Sweet Salvation

by Lily Miles

  Her eyes drift shut as the aftershocks shudder through her, her body bent as though she were praying before the moonlit window.

  Though she was too absorbed in her own ecstasy to notice, a shadow shifts behind her as someone vanishes through the door and into the hallway.

  16

  Margaret

  “I normally do this during the day when it’s easier to see,” Trevor chuckles, speaking so softly that I have to strain to hear him.

  We crouch on different sides of the garden bed, working quietly, aside from the occasional bout of chatter. He seems so calm and relaxed, while my heart is in my throat, making every breath I take nearly painful. Does he really not feel any of this strange crackling inside of him? It’s like pieces of myself are being slowly lit on fire one by one, going up in puffs of smoke that leave me feeling lightheaded and nervous.

  I’ve never felt this way before.

  “Well, Cat… I mean, Sister Catherine and I had to do some finagling because of Mother Antonia’s new rule,” I explain before digging my hands into the dirt.

  It feels so good to feel the earth give way beneath my hands, like I'm actually in control of something.

  I can already imagine what this little plot will look like with seedlings sprouting in it, their green leaves lifting towards the heavens and God’s glory. Creation truly is remarkable, and that I may have a part in it is almost enough to distract me from the handsome man nearby—though not quite. I keep stealing looks at him, watching the muscles of his body move in the moonlight as he bends and digs to make little trenches for the seeds we’ll plant soon.

  He’d already assured me next time he’d bring with him an assortment of seeds and help me pick which plants were compatible with one another. It’d blown my mind that various plants may not get along in such close quarters, but Trevor hadn't made fun of me at all for not knowing. He’d been so careful and gentle while explaining the way dill loves cabbage but hates carrots. His eyes got tender as if he was talking about people he knew, rather than vegetables and herbs.

  I wonder if he’s lonely here. In overheard conversations between Sister Ruth and Mother Antonia, I’d heard bits and pieces about why he came to the Blessed Virgin convent. I know he was in trouble before, but I don’t care about that. I may not be as perceptive as Catherine, but I know a good heart when I meet one.

  “What rule?” he asks, leaning back on his haunches to look over at me.

  He’s slightly breathless from lifting the bags of soil and dumping them into the raised garden bed, and sweat sheens on his brow. The sight is distracting but I do my best to concentrate on my answer instead of his strong, slick body.

  “The one Mother Antonia just made about how we’re not supposed to interact with the male workers here anymore,” I answer matter-of-factly, surprised that he wasn’t aware of it. I’d heard the mother superior telling most of the other workers already that they needed to keep their distance, so I just assumed Trevor would’ve been aware as well.

  “Oh,” he says slowly, letting out a quiet whistle before stroking his chin in thought. “So that was what Henry was talking about earlier …” He abruptly pauses, eyes shifting quickly back towards me with concern crinkling the lines of his forehead. “Wait, does that mean you shouldn’t be here right now?”

  I turn bright red, the same color as a lobster or a terrible sunburn, and I know that it’s going to be visible even through the dark. I look away from Trevor, trying to conceal the blush, but he laughs before swallowing the noise so no one will hear, and creeps closer.

  “You know, Maggie, I’ve been so curious about you since I first met you. I never would’ve pegged you as a rule breaker,” he whispers intentionally now, his eyes scraping over the hills to make sure no one was looking over at us.

  The only lights are from a few of the convent windows and from the apartment building far off down the hill where the male workers retire every night. Sometimes, when I would come out for an evening walk, I could hear music being played from their open windows and I would almost wish I could walk over and join them in their nighttime partying.

  What must it be like to be able to dance whenever you felt like it?

  “I’m not a rule breaker!” I insist, earning another muffled laugh from Trevor.

  He bends down in front of where I'm resting on one of the wooden box ledges, and gazes up at me. The swirling gray clouds reflect in his green eyes, making them look like a kaleidoscope of colors. I'm entranced by it for a moment, my eyes skimming the length of his strong chin and broad shoulders. One of my hands lifts involuntarily, brushing over his hard bicep. His breath catches at the deliberate touch. I yank my hand back stammering out an apology, but he grabs my wrist gently in his hand and pulls it back towards him so that he can press my palm over his heart. His hand rests atop mine.

  My eyes drift shut as I feel the rapid beat of his heart, echoing along at the same exact rhythm as my own.

  Is he nervous like I am? Does he have these strange sensations like I do? Does he know what they mean? With his worldly knowledge, surely he could teach me …

  His hand continues to rest atop mine, capturing it as though he never wanted to let it go. His palms are calloused and rough, the scrape of his flesh over my soft skin making a shiver roll slowly up my spine. Heat blooms deep inside of me, the same way it had the other night when I lay in my bed and let my hands wander over my body. I'm struck suddenly with the desire to have his hands wander over my body, and I almost beg him to touch me everywhere. I manage to swallow those pleading words before they can break the silence between us.

  My entire body starts to tremble. It’s as though a thousand volts of electricity are shooting out from his fingertips over the back of my hand. I'm shaking so much that if I tried to stand, I’d surely crash to my knees because my legs would give out from under me. When I breathe, the wave of heat seems to spread, rising slowly from my core to reach even my fingertips and my toes. The lower pit of my stomach begins to tighten, just as it had when my fingers slowly dipped below the hem of my panties towards that place on my body that I had never touched before. Heat ripples from between my thighs as I remember how good it felt to touch myself even as tentatively as I had. Now I’m curious what would happen if I followed through and allowed my pleasure to overwhelm me, instead of getting frightened of the sensation.

  Did Trevor know anything about that? Could he show me?

  When my eyes crack open again, Trevor has crept closer. He’s on his knees right before me, his other arm at his side, and now our faces are separated by mere inches.

  I can barely see him through the dark, but I can see the swirling heat in his eyes. He feels this, too—he has to. It bounces between us back and forth, like a ball of electricity being passed between our bodies, growing stronger with every volley.

  Overhead, a lone bolt of lightning cracks through the still night.

  For just that piercing second, I could see my face reflected in his eyes, but it was a face I didn't recognize. I wouldn’t have known that was me if I’d seen a picture of it, with those hooded eyes and desperately pursed lips.

  What am I doing? Why am I sneaking out at night to visit this man?

  I knew full well what I was getting myself into by coming out here, but I’d let Catherine talk me into believing my reasons were nothing but pious.

  I'm a foolish, wicked sinner.

  “We can’t,” I cry out too loudly, my voice rising above a rumble of thunder.

  As I speak, I rip away from him, falling over the edge of the garden box and crushing the fresh soil below. It rises up around me in a dark cloud that will stain my robes. I scramble to be free of the box but everywhere I look, Trevor consumes me. He towers over me, scooping me into his arms and placing me on my feet. I wrench away from his touch, a touch which is all at once everywhere and making my flesh burn below my habit.

  When I jerk away from him, he raises his hands with his palms flat towards me to show that he had no intention
of grabbing at me, even though I almost want him to. Actually, I want him to argue with me, to drag me against him and hold me tight no matter how hard I struggle, but he does no such thing. All that he does is continue to stare at me with those mesmerizing eyes of his eyes, eyes I can’t get enough of that will continue to haunt me even when I sleep.

  “You’re the one who came out to me,” he says quietly, a frown contorting his handsome face. “I had no idea this was against the rules, but you did. You still chose to meet me here, Maggie.” Even with that frown, why did he look so darn hot?

  “Sister Margaret,” I whisper beseechingly. “You have to call me Sister Margaret!”

  I can’t handle the way he says my name so fondly—lovingly, even. It seems to fit so perfectly between his lips, as though he’d been saying it his entire life. When Catherine says it, it ignites nothing in my soul, but when Trevor speaks my name out loud, it’s suddenly hard to breathe. Even if the name is only whispered, the weight of it rests heavily atop my chest.

  “You’re not just some sister to me,” he answers with a shake of his head. “It feels too weird to call you that. I don’t want to. You’re just Maggie to me. A woman.”

  “I made a vow,” I continue desperately. “I pledged that I would remain pure and only devoted to my faith. You have to call me by my sacred name.”

  His arms slowly lower, and for a second I hope he’s finally going to crush me in the tightest embrace. Instead, he just folds his arms across his broad, sculpted chest and narrows those gorgeous green eyes on me, searchingly.

  “Are you trying to convince me or you?” he asks quietly, his words focused and firm. “None of this changes the fact that you sought me out tonight of your own free will. You knowingly broke whatever rule your tyrant of a mother superior issued. What did you want when you came out here?”

  I reel back from him, almost tripping over the unlevel ground but managing to stay standing, somehow. “I came because I wanted to try to save you! Your lack of faith is clear in the impure way you regard me with those lusty eyes! I was hoping I would be able to bring you closer to Christ by coming out to see you.”

  Even though ’til now he’s been hyper-conscious of their need for discretion, Trevor erupts in a spontaneous belly laugh, unable to contain his amusement. The sound of his mirth is carried by the whirling breeze as the storm above comes closer and closer, the wind gusty and cold and scented with wet earth.

  “Okay, let me get this straight,” he says when he’s finally done laughing. “You broke the rule and snuck out at night. You snuck out at night to be alone with a man. Alone with a man in the shadows of your convent. So, you broke a rule and snuck out at night to be alone with a man in the shadows of your convent because of your faith, Maggie? That’s a load of shit. Be honest with yourself, for once!”

  Fat, warm drops of rain suddenly begin to barrel down over us, streaking down my face and soaking my body through. The dirt on my habit turns to mud and my robes feel heavy. Even though the air and the rain are both mild, my body starts to tremble. It’s not the same pleasurable vibrations of before, but the kind that tells me that this conversation has gone completely off the rails into territory I never wanted or expected.

  “Go on back now, Maggie,” Trevor says, jerking his chin roughly towards the convent behind us. “Run back to your mother superior and claim that you were out here to save me. See what she has to say about those good, pure intentions of yours.”

  “You don’t know me!” I cry back at him, hands curling into fists. I have to shout over the loud rumbles of thunder now ripping through the air.

  “And you don’t know me,” he answers back, eyes flashing through the dark. “Maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to judge those around you.”

  I take one step backward, then two, struggling to figure out just how this conversation went south. I hadn't come out here to ruin everything. I hadn't come out here to leave in tears that he couldn’t see because they were mixing with rain.

  Unable to take any more of the storm or the equally stormy fury in Trevor’s eyes, I turn and run as fast as my soaked habit will allow back to the convent, slipping in through the door. My chest heaves, tears stinging my eyes as droplets of rain fall from my habit, sprinkling the floor. There will be no hiding what happened now: Mother Antonia is going to know someone went outside during the storm.

  I rush towards the stairs leading to the room I share with Catherine, slipping all the way, but as I round the corner I run nearly headlong into Sister Eva.

  Eva just drifts to the side to allow me to pass, her eyes slightly unfocused, her lips parted, cheeks red. She looks as though she’s seen a ghost.

  Usually I would’ve taken longer to check on her and make sure she was okay, but I knew if I lingered she would come back to her senses and dart straight to the mother superior, to tell her that I was the one who left the halls of the convent wet and muddy.

  Instead, I rush to my room. Once I was safely hidden away from prying eyes and ears, I burst into the torrent of tears I’d been holding back since Trevor’s scathing words had bitten through me.

  Though my virtue is intact and I'm no longer in the vicinity of that tempting man who makes me tremble with sinful desire, why do I feel like I just made the biggest mistake of my life?

  17

  Trevor

  I have no choice but to watch as Maggie furiously climbs the back slope towards the convent, my heart struggling with the urge to chase after her and pull her into my arms and beg for her forgiveness. I really have no idea how the conversation took that unpleasant turn; all I know is I want to go back in time and replay the scene again to figure out where I went wrong. I totally blew it, and no way I’m going to do that ever again with her.

  The last thing I ever wanted was to make Maggie cry. That’s why I keep my desires to myself and I don’t chase her, even though every fiber of my being is urging me to do just that. I won’t ever trap her the same way she’s trapped by her mother superior, ever force her to do anything she doesn’t want to do.

  Yet I so want to be near her, basking in the shining light that is her presence. I don’t care if she preaches to me or if she never lets me touch her, all I want is to be close to her.

  For a moment a sliver of yellow light from inside the convent walls shines before the door closes and it vanishes, along with the beautiful woman.

  The emotional scene has totally spent me. My exhausted head falls into my hands, even as the storm continues to rage around me. I simply can’t work up the energy to grab my bag and head back towards the waiting apartment, even though I'm probably going to be out past the men’s curfew. Anyway, even with the curfew, I’m not sure anyone will even notice I'm gone. No one here cares about me, I don’t matter. I'm invisible, a cog in the wheel. I do what I'm told, I eat, and I sleep. That’s all that I am here.

  The only one who I thought saw me as a person rather than an invisible nobody is furious with me … now I really have no clue at all what Maggie thinks about me. Now to the dark-eyed nun, I might very well be a nobody, too.

  Had I pushed her away as I had pushed away so many other people who’d bothered to care about me over the years? Or had this been her doing? I could no longer tell which one of us had sabotaged this; maybe, in fact, it was both of us. Anyway, I suppose who messed up doesn’t matter, all that does matter is that I doubt she’ll ever talk to me again. And she may not ever again be able to, with this rule of Mother Antonia’s keeping the male workers and the nuns separated.

  My heart is heavy from the words Maggie had said. What about me made her believe I am a man without morals or convictions? A man who needs to be “saved?” Do I have to believe in her religion and her version of God to be worthy of her time?

  I don’t even really know where I stand when it comes to faith, but to have her judge me like she did, it stung. I press a hand over my heart, the same place where her palm warmed my chest not long before. If I focus hard enough, I can still feel her touch lingering
there. That moment had been so brief and yet so very intimate.

  That look in her eyes as she’d touched me—for a moment I thought there was really something amazing growing between us. I’ve never been in love, but this new feeling sure felt like the beginning of that. At least, from what I’ve heard about how being in love feels.

  But anyway, there really couldn’t be anything between us, and this conversation was just the harshest of reminders that this was the case and would always be. She has chosen to devote her life to her religion and she would spend the rest of her days in the walls of her cloistered convent, while I would be free to do whatever I want, wherever I want.

  I couldn’t very well spend the rest of my life here just hoping to catch occasional glimpses of her. Yet, even with all these problems and obstacles keeping us apart, there is something so special about that woman, she keeps drawing me back to her—no matter how much I try to convince myself to let her go and put her lovely face behind me. I just wish she knew how I felt.

  It would be pointless to tell her that she intrigued me or that I wanted to get to know her better: Mother Antonia had already laid down the law making that impossible. And though Maggie had broken the rule once supposedly to bring me her idea of salvation, I couldn’t see her doing that again.

  Would this be the last time Maggie and I stood face-to-face? Would she recall this painful, rain-drenched moment every time she thought of me from now on? That certainly wasn’t how I wanted her to remember me.

  I peer through the rain at the garden bed, replaying the conversation we’d had about what sorts of plants she wanted to see grow. She’d seemed so enthusiastic about it, eagerly listening as I went over various, easy-to-grow seedlings. I’d picked things she’d see quickly sprout, like corn or tomatoes or spinach. If I still planted those for her, would she see them through the windows of her convent and know that I’d planted them all especially for her?