18
Careful.
A week later, I stared up at Poppy’s ceiling. She was pressed against me, her head nestled on my arm, her breathing slow and even. I had lain awake watching her after we’d made love, watching the soft lines of her face relax from ecstasy into peace, feeling nothing but mindless contentment. But now that she’d been asleep for several hours, the contentment had ebbed into an anxious doubt.
The last several days had been like something out of a dream or a fairy tale, where my days were chased by the structured benevolence that was my life as a priest, and where my nights were filled with gasps and sighs and skin sliding over skin.
At night, we could pretend. We could drink and watch Netflix, we could f**k and shower together afterwards (and then f**k again.) We could drowse ne
