I worry that if I got any balls here, you would end up giving them away to the first kid who asked for them.
Tell Sean to get over it,
she fired back her response.
I smiled, imagining the expression I knew she would have had when she responded.
Father Sean looked over at me with a knowing smile.
“What? She’s funny sometimes.” I justified.
“She is,” he agreed.
We went back to watching the game, but I knew he was going to bring her up again.
“So, what’s the deal with you guys? Are you interested in her?”
I hadn’t expected him to flat out ask me that.
“Uh, no,” I said simply. “She’s not really my type, and clearly, I’m not her type; see current and previous guys she’s dated.”
“I’m getting lumped in with Ethan?” he said with feigned offense.
I shrugged, not denying the comparison.
“I like to think I have a little more personality than him.”
His openness surprised me.
“So then are you looking for someone?” he asked.
I raised an eyebrow at him. “To date?”
He nodded.
“Not really. You recruiting me for the priesthood right now?” I pushed back.
“Ha, yeah right,” he grinned. “I’m not saying it could never happen, Thomas, but I think you would need to come to church a little more often before the Dominicans started vetting you. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“I’m just offering to wingman. In a morally appropriate manner, of course.”
“Wow, that’s an interesting take on wing-manning if I ever heard one,” I replied unenthusiastically.
He could tell I doubted his ability.
“On your three o’clock there’re two brunettes who keep looking over here at us,” he said nonchalantly, proving his skill while maintaining his stare at the field.
I casually looked over and caught the eye of one of them, who smiled shyly at me before looking away and then giggling to her friend who not so casually turned her head and smiled directly at me, raising her cup to me. They looked to be about my age and were both attractive. Not wanting to be rude, I smiled and mimicked the gesture before taking a drink and then looked back at the game.
“I’m impressed you picked up on that,” I admitted.
“I’m celibate, not blind.”
We paused to watch Cano again, hoping it would lead to a run. It ended up being a fly ball sent to right and caught.
“So are you going to go talk to them?” he encouraged.
“And say what? My priest friend and I want to buy you a drink after the game?” I scoffed.
“You don’t have to tell them I’m a priest.”
“You telling me to lie, Father?”
He looked at me with frustration. I humored him briefly.
“So, let’s say we go out with them after the game. Then what? You’re not going to want me to go home with either of them. What’s the point?”
“You don’t know, you might end up really liking one of them and may decide to take her out on an actual date.”
“That’s cute,” I made light of his suggestion. My phone vibrated with another text from Maura. “But no thanks,” I said before reading her text.
If you can name all seven brothers without looking it up, I’ll give you a prize.
Maybe I was reading too much into it, but it seemed like she was flirting with me, in her own innocent Maura way. There was no way she would ever know if I looked it up or not, but I played fair. I began entering the names: Adam, Benjamin, Caleb, Daniel, Frank…
“You wouldn’t happen to know the E and G names of the brothers from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, would you?” I asked Father Sean.
He raised an eyebrow at me.
“Maura says she’ll give me a prize if I can name all seven,” I explained with amusement.
“You ever think there might be another reason why you’re not interested in talking to those girls?” Father Sean called me back into the conversation.
“Seriously? We just went over this. She’s a non-factor. I mean, unless the prize ends up being meaningless sex,” I joked.
I figured the off-color joke would make him want to protect Maura from me and move on from the subject. His expression told me that I was walking a thin line, which was the reaction I had intended.
“Ephraim and Gideon,” I declared aloud when the memory clicked. I couldn’t believe I remembered all seven without help.
Adam, Benjamin, Caleb, Daniel, Frank, Ephraim, Gideon.
Impulsively, I sent another text.
What’s my prize? It better be sexy.
I sent it purely because I knew it would fluster her. I returned to the conversation.
“You know you don’t want riff-raff like me interested in her anyway,” I argued.
“Fair enough,” he granted, and let it drop.
The game ended up being fairly exciting. The Red Sox tied it up in the seventh inning. I had stopped checking my phone for Maura’s response because the game was too interesting. The Mariners were down by one at the end of the eighth. Cruz ended the game in the bottom of the ninth with a walk off home run. Father Sean and I celebrated along with everyone around us as we watched the team gathering around Cruz when he reached home plate.
“Yes!” Father Sean exclaimed, clapping his hands together and smiling. “So glad they didn’t lose!”
He spoke like a true Mariner fan.
“You want to grab a beer?” Father Sean suggested as we headed out of the stadium.
“Sure.”
It was still surreal that hanging out with him one-on-one hadn’t been awkward. We found our way to a bar down the street, busy with other fans who’d had the same postgame idea as us. We were able to find a high-top cocktail table in the corner before the place became standing room only.
An attractive blonde waitress waited on us. She seemed quite taken with Father Sean, asking him questions about the game, touching his arm, laughing at his responses. After she had served us our drinks and was out of earshot, I finally asked the question I had been trying to fathom ever since I’d ever known about celibacy and the priesthood.
“So that doesn’t bother you?”
“What?”
I couldn’t tell if he was feigning cluelessness.
“The waitress clearly hitting on you. It doesn’t bother you when women do that?”
“Oh, here we go,” he grinned. “It’s the sex question. Frankly, Thomas, I expected you to hold out a little longer before asking,” he teased.
“Sorry,” I apologized half-heartedly but I still wanted an explanation.
“Nah, it’s fine. I’ve been hanging out with so many devout people who act like it’s not weird, that I haven’t been asked in a while.”
He paused.
“So what do you want to know?” he threw it back to me.
I wasn’t sure where to start.
“How?”
“How what?”
If I was going to be nosy, he was going to make me work for it.
“How can you not?”
Considering how good-looking the waitress was, I knew if she had flirted with me like she had with him, I would’ve happily taken her home with me, given the chance.
“Let me ask you this,” he started, “when was the last time you had sex?”
I paused trying to think of when Natalie had left for Spring break.
“A little over a month ago.”
“Okay, fair enough. And have you thought about sex since then?”
I wondered if this was a trap and he was somehow tricking me into saying a confession without being at church.
“Ye
s,” I said hesitantly.
“Did it prevent you from being able to function in your everyday life?”
“No, but it’s only been a little over a month, not…”
“Six years,” he filled in the timeline for me.
I let out a heavy sigh thinking how hard six years without sex would be.
“No one ever died from not having sex. Our ability to exercise self-control is what separates us from animals. I’m not saying there aren’t days when I think about it or want it. Of course, that’s natural. But I made the choice to commit to something else, and it doesn’t kill me to abstain. I imagine it’s like giving up smoking; you’re always going to want a cigarette, but after a while, it just becomes more of a habit not to smoke, and you don’t put yourself in situations where you’re more likely to engage in the habit.”
“So no strip club after this?” I joked.
“From what I remember, the strippers aren’t allowed to have sex with you,” he quipped back, letting me know he wasn’t as innocent as I thought he was.
“So, just so we’re clear...you have had…” I paused.
“Sex?” he laughed. “Really, Thomas, you going prude on me now? Yes, I have gotten laid before. Probably too much for my own good.”
“So why give it up?”
“Because I wanted to be a priest more than I wanted to get married and have sex,” he said simply.
“Once again, so I’m clear, you have had sex before? Are you sure you weren’t just having really bad sex?”
He shook his head and looked amused at my inability to grasp the possibility of wanting something more than sex.
“Man, I don’t know how else to explain it to you. I know it doesn’t make sense to most, but that’s just how it is.”
“I mean, it would make more sense to me if you had never done it, or like, if you were really awkward or bad-looking...but…” I sighed, unable to finish my point, so instead I took a drink of beer. “I mean, was Maura that bad of a girlfriend?”
He laughed.
“No, honestly she was probably the best girlfriend I ever had,” Father Sean reflected. “We bickered a lot, but I could’ve easily married her.”
“Then why?”
He shrugged, knowing once again it wasn’t going to make sense to me.
“After making many poor decisions at Notre Dame and a few years after college, I came back to the Church when my dad was diagnosed with cancer and died four months later. By the time I moved to Seattle for grad school, the priesthood had crossed my mind more than a few times, which I shook off as completely unrealistic, given my past. I didn’t think I was capable of it. And then I met Maura. Being with her just made me…” He paused, looking unsure how to continue. “It’s hard to explain without sounding cheesy, but she just has a way of making people realize how unconditional and compassionate God’s love is for them. It’s like she looks at people and only sees potential.”
I let his words sink in, considering whether she’d had that effect on me.
“Isn’t that exactly the type of woman guys like you want to marry?” I challenged, thinking I was owed an explanation for her sake.
He took a drink and nodded as he swallowed, appearing to have thought over the question many times before.
“I know, I know,” he admitted. “Like I said, it doesn’t make sense.”
He paused.
“Man, I got so close to buying a ring, putting a down payment on a house; but when I thought about marrying her, the parts I was most excited about had nothing to do with her. It was all about how much service we were going to do together. And I started noticing that the time I felt most complete and the most at peace weren’t the times when I was with her. It was at church, by myself. Yeah, it’s good to have a strong personal faith, but not to the point where your spouse becomes a complete afterthought. It wouldn’t have been fair to her,” he confessed.
“The unfortunate thing is that Maura is so loving and loyal that she probably would have let me be a shitty, distracted husband, just as she let me be a shitty, distracted boyfriend for the last half of our relationship. Thankfully, I had just enough sense of selflessness to know that my own fears and reservations about being a priest weren’t enough let her end up in a crappy marriage that she didn’t deserve.”
It still didn’t make sense to me, but I doubted he would be able to explain it more sufficiently.
After a moment passed he said, “What can I say? Sometimes you don’t know what you need or want until you’re brave enough to honestly consider a possibility that terrifies you.”
His statement resonated with me. I wasn’t sure why. Potentially, it was the amount of conviction he’d said it with. We went back to drinking our beers and watching the highlights of the game being played on the TVs above the bar. The bar gradually got louder and busier. It was a rare night when both the Sounders and the Mariners had played at home, which explained the crowd.
“Shop Boy!” I heard someone call in our direction.
I didn’t think it was directed at me, until I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to see the intern from Maura’s work, Ashland, standing in front of me. She was wearing a Sounders T-shirt, which she had tied in the back so that it fit more tightly in the front. Her navel piercing was revealed by her low-cut jeans. I noticed for the first time the stud in her nose. Her long dark hair was up in a ponytail.
“Thomas!” she exclaimed.
“Hello,” I said politely but with less enthusiasm.
“What’re you doing here?” she demanded.
“Just grabbing a beer after the Mariners game.” I lifted my glass to show her. “You?”
“The Sounders won, so we thought we’d come celebrate,” she yelled over the noise, putting her drink down on our table. She rested her hand on my shoulder, moving her face close to mine to talk into my ear.
“I saw you when we walked in, and my friends totally dared me to come talk to you,” she giggled as she stepped back.
Ashland was clearly tipsy, if not drunk. I was surprised by her overt friendliness, because she had never said much to me before. Then again, there had been a couple of times when I’d caught her checking me out at the youth center.
“Hi, I’m Ashland,” she exclaimed, holding out her hand to Father Sean.
“Sean,” he shook her hand. He left his title off.
“You look familiar,” she said, squinting, trying to place his face.
“He volunteers at the youth center, too. Ashland is the graduate intern at the center,” I explained to Father Sean.
She continued to stare at him. Then her eyes grew wide in revelation. “Oh my God! You’re the priest!” she exclaimed loudly, taking a step into me and leaning against my arm.
Father Sean just nodded.
“Wait, you’re allowed to go to bars?” she asked naively. She turned to me. “That’s crazy,” she proclaimed, looking for my agreement.
I made eye contact with Father Sean, confirming that he also thought she was a little out of it.
“Yep, it is pretty crazy,” I agreed with her, unable to keep from smiling.
“So, Mr. Man-chanic, are you like, religious, too?” she asked disdainfully.
“Not particularly,” I was honest. I was certain this would not be new or upsetting information to Father Sean.
She took another drink.
“Did you just call me ‘Man-chanic’?” I laughed.
“That’s what I call you behind your back, because you’re hot,” she confessed freely.
“I guess it’s better than ‘Grease Monkey.’”
“And I call you Father What-A-Waste,” she said looking over at Father Sean. “No offense, but you’re like, way hotter without the dress,” she referenced his Dominican robes that he was not wearing.
He smiled, more amused by her inebriated
state than offended.
“I totally was going to try and hook my friend up with you before I knew who you were.”
She pointed to the corner at a group of young people in Sounders gear. The woman she looked to be pointing at was making out with a guy.
“It looks like your friend already found someone to hook up with. God must’ve been looking out for her,” Father Sean reflected dryly.
It was funny to see Ashland trying to figure out how serious he was.
“Whelp, I better get going before I get in trouble with the Archbishop. He sometimes does sweeps of the bars on Saturday nights,” Father Sean continued his sarcasm. “Wouldn’t want the Pope to find out I’ve been having fun. You know how it goes,” he sighed.
He stepped over to me while Ashland was distracted by her drink. He knew a good wingman never lingered longer than needed.
“I’m trusting that you will make gentlemanly choices,” he said, grabbing my shoulder firmly. I assured him with a nod.
“Thanks for the beer. I’ll see you at Ravenna on Thursday. Have a good night.” He eyed me severely, further communicated his expectations that I not take advantage of Ashland.
“Ashland, good to officially meet you.” He shook her hand before leaving us alone.
“So, you’re a Sounders fan?”
“Um, yes, clearly,” she said emphatically. “It’s a superior sport to boring old baseball, obviously.”
I dramatically dropped my mouth open.
“How can you say that, Ashland? Baseball is America’s pastime. Soccer is for communists. Then again, aren’t you studying social work? That would make sense,” I joked.
“Pfft, baseball is for pussies,” she exclaimed. “No offense.”
She seemed to think that phrase would allow her to get away with saying anything she wanted. She took another sip of her drink.
“How about you tell me exactly why soccer is better than baseball?” I invited.
“It’s fast and it’s rough.” She raised an eyebrow at me, driving home her innuendo.
“That must be why I like baseball. I think scoring is a lot more satisfying when you can take your time.” I held eye contact with her for a moment, showing that I also could make innuendos.
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