Beautiful Mistake(15)

There was still a half hour until I could go sign out with Father Frank, so I settled in, leaning my back against the cushioned red fabric, hoping to catch a few z’s. The chair was pretty damn comfortable on the priest’s side, must have been because they got stuck listening to other people’s bullshit for hours every Saturday afternoon. I had no idea how these guys spent their entire lives in this place. Just being here for the last few Saturdays had been enough to freak me out.

Three weeks ago, my mother caught Liam and me ditching school again. It was our senior year, my mom was normally pretty cool, and parents expected a few cuts. That wasn’t what sent God-fearing Grace West off the deep end. It wasn’t even finding a half-naked and fully-stoned Emily Willis on her knees about to give me a blowjob in the yard that had freaked Mom out. Nope. What had gotten me involuntarily signed up for a month of cleaning St. Killian’s on Saturday mornings was my music. Both of my parents hated that I had no intention of going to college or becoming part of the upstanding, family-owned investment firm that bore the West name.

So, I was sentenced to community service for wanting to play my drums and sing. After Father Frank’s long talk with my mother, he also took every chance to remind Liam and me that playing music was no way for a man to make a living. Thank God, I only had one more week left here.

I’d just started to zone out with my eyes shut when the confessional door squeaked open. I had assumed it was Liam again.

“Sin again so soon, loser?” I said.

It sure as hell wasn’t Liam who responded. The voice was tiny and shook with nerves as she spoke. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

Shit.

A little girl was on the other side and had assumed I was a priest. From the sound of her voice, I figured she couldn’t have been older than ten or eleven. What the hell could she have to confess?

I probably should have opened the door and walked out before she started to let me in on her darkest secrets. No, not probably. I definitely should have walked out. But…maybe it was the good weed. Maybe it was the sound of her shaky little voice that had me curious. Maybe I was just fucked up in the head. But instead of literally opening the door, I opened a figurative one instead. One that I had no idea would change my life forever when I opened my mouth.

“Go on,” I told her. “Tell me your sins.”





Rachel



Caine had slipped in halfway through the class.

Suddenly I could understand why he found lateness distracting. For the last twenty minutes, I’d been distracted by the man sitting in the seat I’d sat in during the last class. Next to him, Mr. Ludwig, the beanie-wearing artist of nudes, looked as nervous as I felt. Although his nervousness probably had more to do with the fact that the professor had just quietly slipped the notebook he’d been drawing in again today from his desk, and it was now closed and sitting in Caine’s bag.

I tried not to look up to where they were sitting, yet I could feel Caine’s eyes watching me. How is it that I had two hundred pairs of eyes focused on me, and I only sensed two?

I cleared my throat. “Since we have a few minutes before the end of class, I’m going to hand out the headphones we spoke about earlier.” I went to the supply closet in the corner of the classroom and pulled out a box. Handing it to the first row, I asked the student in the corner to take one and pass the box down as I delivered a full box to each row. Caine got up and quietly grabbed a few boxes to help me distribute to the rows at the back of the lecture hall before taking his seat again. As I distributed, I reminded the class of the exercise that built on Professor’s West first assignment, and then I gave them one of my own.

“Along with the exercise we already discussed, I’d like you all to do a second listening assignment. We all have songs that remind us of good times in our early teens. Pick out the one that has the strongest memory for you. Tonight, when you’re alone at home, I want you to shut the blinds, turn off all of the lights, and get the room as dark as you can. Then lie flat on your back somewhere comfortable, preferably in your bed, and listen to the song that holds those memories for you using the Bose headphones. Listen to it twice. That’s it. Nice and simple. We’ll use what you hear in an upcoming class.”

After the class had emptied, Caine walked to the front. “Nice job.”

“Thank you. I didn’t think you’d be sitting in. It kind of threw me when you walked in late.” I smirked. “I don’t like lateness. I find it disrupts my class.”

Caine raised a brow. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

I packed my laptop into my bag. “Mr. Ludwig didn’t look happy to see you.”

“Mr. Ludwig is lucky he’s still sitting in my class at all.”

Caine helped me collect the leftover headphones from each row, and then we consolidated the stragglers to make one box of headphones and nested the empty boxes inside each other.

“So, what’s your song?” he asked.

My brows drew down. “Hmmm?”

“The assignment you gave. What’s the song that reminds you of your childhood?” What immediately came to mind was an old Lynyrd Skynyrd song, “Devil in a Bottle,” but that was a little more honesty than I could handle.

“I don’t know. Probably anything from Maroon 5.” Since I was a crappy liar, I avoided his eyes. But when I glanced up at him, I caught him doing that squinting thing. “What?” I asked.