Saint

Chapter 5

5 from the notebook of Elijah Iverson

Shoulders.

That was my first thought when I saw him.

The kind of shoulders that could blot out the sun, shoulders which tested the seams of his monk habit. (Which is a garment designed on purpose to be loose and shapeless, so that’s . . . something.)

Four years of changes, and it was his shoulders I noticed first. But there were other changes too. A thick scruff on his striking jaw, calluses on his big hands. And even though those green eyes still made my heart speed, they no longer glittered with mischief and boyish joy, but something . . . I don’t know, solemn feels like the wrong word. Secret, maybe.

And the quiet of him, quiet like I’d never seen from Aiden Bell. He listened to every word I spoke as if I were uttering a prophecy, and when he did look at me and not at his hands, his gaze was so intensely present. Like all of him was there with me, so very there, like he’d existed his entire life just to look at me for thirty minutes in a cloister.

That part . . . it is like the old Aiden, and yet it isn’t, not with the quiet thrown in along with it.

Why can’t I stop thinking about how quiet he was?

Why can’t I stop thinking about his shoulders?

I did what I went there to do. I told him about Jamie, about the wedding, I successfully instigated closure.

Nothing feels closed

Why can’t I stop thinking about