Say a Little Prayer(56)

She stops, but I feel the confession hanging on the tip of her tongue. It lingers between us, deliberately unsaid, and I resist the urge to lean forward and take it. To make her state, out loud, what we’re both thinking. I know Julia and Ben don’t agree with most of the things their father does, but I didn’t realize how much I’ve needed to hear her say it until now. I wait, but after a second of strained silence, Julia just ducks her head.

“Sorry,” she mutters. “The point is, I don’t like Amanda. But maybe she’s never had anyone tell her things could be different.”

It’s the same thing I’ve been telling myself all week—the idea that if I can just get people to listen, if I can pull together real, tangible proof of Pastor Young’s lies, then everything will be fine. It has to be. I’ve come too far to second-guess my plan now, but as I watch Julia tilt her head toward the bonfire, I wonder if basing my entire strategy on the idea that our congregation is inherently good might come back to bite me.

Maybe it’s not that simple. Maybe everyone is more complicit than I want to believe.

“Could it really be different, though?” I ask. “Could things actually change? I left a year ago, Julia. Isn’t it all still the same?”

When Julia looks at me again, her expression is painfully gentle. “No,” she says. “They’re not the same. You’re here. You came back.”

I shake my head. “I’m not back.”

“You could be, though.”

“Is that what you want?”

The question slips out before I can stop it. He still thinks we can Save you. That’s what Ben told me on the bus. That’s what I’m afraid Julia is thinking now.

She blinks, lashes fanning across her cheeks as her head cocks to the side. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” I swallow over my rapidly tightening throat. “What if this week is it? What if I never come back to church and nothing you say will ever convince me? Would you still want…that?”

I can’t bring myself to voice the real question—would you still want me? But when Julia reaches for me in the dark, hand settling purposefully on my knee, I wonder if she hears it, too.

“Always.”

My next inhale catches in the back of my throat. Somewhere behind us, Patrick launches into the slow, twangy chorus of a song I almost recognize. It’s slower than ‘Wonderwall,’ more intimate than anything he’s played all night, and there’s a split second between heartbeats where it feels like Julia and I have slipped out of time.

Because we’re not alone here. The bonfire is still flickering several yards away. There are plenty of reasons for me to keep my distance, but as I watch the flames drag gold-tipped fingers down the side of Julia’s face, I can’t remember a single one. In fact, every scrap of my remaining attention is focused on the way her hand still lingers on my knee, like she can’t imagine a world where she ever lets go. Then her gaze drops to my lips, and for a single aching second, I think she wants to kiss me.

No. I push the thought away. You’re being delusional.

But how am I supposed to think anything else when she’s looking at me like this?

Her grip tightens around my knee, and I have to dig my fingers into the bark to avoid reaching for her, too. I want to touch her. I want to tuck her hair behind her ears and memorize the soft curve of her waist, and I want, more than anything, to know if what she said earlier is true.

If she really thinks I can change things.

The fire pops, sending a shower of sparks arcing into the night. Julia blinks at the sound. She shoots a quick glance over her shoulder, then stiffens. I hear her suck in a sharp breath, and then she’s on her feet.

“It’s late,” she says, barely looking at me as she scoops up her things. “I think I should call it a night.”

I teeter on the log, caught off guard by her sudden absence. “I…What?”

Julia’s face is inscrutable as she grabs her prayer book from the ground. “It’s late,” she repeats. “Sorry. I’ll see you back at the cabin.”

And then, before I can form a coherent sentence, she’s gone.

Rationally, I know no one else is watching us. There are too many people milling around the clearing to tell who’s coming and going, but it feels like every eye is suddenly trained on me. Like the entire camp knows exactly how much I wanted to kiss her and how, for a second, I thought she wanted to kiss me, too.

I squeeze my eyes shut as Patrick starts strumming his way through another song. It’s not like I haven’t considered the possibility of kissing Julia. It’s not like I haven’t overanalyzed the feeling of her hand in mine or the way she’d curled against me last night and thought, Could we? So far, the answer has always been a firm and deliberate no. No, Julia isn’t queer. No, she would have told me if she was. No, I’m not willing to risk our friendship on feelings she probably doesn’t reciprocate.

But as I watch her disappear into the night, the answer shifts in the back of my mind. Instead of no, it sounds a little more like what if?

I groan and bury my face in my hands. This, I think, is why I’d been so hesitant to come out—because no matter how supportive my friends and family have been so far, it still feels like something that will fundamentally change the way people see me. There are a decent number of queer students at Madison. There’s an LGBTQ+ club, too, but that didn’t stop Kyle Anderson from getting quietly scrapped from the homecoming court ballot when the rest of the baseball team found out he was dating a boy from his temple. It doesn’t stop the handful of volleyball girls who still make jokes about changing in front of Emma Perez or the teachers from misgendering Angie Harrison for the third year in a row.