Chapter 2: The Sunday School Trap

I had spent all morning burning in my bed, my skin sweating under the rough cotton of my slip as I ran the same filthy, ugly pictures through my head.

If he finally cracked—if he stopped hiding behind that clean parish smile and let me get my teeth into him—I wouldn't give a damn about a quiet, sneaky fumble behind the vestry door. I wanted to chew him up until he couldn't even remember the hymns he taught. I wanted him flat on his back on this nasty classroom carpet, his church clothes ruined, begging me to stop looking at him while I made him admit he was just as dirty and desperate as I was.

I’d spent four whole hours getting ready, smoothing my dress, practicing my calm church face in the mirror until it looked like nothing at all was going on behind it. The second the basement door clicked open and Alex walked in carrying his stack of attendance sheets, something in my chest pulled tight anyway. He smelled like laundry soap and the faint sweat of someone who’d been moving fast in the heat, and it undid my calm face in about half a second.

I kept my hands flat against my thighs, afraid that if I let them move at all, he’d see exactly what they were doing.

He paused near the back for a moment, scanning the room, before his eyes landed on the empty desk beside me, the one I’d claimed the second I walked in by dropping my Bible on it.

“Is this taken?” he asked.

“It’s for you,” I said, sliding the Bible over, ignoring the sharp looks from the girls behind her.

He gave me the same polite, even smile he gave everyone in the parish, missing entirely the way my hands hadn’t fully steadied yet.

“Thank you, Sister Pat.”

Sister. I hated the word and wanted more of it in the same breath, some stubborn part of me convinced that if he’d just say it differently once, slower, closer, it would stop hurting and start meaning something else.

Across the room, Clara shoved her chair back with a loud scrape. She was home from university for the summer, three years older than me, and she moved down the aisle like she already owned whatever room she walked into, skirt hitched a little higher than the last time I’d seen her, lips painted the kind of pink that photographed well.

“Brother Alex,” Clara said, leaning over the front desk with a smile that had clearly worked on other men before him. “I’ve got some boxes that need moving after class. Would you mind? I’d really appreciate the help.”

“Sure, Clara,” Alex said, mild as ever. “Give me a few minutes after we wrap up.”

“You’re always so good to everyone,” Clara said, letting the compliment sit there a beat too long. Then, glancing sideways at me with something a little too knowing in her expression, she added, “Isn’t he, Pat? Always so generous with his time.”

I kept my voice light, sweet, the same voice I used on my mother’s friends at church functions. “He is. Must be exhausting, being that generous with everyone.”

Clara’s smile didn’t move, but something behind it did. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had to work that hard for anyone’s attention.”

“No,” I said, “I imagine you haven’t.”

Clara held my gaze a second longer, decided it wasn’t worth pushing, and drifted back to her seat with her chin still tilted high. I watched her go and thought, not for the first time, that girls like Clara circled men like Alex the way stray cats circled an open door, convinced that confidence alone would get them let in. They just wanted to flirt. I wanted something that would actually leave a mark.

The lesson was supposed to be about patience, but Alex kept glancing back toward the front row more than the material required. Every time he leaned in to write on the board, his sleeve brushed my arm, and every time it happened I noticed exactly how long the contact lasted before he pulled away again.

“Brother Alex,” I said, raising my hand before anyone else could get there first.

“Go ahead.”

“Do you ever get tired of being patient? The real answer. Not the church one.”

A few kids laughed nervously. Alex didn’t answer right away. He looked down at his notes, taking longer over it than the question really needed, and I found myself watching the shape his mouth made while he thought instead of listening for whatever he’d eventually say.

“Everybody gets tired,” he said finally, keeping his voice low, almost private, like it wasn’t meant for the whole room even though it clearly was. “Patience is just what you do while you’re waiting.”

“That’s still the Sunday school answer.”

“It’s the only one I’ve got, Sister Pat.”

There it was again. It made something in my stomach turn over, some tangled thing that was half frustration and half a wanting I didn’t have a clean name for.

When class finally let out, the room cleared fast. Clara lingered by the door, clearly waiting to collect on those boxes the second Alex was free. I didn’t move. I took my time putting my pens away, slow enough that Clara eventually rolled her eyes and stomped out ahead of him, giving up on the wait.

“You’re usually the first one out,” Alex said, looking up as the door clicked shut behind the last of the others.

“I wanted to ask you something.” I let my voice drop small and quiet. “Do you ever get lonely? Living in that apartment on your own. Everyone talks about how much you do for the church. Nobody ever asks if you’re actually okay.”

Alex went still, his hands stopping over the papers on the desk. He looked at me for a moment that stretched longer than it should have, something moving behind his expression that I couldn’t fully name, not quite surprise, not quite discomfort, something caught between the two.

“That’s a very grown up question, Pat.”

“I’m eighteen. I’m allowed.”

He let out a short breath, glanced away, then met my eyes again. For a second I thought he might actually answer honestly, really answer, the way he never let himself do with anyone else in this building. He opened his mouth like he was about to.

Then he seemed to catch himself. “It gets quiet sometimes. That answer your question?”

“It’s a start,” I said, and let it be enough, because pushing further right now would have cost me more than I was ready to spend.

I stood, gave him a small, private smile, and walked out.

Halfway up the stairs, I looked back down. Alex was still standing by the desk, staring at the empty doorway where I’d just been, looking rattled in a way I’d never once seen on him before.

*Quiet sometimes.*

I sat through the rest of the morning service without hearing a single word of the sermon, the phrase turning over in my head through every hymn and every prayer, until the only thing I could think about was how much quiet I was planning to take away from him.

When the house was finally dark and my father’s snoring carried steady down the hall, I slipped out my bedroom window into the damp backyard grass. I pulled the burner phone out from where I’d hidden it under my mattress weeks ago, the screen glowing pale in the dark.

I typed the message once, read it back, and deleted it.

Typed it again.

My thumb hovered over send for longer than I wanted to admit, some small, distant part of me asking if this was the point where I should stop, close the phone, climb back through the window, and let Sunday just be Sunday. I thought about it for exactly as long as it took to talk myself out of thinking about it at all.

I scheduled it to land on his phone by sunrise.

*I know the lock on your side door is broken.*

I clicked send, letting out a slow, shaking breath in the dark.

My phone buzzed in my hand instantly.

Not a confirmation. An incoming call from an unsaved number, the screen flashing bright against my palm in the quiet yard. I stared at the blinking numbers, my chest going cold. I hadn't even given him the number yet.