“Do you hear that?”
She tilted her head and listened.
“No. I don’t hear anything. Do you hear something?” she asked Søren.
“I do.”
“What?”
“God laughing at me.”
“If I'm going to give you forever," she said, raising her chin higher, "I want something in return."
"I already offered to help you out of your mess. What else do you want?"
Eleanor considered her demands. He sounded open to suggestion, which was good because she had a suggestion.
"Everything."
"Everything?" he repeated. "As in. . .?"
"Every. Thing." She stared at him across the desk, and this time it was her turn not to blink. "I give you forever, the least you can give me is everything.”
“Life is a symphony composed by God, played by us with preludes, themes, movements, passages...and wrong notes, so many wrong notes. Heaven is where we get to hear the music played perfectly for the first time.”
“You're not a normal priest, are you?'
He gave her a smile that hit her like a slap to the face and a kiss on the mouth all at once.
'My God, I hope not.”
“Kingsley stepped even closer.
“How old are you?” he asked her.
“Seventeen. How old are you?”
“Thirty. Is your hymen intact?”
Eleanor stood up straighter.
“Is your brain intact?”
“I ask for a reason.” He shook his finger in her face to hush her. “I fucked a virgin last week. I didn’t mean to.”
“What happened? You trip and fall into her hymen?”
“You mind-fucked me.”
“Does your brain hurt? I tried to be gentle since it was your first time.”
“She should submit to him in love and without fear, giving her body to him like a holy offering and making their bed an altar.”
“He gave her a smile that hit her like a slap to the face and a kiss on the mouth all at once.”
“Little One, to be with me is to hurt.”
“To be without you would hurt more.”
“There is God, there is you and there is Kingsley. Those are my three nonnegotiables.”
“A man in love with a woman in love with another man is the second most desperate creature on the earth.”
“What’s the first?”
“A man in love with a man in love with another woman.”
Eleanor laughed. Kingsley didn’t.”
“It is here that love is to be found—not hidden away in corners but in the midst of occasions of sin.”
“When you hear music so beautiful it gives you chills, those are angel wings brushing against you.”
“What's a dissertation?"
"If Satan gave you instructions for writing the book report from Hell, it would closely resemble those of a Ph.D. dissertation.”
“You stole five cars. Instead of going into prison or juvenile detention, you endured nothing more than volunteer work. Now that you are paying back your legal fees, which were not inconsiderable, perhaps you need to suffer more in your service. It's good for the soul."
"Suffering is good for the soul? You're sitting in your cute little office drinking your gross-ass tea that smells like bacon-"
"It's Lapsang souchong."
"It's disgusting. You're drinking disgusting tea and writing homilies in your room-temperature office while I"m dying in there. I don't see you suffering."
"I have suffered. My suffering has ended."
"Did you find Jesus?"
"No, I found you.”
“I have a friend,” Søren said at last.
“A friend? That’s the big secret?”
“You didn’t ask for a big secret. Only a secret.”
“Why is your friend a secret?”
“That’s a secret.”
“Wine and women should always be allowed to breathe.”
“Okay,” she said. “You got me. I’m yours.”
…
“Forever,” she said.
And he said, “Everything.”
“I wish I could give you everything you wanted. But even a good gift is a bad gift if given at the wrong time.”
“Adam and Eve didn't know what they would win or what they would lose until they'd both won and lost it. It's like that poem we read. The guy doesn't know what the meaning is of the road he took until he got to the end of it. You choose first, then you find out what you've chosen after. Every choice has a price. Sometimes we don't know what it is until after we've paid it.”
“Well, a priest is better than a eunuch for advice, then. I’m guessing you still have all your original parts.”
“Warranty included,” he said.”
“A cello on a winter night in the midst of a frozen city—that was what his voice sounded like.”
“I think life is a book,” Eleanor said. “God writes it. We’re His characters. He knows what happens on the next page, but we don’t. Heaven is where we get to read the book cover to cover and see how it all makes sense.”
“The kiss surrounded her like air, held her up like water, supported her like the earth and burned her like fire.”
“Doesn’t help that you’re like the hottest priest on the planet.”
Soren looked sharply at her. Eleanor went pale.
“I said that out loud.”
“Should I pretend I didn’t hear it?”
“Eleanor’s eyes widened at the sight of the man.
“I love that reaction.” He pointed at Eleanor’s face. “That is the ‘you didn’t tell me how pretty he was look, oui?”
“It’s good to live in the past. It’s sexier here”
“Safe to say our Lord was one of the first radical feminists. He constantly berated men who judged women. The woman with the alabaster jar. The woman with the issue of blood. The first person he spoke to after His resurrection was not Peter, but Mary Magdalene.'
'Jesus loved the ladies. I like that.”
“He sat astride his motorcycle, and she stepped in front of it.
“Do you have any idea what it is you have between your legs?” she demanded?
“I’m well aware of what is between my legs.” He said the words without even breaking a smile.”
“Whatever this game is we’re playing,” she finally said, “I’m going to win it.”
If she expected him to be thrown off or confused by that statement, she was sorely disappointed.
“If you trust me and obey me,” he said, “we might both win.”
“The way I feel about him is like a heartbeat -- soft and persistent, underlying everything.”
“They weren't nice words he said. He could've lived a good life and died never having made a person feel rubbed down to bones and too sad to hold together. ”
“My advice to you is this. Do not attempt to stand alone. ...The most fatal thing a man can do is try to stand alone.”
“As the exalting one man so greatly above the rest cannot be justified on the equal rights of nature, so neither can it be defended on the authority of scripture; for the will of the Almighty, as declared by Gideon and the prophet Samuel, expressly disapproves of government by kings. All anti-monarchical parts of scripture have been very smoothly glossed over in monarchical governments, but they undoubtedly merit the attention of countries which have their governments yet to form. "Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's" is the scripture doctrine of courts, yet it is no support of monarchical government, for the Jews at that time were without a king, and in a state of vassalage to the Romans.”
“Are these things really better than the things I already have? Or am I just trained to be dissatisfied with what I have now?”
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