The Confessions(22)

“He doesn’t, but don’t tell him that. It’ll hurt his little feelings.”

“You’re a very good priest,” she said. “I’m glad we finally got to meet. He speaks very highly of you.”

“Not so fast. You still haven’t given me a real sin yet. I can’t wrap this thing up until you do. It’s not reconciliation until I’ve absolved and reconciled you.”

“We went over everything. I have committed no mortal sins.”

“Make something up then!”

“Um…” She held up her hands. “Come on, Nora, you make up stuff or a living. Wait. I got it. Daniel Craig.”

“The actor?”

“Yes, him. James Bond. He’s married.”

“He is.”

“I want to f*ck him.”

“Well, who doesn’t? He shows up in half the confessions I hear.”

“Doesn’t Jesus say that if you look upon someone and lust after them in your heart, you’ve committed adultery?”

“He does, yes. But we’re fairly certain lust means you’d do it if given the opportunity. Simple sexual attraction doesn’t count as lust.”

“It’s not simple sexual attraction. I’d steal him from his wife, and we’d run away to Italy and live together in a crumbling Tuscan palazzo, and we’d leave the world behind, and it would be nothing but wine and food and sex until we ate ourselves, drank ourselves, and f*cked ourselves to death. Now that’s lust. But more importantly, it’s adultery.”

“That is adultery. Excellent. Well done.”

“So you can absolve me?”

“I will the second you tell me who we’re really talking about.” He raised his eyebrows at her and waited.

“You’re good,” she said. “Very good.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice seeing through masks. Take off yours.”

“Zach,” she said with a heavy sigh. “Grace’s husband. My editor. I still have feelings for him. Very strong feelings that make me tempted to do things I shouldn’t do.”

“You and Marcus have a complicated relationship with this couple, don’t you?”

“Understatement of the century. And it doesn’t help that I traded Grace a night with S?ren for a week with Zach. She ended up with a child. I ended up with a…I don’t know, a dream of what could have been. And the man is ridiculously so good at anal.”

“Eleanor.”

“An ass-master, I swear. He’s better than Nico and S?ren and they’re both fantastic. Every night for a week. I couldn’t walk, but I was happy.”

“You’re trying to give me a heart attack. That’s not nice.”

“Sorry. Sorry.” She raised her hands in surrender. “I had to get that out.”

“I think you keep as many secrets from him as he keeps from you.”

“Yeah, but I only keep the secrets that would…”

“Hurt his little feelings?” Stuart finished her thought for her.

“Damn, you are a good priest.”

He blew on his nails and brushed them on his cassock. That got another laugh at her.

“Father, I love S?ren and Nico. I’m in love with them. I don’t want to feel this way about someone else. What do I do?”

“First you have to see your feelings for what they are, not what you think they are. What happened that week with Zach that sticks with you? And not the…you know.”

“The sex,” she said.

“That. You said that week with this Zach gentleman left you with ‘a dream of what could have been.’ What’s that dream?”

“That week is the week I met Nico. It was right after we found out about Fionn. That week with Zach in France was the last…I don’t know, the last easy week of my life.”

“Easy? How so?”

“When I met Nico, he fell in lust with me. Has a thing for older women.”

“I used to. Then I turned 81. Now I can’t find any older women. But tell your boy I approve of his tastes.”

“I absolutely will. Anyway…Kingsley’s son, Nico. That was hard after meeting him, knowing that he was going to complicate my life. Complicate it even more. Wes made things difficult, but at least we lived on the same continent. That week with Zach was the last week before everything changed. I keep going back to it in my mind, living there, wishing we’d had more time, wishing I could stop time and stay in France longer. Not forever. Forever belongs to S?ren. Just longer. I love my life but it’s not easy being in love with two men in two different counties. Why couldn’t Nico have been Canadian or Mexican? He had to be French? Really? So unfair.”

“I suppose I don’t have to tell you, of all people, that life isn’t fair?”

“Nope.”

“You say that was the last week before everything changed, before everything got harder,” Ballard said. “Isn’t it possible that what you’re lusting for is not the man but the life you were living before meeting Nico? That and…”

He punched the air and she nodded. She caught his drift.

“By your own choosing, you have two lovers—and one of your lovers has another lover of his own and a child. You enjoy that life. You chose that life. But you know better than I do that it’s a hard life, “ he said. “You’re not merely lusting after a married man. You’re lusting for a life you can’t have—a simple life. Simpler, anyway.”