Jon Merz - Vicarious

“I’m sorry.”

Curran rolled the car to a stop. “Forget it.” He unlocked the doors. Lauren started to get out. She turned and looked at him.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Curran sighed. “Yeah, well, truth hurts I guess.”

“Steve-“

“I’ll call you later.”

She looked down. “Okay.”

Curran waited for her to get out of the car and then peeled out. He didn’t even glance back in his rearview mirror. If he had, he might have seen Lauren looking at him with tears in her eyes.

Lauren couldn’t sleep.

Outside her window, the November winds roiled and battered the house with twigs, branches, and flecks of dust. She burrowed deeper under the covers and wished she could simply go to sleep and wake up when this was all over.

Maybe she shouldn’t have said anything to Steve. The fact was, she decided, Darius seemed to always be one step ahead of them. Steve needed to hear what I told him, if only to try and motivate him enough to take action before Darius leads us all again.

Still…she frowned. She hadn’t really counted on making him angry. He probably hates me now, she thought.

She couldn’t blame him.

The real problem was something else.

She shifted. Lauren already knew she was physically attracted to Curran. It was obvious, at least within the internal machinations of her body. She sensed how she changed when he was around.

When Curran wasn’t around, Lauren felt calm. She felt at peace with the rest of her world. Everything seemed clear, well-defined. She could see her goal of becoming a nun. It seemed as easy as taking a breath.

But when Curran was around, his presence seemed to carbonize her hormones. Lauren found herself blushing like some naive schoolgirl if he looked at her too long.

And that smile of his.

She sighed.

Her commitment to the Church in some ways felt like it was wavering. And she didn’t want that to happen. She had chosen her destiny and this was the course she wanted to stick with.

She hoped.

The problem was, she wasn’t sure how much longer she could go on convincing herself the Church was her destiny. Equally troubling, she wasn’t sure how much longer she could go on denying her fascination for Curran.

Working for the Church would have its own rewards, of course. And they’d probably be far greater than anything she might find outside of the Church. But still, something deep within the recesses of her mind, nagged at her.

Almost doubt.

Almost.

Lauren frowned. Was she really cut out for a life in the Church? Could she hack it? She sighed. Of course she could. Hadn’t she already invested so much time and energy into it? Hadn’t this become her path to salvation? Or at least closure on all the bad things that had happened to her in the past?

It had to be somewhere, after all. Lauren couldn’t keep going through life scared of commitment, scared of men, scared of intimate contact. She just couldn’t. Her brother had scarred her badly doing what he did. That couldn’t be changed.

But her outlook on life could. Her perspective on how she would live the rest of her existence, that could be changed.

And entering the Church was the best way she knew how to get things back the way they needed to be.

Falling in love might be another, she finally conceded.

But there were no guarantees down that path.

What if she fell in love with a man who eventually spurned her? What if he dumped her hard after she fell for him and she found herself right back where she was now?

Lauren didn’t think she could stand that again.

She turned over in bed, aware of how suddenly hot she felt. She kicked off a layer of comforters. A little bit of cool air refreshed her.

Maybe that’s what she wanted most out of her life: a guarantee.

No guarantees in life, she thought with a small grin. Wasn’t that the old saying? Except death and taxes.

She wondered what Curran was doing.

She wondered how he slept at night.

Was he curled up in a fetal position or flat on his back.

Lauren pictured him flat on his back, one arm behind his head under a pillow. He’d be naked except for a pair of jockey shorts. She could see in her mind’s eye the wavy ridges marking his abdominal muscles, the sweeping fullness of his pectoral muscles, the peaks along his arms.

She sighed again.

Curran.

Did he love her?

She shook her head. Probably not. After all, she’d given him little reason to develop his affection into anything beyond lust. She felt a twinge of heartache when she realized she might have been too cruel to him during their time together.

But he desired her.

She knew that.

All it took was a single glance at the way his eyes traveled over her body. They way they locked with her own eyes. It almost seemed like he could dilate his pupils at will, opening and closing them as if drawing her into the black hole of his desire.

Lauren could feel it.

It was almost tangible.

She wondered what it would be like to touch Curran. What it would be like to trace her fingers, her hands…even her tongue, along the ridges and valleys of his muscle bellies. She imagined herself entwined with him. Legs over legs, arms over arms, heads bent in a passionate kiss.

She moaned.

And caught herself.

She yanked her eyes open and looked around, as if afraid someone might hear her. Father Jim lived here alone for the most part, but occasionally, a visiting priest would come into town and spend the night.

She thought of Darius.

Could he find her here? Could her enter this holy dwelling?

She reached out of her bed, fumbling for the drawer in the oak nightstand, and slid the drawer open.

Her fingers felt for the cold steel barrel of the small caliber handgun inside. It slid into her hand like it had been molded to it. She gripped it tightly, feeling the knurled grips, the solid weight, and the lethality even in its compactness.

She felt better.

Even though she hated guns.

She exhaled, sighing as the cool interior of the room suddenly made her a little cold. She lay there in the dark, listening to the sounds of the night outside.

More wind.

It had felt more like a breezy New England March than a November these last few days. Every time she caught a snippet of weather, the newscasters reminded her that this was the windiest November on record.

A sudden scratch at the window made her jump.

She eased slowly out of bed and then ripped the curtains open, aiming the gun — ready to shoot.

A twisted branch of wet maple scored a line across the glass.

She let the curtain fall back and sighed.

Too jumpy, Lauren.

She hopped back into bed and drew the covers up again. The gun lay against her breast. Each time she breathed, her breast grew and she became acutely aware of the gun’s weight.

She turned over and slid the gun back into the drawer, closing it slowly.

No sense shooting herself in the middle of the night by accident. Not while there was still a lot of work to be done.

After all, they still had to catch the Soul Eater.

Lauren flopped back over on her back. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine what Darius might be doing. In her mind’s eye she seemed to float away, she saw herself almost flying out of her body, out into the night.

But the cold didn’t seem to affect her. She floated on gusts of wind, danced over rooftops and spires, and zoomed out over the city.

Then she saw the house in Chestnut Hill.

It seemed so vivid. The entire scene.

She could see the police car. Just one now. She could see Kwon still wide-awake in his car drumming in time to some music on the radio.