Chapter Thirty>>>Born Again Christians Kiss
After five rounds of Go Bible Heroes, 8 pages of the Book of Mark, and 37 mentions of Jesus Christ being Lord, everyone is finally starting to quiet down. The women begin to spread out around the church to do private Bible studies and make calls to worried families.
“What time is it?” Harper whispers to me, resting her cheek against my shoulder. We are sitting together playing pictionary by ourselves with a stack of napkins we found in the kitchen area of the church.
I yawn as if on cue and glance at my watch, “Quarter to ten. We’ve been here for almost four hours…”
“Let’s go see how the storm is coming,” she suggests, finding the energy to get up off the church bench and begin walking to the front door of the church.
I follow her, checking out her ass as she makes her way down the church. Suddenly I feel like Jesus Christ (who’s Lord, by the way) is watching. What is happening to me?
Harper pulls open the door and peers out at the rain. She steps outside and stands underneath the awning watching the storm. I slip outside and join her, wrapping my arm and her waist and resting my fingers on the waist of her jeans.
This feels perfect.
“This was supposed to be perfect,” she sighs.
I just love being with you! That’s all I need. Don’t you enjoy being with me?
“And it’s not that I don’t enjoy your company…but I’m sorry we never did make it to the hotel and here we are with a bunch of women we’ve never met…playing round after round of Go Bible Heroes.”
Don’t apologize.
“I’m sorry.”
I grin and kiss her neck lightly, “Don’t apologize. You can’t control the weather.”
We stare out at the lightening and hold each other close and for one moment in time, everything feels perfect. It doesn’t matter that there’s a roomful of annoying women waiting for us inside. I don’t even care that we never did get dinner. Everything just feels perfect.
“This is a long storm…” she muses.
“It is. I wonder if we would have been okay to keep going …”
“We’ll never know,” she shrugs.
Suddenly, I get a fun idea in my head and I guess a crazy expression on my face because Harper stopped and questioned me.
“It’s freezing…” I mutter, “Come on. We should go back inside. In fact, let’s go explore.”
She examines my face and chuckles, and I cannot help but feel like she’s laughing at me, “Explore? You’re such a…boy.”
Really?
“I hope so,” I grin, grabbing her and pulling her inside with me.
“Not back inside…not back in here...” she groans, hiding her face in my sweatshirt.
“It’ll be fun this time…I promise.”
I look around carefully, making sure none of the women were watching while I plan our temporary escape. Fortunately, they are still busy off in their different parts of the sanctuary.
“Come on…lets have a moment to ourselves…”
Harper and I giggle as we run off into the darkness of the empty church. We hurry down the hallway that leads away from the sanctuary…past the kitchen and the fellowship hall where the congregation probably comes together for coffee on Sundays. I feel like we’re little children and to be honest, I like the innocence of it. We run down the dark hall in the direction of a crimson lit-up exit light that is at the end of the hallway.
“This is kind of creepy…” I admit, “Specially with the thunder cracking in the background, huh?”
“Taylor Hanson is scared…” she chuckles.
Yes, a bit. This is yet another scene from a bad horror film. Where is the homicidal Jesus freak?
“Yeah right…” I mutter, glancing into the rooms as we pass them. I stop to push open a door on the left and slowly flick on the light. The room lights up and we can see small tables and chairs all around the room. On the wall are posters of Noah and his Ark.
“Sunday school classroom…reminds me of the one I grew up in,” I whisper.
Harper flicks off the light to my surprise, and although I can’t see her face, I can tell she’s grinning. Just as surprising, I feel her lips on mine and suddenly I am overwhelmed by lust for the beautiful woman in my arms.
Minutes must have gone by of incredibly satisfying kissing, but you know how kissing is. It only felt like seconds. I suddenly feel Harper’s hand resting on the buckle of my belt. She hesitantly fingers the silver.
With my hands tangled in her hair and my jeans about to burst at the seams, the light flicked back on. Oh fuck…oh fuck this feels like home.
“Oh!” Someone gasps, “We were…we were wondering if something happened to you!”
This is almost as bad as your little sister walking in on you while you’re half naked laying over your half naked girlfriend. This is almost as bad as when your mother finds your stack of condoms in your night stand drawer and questions you about the exact status of your virginity. How embarrassing…
I turn to the woman in the doorway and wipe the smeared, strawberry lip gloss of my lips. I offer a sheepish smile, “We were just taking a walk…”
“Oh…okay. Well we’ve all decided to sleep here for the night. For awhile the storms settled down, and we probably should have left then, but we couldn’t have known.”
We follow her out of the room and back towards the sanctuary as she talks.
“Now it’s picked up again, and we have another warning. It’s looking even more serious than earlier. You two better stay the night here.”
As we follow her, Harper whispers in my ear, “That was so awkward…does she think we’re going to hell?”
“Even born again Christians kiss!” I laugh, and Harper swats me for replying so loudly.
We arrive back in the sanctuary to the curious group of women.
“You found them!” One of the ladies gasps.
“They were…taking a walk around the church.”
“Just checking it out,” I add with a tight smile, “Stretching our legs.”
I don’t know much about Jesus, but I know he’s laughing at my luck. Here I am on my meant-to-be romantic Christmas trip with my new girlfriend lying in the sanctuary of a church with a roomful of 40 year old ladies. I briefly contemplate telling the story differently to my brothers- mentioning the dozen women without the 40 year old mother part.
Harper found it funnier than I, and she laughed on and off the entire time we were laying under the piles of blankets trying to fall asleep.
“This is crazy…” I muse, shaking my head in wonder, “Only us, Harp…only we could end up here on our romantic…romantic get away.”
She laughs, “Romantic get away? Who says this was supposed to be a romantic get away? I was planning on getting to the hotel and playing a game of cards before we fell asleep…”
“Cards, eh?” I lean back and kiss her forehead, “Go Bible Heroes?”
“Something like that…”
“Old Jesus?” She doesn’t catch on, “You know…like old maid.”
“Now that’s going too far,” she grins, “That’s just cheesy.”
After a long silence she asks, “Are you overly bummed?”
“Bummed about what?”
“That we’re…here?”
I pause before I answer. I think this is one of those test questions. This is one of the questions where if you answer wrong, the woman will either a. cry or b. walk away and cry. If I answer wrong, there WILL be crying.
“You know I’m happy if I’m with you. It’d be nice to not be surrounded by a chorus of snoring mothers…”
She laughs. I like to make her laugh.
“But it could be worse right?”
“We could have been torn apart in a tornado…”
“That could have happened…” I agree.
“We could be stuck in the McDonalds…”
“That would suck…” I agree.
“At least we’d get free fries…”
“And apple pies…warm probably. Are you cold?” I pull the covers over us more.
“I’m fine…”
Eventually, she stops talking and I hear her breathing get deeper and slower.
“Harper?” I whisper. No reply. I kiss her forehead again and sign in contentment.
It’s funny how life works out. It’s funny how instead of maybe having sex for the first time with my adored girlfriend in a hotel by ourselves we end up here. The funniest part is that I really don’t care.
Well, maybe just a bit.