Chapter 15

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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Dear journal,

Thoughts about today: I dread having to tell Shelly about the kiss. I want to keep telling myself that it didn’t really happen. I don’t think I’ll be able to lie to her about it, though. She can read me like a book anyway. I probably won’t even have to tell her, she’ll know something’s wrong as soon as she sees me. She picks up so much more than what she actually sees with her eyes. That’s how she knew this was going to happen in the first place. There’s no way I’m telling her any details though, even if she asks me. God, why did it happen?

Honesty time: I really want to marry Shelly and just live a normal life. I want to make mom and Ed, and dad and Alicia proud of me. Most of all, I want you to be proud of me too, Lord. After what happened tonight, I feel like there must still be a dark hole in my soul that even you can’t reach. I know the bible says somewhere that we should greet each other with a kiss, but it wasn’t just a kiss. I was lusting for him, Lord. And that’s a major problem.

I don’t understand, but I’m not ready to give up and turn my back on you just because I’m being stupid.

What I learned: No matter how a person feels, they’ve got to walk by faith. And “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.[1]” No matter what I thought I felt, I’ve just got to keep walking by faith. She’s what I’ve been hoping for ever since God changed my life.

If I put some positive spin on it, I think this could actually prove to Shelly how much we need to be together. Her understanding of what makes me tick is just what I need to stay on the “straight and narrow.”

Lord, don’t let a stupid little kiss come between us. Help Shelly to understand that.

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She was standing just inside the door, her face eager with anticipation. I forced a huge smile, and leaned in to kiss her. I considered pushing my tongue forward, but remembered where it had been last night and suddenly felt like I would somehow be defiling her if I did it – like she would somehow know I had licked Elijah’s tonsils and be able to tell I had cheated on her. Not that I thought I had cheated on her, I mean she’s the one who made me do it, but that’s what was going through my mind. I dreaded her question. For a brief time this morning I had decided I was going to lie to her, but then I realized I loved her too much to actually do it. We were just going to have to talk this thing through.

“I saw you and Elijah at Romano’s last night.”

“You were there?” Why hadn’t I seen her?

“Hello-o-o? I waved to you when you came in the door.”

I was speechless. …and I could feel that my ears must be glowing.

“You kissed him, didn’t you?” she asked, almost bitterly.

“I did what you forced me to do, Shelly. Now will you put my ring on your finger?”

“Phillip, I saw how the two of you were looking at each other. It wasn’t just a kiss.”

“What are talking about? I did what you asked, and that’s all I did.”

“I saw your eyes.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I was right. Your eyes never look like that when you’re with me.”

“That’s because I’ve been so nervous about what you were making me do. In case you don’t know it, marrying someone is a huge responsibility for a guy. I guess I’ve just been distracted about it when I’m with you. Last night when I was with Elijah, it was like we’re just friends. I didn’t have to be thinking about providing for him and a family, Michelle.”

“We used to be friends like that. What have we done? I’m so sorry, Phillip.”

It’s weird how you can take a simple subject, write a ten page paper on it and still not explain it properly. Then you can take a complicated one, like love for instance, and with three short words make everything crystal clear. “Shelly, no,” I protested as she began digging in her handbag. I somehow knew what she was looking for. “I swear to God it wasn’t like you think. He’s a guy for crying out loud.”

Shelly found the blue velvet box and pulled back, wiping a tear from her eye. “Tell me the truth, Phillip. What was going through your mind at the time? Were you thinking about me…about how you were glad to get it over with so I could put this on my finger?”

“It was lust, Shelly. That’s different than real love. You’re the one I want to spend my life with.”

“Physical attraction …lust, is a part of love you can’t ignore, Phillip.”

“Shelly, please. Love is a commitment, not a feeling.”

“We can’t live our lives without feelings. I want you to have feelings for the one you’re in love with.”

“I have feelings for you, Shelly. Please,” I pleaded again.

“We have to be brave – both of us. God will somehow see us through this.”

Then she fell on my neck; huge, deep sobs wracking her body to the core.

 “Why did you ever make me do this, Shelly? Oh, God, I’m so sorry. I’m so confused. I hate myself for allowing it to happen.”

“For allowing what to happen, Phil? For allowing you to find out God wants us both to be happy?”

“That’s just it; I can’t ever be happy if I turn my back on everything I believe in and walk away from God. How could I ever possibly be happy if I did that?

“Shelly, I’ll learn to be happy in your arms. I need you. I want to live a normal life, just like God wants – a wife, church, civic duties… I want to have children to share my life with, Shelly. How could that ever happen if I just tossed everything out the window and embraced perversion?

“If you won’t marry me Michelle, I’ll look for someone else, but I won’t let myself fall in love with him. I could never do that. Don’t you understand? Please take the ring back,” I sullenly whimpered as I pushed the velvet box into her hand. “Please”

“Phillip, you’re breaking my heart. I… I can’t.”

Seeing that we had drawn quite a crowd in the lobby of the Art Center, I let the ring fall at her feet, and sprinted out the door.

Two hours later, I saw her sitting on a bench, huddled in her parka, snow silently swirling around her as she stared into nothingness.

I walked over to her, brushed some snow off the bench and sat down beside her. We sat like that for probably half-an-hour, me holding my arms around the girl who had now turned my world upside down twice, slowly rocking back and forth.

“It was a stupid thing to ask you to do,” she finally whispered. “It’s like I pushed you right into the path of a loaded shotgun. I don’t know what I could have been thinking. I don’t know why I thought you wouldn’t get hurt – that we wouldn’t get hurt. Jealousy made me swerve my car in front of yours, and slam on the brakes. I’ve ruined everything we could have had.”

“Shelly,” I whispered, hopeful we could somehow repair the crack we had managed to open in the dam that had, up until now, held our lives in a pool of relative calm. “We can start over. No games this time. Now we know what we’re dealing with, and we can help each other to overcome our weaknesses.”

“Phillip, if that’s all it was – a weakness – I would already have this ring on my finger,” she said as she pushed the damp velvet box back into my possession. “I’ve done a lot of research in the past two months, and I don’t believe it’s a weakness. It’s who you are, Phillip. It’s not like getting hooked on drugs or alcohol, where you can just wake up one day and say you made a mistake. It’s who you are. You can’t ever change who you are – not really.”

“But we’re new creations in Him,” I protested weakly, well aware that my lifelong attraction to guys had been altered little by my conversion. The drug use …the lying …the stealing, had all been stripped away in an instant. But in the five years since my conversion experience, my eyes had never begun to follow girls. They always picked out lean, bright-eyed guys for me to watch. At least they did when I would allow them to.

“Let me give you another test,” Shelly provocatively whisper as she straddled my lap with her legs. Pinning me against the backrest of the bench, she wantonly ground her body against mine and snaked her tongue into my mouth. It was me who was doing the “m-m-m-m” thing this time.

Then I felt her hand reach between us and come to rest on the part of me which should have been most excited about what she was doing.

“The test results are in,” she announced brightly as she suddenly leaned back and looked into my eyes.

“I give you an ‘A’ for body warmth, a ‘B-plus’ for lip action, and an ‘A-minus’ for sound effects.”

Hope buoyed to the surface of my heart as I reached for the ring box and held it out to her.

She stared at it a moment and then her face tightened. “I’m sorry, Phillip, if that didn’t get you excited…”

I knew the instant she said it that she was talking about what her hand had discovered …or rather had failed to discover.

She shook her head slightly and smiled, touching the end of my nose with her finger in an endearing way. “Carrots, I hate to be the one to break the new to you, but you’re about as straight as a dog’s hind leg …and I love you as much now as I ever have. I’ll never forget you for as long as I live.

“Come on,” she laughed as she tugged me to my feet. “I could use a steaming hot mocha latte just about now. My treat” And then she kissed me on the cheek and told me again that she loved me.

“We still have a date scheduled for Friday you know, and I can’t tolerate welchers. Where’re we gonna go?”

“You amaze me Michelle Dade. We drop a wrecking ball into each other’s lives one minute, and you’re ready to party the next. I love that about you. Are you sure…”

“The answer is yes, Phillip, I’m sure. …and I’m going to want progress reports after yours and Skinny-legs’ dates. Full details – and there better not be any hanky-panky going on between the two of you – you are still a Christian.”

“You are nuts, Tootsie. I’ve created a lunatic. Don’t be surprised if I show up on Friday with a straight jacket in my hands. …and there won’t be anything to report, because we won’t be dating.”

“We never used to call them dates, either.”

We both did a lot of soul searching that next week, and by Friday I think we both felt freer than we had in a long time. That’s when I realized the stress of keeping that certain part of who I seemed to be masked whenever we were together had been choking our friendship, and we hadn’t even been aware of it. Now the charade was over, and we were best friends again.

“Elijah,” Shelly suddenly blurted out in the middle of a sentence. “Elijah, come and join us.”

“Hey. Michelle, right? Hey, Phillip”

“Elijah, I want you to meet the most amazing woman on planet earth. Michelle Dade,” I said as I stood and motioned my arms toward Shelly. “Shelly, Mr. Lips. …er, Elijah Cohen.”

“Oh my God, Carrots. I can’t believe you just called him that. Mr. Lips?”

“That’s evidently what you saw in him, or you wouldn’t have asked me to taste them for you.” Turning to Elijah, I continued with my joking. “Lij, she just confessed to me that she made me do it because she kept waking up dreaming of you, and knew that if she tried doing it, I’d have a cow. She made me take notes, and everything. She was jealous when I told her your tonsils tasted like chocolate.”

“O-o-okay,” Elijah said slowly. I noticed him trying to covertly catch a glimpse of Shelly’s ring finger. “Is someone going to let me in on this joke, or do have to stand here like an idiot and guess?”

Shelly pushed out the chair next to me so Elijah could sit down, but before he did, she used her foot to get it right up against mine.

“You two look so cute together.”

Elijah leaned in close and asked me if she was drunk. His knee rested against my leg and I nervously moved my chair and leg away from him.

“No. Just feeling a lot happier than she has in a long time. This is the best date we’ve ever had.”

Michelle, who must have noticed Elijah trying to see if she was wearing the ring, put both her hands on top of the table and flexed her fingers.

“So, are like… are you two are still dating?”

“Nope,” Shelly answered briskly. “But we love each other more now than we ever have.”

“You got married?” Elijah asked, looking a bit forlorn, and starting to get out of his chair.

“No, but we still love each other. I’m still hoping,” I told him looking into Shelly’s eyes one more time to see if she would reconsider.

“Love, as in the best friends in the world,” Shelly replied shaking her head slightly. Then she leaned across the table and playfully got into his face. “So watch your back, boyfriend. I’ll get real nasty with you if you ever hurt Carrots here – and that goes double for breaking his heart.

Panic time!

“Oh, and by the way, you better have him home before midnight, because after that he turns back into frog.”

Elijah’s million dollar smile did little to ease my heartache.