through it until he found the song. Holding it out between them, he
smiled at Rebecca. She smiled back, then resumed looking forward. She didn’t
know the hymn, but it must have been familiar to the rest of the congregation
because they all sang. She hoped Chris wouldn’t notice that her lips remained
closed.

She didn’t sing as a rule, but her silence had the
added advantage of allowing her to hear Chris. He seemed as comfortable singing
in church as he did around the fire pit in the morning. She closed her eyes and
homed in on his voice—deep and rich. When his hand touched her back, she opened
her eyes.

Chris leaned into her, his brow wrinkled, and
whispered, “Don’t you sing?”

She shook her head, and then turned to watch as the
priest and some others adorned with colorful robes processed to the front of
the church. She only caught a glimpse, but the priest looked young, and Rebecca
thought it must be Chris’s friend Father John.

The music stopped, Chris slipped the hymnal back in
the rack, and the priest began to speak. They made the sign of the cross again.

She tried to push down the creeping discomfort, but
something about all the ritual struck her as cultish. Maybe it was because her
experience of worship in a cinder block hall differed drastically from this
experience.

Whereas the walls of her father’s church were plain
and unadorned, here there were murals and statues affixed to every surface.
Frescos and stained-glass windows pulled her attention in every direction. She
studied a scene from Matthew’s Gospel depicted in the window nearest her until
the creak of pews groaning under the weight of the congregants jolted her to
attention. She sat, too, and Chris took her hand and held it between them,
giving it a little squeeze.

Rebecca relaxed as a woman read from the Old
Testament. More singing, and again Chris placed the book between them, presumably
so she could sing along. She kept a small smile plastered to her face, but she
wouldn’t be cowed into singing. A reading from the New Testament followed, and
then everyone stood again, singing. She focused on the priest for the first
time as he read from one of the Gospels.

Her eyes widened and her chin dropped as she took
in the familiar features of the priest. Thank God Chris was beside her and
couldn’t see her reaction.

The priest’s short, light brown hair threatened to
curl if allowed to grow even a half inch longer. His pointed nose and strong
jaw gave him a look of authority despite his age. Although not near enough to
see his eyes, she knew they were green, and even reading from a text his
sonorous voice charmed her as it had that summer eight years ago. This was
Father John? Chris’s good friend—the man he thought of almost as a brother?
What were the odds?

Rebecca reeled in her thoughts and tried to focus
on the Bible passage when everyone spoke in unison again and took a seat. Up,
down, up, down. She thought she’d never catch up. As if she hadn’t had enough
time to focus on Father John already, he launched into his sermon. Rebecca had
to admit he was a gifted speaker. He had the rapt attention of everyone
there—quite a feat considering the mixture of old, young, and in between, men,
women, white, Hispanic, Asian. She’d never been amongst such a diverse group of
people.

Her mind drifted as Father John wrapped things up.
She remembered a seventeen-year-old boy, handsome, smooth, and confident. And
herself—a fifteen-year-old girl, plain, awkward, and shy. What that boy saw in
her, even for a moment, she didn’t know. Then again, she wasn’t sure what the
man next to her now saw in her either.

Chris gave her palm another little squeeze. “Okay?”
he whispered.

As she nodded, everyone rose to their feet again.
Still holding Chris’s hand, she stood. At least the next part she knew and knew
well—the collection basket, apparently the same the world over. More up and
down, then the Lord’s Prayer, in which she prattled on aloud when everyone else
had stopped. She clamped her lips shut as her cheeks heated. If Chris had
noticed her faux pas, he didn’t let on. The next song’s words were
indecipherable, and she concluded they were in a foreign language. More kneeling,
and then something else familiar: communion.

As the people in front of them rose and got in
line, Chris whispered, “Just wait here.” He sat back and raised the kneeler.

She put her hand on Chris’s arm to keep him from
climbing over top of her. “No, I’ll go.”

Standing now, he leaned down to her, his tone
gentle yet adamant. “You can’t. You don’t believe what we believe.”

An elderly lady at the end of the pew pressed
towards them, hobbling as she gripped the back of the pew in front of them for
support. With no time to discuss, Rebecca relented and twisted her knees to the
side, letting Chris and the woman pass, surprised to feel tears stinging her
eyes.

She slid forward onto the kneeler not because she
wanted to pray, but because there she could better hide her unshed tears behind
her hands. She listened as the singing began again, catching an occasional waft
of perfume as people passed by her on their way back to their seats. She
shouldn’t have come. The entire experience made her uncomfortable despite
Chris’s efforts to set her at ease. His command to stay in the pew only
confirmed she did not belong here.

I’m sorry, Lord. This was a
mistake.
One tear crept from her left eye, and she wiped it away when suddenly a sense
of peace washed over her, like a gentle wave receding into the ocean. She
heard, not with her ears, but with her heart: Home.

She didn’t know what to make of it, and in another
second, Chris returned and knelt beside her. She didn’t raise her head, but he
lifted a piece of her hair that had come loose from her braid and tucked it
behind her ear. She shivered as his breath caressed her neck. “I’m sorry. I’ll
explain after Mass.”

She gave the slightest nod so he would know she had
heard him, not really interested in talking about it later. Home. That was
where she wanted to go.  Maybe that was what the voice—God?—meant.

The whole weekend had been a mess. Not a bad mess,
but the kind of mess that left her out of sorts—scared one second, thrilled the
next. Chris’s presence amplified every feeling, and all the emotion had worn
her out.

They stood a final time, and Father John dismissed
them.

Chris ushered her out of the pew, guiding her with
his hand to the small of her back as they made their way to the back of the
church. As they passed through the double doors, she saw Father John greeting
everyone personally. Surely Chris would want to introduce her to him. She
needed to tell Chris now how she and Father John were acquainted if she wanted
to spare him any awkwardness. She had about five seconds before they would be
face to face.

“Chris, do you remember after Alan and Jamie’s
wedding, when you asked about my first kiss?”

His brow knit together and his eyes narrowed as he
struggled to understand why she would bring that up at this moment. “Yeah. You
said I was eight years too late.”

“Yes. Well, my first kiss . . .” She inhaled deeply
and let the rest out in a rush. “I kissed Father John.”