I nodded, my stomach jumbling. What was he telling me? To back off? Had he read my thoughts? I was mortified that my actions had given my private fantasies life. I backed slowly toward the door.
For a moment, he just watched me. Then he grabbed his coat and slung it over his arm and came toward me. He opened the door and held it while I passed by him. I stole another deep breath and filled myself with his scent before the cold, afternoon air hanging in the halls outside chilled me.
He locked the classroom and we started down the corridor in silence. I was a muddle of hurt, confusion and frustration. He was unlike anyone I’d ever known. When he spoke to us about music, I felt the love and passion he had as if he held me in his arms and passed that love and passion to me through an embrace. His voice lifted my spirit. His face… I glanced at him as we walked side by side.
He looked like one of those beautiful, marble statues you might find in a museum or somewhere in a dark corner of a church.
“Are you religious?” I asked.
His eyes were clear as a stream, and rippled into a smile. “That’s an introspective question. What makes you ask it?”
“Something about you… you kind of look it.”
His hearty laugh swirled through the empty hall before filling me. “How does one look religious?”
“I don’t know. You just remind me of a marble statue I might see at church.”
“Marble? That hardly invokes feelings of warmth and invitation.”
“I mean, you look like one of those statues.”
“Do you go to church Eden?”
I shook my head, watching to see if he found my honesty a turn off. “You?”
He nodded. “That’s where I started singing. My mother was our choir director.”
“Cool.” I could see him in a white robe with a big, round red collar, his angelic voice clearly above everyone else’s. “You had the best voice, I bet.”
“Mom always thought so.” His grin deepened. “Music has its roots in religion. I got a steady diet of both growing up.”
“So, where do you go to church?” I was already planning to go there.
He stopped at the joint in the hall that led to the faculty offices. For a moment he looked at me as if considering my question. “All Saints Church down in the Riv.”
“Non-denominational?”
“Yeah. I’ve got that meeting.”
“Oh. Sure.” I started toward the parking lot. “Bye.”
“See you tomorrow.”
I strained to hear his footsteps even with my back turned but they vanished after seven steps.
•••
It rained that night. The pattering sound drowned out Stacey’s useless chattering on her cell phone as she walked through the house on her nightly bragging session to her friends about her latest purchases.
I took off in my car and headed down to the Riv. The hollowness I carried yearned. I thought about Mr. Christian when he first told us about classical music being more satisfying and scanned the radio for a classical station because I didn’t own anything but pop.
I’d listened to enough in class that the repulsive reaction I’d had initially was nearly gone now. As I drove down PV Drive, I tried to listen to the melody, like he’d taught us to. The violins were strong, like a wind blowing through trees. Cellos snaked a deeper harmony along the base of those trees. In my mind, I saw a dark forest. When I heard tinkling bells, I imagined the leaves on the trees shimmering with the sound.
The song took me right to Mr. Christian’s house and I slowed as I drove by, peering through the rain at the darkened cottage. His car was nowhere in sight. But then he could very well have parked it in the garage.
Still, the place looked empty.
I wondered where he could be. Some churches held meetings on weeknights. I knew that much from kids who weren’t my friends but whom I’d heard talking about it.
I drove to the address of All Saints I had looked up in the white pages. The building was on the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Redondo Beach Boulevard.
A handful of cars were in the parking lot—though I didn’t see his—and a few people were going inside so I parked. He could have parked somewhere else, like on the street. He could be inside. My nerves skittered.
I had no idea if Mr. Christian had church meetings on Thursday nights, but the creamy-colored church with its spirals pointing to heaven, its stained glass shooting colors of hope into the rainy night, drew me.
It was warm inside and smelled of oiled wood and paper. I hadn’t worn a coat. Like every teenager, I saw the practical umbrella as taboo. My skirt and top were drenched with rainwater.
Standing in the dark-wood foyer, I shivered. Low lights from black sconces mellowed the room. A wooden stand held a stack of programs so I took one. It had the church itinerary for the week.
Organ music seeped heavily through the open doors and into the foyer where I stood. I walked into the chapel to find a smattering of people sitting in random pews, listening to the music.
An older man played.
One look around and I knew James Christian was not there. Still, I wasn’t disappointed. The music was doing just as he’d said it would, filling the hollowness inside of me.
For a moment, I stood in the back and listened. This melody was heavy, and moved like a herd of horses at a full run. The organ added drama with its warbling notes. I decided to stay, even if Mr. Christian wasn’t there. This was his church after all, and he walked here.
Sliding into the last row, I sat, shivering. The inside of the building looked relatively plain and simple as far as churches went. The only church I’d ever been to was the Catholic church where Dad had Mom’s funeral. He’d taken me there for three months after, said we needed it.
No one spoke now. Everyone listened to the old man play, his body moving like a wave at the organ. It was freeing being there, not knowing anyone. Not caring if anyone saw me or what they thought because I was there.
I could see why people went to church.
Leaning back against the bench, I closed my eyes. Song after song played. Most of them had the sound of classical music but the shortened verses were that of their cousins, hymns.
What were the words?
Had Mr. Christian written any hymns?
My clothes slowly began to pull away from my skin as they dried. Still damp, they kept my flesh too chilled to fall into deep relaxation. I wanted to sleep. The music echoing off the tall walls and stained glass windows lulled and warmed me from the inside out.
“Eden?”
My eyes shot open. My heart pounded. James Christian stood in the aisle next to the pew in which I sat.
I sat up. “Hey.”
“What are you doing here?” Confusion mixed with something else I couldn’t read on his face.
I hadn’t thought through what I would say if I were to see him. My mind tumbled with stupid replies. Because I was in a church, I tried honesty. “I wanted to see your church.”
He blinked, surprise on his face then. “Wow.” He glanced around, so I did too. Some parishioners were watching us. I wasn’t sure if it was because we were talking, interrupting the music, or because they knew him. I slid over, making room for him. For a minute he looked as if debating the idea of sitting. Then he sat next to me.
The heat of his body electrified me. His cologne mixed with the smell of rain. Unlike me, he’d used an umbrella. He held it clutched in his left hand and now it dripped onto the carpet strip beneath our feet, wetting the red plush to blood.
“I hope that’s okay,” I said, not wanting to offend him.
“Of course it’s okay,” his voice dropped to a whisper.
I shuddered when he leaned close so our voices would remain intimate. “Church is for everyone, any time.”
“I just wanted to see it.” I stretched out as I had been when he’d found me. My arm brushed his. “The last time I was in church was for my mother’s funeral.”
I felt
his gaze on me even though I kept mine on the organist.
“I’m sorry.”
His soft tone almost opened an old well I had purposefully sealed shut. Tears started but I blinked them back. Sorrow was on his face. “It was a long time ago,” I said.
“Not that long for a girl in need of a mother.”
He was so insightful. “You’re right.”
“This is a good place to come think of her,” he said.
“I hadn’t been thinking of her at all.”
A line formed between his brows. “I’m sorry if the suggestion brings you pain.”
“It doesn’t.” His face was so serious. I sat back up. “It was a long time ago. Yes, I have moments when I think of her and when I do, it hurts. But I don’t dwell on it. I can’t.”
That was real hell.
I faced forward.
“You’re soaked.”
“I didn’t have an umbrella.”
“I can see that.” His gaze traveled the length of my body and I shivered again. Instantly, he took off his coat.
“Here, take this.”
My mouth fell open. Eyeing the elbow-patched coat, everything inside of me leapt with the eagerness of putting it on. I slipped my arm into the warm sleeve as if I was putting on the Pope’s robes. Enveloped in his warmth, I wanted to close my eyes and revel in his scent warming my nose, filling my head. “Thank you.”
“You can’t get sick being wet and cold,” he leaned forward, his elbows resting on the back of the bench in front of us, “but you can be miserable.”
There was no misery in me anywhere with his coat wrapped around me. “Why are you here?” I asked.
“Oh. I work with a group of wayward youth once a week. I teach them to sing, no surprise there.”
“Don’t you ever do anything for fun?”
His eyes flickered in the soft light. “It is fun.”
“Aren’t the kids kind of hopeless?”
“Not at all. In fact, a lot of them have more hope after learning to sing and appreciate music.”
I shrugged, hugged his coat around me, his body warmth now dissolving into mine. “You smell good.”
His face broke into a smile. He reached up and loosened his tie with a glance around before he looked at me again. “You say it like it is.”
“Shouldn’t I?”
“Maybe. But I’m your teacher.”
“So what? We’re in a church. As far as I know, that’s neutral ground. Here, we’re two people—an eighteen year old and a twenty-one year old. That’s all.”
He pinched his lips and didn’t say anything for a long moment. “That’s not all, Eden and you know it.” For a thick while we stared at each other. Then he leaned a little closer. “I could get in trouble spending time with you.”
“You’re not spending time. You happened to run into me here. It was a coincidence.”
“Was it?”
A knob formed in my throat. I reminded myself where I was. God would hate me lying to this beautiful, church-going man. “Okay. I came here because…” I couldn’t believe I was going to admit the truth. But the light in his face made me unable to lie. “I wanted to see your church. And if you happened to be in it, that would be cool too.”
The long emptiness between us was punctuated by the silence now hollowing the chapel because the organist had finished.
Mr. Christian stared at me.
Heart pounding, I met his stare equally. I did care about him. I liked who he was, what he did for me and for other people. I didn’t know where he had been, but I wanted to. I had no idea where he was going, but I wanted to know and more than that, I wanted to go there.
“Eden…”
I braced for a brush off. As fantasies went, this one was beyond anything I had ever dreamed up, and inside, I fought the impossibility of it continuing.
“I know what it sounds like.” I hoped to stop him from saying the words that would hurt me. “And it’s true. Crap, see what being in a church does to me? It’s like some truth serum.”
He bowed his head and more silence stretched between us. I wanted to touch him.
“I’m sorry if I put you in an uncomfortable position,”
I said. “That’s the last thing I’d want. I can’t lie, though.”
Feeling tears start, I blinked fast and sat up, tugging off his jacket. I held it in my arms, running my hand over the elbow patches.
“I like this coat,” I said because he still hadn’t said anything and that hollow inside of me was opening again. “It was the first thing I noticed about you.”
When his head lifted, there was distress in his eyes. I bit my lower lip, feeling guilty that I had somehow brought that to him. His gaze fell to my mouth and the veil of anguish vanished. His eyes sharpened, his jaw drew tight.
I took a deep breath and held the jacket out. “I really am sorry.”
He took the jacket from my hands, our eyes locked in something silent I didn’t understand. I stood and after a moment, he did as well.
Then he lifted his umbrella. “Take this. It’s still raining.”
I touched his warm fingers when I took the umbrella but he didn’t release it to me. Our hands remained joined as securely as our eyes. I had thought I’d shared hot moments with Matt. Nothing had ever felt like this, searing my bones, melting me from the inside out.
“Thank you.”
At home, I stood out in the rain, looking up into the rounded coves of the black umbrella. The smile on my face would not leave me. Water dripped from every sharp point and onto the stones of our driveway, sounding as if millions of fingertips pattered against the taut, black fabric to get my attention.
I had used the umbrella like he’d told me and stayed protected from the rain during my dash to my car from the church. I was dry now, with the exception of my legs, splattered with water.
Euphoria forced me to kick at the puddles forming around my feet. I was dry because of his umbrella. In my head, I saw his face and I closed my eyes, reaching for the intense look he’d had when desire had dissolved the distress on his face. He wanted me. I knew desire, I’d seen it plenty of times in the eyes of boys that wanted me.
James Christian wanted me.
I stopped kicking puddles, stunned from the revelation.
Away from the reverent confines of the church, my mind easily wandered to the forbidden fantasy of the two of us. And at that moment, I didn’t care that I had shared a portion of my feelings with him. Someone had to start things. Though I doubted he would ever reciprocate, it was freeing knowing that he knew how I felt.
The front door swung open, sending a ray of golden light right where I stood. Stacey looked at me.
“What are you doing?”
“Staying dry.”
“Getting wet is more like it. You going to come in sometime tonight?”
“Maybe.” I was under James’ protection as long as I stayed underneath the umbrella. I didn’t want to go inside.
She let out one of her, you’re-a-strange-girl-and-I-don’t-care-if-I-don’t-understand-you sighs and shut the door. The beam of light drowned in the rain.
Chapter Ten
I debated keeping the umbrella. It sat in my bedroom in the corner like a prized idol. I stared at the black contraption as I dressed for school the next day.
One of his possessions. In my house.
Catching my reflection in the mirror, I almost laughed.
You sound ridiculous. It’s just an umbrella. He probably has dozens of them. Stacey did. Dad did.
I had none.
I took it to school with me, holding it against my body like an infant as I walked the hall toward Concert Choir.
He would hate it if anyone saw me hand it to him, so I kept it tucked under my arm.
Chopin played from the CD player and a few students were already in their seats. Immediately, I searched for him. He was at the piano, minus his elbow-patched jacket, wearing a soft green shirt and a dark tie with his khakis. He was
talking to some kids. My heart started to skip. I took in a deep breath.
I quickly crossed to the office where I would collect the day’s music. I stashed the umbrella by his coat, which he’d hung over a chair that was kept in the small space for utility use. My fingers lingered over the corduroy, traveling to the plaid patches. I smiled.
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