"Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires. Song of Songs 8:4."
"Blake," Oliver whispers softly at his side.
"Just take me home," Blake says, face buried in his hands. "I know you don't want anything to do with me but I don't know where we are and I don't want to walk back alone."
Oliver says nothing in return immediately, but Blake hears him unlock the doors to the car. He hears his footsteps on the dirt road and most likely the sound of the blankets and the book being thrown into the back seat.
"It's getting colder as the sun goes down," Oliver eventually says. "You're going to freeze out here. Let's sit in the car."
Blake can't dispute that fact. The sun is dipping down below the horizon and his nose is already starting to turn into an ice cube so he stands without a word and climbs into the passenger seat. Oliver gets in the car as well, immediately turning the car on and cranking up the heater.
After a few, long moments of silence, Oliver finally speaks again.
"Why do you think I won't want anything to do with you?" he asks quietly.
Blake swallows loudly, afraid to even admit it out loud. "Because – because I kissed you. And you're not – not like me."
"So you...weren't just confused?" Oliver asks. "You weren't just – I mean, you knew I was me? That I was a boy?"
"Yeah," Blake says, laughing hollowly. "I know you're a boy. That's not a fact that suddenly slipped my mind."
"Oh."
With that last word, Oliver puts the car in reverse and they pull away from the fence. He turns them around and knocks the gear shift into drive so they can head back home. Blake bids a silent farewell to the place that held a few, brief minutes of Heaven for him because now, in this car with the heat up so high that it's nearly stifling, it's beginning to feel like Hell.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Oliver asks.
"Tell you what?"
"Why didn't you tell me that you were gay?" Oliver clarifies. "And that you...wanted to kiss me?"
"Because I know exactly what Christians think about us," Blake says lowly. "And I didn't feel like hearing you tell me that I'm a sinner and that I'm evil or that I deserve to die."
"Blake," Oliver says softly. "We're not all like that."
"From what I hear, most Baptists are."
"Well you obviously haven't met many Baptists."
"And you obviously haven't met very many gay guys because if you had, you'd have guessed it sooner," Blake snaps, mostly because he's mad at himself.
"You're right," Oliver admits. "I have never met anyone gay in my life. And where I'm from, most of the people that lived there probably would say stuff like that to you, about being a sinner and about being evil."
"Thank you for making my point."
"But you should know by now that we're not all the same. I didn't beat you over the head with my Bible when you told me that you were an Atheist, did I?"
"You did call me a sinner."
"That's because, well, I mean as a Christian and a member of the Baptist church, we're taught that not believing in God is, in fact, a sin," Oliver says.
"And what exactly would you, as a Christian and a member of the Baptist church, say about me being gay?" Blake presses.
Blake looks directly at Oliver, who now seems to know he's under scrutiny considering how hard he's chewing on his lip. Oliver takes a deep breath and his grip on the steering wheel tightens. He doesn't take his eyes off the road.
YOU ARE READING
Sins of the Flesh
RomanceI'm sorry I am not made perfectly in your image. But maybe I wasn't supposed to be. --- He still prays every night. He still attends church every Sunday. He still believes. But he still cannot tell himself that he's gay. He can't write it. He ca...
