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. Wi
th 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.
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