This Gorgeous Game (12 page)

“I was way in the back,” I explain. “But I saw everything and it was a-
may
-zing.”

“Thanks.” His smile grows. God, he’s beautiful. “You’re kind.”

“No, I’m serious. I haven’t laughed that hard in ages. You guys are like Catholic
SNL
or something.”

“Really?” He thinks I’m just being nice.

“Honest.” A girl walks up, asking Jamie to sign another T-shirt, and I remember we are not alone. I’d almost forgotten there are people milling around us. He finishes, hands her Sharpie back, and she takes off, somewhat reluctantly, I notice. “Definitely not a worship band.”

“No way. Besides, I didn’t get the musical talent gene, in case you couldn’t tell from the singing during the show.”

“But that’s what made it so funny.”

“Anything for laughs.”

“Do you do this for fun, or is it, like, a job?”

“The Holy Fools is paying my way through college.”

“Really? That’s great. Beyond great.” Jamie is smart, nice, hot,
and
impressive.

“Hey, so I wanted to introduce you to everyone. Is that cool?” He glances around, back at their merchandise table. The rest of the group is packing T-shirts and other paraphernalia into gigantic black duffel bags.

“Sure.” I can’t help becoming a little nervous as he leads me toward the stage and everyone stops what they are doing, as if already prepped for an introduction.

“Hi, Olivia,” one of them says, all friendly, and I think,
He already knows my name!
“I’m Nathan. Great to have you here. Break it to us gently—what’d you think?”

“You were incredible. I loved it.”

“Well, aren’t you sweet.”

“I’m Hailey.” The only girl in the group walks up and extends her hand to shake mine. “Jamie told us you were coming today. It’s great to meet you.”

“Yeah, he wouldn’t shut up about it, either,” says a short, stocky guy with a bowl haircut. Jamie punches him in the arm, which I assume means that the friend should keep his mouth shut on the me-issue. “I’m Jonas. A pleasure.”

“Don’t worry, Jamie said only nice things,” Hailey whispers, leaning in so no one else hears. “You are one lucky girl, you know.” We both turn to look at Jamie, who has gone over to help the others finish breaking down the display.

“I am in total agreement with that statement.”

Hailey smiles. “He hasn’t stopped talking about you since the day you met.”

“Really?”

She nods.

“Come on, Hailey. Time to go.” Jonas brushes by me, heading up the aisle carrying two merchandise bags, one over each shoulder, barely able to walk. Hailey smiles and walks over to the table, hoisting one of the bags over her shoulder and following Jonas toward the door. As Nathan passes me on his way out he asks, “You’re coming to church, right?” When I answer, “Yes,” he calls back, “Now don’t you two get all caught up in each other or you’ll be late.”

Jamie rolls his eyes. “Sorry about that. They’re just…
excited.
”

“Excited?”

“Yeah…well……yeah.”

“How so?”

“Because I invited you.”

“You don’t usually have guests attend shows?”

“We have guests. Just not special guests.”

“Special?” My insides jump up and down with glee.

“You’re the first girl I’ve ever had come to one of these and, you know, to church afterward. They’re sort of in shock.”

“You don’t invite girls every week?” I already know the answer but I want to hear him say it.

“The honor is yours only.” He looks around and under the merchandise table making sure nothing is left behind, maybe using this as an excuse to look away. Definitely blushing. Jamie is blushing. “I think they took everything. So…do you want to go?”

“To church?”

“Yes. But don’t feel pressured. I have to attend mass, though. I always go after we perform. It’s kind of part of the gig.”

“I’m going. I want to.”

“Good.” He relaxes again, offering his hand, a gesture for us to head up the aisle. He weaves his fingers through mine and we leave the auditorium and enter the packed church. Nathan, Hailey, and Jonas have saved us room in the pew. As soon as we slide in next to them, the priest starts the procession and everyone stands.

After the opening prayers, we sit again as the deacon goes through the first reading. Little by little, Jamie’s fingers creep closer to mine, until our pinkies touch, then wrap around each other, and soon one, two, three, all our fingers are entwined. We stay like this, touching fingers, brushing palms, pulling apart for different prayers and rituals, only for our hands to find each other again, all the while staring at the altar, at the priest. The mass happens around us for the next hour. My heart speeds up, slows down, leaps, and speeds up again, thumping in my chest, and for once I wish with all my being that the priest would not come to those closing words,
Our mass has ended, let us go in peace.
I hadn’t known going to church could be so romantic. If it was always like this I’d go to daily mass.

As Jamie and I file out behind the crowd, I notice someone out of the corner of my eye, a man standing there, looking at me, at
us.

A Father Mark–looking man.

My head snaps right but no one is there and I think,
God, Olivia, now you are seeing things.
Jamie turns to me, his eyes searching, inquiring, and I smile in response, concentrate on his hand in mine, steadying myself and determining to be in this moment, the here and now, because the here and now is about as good as things get and my time with Jamie isn’t even over yet. We have the entire afternoon ahead of us and today is about Jamie only and nothing, nobody, can do anything to change this. Not even Father Mark. If that’s who I saw. Which I didn’t. Because it wasn’t. Him.

THE NEXT WEEK FLIES BY AND BEFORE I KNOW IT I AM
getting ready to head out for the first meeting of Father Mark’s fiction class. I am a jumble of nerves and confusion. The strange dance of avoidance between Father Mark and me has intensified and we still haven’t seen each other since that day in his office, which seems like a long time ago now. Well, I haven’t seen him at least. But Jamie and I, on the other hand, have gotten together daily since the Sunday of our church date, and he is even walking me to class and home afterward and I am more excited about this than class itself. It’s difficult to ignore how my feelings about Father Mark and the class and even the contest have changed—it wasn’t long ago that I was counting the days because I couldn’t wait for the seminar to begin.

Mom and I stand around in the kitchen, drinking lemonade, waiting for Jamie to arrive—she insists on meeting him this time—when the doorbell rings. I run to answer it, but Mom gets there first.

“Hello, Jamie. Come on in. It’s nice to finally meet you.” She steps aside. Mom is all smiles.

“Hi, Ms. Peters. Nice to meet you, too.” Jamie flashes me a grin on his way into the foyer.

“We should get going so we aren’t late,” I say, hoping for a quick getaway.

“No, no,” Mom protests, looking up at the clock, which says three, giving us a full hour before class begins. “Please, sit down.” She ushers Jamie into the living room. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

“Just water if you don’t mind, thanks.”

“We have lemonade.”

“Lemonade would be great then.”

“Olivia, what about you? Would you like more?”

“Fine, fine,” I give in, handing her my half-empty glass.

Mom returns with the drinks, sits down on the couch, and the questions begin.

“Where are you from originally, Jamie?”

Cape Cod. Born and raised by the beach.

“How do you like HMU so far?”

A lot. Great professors. Great classes. Great city.

“I hear you’re quite the comedian.”

The conversation continues like this for what seems like forever. Jamie is at ease, as if he meets people’s parents all the time, and Mom is having fun grilling him. It appears I am the only anxious person in the room. I guzzle my lemonade and then sit there, fidgeting, while Jamie continues to answer Mom’s inquiries with enthusiasm, even making a few of his own, until finally, I cut in. “Mom, it’s three-forty.”

She glances at the clock. “All right, Olivia. You win. Besides, I wouldn’t want to be the reason you two are late for Father Mark!” She sings his name. “Especially when he’s coming for dinner later this week.”

“He is?” I am startled.

“He is!” She is exuberant.

“But when—”

“He called the house and we made a plan. You know I’ve been wanting to celebrate your win. I’m so proud of her,” she says to Jamie, beaming.

“He called the house?”

“I know it’s difficult for you to remember, but we still have a landline, Olivia. He said he was having trouble getting in touch with you on your cell—I didn’t get you a cell for you to ignore it, by the way.” She gives me a scolding look. “Anyway, he and I got to talking and I invited him over for a dinner in your honor.”

“That’s great,” I say, my heart sinking a little as Jamie and I stand up, getting ready to head out. The end of my Father Mark vacation has officially arrived. I need to work on remembering how time with Father Mark used to be so exciting and not so—I don’t know, dread-inducing? But I’m confident this feeling has more to do with nerves that will dissipate as soon as we do see each other again and things go back to the way they were before.

“Ready?” Jamie asks after the requisite “Nice to meet you’s” and “Thanks for the lemonade” from him to my mom, and I say, “Yes,” and launch myself through the foyer, out the door, and down the steps while Jamie is still exchanging pleasantries with my mother. When he finally makes his way over to where I am waiting not so patiently, he is chuckling.

“What,” I demand. “What?”

“You are cute when you get nervous.” He stops in front of me, close enough to kiss, but then he holds out his hand instead, reaching for mine. “We should walk fast,” he says. “It’s almost four.”

“How ’bout I race you instead,” I challenge, taking off before he can answer. Even though it is warm out and my bag bounces against my side it feels good to run, to release some of the excess energy I feel, and by the time we reach the campus gates I am laughing and both of us are trying to catch our breath. Jamie lies down in the grass on the quad, his chest rising and falling, and I join him, so we are side by side, and he turns to me. “I let you beat me.”

“That is such a guy thing to say.”

“Well, I’m a guy.”

Despite my exhaustion, I can’t let his comment slide so I heave myself off the ground, again taking off, this time toward Gregory Hall, shouting, “I bet you can’t catch me even if you try your hardest.” Jamie is up and running after me and in less than a minute we are both across the courtyard and at the entrance to the building, tagging the wall. Neither of us can tell who got here first so we call a truce. It must be late because we are alone.

“So after class, I thought we could go to the Public Garden,” Jamie says, in between breaths, before we go inside.

“Okay,” I agree, deciding that I will show him my favorite place, the bench under the willow tree, thinking that this is a nice idea—to share a place so special to me with Jamie.

“We should really go in. It’s after four.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sure.” I am hesitant, reluctant even, but I follow Jamie inside, consoling myself that we have three hours of sharing an armrest and being near each other ahead of us. When we reach the auditorium he opens the door to let me go first. Father Mark’s voice carries into the hallway and I tiptoe inside, trying to be quiet. Jamie follows and we grab two spots in the back row.
Creak
go the theater-style seats when we push them down.
Creak.
Father Mark stops speaking and peers from the podium into the audience packed with students, staring at the latecomers, zeroing in on us. On me. Entering his classroom late. Disrespectful. He stops long enough that I wonder what he is thinking, if he is upset. His reading glasses fall from his face and dangle on their chain. Papers rustle. He picks up his eyeglasses without moving his gaze from mine and I suddenly feel prickly. Hot. Cold. Uncomfortable. Guilty.

Then he returns to what he was saying and I sigh with relief.

Looking up at him now, standing there on the stage, so tall and confident, it seems strange to have witnessed this same person become frantic and unnerved. For a passing moment I feel ashamed about my recent behavior, my resistance, the rebellious daughter testing the boundaries and the patience of the father.

After going over the syllabus, expectations for attendance, and assignments, to which I only half listen because my other half is otherwise occupied with Jamie’s proximity, Father Mark explains that he will end tonight’s class early, that he’ll see us again next week—and to make sure we check our assignment—but that before we go he’ll read a poem aloud, that he’ll do this at every class meeting. When he announces his selection—Pablo Neruda’s “Sonnet XVII” to be read in both English and the original Spanish—he regains my full attention. My cheeks catch fire because I immediately know what he means to do.

“Olivia Peters, please join me on the stage,” he says in that booming voice of his, now amplified even bigger by the sound system.

I sink down further in my chair and it groans from the movement. Jamie leans toward me and whispers, “You’ll do great.”

“Don’t be shy, Olivia,” Father Mark says into the mike.

Feeling dazed, I get up from my seat—
creak
—and make my way to the front of the auditorium, up the stairs and onto the stage. All the while Father Mark is explaining how I am a special student in this class because I won a contest,
his
contest, that I show great promise and he is thrilled to have me here. He’s decided to introduce me to everyone through the Nobel Prize–winning poet Pablo Neruda, because he knows that Neruda is one of my favorites. I climb the stairs to the stage, listening to his words, how he describes me to everyone as if we are on the best of terms, as if I hadn’t just walked in late to our first class meeting and avoided him entirely these last couple of weeks.