She hadn’t realized that her intent attention on Michael had caused him to read her scrutiny as attraction, because he was mumbling under his breath, “I am not single, you know; my wife lives in Miami and my mistress lives in Montego Bay.”
Maribel had tuned him out and was nodding yes without hearing what he said.
“But I would really love to go to dinner with you sometime; you are gorgeous. Probably right here in this hotel. They have a lovely restaurant.”
She was still musing about the ramifications of Michael being Rose’s father and had completely missed what Michael had said.
“She’s not interested,” said a voice above her head.
She spun around and stared at Brian. He was in a well-cut dinner jacket with a brown open-collar shirt that precisely matched his eyes. He looked so gorgeous and he smelled so good. She closed her eyes briefly so that her brain could register that Brian was here, and he was talking to her or to Michael. She didn’t care, but he had a jealous look in his eyes.
“Oh, er, sorry,” Michael mumbled, “seems as if I misread things.”
Brian nodded and watched as Michael melted into the crowd.
“What on earth am I not interested in?” Maribel asked nervously. “I didn’t hear a word he was saying.”
Brian shrugged, “I saw you over here completely still, giving him that blank, zoned-out look that you have when you are tuning out someone, and then I saw him stepping closer, so I knew that you were going to be in trouble. He was asking you to dinner.”
Maribel smiled, “Well, thanks, I guess.”
“He is married,” Brian said, shifting on his feet and looking around, “and there is that little commandment about adultery in the Bible.”
Maribel nodded again, smiling. What was he doing here?
“I came with Rose,” he said, as if he read her mind. “I was … I mean, I am her date for the evening.”
Her eyes clouded over. “So where is she?”
He shrugged; the truth was that Rose ceased to exist the minute he had seen Maribel and though he still felt as if her past was an oozing sore that he couldn’t touch, he still felt as he did the first time he saw her—like all the wind had been knocked out of him. He had watched her over the last few months from afar, still stifled by the deep anger that her past life roused up in him.
She cleared her throat. “So how are things?”
He grimaced. “Pretty awful. My father is back in the hospital because of his heart.”
Maribel touched his arm. “I am so sorry.”
He stiffened; even through his jacket he could feel her touch.
She pulled away her hand as if it was burnt by fire and looked at him with her wide, innocent eyes, and he felt so betrayed. She could touch so many men for money and yet … he slammed a door on those thoughts and looked across the room. It was rapidly filling up and he could see Rose talking and laughing with the same man who had tried to chat up Maribel earlier.
Maribel followed his gaze and looked at Rose in her smart sophisticated outfit and the way she held herself confidently and blurted out, “So how are things with you and Rose? Am I going to get an invitation to the wedding?”
Brian frowned. “She and I are not together.”
“Oh,” Maribel frowned. “I thought … I saw you two at Cathy’s wedding; you looked very close.”
Brian remembered the day so well; he had literally felt heart-sore with Maribel standing so near him as part of the bridal party, but he had deliberately kept far from them after his duties as minister was done.
“We aren’t together. I wanted to marry somebody else but it turns out she was a …” He clamped his mouth shut and watched as Maribel stiffened in pain.
She turned away from him and he grabbed her arms. “I am sorry, Maribel,” he said, tortured. “I knew this would come up … the whole thing is eating me alive …”
She glanced at him, tears in her eyes. “I am leaving now, excuse me.”
He dropped her hand and watched as she walked away and then followed behind.
Maribel stood at the elevator door, waiting for it to take her to the ground level.
“Come on,” she whispered and was grateful to see that it was empty when it opened. She went in and was surprised to see that Brian had followed her.
“We have to talk,” he sighed, and watched as she pressed the ground floor button.
“So talk.” Her voice was choky and suffused with tears.
He grabbed her to him, and they hugged. A deep sigh escaped Maribel.
The door swished open and they broke apart.
Maribel laughed deprecatingly. “I am sorry.”
“Me too,” Brian said, following her from the elevator. His whole body was tingling from the hug. “I’ll follow you to your car.”
Maribel nodded and they walked toward the parking lot in silence.
He leaned on her car when they got there and looked at her. “We are both miserable.”
Maribel nodded. “I have been miserable for a while.”
He sighed. “I still love you.”
Maribel gasped.
He turned away. “It's just that I am not sure who I love, Maribel the ideal girl in my head or Maribel the girl with a mammoth past. I don’t know if I will ever love Maribel the girl with the past.”
“What about just loving Maribel?” Maribel stood in front of him.
He grimaced. “Every time I think about it, Maribel, I feel like smashing something. I have prayed about it, I have tried not to think about it, but I wonder, I say to myself, will I ever trust her with other men? Will I ever know how I compare to all those men and women that she slept with? I am turned off by the fact that even as we speak there are people out there who are watching you have sex on some DVD or still have a picture of you hanging with all your inner secrets exposed for the world to see. Nothing will ever be fresh between us … because you have done it all with a hundred men or more. Will I bore you? Will I constantly wonder how I measure up?”
He paused. “Maribel, look at me.”
She looked, tears brimming over onto her cheeks.
“I know you have a relationship with God now, and I am happy about it but your past is almost insurmountable for me. Mainly because of my profession; you see, as a spiritual leader I'm held to a higher standard."
Maribel snorted and turned away. “What about forgiveness? And facing things together? And love?” Her voice petered away.
Brian sighed. “I am no Bible prophet. I am not Hosea, and you are no Gomer. I may want to forgive your past, but it’s the forgetting that’s the problem. What makes this even worse is that it is so easy to gain access to information these days. I may be preaching somewhere to somebody who has watched my wife in a pornographic movie or seen a nude image of her on the Internet; that won’t bode well for the ministry.”
Maribel sobbed, “Okay, I get it.”
Brian touched her hair and then moved his hands away, balling them into fists.
“Maribel, I am very thankful that Thelma did not blab about this at church. I thought it was a minor miracle, but I would have to live like this for the rest of my life if we got married, waiting on miracle after miracle that someone would not to find out about your past; for some man that you slept with to declare to the whole world that he had paid the pastor’s wife to screw him.”
Maribel flinched.
“I am sorry,” he sighed and watched as the last vestiges of the evening faded away. “I made a decision yesterday and I thought it only fair to tell you.”
Maribel stood, her shoulders hunched, and looked defeated. “What is it?”
“I am going back to Canada at the end of the week. I have already packed. Pastor Green is coming back. He is so happy about it he can barely speak.”
Maribel closed her eyes and swallowed. “Okay.”
“We would have been good together as a couple,” Brian whispered. “I could see us together; I used to even picture our babies. I had many dreams for the both of us.�
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“I am the same girl you had those dreams about,” Maribel said desperately. “I am still who I am in here." She clutched her chest. "I made mistakes when I was younger but I am changed now; I am different. I am older and wiser.” She was feverish in her pleading.
Brian shook his head and then squeezed her hand. “This is goodbye, Maribel.”
“So is that it,” Maribel said harshly. Her belly was flip-flopping weirdly. “Is this really how it will end—you declare that you love me and then you say goodbye?
“Brian, in that book about forgiveness that you are writing you claimed that a mother forgave the man that killed her son. Remember how amazed you were at that?”
Brian nodded, swallowing.
“Well what about this—you, a pastor, and me, an ex-prostitute, getting together despite the odds?”
He turned away. “Goodbye Maribel.”
In a last-ditch effort to stop him, Maribel walked behind him, her white dress snagging in her heels and ripping. “Well, I guess that’s it, then.”
He stopped.
“You are just a preacher, Brian; that’s what you do. Preach. Oh, and write. This would have been a good time to practice … you know …” Her voice faded. “Practice what you preach.”
She snorted, “But until you know what forgiveness really is, I guess you are the preacher and I will remain a prostitute in your mind’s eye.”
Brian walked off, leaving her behind with her ripped white dress and her dreams in tatters.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It was hard for Maribel to imagine that it had been a year since she joined the choir. Sister Claudia was still as strict as ever, her unlined face stern as she blasted the tuneless modern gospel songs that relied more on beat than pronunciation of words.
It was six months since Brian had left Jamaica, and Maribel couldn’t remember a day when she didn’t miss him. She couldn’t remember a day when she didn’t replay “what if” questions in her head about her relationship with Brian and how quickly it turned sour when he found out about her past.
Sister Claudia had the bass section of the choir practicing their piece as she directed them from the piano, and Maribel’s mind wandered. She was unhappy and restless, and the melancholy that seemed to dog her days was especially virulent at nights. She got especially restless when Brian sent her a forward in her email inbox. The mails were usually generic and encouraging, sometimes little Bible texts and inspirational stories, and yet when she emailed him he did not respond. At those times she felt especially unhappy.
Rejected.
Unloved.
“Okay choir, I have good news.” Sister Claudia faced the choir and smiled briefly. "Our major travelling gig for the year will be to Canada. For some of you newer members, who joined this year we have a major outside of Jamaica travelling experience every year and this year we will be performing at our sister church in Toronto.”
A spark of excitement ignited in Maribel. So she would see Brian again. She turned in her seat to look at Cathy. But Cathy was looking slightly under the weather and gave her a wan smile.
“We will be performing on the fourth of March, which I hear is an ideal day because it will be a special one for our previous pastor.”
“That’s my birthday,” Maribel said excitedly.
“Well then,” Sister Claudia smiled, “you can do the lead for the song O Perfect Love. It was requested by Pastor Brian himself. So we have nearly five months to prepare twelve songs. I don’t need to tell you that this will take a while and lots of practice.”
Maribel felt tremors race up and down her spine. Why was March fourth a special day for him? Was it because it was her birthday? Was there some secret he was not telling her? Some surprise birthday gift?
He must have been ignoring her for a good reason, so that he could spring a surprise on her when she went to his country.
She went through the rest of choir practice in a daze and afterward cornered a lackluster Cathy in the parking lot.
“Do you understand what this means?” she asked Cathy excitedly.
Cathy looked at her dully. “What?”
“The Canada trip?” Maribel asked, brimming over with excitement. “He is planning something on my birthday.”
Cathy held on to the door of her car and sighed, “Maribel, I have no energy to expend in warning you against getting your hopes up. It’s been six months since he left and he hasn’t as much as called you. That sounds like finality to me.”
“It can’t be,” Maribel said, frowning. “He will get used to my past and then we will move on.”
Cathy sighed, “I think you are being a bit too hopeful.”
“Why do you sound like that?” Maribel finally registered that Cathy was looking tired and washed out. “Are you coming down with the flu or something?”
Cathy grinned, “Or something. I should tell my husband first, but hey, you asked. You are going to be an aunt.”
Maribel looked at her aghast. “Say what?”
“You heard,” Cathy said, grinning.
“Well congrats,” Maribel squealed. “I am going to be an aunty. How far along are you? You look like someone slapped you around and then kicked you for good measure; where is the fabled pregnant glow?”
“I am eight weeks preggo,” Cathy said, getting in her car. “I just found out today, which means in five months I am not going to be able to go to Canada. Hence, I think I will forgo future choir practices and allow Greg to pamper me in the evenings like a queen.”
Maribel smiled. “I was hopeful we could go together.”
“There is no way I am going to waddle to Canada at seven months,” Cathy grimaced. “Imagine me straining to sing one of Claudia’s pieces at this shindig. I guess I will just have to live vicariously through you.”
Maribel shrugged. “I have to go. I want to see Brian and find out what he has planned for us.”
Cathy warned, “Maribel, be careful.”
“Yes Mama,” Maribel said laughingly.
She hugged herself as she approached her car, her mouth in a smile that would not quit. She could see the scenario in her head now; Brian knew she was in the choir so he suggested that they come over on her birthday to sing, just so they could kiss and make up and probably, in the not so distant future, get married and have babies like Cathy and Greg.
She turned up her stereo really high and sang all the way home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
When Maribel checked into the hotel with the rest of the choir members she was floating on cloud nine. She had tried to email Brian over the last few months but he had not responded. All of that added to her suspicion that he was trying to spring a surprise on her and she smiled as she jumped into her spacious bed. She had listened to Dido’s White Flag while she was on the airplane and now she sat on the bed with a stupid grin on her face. To her it was timeless music and was especially applicable to her now. She sang the second verse out loud.
She had jotted down Brian’s number from his email and was now itching to call him; they were supposed to perform at his church tomorrow and at another venue the day after.
She felt anticipation zinging through her. Last year’s birthday was a disastrous one for her, and this year—well, this year should be better. How many bad birthdays could a girl take?
She remembered the birthday when Felicia had died. One minute she had stood talking to her friend and the next blood was everywhere, the once-vibrant eyes forever closed.
Then there was the street dance when she had felt so lonely and empty and that bartender had reminded her of her past and of course, last year when Brian found out that she had slept with his uncle.
Now this year was going to be better; she could feel it. She was on Brian’s turf now; his country; his surprise. She had deliberately not listened to any of the whisperings about the trip these past five months because she didn’t want to inadvertently spoil the surprise. A shaft of unease had pierced her at odd times that he did not cal
l or respond to her emails, only with those generic Bible text emails.
He really was trying to be difficult, she sighed. And her fingers itched as she stared at the telephone. And then she gave in to the temptation. After the operator connected the call she paced the room with the phone on her ear and listened to the rings and then there it was—his voice, his wonderful, honey-toned voice.
“Hello.”
“Hey,” Maribel said brightly, feeling suddenly gauche and exposed.
Brian inhaled loudly and then exhaled shakily. “Maribel?”
“Yes, it’s me,” Maribel said huskily.
“I didn’t know you were coming with the choir,” Brian said hesitantly. “I did ask but Sister Claudia said that she was not going to commit to telling me before everybody was confirmed.”
Maribel felt suddenly deflated; he didn’t know she was going to be here? All those months of excitement for nothing? She had even done a thorough spa treatment last week so that she could look her best for this imaginary surprise, and he didn’t even known she was coming!
“Er ...” She was now at a loss. “I thought you knew,” she said lamely.
Brian sighed. “Where are you staying?”
Maribel told him breathlessly.
“I have a gift for you,” Brian said. “I might not be able to speak to you tomorrow, so I’ll just come over and give it to you now.”
He sounded so distant and cold. Maribel actually shivered after she hung up the phone. He said six o’clock; that was five hours away. She curled up on the bed and closed her eyes, all sorts of scenarios running through her head. What was going on? Why couldn’t he speak to her tomorrow?
The knock at the door woke up Maribel and she fumbled with a lamp, switching it on before she jerkily got up. My God, she had slept for about four hours. Her mind had churned about the situation for so long that she must have put herself to sleep thinking about it. She glanced at the clock on the night stand and it read 5:57, the flashing red numbers reminding her that she had not even showered or taken the time to get ready.
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