Read Online With the Father by Jenni Moen - Free Book Online Page A

established, and
predictable. He was what everyone wanted for me.   What everyone expected for me. However,
I had no interest in the predictable. No matter how good he was in bed.
    I stifled the urge to get up and run from this room, this town, and all
the misery that was holding me here. It was a stupid, irrelevant thought
anyway. I’d never be able to leave now. She was depending on me. “We went out
for burgers with Paul Sullivan yesterday,” I said changing the subject to
something more neutral.
    “Who?” he asked.
    “The priest from the Catholic Church.”
    “Oh, that Paul Sullivan. That sounds like a barrel of laughs.” A bit of
sarcasm snuck out. Even though his subject didn’t deserve it, I was glad to see
a sliver of the old Maddox resurface. He’d been different since the fire, and
this new Maddox was missing the spark that I’d loved to hate for the past four
years.
    I laughed. “Is there more than one? You know, you wouldn’t forget who
he was if you went to church occasionally. He’s actually pretty funny … and
very interesting.”
    His eyes narrowed and fixed determinedly upon me. “Have dinner with me ,”
he said, abruptly changing the subject.
    “I can’t. I told
Paul that I’d work at the kitchen tonight.”  
    “So now you two are
getting all cozy?” he asked.
    The showing of jealousy caused me to laugh. “He’s a priest, Maddox. You
don’t get cozy with the father.”
    He smiled at me,
with a wicked gleam in his eye. “True. And everyone knows that Catholic priests
only like little boys, anyway.”
    “Gross. You can go
now.” I pointed toward the door, only half kidding.
    “I was just
joking,” he said, pushing out of the chair. “But, I’ll leave if you agree that
you’ll have dinner with me tomorrow.”
    I considered it. He
was mostly harmless, and this tired, sad Maddox was wearing me down. He had
just as much on his plate as I did. Running the company by himself wasn’t something he expected to be doing, but here he was doing just that.
Strangely, we were in similar situations. “Okay, fine,” I said, relenting.
“Just friends though. I can’t do more than that right now.”
    He fist pumped the
air. “Score!”
    “No. Not
score.   I said ‘just friends.’”
    He covered his ears
with his hands and sang, “La la la la la . I can’t hear you.”
    “You’re
impossible,” I said to his back.   “Oh, hey, would it be okay if I use Jonathan’s computer to check my
email?”
    “Of course. It’s
all yours. ” he said with a dismissive wave of his
hand. Even with his back to me, I could see his enthusiasm. I could feel it
reverberating around the room.
    Still shaking my
head, I pivoted in the chair and pushed the power button on Jonathan’s laptop.
The screen immediately lit up. I scanned the desktop for the Internet icon and
clicked on it. While I waited for it to pull up, I noticed a chat icon in the
lower corner of the screen. Did people still chat? In this day of text
messaging and social media, it seemed almost archaic. If you sat at a desk and
stared at a computer all day, however, maybe it made sense.
    I spent the next
twenty minutes checking my email. My roommate in New York City, who was also a
freelance writer, had checked in to let me know that all was well and that I
was missed. It was a courtesy email. We weren’t close. Our jobs caused us both
to travel a lot. We shared an apartment for the simple reason that we were
rarely there at the same time. Our interactions were limited to emails and
scrawled messages on a chalk board .
    After firing off a
response to her, I read two emails from assignment editors at the magazine from
where I received most of my assignments. Both were inquiring as to my
availability for upcoming assignments. I sighed and clicked the ‘x’ in the
corner to close the window without responding. I would do it later. I would
probably never work for them again, but I wasn’t quite ready to burn those
bridges yet.
    After