“It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t want me.”
A car honked at him, and he realized he was stopped in the street, fists clenched so hard the creases were white. And great, he was in his clerical collar and was about to lose his shit in the middle of the street. Somehow he’d thought that there would be more joy in following God’s call. More joy and peace, less angry cursing on the streets of Washington.
He got to the curb and pulled out his phone. The church secretary answered his call, and he asked her to bring the casseroles to the homeless shelter near the church and assured her that even though he’d left early, the bulletins were ready to be printed and folded.
Then he added, “Oh, and Mrs. Donna? Don’t mention the casseroles to Mrs. Webster. Thank you so much. Bye!”
He changed direction to head towards his little row house apartment. He might not have taken home the casseroles but he had a bottle of scotch he’d been saving for something. Proverbs 31:6. “Give strong drink to the one who is perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress.”
“Jesus, please don’t let that be my life verse.” Divinity school, his pastors only listservs, that one dumb Facebook group—they were rife with stories of folks whose ministries were destroyed by their coping mechanisms. Simply being pushed towards marriage—again—was hard, but seeing her today? He was shook.
And he had to preach tomorrow.
KIM JONES STOOD in the middle of a protest, chants going on all around her, and dropped her sign.
“Hey, watch it!”
Great, she’d almost impaled her protest buddy. “Sorry, so sorry.” She abandoned the sign she’d made with such great enjoyment and pushed her way towards the organizer of the protest. Mrs. Janice was still wiping away tears.
There he was, crossing the street, wearing a clerical collar.
“Mrs. Janice, who was that?”
“You know, I didn’t get his name, but he said he was the pastor at Mt. Zion Presbyterian, just down the street. Whoever he is, he is a powerful man of prayer. Who…” Her voice trailed off. “Who apparently can’t cross the street.”
The powerful man of prayer almost walked in front of a turning car and then took several tries before he hit the button to change the light.
Leonard fucking West.
She’d heard he was in Washington, but she’d figured he’d be at a big church in the suburbs climbing the pastoral ladder of success with a willing wife and a kid or two by now. Maybe a token associate pastor at a majority white church. Okay, that was kinda bitter, and slightly hypocritical considering her continued position at the Department of Labor was optics-based, at least on the current administration’s part. But she did not expect to see him at a church in a struggling neighborhood.
She watched him until his figure was lost in the busy city landscape. She still knew the way he walked, the swing of his arms, the length of his stride. Her heart was racing, but at least her hands were steady. And then she jumped when someone lightly touched her arm. “Sorry, Kim—we’re moving on. I got your sign, but it looks like it got stepped on a few times.”
“Thanks for getting it, anyway.” She followed the crowd mechanically, joining in the chants while her stomach roiled and her heart beat overtime. She’d told herself if she ever did see him again, she could play it cool. They hadn’t met again, per se, but she had definitely not been cool. He’d seen it, too. Seeing him again, unexpectedly like that, she rejected metaphor after metaphor. Of course it was a punch to the gut. Just one that didn’t mean anything or hurt. Yeah, it was like ripping off a bandaid. Not finding that a healed over wound was still septic and tender. She wouldn’t come up this way again, and it would be fine.
Her life had enough mess in it as it was, working for this administration and convincing people she still had a soul. Damn if she was gonna let her country self-destruct without a fight. So when the current administration had taken over, she'd buttoned up her cardigans over her Black Lives Matter t-shirt, took very careful notes, and hoped four years would go quickly. And when that asshole was voted out or even better, impeached, she'd emerge victorious with vindication and clear documentation that she'd been fighting for the preservation of the rights of workers. It sounded good, even if the day-to-day work wasn’t quite as glamorous.
HER MOM HAD LAUGHED and called her Esther when she she'd explained her plans to stay. Her little brother still hadn't forgiven her. Her dad was more pragmatic. “You gave up the love of your life for this. You'd better get that money.”
“Dad!” she'd protested. “It was never about the money. Never! And I didn't chose a career over Leonard. He chose his career over me.”
Right. She didn’t need Leonard or any drama connected to him. She didn’t need space to process. She was totally cool.
CHAPTER 2
K im was so cool and composed, that’s why she almost didn’t keep her supper date that night with her best friend from grad school. They’d met through alumnae meetings of their shared sorority, and so Delia had been the one who’d listened to Kim bitch and moan about Leonard all her first year. They’d always kept in touch, but during the current regime, with Delia working for a coalition of labor unions and Kim at the Department of Labor, their regular friend-dates gave Kim an opportunity to gauge responses and realities of the new policies sent down by the White House.
Officially, though, they were just sorority sisters and grad school friends getting together.
Oh, okay. Delia was dressed in red pants, a black shirt, a red cardigan. Her current hairstyle was an Afro, held back with a headband. Her heels were red patent leather and about six inches high.
Kim inhaled sharply and let the breath out slowly. Okay. No one was gonna forget seeing Delia.
She maybe hugged Delia a little too hard.
“Honey, are you okay?” Delia asked “I haven’t seen you this wound up since election night.”
“I want to be but I’m not. D, I saw him today.”
“Who did you see, baby?” Delia’s voice was low and slow, like she was working out her schedule to avenge Kim and hide the body. “That guy you’ve been talking to online? Is he a problem?”
“No, I wish that was it. No, Leonard. You remember him, he—”
“How could I forget?” Delia interjected dryly. “I thought we would be able to make Lake Leo outta all the tears you cried.”
“Yeah, okay. Well, I saw him today. He’s in the District! I mean, up Georgia Avenue! I thought if I stayed away from Presbyterian churches I’d never have to see him again.”
Delia scooted her chair over and gave Kim’s shoulders another squeeze. “Sweetheart, we’ve gone over all this before. You don’t owe that sumbitch anything, and you certainly shouldn’t give him this much of your emotions. He made his choice.” She patted Delia’s head, moved her chair back to normal, and opened the menu briskly. “So look, we’re gonna order, you’re gonna tell me about your week in the Department, I’m gonna cuss, and we’ll forget you ever saw him, okay? How’s your mom doing?”
So they chatted about life until the server arrived with the menu. They decided to split a chicken pesto pizza. While they waited for it to arrive, Delia updated Kim on her always interesting personal life.
Delia took her first bite. “Dang, this is good. I can always count on you to pick the best restaurants. Okay, so I know you have work updates to talk about, and your little weekend protests sound great, and we’re ignoring he-that-shall-not-be-named, but I gotta hear more about this guy—the new one. You found like a black Christian Mingle app? And used it?”
“I couldn't take another dick pic, and I figured it’d be better odds just to start with black men. It took me long enough to be ready to date again, I didn’t want to wait for longer. And yeah, I've been chatting with a guy on there. He seems really great. He's a new professor at UMCP, he's funny, and he doesn't mind that I like The Rock. But I don’t think it’s big deal. I’m not like, standing by my phone to be there for every message. But I enjoy our conver
sations.” She certainly preferred the placid enjoyment she found in their banter to the gut-punch of seeing Leonard.
“He can handle your bizarre obsession with The Rock? He really might be The One! So y'all are gonna meet soon?”
“I mean, I’m not sure I’m looking for The One, just trying to get my feet wet, but yeah, we’re gonna go to church together tomorrow.”
“You are so Christian. First date at church? You know I was glad I was there for you when you were getting over Leonard, but I never did understand why you didn't want to be a pastor's wife.”
“I never told you about my aunt? The one that stays by my mom and dad? Her ex-husband was a pastor. He started a church. Then he cheated on her with a younger parishioner, got her pregnant—and the church sided with him! She said she could never get pregnant but people asked her about it all the time, and it never stopped hurting and he never said anything to the congregation. Anyway, that’s a situation I don’t ever wanna be in, where a church thinks they own you and your uterus, and then don’t even care about you. My ex-uncle is STILL the pastor at that church.” She’d been eleven when her aunt had come over crying while she rolled her suitcase up the driveway. It was the first time she’d heard her mom cuss. That was enough.
Delia listened wide-eyed. “Okay. I can see that.”
“Thank you. I never doubted my reasons.” And then Kim lowered her voice and shared the information from this week of work—yes, the president was trying to relax regulations and imperil the lives of the working class. “Now, I don't know if that's actually going to make it out of the White House. My friend there is definitely gonna try to stall. And I've already looked up all these relevant cases, and I don’t think the president will have a shot in court. But I needed to tell you so you all were ready and not scrambling. And you can reassure your local chapters.”
“Oh my God. Who the fuck does this guy think he is? Does he know what this will do to the dumb fucks who voted for him? What does he think is going to happen to those small businesses when all their employees die? Mother fucker.”
“Delia. Shhh. I mean I totally agree. But that waiter is awfully close.”
“Fuck the waiter.” Her hands went to her hair and she went straight to the roots and squeezed. “Shit. I can't afford to lose any more hair.” She put her chin in the air and ground the back of her neck into her shoulders.
Kim noticed the waiter checking out the line of Delia’s throat. She reached out and patted her on the back. “Deels, it’s gonna be alright. You all have really great lawyers, and a lot of judiciary aren't in line with his agenda. And you won't be taken by surprise. You can assemble stories of the ones that would be the most affected. You've got a great PR team, just use them.”
Delia took her hands out of her hair, slowly folded them on her lap, and looked at Kim with stark eyes. “I just don't know how you can stay on with his administration, K, I really don't. He's like a walking, talking, pus-ridden cancer who only cares about himself or his businesses and his racism. I hate him so much.”
Kim took a deep breath. It wasn't the first time, it wouldn't be the last. She started out calmly. “Listen D. I stay so I can do things like this. Be a safe outlet for worried people inside the White House. Keep reminding the American public about conditions of laborers. Get the secretary to make the best possible decisions. There's not very many people left who aren't rubber-stamp-pro-business. I know they kept me because my skin color looks good on their graphics. I know it. But I'm gonna stay for as long as I can to do the most good —or prevent the most harm. And you're gonna thank me, I promise you.” She finished in a hissing angry whisper that sent their waiter back a few steps.
Delia raised her eyebrows and blinked. Three times. “Well, okay then. Still little Miss Sacrifice.” She caught the eye of the waiter and beckoned him over with a chin raise. “It’s okay, man. She's not gonna do anything scary. Can I get a dessert menu, please?”
“D.” Kim’s heart was still beating fast. Weeks and months of being doubted and questioned by people who knew her, who knew her hopes and dreams and values and yet still questioned her, had finally come to a head, and her good friend had received the brunt of it. “I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have gone off on you like that. I'm just so tired. I go to work and it's toxic, and when I go back home everybody questions me. Even that guy online asked me what I was doing.”
Delia laughed. “It's okay, hon. We all have bad days, and this is a bad one for me, hearing this. I shouldn't have laid it on you. But I hope you told your old professor what he can do with his questions.”
Kim managed a smile. “As a matter of fact, I did. And he still wanted to keep talking.” She reached into her purse. “In fact, let me see if he’s got anything to say right now.” She’d come here full of fear and doubt (and denial, but who’s counting), but she’d forgotten how Delia could settle her down, give her the push to move on and take hold of the things she could control.
“Ooh, go find out which dessert here is the best.”
Kim’s phone turned on with a cacophony of alerts. Her breath caught. There was an alert from the dating app—a new message. She read the message and went completely still.
“Hey. K. You stopped breathing. You gonna breathe again?”
She just pushed the phone over to Delia for an answer.
Delia read the message on the screen aloud. “‘Want to meet me at 10:00 at Pan Lourdes on Georgia for donuts before we go to church? It's right up the street from my church. Church is at 10:30, if you'd rather just meet me there. It's Mt. Zion Presbyterian.’ Donuts before church? That sounds great.”
“It’s—that’s—that's his church.”
“Of course, it's his church.”
“No. I mean that's Leonard's church. That’s what he told Janice from the protest. I mean my ex-boyfriend is my dating app guy’s pastor. He was so great and seemed so mature, and he talks about how much he loves his pastor, how much he'd been influenced by him. They’re probably the same age! They play basketball together. God, I can't believe it. All the churches in this town, and I find the brother that's going to his. Gahhhhhh.”
“Oh honey.” Delia was scrolling up with one hand while she reached out and squeezed Kim’s hand with the other. “Shit, y'all were talking a lot! And whew! He is quite handsome. What did you say he did?”
“He's a new professor at UMCP. I hope he has a nice life.”
“Hey, I’d help with that.”
“If you want some donuts, be my guest.”
“Let me check out the desserts here for now.” Delia patted her on the back.
“Okay. You order so I can settle the check. I've lost my appetite.” Yeah, Delia could ground her, but then Leonard could destroy her peace again. Fucking Leonard West. She hoped he spilled the communion wine on the communion bread tomorrow.
CHAPTER 3
L eonard did not spill any part of the Lord’s Supper or preach drunk that Sunday—had it really been yesterday he’d seen Kim? He did have extra coffee and some ibuprofen. He’d made his way through the service on autopilot, thanking God that he’d been diligent in his sermon prep so he wasn’t desperately scrambling to prepare the night before when he wasn’t even sure he felt like he believed his message and wasn’t maybe entirely sober to boot.
He knew he was saying the right things. But even though he was in personal turmoil—again! in a way he hadn’t been for years—the mechanical motions of liturgy seemed to be enough. Maybe God works whether or not I want to do the work.
Feeling, to his surprise, confident, he finished, “And I want you to know, beloved, I am preaching this to myself most of all. When life is too hard, when all your choices seem awful, when the world is against you, what we want to hear is that something of the world will fix it, that this one special thing will make it better, or just doing things good enough or hard enough—you folks who live out in the suburbs, calling your representatives every day will not make everything right—but continue to follow your conscien
ces.
“But I'm here to tell you that though we may not be triumphant in this world, that when our best efforts are not enough, when our faith wavers, when our hearts fall, when our world turns upside down—again—Jesus is enough. And he never wavers in his love for us, and he catches our hearts, and we know—he will wipe every tear from our eyes, and bring total justice and healing in the final days. And we know this because we know he died for us to counter the cost of sin, and we know this because he rose again, and beat the oppressor death. He is for us, he loves us, and he will keep us. Hallelujah.”
An old lady stood up in the back and clapped.
They sang a hymn, and then holding his hands up, Leonard blessed the congregation. “The love of God, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.”
He walked down the center aisle to the church doors to greet the people as they left. He managed to fend off a couple of invitations to lunch from dear kind church people who would be exhausting, met a few visitors, and then grabbed a friend who'd walked past with just a handshake.
Instead of ending the handshake Leonard pulled him in. “Hey Jamal, you have lunch plans now.”
Jamal shook his head. “Man, I don't really feel like it.”
Jamal was Leonard’s favorite new member. In the year or so since he’d started his job at UMCP, they’d become fast friends. As an academic, he didn’t hold Leonard in a position of respect that forswore intimacy, so they played basketball together, watched and debated TV shows and movies, talked through theology books, and quietly drank together.
Leonard knew it was a rare gift to find someone to whom he could be pastor and friend. He lowered his voice. “Yeah, me neither, but you gotta help me or I'll be lying to Mrs. Henry, Mrs. Webster and the entire singles ministry.” He took a closer look at Jamal. “Man, you do look awful. You wanna talk to your pastor about it?”
Rogue Desire: A Romance Anthology (The Rogue Series) Page 27
