Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA
I waited half an hour for the chaplain to come out of Addy's room, my mind working overtime as I wondered what she could be talking to him about.
Imagining that it all boiled down to I hate my husband and I want to divorce him, I wondered if he'd be counseling her to retain a good lawyer or to try marital counseling. When the man walked out of her room, I straightened up, pushing away from the wall and he looked at me as if he knew me.
"Challen."
"Yes." I stuck my hand out to him and he gripped it and shook it.
"I'm Uriah Ellis," he said. "Father Ellis, if you want to get technical, but I prefer either Ellis or my road name...Pilot."
It took me a second, and a reluctant smile tugged at my mouth. "For sky pilot."
"Yeah. Not real original, but it works."
"You're the chaplain who doesn't look like a chaplain," I said, and he laughed loudly.
"If I had a dollar for every time I heard that..." he shook his head with a smile. "Fourth generation Episcopal priest, if you can believe it, but I took a different turn after I was ordained."
"I bet you did," I said. "Could I talk to you?"
"Not if you're going to ask me what I talked to your wife about."
"I'm not." I wanted to, but I wouldn't. Even though I didn't know much about religious things, I had a pretty good idea that whatever you talked to chaplains or priests or pastors about was secret.
"Then I'd be glad to talk with you. Do you want to go to the cafeteria or the waiting room?"
"Cafeteria," I said. I was living on coffee, and the cafeteria coffee was slightly better than the vending machine coffee.
After telling the nurses where'd I'd be, we walked down to the ground floor together and I bought him a coffee. He found us a table just outside the cafeteria and we sat down. Ellis didn't say a word. Just waited me out.
"Do you think a marriage can be saved when one of the spouses has really messed the marriage up?"
He took a long pull of his coffee and regarded me thoughtfully. "It depends on both of the spouses. What each one has as a line in the sand. Cheating's a deal breaker for a lot of couples. Did you cheat on her?"
"Not physically. But I just found out about emotional affairs, and even though I didn't make it through the entire checklist before I saw you go into my wife's room, I was guilty of enough of the signs that I knew I was having one."
"Was Addy aware of this?"
"She kept telling me I was spending too much time with this woman, Jennifer, from work. And you know what I did? I kept ignoring Addy because I saw it simply as someone to share my hobbies with. We work together in the same department and we'd eat lunch together, run after work, sometimes grab dinner -- shit. Sorry, but listing out everything I did wrong like that just brings it home how much of an asshole I was. And I just swore again."
He grinned briefly. "Do I look like swearing bothers me? I'm a nomad, but I'm still part of an MC, and my brothers can't complete a sentence without fuck as either the main noun, verb, adjective or adverb and sometimes all of the above."
"OK, so just know that I really fucked things up with Addy."
"Tell me everything. Everything you did wrong."
It was my turn to take a drink. "This is going to take a while."
"Got nowhere else to be," he shrugged.
YOU ARE READING
Challen and Addy
RomanceA married couple has been drifting apart for a while. He's on the go. She's more comfortable at home. He has a female friend at work he enjoys hiking, mountain bike riding and running with. She can't keep up. One day she tries and ends up in the hos...
