See Dot Smile

Christmas Eve: Part 2

Three hymns and two scripture readings later and I'm suffocating. He smells so amazing I just want to unwrap him and let his beautifully freckled skin breathe, like a bottle of....

I don't drink wine. Which one is best served after it breathes?

Is it Red?

"Okay, let's go."

"Wait, what?" I clumsily put my hymnal away as he presses his hands into my shoulders, pushing me down the length of the pew toward the door.

"Just move fast, so we get downstairs before the song ends."

One of the kids in the front row leers at me. "Bad Lady," her eyes say.

"Shit. I forgot my phone."

"Leave it," he says.

"I can't," I argue. "It's my phone."

"Fine, hurry up," he says, shoving me back down the pew.

I bash my thigh into the armrest and hobble down to collect my phone.

"Come on, come on." He waves me frantically toward the stairs. I have no idea what he's getting me into, but my insides are squirming with hide-and-seek butterflies. I reach the doorway and follow him down the winding staircase.

We're halfway down when the music stops, leaving the echo of organ and voices hanging in the air.

He throws his arm out, catching me across the chest. "Sorry." He giggles.

I'm not.

We stand frozen, waiting for the next part of the service to cover our remaining footsteps. A low, mumbling voice starts up and Joshua rolls his eyes. "It's the sermon," he says. "Okay. We need to go slow the rest of the way. One step at a time."

I took hold of his arm when it landed on my boobs, so we're taking the first step together. We lower our feet onto the stair and cringe. The creaking sound that comes out of it could wake up a den of hibernating bears. "Shit." He laughs. "Okay, let's try one more."

We do. This time the stair groans so loudly, one of the antsy kids upstairs says, "Mommy, was that a ghost?"

I bury my face in Joshua's shoulder to keep from laughing.

"Okay, fuck it," he whispers against my hair, sending a pleasant shiver down the back of my neck. "Let's just go all the way."

If that's not the king of double entendres, I don't know what is.

We inhale together and barrel down the remaining third of the stairwell, holding our breath until we reach the bottom. He pulls me through the side door that leads to the church basement, and I keep in lock step with him down the carpeted stairs. He glances back up to make sure we aren't being followed. Then he ducks into the dark rehearsal room and drags me in after him. 

We stand inside the doorway catching our breath and stifling our laughter, even though we're far enough away that no one upstairs can hear us.

He leaves my side and fumbles around in the dark, bumping into something and swearing under his breath. He clicks on a table lamp, casting the room in a rosy, orange glow. 

I'm glad he chose the lamp and not the fluorescents on the ceiling. They would have been easier to turn on given that the switch is outside the room. But evidently, Joshua is going for ambiance. And I'm very okay with that.

He stands in the center of the room and jerks his head toward the long wall of closed closet doors. "Confessional?" He grins mischievously. 

My heartbeat kicks into overdrive. Confessional isn't what it sounds like. We're not Catholic, so confessing our sins isn't something we ever had to do at church. But once in a while, Joshua and I would hold a "Confessional" in the style of reality TV. Where we'd venture into a small space and speak our truth and get things off our chests and in all other ways reveal our secrets to each other. It's been ages since we had one. Ages since we did anything like this together. Just the two of us.