A Lesson in Thorns

by Sierra Simone

  “No, thank God.” Becket’s fervent tone tells me he’s actually thanking God for this. “Yesterday must have been the first time they’ve seen each other in years.”

  Years? What the hell had happened between them?

  “Saint works at the public library in Thorncombe,” Becket goes on. “Most weekdays.”

  “St. Sebastian is a librarian?” I ask, shocked.

  Becket cracks a wide smile, looking like a charming, eligible clergyman from some Masterpiece show. “He looks too sexy to be a librarian, doesn’t he?”

  “Becket.”

  “Don’t worry, you do too,” he says, with an angel-eyed wink I wouldn’t have thought him capable of giving.

  “Becket!”

  The priest just laughs, shuts his door with a wave, and then drives off, Sir James Frazer barking back at me the whole way down the drive.

  Chapter 6

  The equipment comes the next day, and supervising the delivery and installation takes almost until dinner. By the time the too-early dusk comes, I’m almost too tired to make myself a quick sandwich, but I force myself, knowing I’ll probably sleep for twelve or thirteen hours, and I hate waking up with low blood sugar. I eat, brush my teeth, and then fall into bed like I’ve never been there before. I do indeed sleep for twelve hours.

  But the next day, I go into Thorncombe around lunchtime, after I’ve worked a few hours in the library getting the digitization software up and running. After a pie and a beer—and a second beer for courage—I walk down to the library, which is off the main street through the village on a small side road that has an arresting view of the St. Brigid’s graveyard.

  High in the far corner of the cemetery, a glossy black headstone frowns over the weathered gray teeth of the other markers, gleaming and distinct. GUEST is printed across the top in massive letters, with two sets of dates underneath, and there are no flowers decorating it, no wreaths or plants, just a rectangle of grass that looks newer than the rest.

  Auden’s parents.

  I stop and take it in for a minute, the graveyard and the church, and after a while, my gaze drifts to the rest of the street, so pretty and so lonely all at the same time. While there are signs of modernity—a banner flapping against the fence for the church’s nursery school, a pharmacy, a bank—it feels shoved to the background, as if the stones and streets of the village itself refuse to be dragged into the present day. A beautiful spot to visit, but it makes me a little wistful . . . and a little unsettled. It’s like the village is keeping secrets, just like the estate it originally served, and there’s this feeling—thin and filament-like, too fragile to really examine—that it’s all connected, that Thorncombe is keeping Thornchapel’s secrets or vice versa, that somehow this deep seam of river and forest in the middle of nowhere knows something I don’t.

  It’s a feeling only strengthened by the way people look at me while I walk around. I’m from Kansas: I know small towns. And so for a while, I chalk it up to the usual who are you vibe people give off when they see a stranger. But I can’t deny that there’s something different too; it’s not clannishness or suspicion—or not only those things. It’s expectation. Like they’re waiting for me to say something or do something, and I have no idea what it is. Apologize for being here? Explain why I’m here?

  Not drink two beers by myself in the middle of the day?

  I’m relieved when I push my way into the Thorncombe Library and find it empty. And though the building itself is all old stone and brick, the inside is fairly modern, if displaying the usual public-building shabbiness that American libraries also have in abundance. I step onto the industrial carpet and walk past a cheerful children’s section and a bank of public computers—all empty—until I find the desk in the back, which judging from the scribbled notes littered around the keyboard and the carts of books lined up behind it, doubles as a reference desk and a circulation desk.

  No one’s there.

  Life would be so much easier if he had an Instagram or a Snapchat or a Twitter account like everybody else, but no, St. Sebastian is one of those people, and I feel distinctly stupid as I look around the empty space.

  Is this how people really used to find people before iPhones? By asking other people? Out loud? With mouth-words?

  Ugh.

  The longest rows of stacks continue on from the desk, and I can make out a half-empty cart at the end, so I decide to go ask whoever’s shelving if they know St. Sebastian.

  But when I find the row the librarian is currently shelving in, it’s not other people, it’s St. Sebastian himself. He’s half-kneeling, one arm laden with books, a hand expertly wedging a title between the others on the shelf. And with the messy hair and lip ring, I expected him to be in a T-shirt and boots again, but he’s in slacks and glossy shoes and a charcoal zip-up with a collared shirt underneath. Cheap business casual, but on St. Sebastian’s tight body, it looks delicious.

  “May I help you find something?” St. Sebastian asks without looking up.

  “Yes,” I say. “You.”

  He nearly drops the book he’s trying to shelve, just barely managing to catch it between his palm and his knee with a thwacky sound. “Jesus Christ,” he mumbles, finally looking up at me. “Proserpina?”

  “Poe is easier,” I suggest, shrugging off my coat and draping it over the cart. I kneel next to him and take a couple of his books. He starts to protest, but I give him a look. “I have my master’s in library science. Do you really think I can’t handle shelving large-print mysteries?”

  His sigh is one of defeat, and I take that as permission. We start shelving side by side, finding an easy, efficient rhythm that’s unbroken by words until he finally asks, “Why are you here?”

  I decide to ignore his grouchy tone. “I wanted to see you.”

  He makes an impatient noise, shelving his last book and turning to face me. “But why?”

  I still have books to put away, so I don’t return his gaze. “Because we knew each other as kids and now I’m back. Isn’t that enough?”

  He steps over to me, taking a few of the books out of my arms. His warm hands brush against my arm, and I can’t help but remember yesterday, what it felt like to be stretched out on top of him, what it felt like to have my legs tangled with his. His hair isn’t long enough to tie back but it is more than long enough to tug on, to twine my fingers through. To feel brushing over my stomach as he kisses his way down to the wet place between my legs . . .

  I blush and look back at the two books left in my arms, staring at the labels on the spines while I try to force my mind away from sex.

  Which should be easy, because I’ve actually never done it. Not once, not with anyone.

  When Emily was my Mistress, she would welt me and spank me and call me her slut, but there was nothing more than the punishment—no oral, no digital, no toys. It’s ultimately why we broke up—and why I broke up with the boyfriend before her—because they were ready for more and I just . . . couldn’t. Despite the raging libido and the insatiable need for kink, I’ve never been able to join with someone that way.

  Sharing pain?

  Sure.

  Sharing pleasure?

  Way too much.

  But despite this weird hitch in my soul, I want sex constantly. Emily used to call me the Literal Madonna-Whore, since I think about sex all the time, almost all of my dreams are sex-filled, and if I don’t come at least once a day, I’m miserable. And yet, I still haven’t had sex.

  This would be so much easier if you’d let me fuck you, she’d told me once, near the end. Can you at least tell me why you aren’t ready?

  The truth was—and is—I didn’t know. My family’s Catholic, but the easygoing kind, and any faint flickers of discomfort with my queerness were doused early on. I was raised to be sex-positive. I found kink online as a teen and went to my first club on my eighteenth birthday. I’m not afraid of pain and I don’t have any kind of aversion to tongues, fingers, toys, or cocks.

  I’v
e felt this way with both boys and girls, I’ve felt this way in dark clubs with music thumping through the walls and in cozy bedrooms surrounded by pillows and posters. I’ve felt this way drunk and felt this way sober, with people I loved and people I merely found sexy as hell. With every person, in every place, I haven’t been able to do it, and the only constant has been this feeling inside of me, this not yet feeling. Like I need to wait, but I have no idea what for.

  Love? I’d found it. More than once.

  The perfect blend of affection and torture? Also found that.

  Marriage? I didn’t even know if I wanted to get married. Leaving aside the wedding I’d had as a girl to Auden and St. Sebastian, of course.

  Maybe it’s been too long. Maybe I’ve let it become this all-important gateway in my head, when it’s not a gate at all, it’s just another step, another footfall on a path that can lead anywhere I choose.

  I look back at St. Sebastian and wonder.

  Why not him? Why not now, in this new life?

  Everything is possible, right?

  He has no idea I’m dreaming about my weird, complicated virginity however, because he takes one of the two books I’m still holding, shelves it, and says, “Lots of people know each other as kids. I’m not sure it has to mean anything now.”

  I’m yanked away from my reverie by a small puncture of hurt. “What does that mean?” I ask, wounded. “You don’t want to talk to me?”

  “No!” he blurts out and then jams the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Maybe? Christ, I don’t know, Poe, I really don’t.”

  “I’m not asking to move in, St. Sebastian, just to hang out.”

  “It’s just Saint these days,” he says tiredly, dropping his hands. “It’s easier . . . like how Poe is easier. Easier to say.”

  That’s true. It suddenly strikes me that both of us have modified our names since the summer we knew each other, like if we changed our names, we could escape their meanings. We could escape the now-painful memories of the mothers who gave them to us.

  “And I don’t know if us hanging out is a good idea,” he continues. “Auden won’t like it.”

  “Who cares?” I say, my words bolder than my feelings.

  If he sees through my lie, Saint doesn’t call me on it. Instead he says, “Maybe you should care. He’s paying you.”

  “I doubt Auden would go so far as to fire me over it. And he’s gone so much anyway. Tuesday through Friday evening, I’m at the house alone.”

  Saint toys with his lip ring, catching it between his teeth and tugging while he thinks.

  “What about just dinner tonight?” I say. “For old time’s sake? Or at the very least as my prize for helping you shelve this cart?”

  That makes him smile the tiniest, tiniest bit . . . and I know I’ve won.

  We meet at The Thorn and Crown a few hours later. I walked from the house, even though Auden’s graciously left me the use of a car. One of his few, which is a little upsetting when I consider how casually he just . . . has more than one car. I think it would be even more upsetting to actually drive it, so I don’t—but as a consequence, I’m both fucking freezing and completely winded from the steep walk by the time I blow into the front door of the pub.

  It’s not full by any means, but a good handful of people turn to stare at me with that expectant Thorncombe stare, made even more awkward by the fact that they’re clearly having some kind of miniature community meeting.

  St. Brigid’s Day Planning Committee is on a battered poster board sign leaning against a table. There’s a man with a notepad, a woman with a toddler crawling around her feet, and two people with dogs. They look at me like I should know their names, but when I wave, they all turn quickly back to themselves and start talking, without waving back.

  If my cheeks weren’t already chapped raw by the wind, I’d have blushed.

  As it is, I’m already too hot in the stuffy pub as I spot Saint hunched over a book in the corner, and I’m stripping off coats and gloves and scarves as I approach.

  “Hi!” I say breathlessly.

  He looks up over his book and gives me a hesitant smile. It doesn’t reach his eyes, which are so dark in the dim light of the pub that they remind me of Dartmoor itself, of its nights so lightless you can’t even see your hand in front of your face.

  I have the same feeling looking at him as I do looking at the winter hills and leafless forests. I’m fascinated, I’m drawn, I want to touch all that loneliness with my bare fingertips and take it inside of myself.

  “You’re so—” he stops saying whatever it is he’s about to say and shakes his head at himself.

  “What?” I ask with a laugh, still trying to pile all my winter shit onto the seat next to me.

  “You’re so colorful,” he says. Quickly. “I mean with your cheeks being so flushed and your eyes being so green right now—”

  He breaks off and looks away, his expression stony. Like Auden, he has a mask he wears too, except instead of Pouty Rich Boy, it’s Broody Poor Boy. I think about this while I finish wedging my coat through the back of the chair so it will stop sliding off. And when I look up again, there’s a faint ruddiness under the bronze of his cheeks, like he’s embarrassed.

  Maybe that’s what draws me to Saint—the blush under the composure, the small signs that under his bitter aloofness is a river of dammed-up emotion threatening to break free.

  “So there’s a meeting here tonight, huh?” I say in a small-talky kind of way while I glance at the menu.

  “Yeah, the St. Brigid’s Day festival.”

  “Sounds Irish to me.”

  “St. Brigid is an Anglican saint too,” Saint says with the tired patience of someone who’s explained this before. “The village gets very into it, since the church is—” Saint waves a hand in the direction of the church, which is also named for St. Brigid.

  “Well. A festival sounds fun,” I say, flipping the menu over. “I love festivals. And fairs. And carnivals. And parties.”

  When I look back up, Saint is staring at me like I’ve started speaking in tongues. “Why?” he asks.

  “Because they are fun and I like fun things. Easy question.”

  He studies me, all sullen, sexy scrutiny, and I’m suddenly not sure what to do with myself, with my hands or my face or my eyes.

  “I don’t think any questions are easy when it comes to you,” he says after a minute, and my heart climbs right out of my chest.

  Everything is possible.

  The moment hovers between us, him studying me and me dying to be more than studied, to be handled—and I know I should yank it all back down to earth, bring us back into real life.

  “I heard about your mother,” I say out of nowhere and then wince inwardly. If I’m trying to coax Saint into being my friend—maybe even coax him into taking an unimportant, not-a-gateway step with me—bringing up a recent tragedy is probably not the way to do it.

  But weirdly, my little outburst seems to anchor him. He slips into his pain like a familiar suit. “Yes,” he says. “It was last year. An infection.”

  “God. I’m sorry.”

  He lifts up a shoulder. “I’m heading up to the bar to order—do you want anything?”

  “Yes, duh.” My food appetite is equal to my sexual appetite, and both are currently in full swing. “The pie please. And the mushroom starters. Oh, and bread!”

  I almost get a real smile for all that. “Anything to drink?”

  “Um, just a beer that’s not an IPA. Thanks!”

  Saint goes to order for us, and I slide his book over to my side of the table. It’s a popular fantasy novel, and I page through until he gets back.

  “We have a copy at the library,” he says, nodding to the book as he sets down our beers and sits. “You know, if you’re interested. It’s pretty good so far.”

  I push the book back to him, take a sip of beer, and then blurt out, “Were you here when she got sick? I’m sorry to ask, just with my own mom . . . I don’t kno
w, I’m morbidly curious, I guess.”

  Saint’s clearly surprised that I’m taking us back to this, but it doesn’t seem to upset him. When he speaks, his tone is weary but level. “I was. When I was a teenager, I did—well, something happened—and I couldn’t bear to stay here any longer. So I went to live with my grandparents in Texas for the rest of school. I’d even started college there. But I think she was lonely, and she was struggling with money . . .”

  “So you came back to her,” I realize.

  “Middle of my sophomore year,” he says. “To help with bills. I’d been here two years by the time she got sick.”

  “You put your life on hold to help her. That’s amazing, Saint. I think a lot of people wouldn’t have done that.”

  “Yeah.” He takes a drink. A big one.

  “So why are you still here?” I ask. “Why not go back to Texas and finish college?”

  This question strikes a nerve, I can tell. He takes another drink, looks down at his glass. “I don’t know,” he says. “When I got here, I found the job at the library, and my dad’s brother is a contractor, so there was enough work to compensate for the library not paying much. And then I just kind of . . . fell into a life. And I guess that moving away, you know, after . . . after she’s died . . .”

  He trails off, takes another drink.

  “It makes it real,” I finish for him, thinking of my own mother. “If you leave, it makes it real.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you feel like your life is still on hold?” I ask.

  Saint laughs—he actually laughs! And when he laughs, I can see that one of his front teeth is ever so slightly longer than the other. And the cleft in his chin smooths out, and his dark brown eyes sparkle. Life and spark hidden under all that winter cold.

  “Fuck, you’re nosy,” he says, still laughing. “Christ.”

  I give a sheepish shrug. “I’m sorry. I like to know things. Don’t answer if you don’t want to.”

  He takes a drink, but this time it doesn’t seem like he’s doing it because he doesn’t want to say more, but because he wants a minute to think.