For I Have Sinned: Bastian and Rob 1 (Southern Sin) Read online

  Julia McBryant

  For I Have Sinned

  Copyright © 2019 by Julia McBryant

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Julia McBryant asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Julia McBryant has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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  For Lauren

  But if you are feeling sinister

  Go off and see your minister

  He’ll try in vain to take away

  The pain of being a hopeless unbeliever

  — “If You are Feeling Sinister,” Belle and Sebastian

  Contents

  Acknowledgement

  I. BLESS ME, FATHER

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  II. A GRAY MIST

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  III. BEING DADDY

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  About the Author

  Also by Julia McBryant

  Acknowledgement

  Thank you to my lovely editor, who put aside her objections to edit this one. Thank you also to Huanita Maria, who looked at this manuscript in draft, said no, no, no, and fixed it. It wouldn’t be the book it is without it, and I owe her a great debt of gratitude. These are her boys are much as they are mine.

  And thank you to the years of Catholic education that handed me the rules and regulations of good writing. Now I know how to break them all. I can still diagram a sentence and identify a subordinate clause, thanks to those nuns, no matter how many times I watched them force children to clean gum off the bottoms of their shoes and inform us we were headed straight to hell.

  I

  Bless Me, Father

  Chapter 1

  He probably could have made it if they hadn’t appointed him swim coach. Even then, Father Robinson Arthur may have been all right. But Bastian McCarthy came to Our Lady of Grace in his eleventh grade year, and Father Rob found himself really and truly fucked.

  Bastian had come from the rich-kid prep school, St. Albert’s, a big hush-hush deal about why he’d transferred. But you couldn’t help speculate why a smart kid like Bastian would switch schools in the middle of his junior year. He upset the longstanding class hierarchy of Jonathan Shepherd, Katie Rowan, and Lucas Travers to step into the scrum, muddle it up, send Katie into hysterics and Jonathan into foul moods (Lucas didn’t care; he was coked out most of the time, his class rank more an accident of intelligence than any work on his end). Bastian never seemed to work, but he sure as hell smirked when he won.

  Because that’s what it seemed for Bastian: winning, like school was some game adults forced him to play, and he played, reluctantly, while he waited for real life to start. He never paid attention in any class but Rob’s, according to the other teachers, and he came with a file folder of diagnoses: ADHD, anxiety, depression, parental divorce, fighting in grade school but no real disciplinary issues since, referrals to guidance for suicidality but nothing recent. A troubled kid, the type you didn’t expect to see smirking at everyone and strolling down the halls like he owned the place, shirt half-tucked under his regulation gray sweater vest. Everyone was always yelling at Bastian to tuck his shirt in, and he’d do it with a “Sorry sir, must’ve come untucked, sir,” then pull it out as soon as they turned away.

  Bastian spent physics staring out the window. He tapped his pen through calculus and read novels under the desk, but always aced the tests. He wrote impassioned essays, in perfect Spanish, about the futility of the American drug war and its devastating effect on Central America. When Sister Maria Elizabeth handed him back an A+ essay in religion, Bastian had shrugged and asked, “Wonder why the agnostic gets the best grades?” She’d cried in the teacher’s lounge afterwards.

  Sister Eileen had rolled her eyes. “She’s not going to make it long.”

  But he was perfect for Rob. He sat in the front. He raised his hand. He asked questions. He wrote brilliant essays. Bastian’s locker happened to sit near Rob’s room, and he’d see the kid after school sometimes — never any friends around. “Hey, Father,” Bastian said one day as he shut his locker. Rob got enough of a glance to notice it was scrupulously neat, not crammed and messy like the other kids’.

  “Hey, Bastian.” Rob didn’t look at him, not really. He mostly tried not to look too closely at Bastian: at that spiky black hair, the smattering of freckles across his nose, those big dark eyes and the lean swimmer’s body that even those horrible Catholic school uniforms couldn’t hide. Pure Irish, couldn’t get more Celtic if you plucked him from the County Clare soil — the type Rob had always gone for.

  “I’m liking Macbeth. I was in it at St. Albert’s.”

  “Were you? Whom did you play?”

  “Duncan. I wanted to be Macbeth, but Wills Culliver got the part.”

  “You’d’ve made a dangerous-looking Macbeth.” Rob ran his hair through his short blond hair. He’d’ve liked to keep it longer, but went with the universal priest cut instead: short and simple.

  Bastian shrugged. “Wills is like, the captain of the football team and enormous, so he looked more dangerous than me.”

  Rob smiled. “You’d make the perfect Puck, if we ever did Midsummer.”

  “Why? Am I that adorable?” Bastian smirked.

  Rob’s face must have dropped into involuntary mortification. Bastian laughed. “I’m fucking with you, Father. Oh hell, I’m not supposed to say that. Well, write me up, then, Daddy-O. I’m sure I’m late for something and you might as well get it over with rather than lecturing me about my foul, foul mouth and how I’m going to hell.”

  Rob laughed. He couldn’t help it. And he didn’t write Bastian up.

  After that, Bastian began wandering into his room maybe once or twice a week after the last bell. “I really liked ‘The Waste Land,’” he said one day, perching up on a desk.

  “And why’s that?” Rob looked up from the papers he was grading.

  “It’s beautiful and it says everything and nothing all at once.”

  “That’s a fair summation of the modernists, yeah.”

  “There’s so many good parts to it. But I don’t understand the Game of Chess part …” and he was off and running, firing questions at Rob, half of which he couldn’t answer and they had to look up together.

  “Hey, did you see this Atlantic article the other day?” Ba
stian asked another time.

  “Which one?”

  “The one about gender fluidity and how it changes over time, and you can be straight and then your sexuality shifts over the course of your life.”

  Rob had definitely seen that one. “Yeah. What about it?”

  “It’s super interesting. I mean, the idea that you can change who you’re attracted to and when sexual orientation forms and everything. If it’s there when you’re born or if it forms in your teenage years or what. What do you think?”

  Rob examined Bastian’s face. Totally earnest, big-eyed.

  “I don’t think a priest is the person to ask about that one.”

  Bastian grinned. “C’mon Daddy-O. For real.”

  “Nope. Staying mute on that.”

  Sometimes Bastian just hopped on top of a desk, dropped his backpack, and said, “So what’s up, Daddy-O?”

  It always made Rob laugh. He’d tell Bastian about what he was teaching in his other classes, or a funny story about Mass. Bastian told him about his dogs. “I have four German Shepherds. They’re all awesome but my favorites are Taz and Angel. They go everywhere with me when I’m home. I take them to the park and all. I trained them myself.”

  “Must’ve taken a lot of time.”

  Bastian had shrugged. “I have a lot of time.”

  “Nice of you to take an interest in Bastian McCarthy,” Sister Aloysius said one afternoon at the copy machine.

  “Hmm?” Rob’s palms began to sweat. He didn’t realize people knew Bastian dropped by after school, and for some indefinable reason, he didn’t want them to.

  “You know. After why he left St. Albert’s, most teachers wouldn’t take the chance. But you.” She pinched his cheek. “You’re so clean you squeak.”

  The next time Bastian wandered by, Rob asked him about it.

  Bastian snorted. “I thought everyone knew. It’s like, common knowledge. Why do you think this happens?” He dug through his bag and held up a paper-covered textbook. Someone had scrawled “FAGGOT” across the back.

  “Guess you gotta recover that tonight.” Rob’s stomach jumped.

  Bastian rolled his eyes. “Why bother? It’ll just happen again next week, so I left it there from like, a month ago.”

  “So you left because you’re gay?” Rob swallowed.

  Bastian threw him a strange look. He leaned down, zipped his bag, stood, and picked it up. “No.” He spoke slowly. “You really don’t know, do you?”

  Rob shook his head. “I don’t.”

  “I left because they kicked me out. I got caught blowing my social studies teacher.”

  “I — um —” Rob didn’t miss Bastian’s wording. Not “I blew my social studies teacher.” Not “I hooked up with my social studies teacher.” Instead: “I got caught.” Like there was nothing wrong with it, inherently, but the getting caught part.

  “Thought you knew. Everyone else does. See ya when I see ya, Father.” Bastian walked out.

  He spent the rest of the school year reading under the desk.

  Rob couldn’t puzzle it out. Did Bastian leave because he had a crush on Rob and suddenly thought it wasn’t reciprocated? Or did Bastian leave because he thought Rob knew and didn’t judge him for it?

  He tried a few times. He intentionally kept Bastian after class to discuss this or that. But Bastian’s face stayed flat, and he looked through Rob instead of at him. Rob couldn’t put the pieces together, couldn’t figure him out: those pretty lips pouted out, and angry, black eyes narrowed. God, Rob wasn’t supposed to think shit like this. Not that he believed in any of it anymore. He realized that the year after he took his vows, but what do you do at that fucking point? Four years of pretending now, and he still had no idea what to do. So he coasted, pretended, went through the motions. Do this in memory of me. I absolve you from your sins. But Rob always kept his vows: chastity, obedience. Not that he didn’t rub one out now and then, but he didn’t fuck around like so many of the gay priests he knew. If you were going to stay in, do it right. Otherwise, get the fuck out.

  Bastian got all A’s. But he did it without speaking to Rob for the rest of the year.

  ****

  The next fall, the first day Bastian walked out onto the pool deck, Rob knew he wasn’t a priest anymore.

  Bastian had missed the season his junior year. Or maybe he’d started at St. Albert’s and quit. But he appeared the first day of practice, goggles and swim cap in hand, towel slung over his shoulder. Pale, like that dark hair and the freckles had promised, but with almost no body hair, all long, smooth planes of muscle. And oh sweet baby Jesus, he wore a red Speedo. All the boys wore Speedos, sure, but Bastian’s was red, and even if some of the other boys wore red too, Bastian’s red seemed particularly alluring, or particularly lewd. That cock tucked up neatly, Lord, you could see the whole goddamn thing. He might as well be naked. Rob yelled at all of them to get the hell in the pool and give him some goddamn laps. He sunk his head into his hands.

  Holy Christ that boy could swim.

  Bastian swam the same way he did schoolwork: as if he didn’t care, as if it were some enormous game, but he was beautiful in the water, perfect form in any stroke, and Rob put him through them all. He ran the whole team ragged that night trying to get the kid out of his head, and finished by making the team swim heats against each other.

  Bastian won them all, in every stroke.

  This made him, by default, captain of the swim team. Rob pulled him aside and told him after practice.

  “And what’s that get me?” His goggles hung around his neck; water dripped off his long lashes. He looked flatly at Rob. “I’m only here because I have to be. Same reason I’m at school. I don’t wanna run the damn place.”

  Four sentences: the most Bastian had said to him in months. Rob decided answering his question was better than responding to his snark.

  “Fame. Glory. The chance to hang out with me and plan meets.”

  Bastian blinked a few times. He tilted his head and appeared to think, then a small smile drew over his face, oh God, like the sunrise. “Be seeing you around then, Daddy-O.” Bastian snapped Rob with his towel as he walked away.

  Rob could have wrung his gorgeous little neck.

  It took him all of thirty seconds to get off that night.

  ****

  He did see a lot of Bastian after that, almost every fucking day.

  He’d saunter onto the pool deck in that same red Speedo, all tucked up neat, then slaughter the rest of the kids. As captain, he was supposed to alternately yell at and encourage them, but he never did. “Just do your goddamn best,” he’d shout some days. “They’d say that’s enough for the Good Lord, so that’s enough for me.” The team would laugh. They all knew Bastian didn’t believe in God. But other days, he ignored everyone, swam like a demon, and left without speaking to anyone. You never knew with Bastian which you’d get.

  Being captain didn’t earn him much fame, but it did earn him some popularity, especially among the younger kids, who thought he was funny, despite his propensity for moodiness, and with the girls, who liked his Speedo almost as much as Rob. “You gonna let us see what’s under there?” he overheard Katie Brooks asking one day. (God, the whole school was Katie, Kates, Katherines, Catherines, Marys, Mary Catherines, Sarahs, Elizabeths, Beths, SaraBeths, and Merediths).

  Bastian gave her a half-smile. It was one of his good days. “You gonna show me what’s under yours?”

  So he did go both ways. But after that, Rob noticed Bastian disappearing regularly, usually coinciding with one of his female swimmers disappearing, then both of them reappearing, separately, a while later. Different ones, never the same girl. If the girls minded sharing him, they never showed it.

  Rob brought it up one day while they were planning a meet. “You fucking your way through the girls’ team then? Because you’re starting to miss too much practice doing it.”

  “Aw, fuck it, Daddy-O, they ask for it. Tell me you’d say no.” He grinned
wickedly. “Or maybe you would.”

  “Beside the point. Keep it out of the pool.”

  “Oh, we keep it out of the pool, all right.”

  “You know what I mean, boy.”

  Bastian lounged in a leather chair, feet up on the desk, wrapped in a towel, still in that fucking Speedo, Christ come down in glory, he needed his ass turned red. Still that lopsided grin, the one that wasn’t quite a smirk, or quite a straight smile, either: like Bastian was laughing at the world and everyone in it. It made Rob melt and he hated himself for it. “Keeps team morale up. Anything for team morale, Daddy-O.”

  “Keep it in your pants and keep it out of my practice.”

  He snickered. “You mean keep it in my suit.”

  Rob stumbled. “Yeah, that’s — exactly — you know what I mean.”

  “You’re as red as my Speedo, Daddy-O.”

  Rob sighed. “Quit it with the cute comebacks. You need your ass spanked red to shut you up. Christ, I wish we still had corporal punishment. I might not write you up, but I’d send you down to get paddled so fast your head would spin.” It’d work, too. Rob had gone to an all-boys school; he’d endured the humiliation of it: the way his ass burned afterwards, shifting in the hard chairs, trying to find a comfortable position that wouldn’t come, knowing everyone knew, and the worst part: if someone hesort of liked had done it, he had sort of liked it too, maybe even gotten hard, and that made it so much worse.

  Bastian rested his elbows on the wooden desk. He had a perfect chest, smooth and slim but muscled. Rob lifted; he was tall, bulked out, especially for a priest; he got in the pool with the kids and could hold his own. But Bastian was the perfect little twink and just that word, that one clipped syllable, and stiffened Rob under the desk. “Would you send me down to get paddled?” Bastian’s voice rose into a taunting question.