Page 107 of Bless This Hot Mess

Or what this moment means.

Against all odds we’ve changed, love

However our story grows.

Tonight our hearts are certain,

This is the love we chose.”

Rino pulled into his driveway. Japheth rolled to a stop outside his building.

“Against all odds…

We’re not hiding anymore.”

Rino rested his head back against the seat,

“Against all odds…

You’re everything I’m living for.”

Japheth closed his eyes, smiling up into the night sky, “Rino…”

Across town, like he could somehow hear him calling, Rino answered, “My meatball.”

“Against all odds…

That’s all that matters now.

Against all odds…

I’m falling in love with you.”

And for the first time in a long time, neither of them questioned it. They just let it be true.

LISTEN to Against All Odds (R&J Duet)

Chapter 15

You BettaWork B!^&$

Every congregation has its scandals. Some involve affairs in the choir loft, others missing bake-sale funds, and sometimes, if you’re very unlucky, the once faithful flock starts disappearing altogether. After ditching Christmas and Easter–they’re gone for good.

If grief had a dress code, no one had sent out the memo but somehow all five of them had shown up to the ruins of WWJD dressed like they were attending another funeral, this time for their boss, their station, and the almost famous lives they’d almost, almost had.

The lot where WWJD had stood looked like someone had taken a blowtorch to a memory. Yellow police tape sagged between metal stakes, fluttering lazily in the breeze like streamers with a bad hangover who’d slept over at a raucous party. The brick shell of the station remained, blackened and blistered, a roofless rectangle framing the pale, washed out sky. Inside, the concrete floor was a patchwork of soot, shattered glass, twisted ductwork, and the charred skeletons ofoffice chairs that had once been battle stations for faith-based bureaucracy.

Japheth paused at the broken gate, the toes of his boots nudging a drift of ash and pink insulation that barely showed its DNA through its burnt marshmallow crispy coating. He’d dressed like he’d tried to split the difference between mourning and a music video–black turtleneck tucked into high-waisted charcoal slacks with razor creases, a long duster coat in deep forest green or midnight purple depending on how it caught the light like a beetle’s shell, and polished cowboy boots that had never and very likely would never see a rodeo, at least not one with cows or patties. His hair was doing that fluffy, slightly electrocuted thing it did when he’d left the house in a hurry and forgotten to apply product.

“This is worse than I imagined,” Japheth said quietly. His breath made little ghosts in the cool air.

Rebekkah hopped the low barrier of tape with grim determination and the grace of someone used to leaping onto questionably constructed community stages. She was in full mourning chic: a fitted black trench cinched tight at the waist, black opaque tights, and her bestdon’t talk to me, I’m famoussunglasses despite the sky being more drearily overcast than dazzlingly bright. On her head, a wide brimmed black hat sat at a strategic angle she’d fretted over for nearly twenty minutes, doing its un-level best to distract from the fact that what remained of her rangy red mane still looked like Jim Carrey and Anne Heche had gotten into a custody battle with no clear victor.

“It looks like the set of a music video,” Rebekkah said, her voice hushed. “But like the sad one in the middle of the album everyone skips through.”

Ronald ducked under the tape; he was at that awkward height where jump versus duck was often a quandary and inthis case, he chose to stoop in his dark indigo overalls and black hoodie, the front pocket stuffed with a rolled-up measuring tape and a carpenter’s pencil forgotten from his ongoing tinkering with his backyard Ark. He remembered them both now as they poked into his ribs as he emerged from under the police tape. His hair was braided back from his face and tied with a black shoelace that was a desperate man’s up-cycling masquerading as couture.

“Looks like the rapture came for the drywall and office furniture,” Ronald muttered, scuffing his sneaker against a scorched tile. “Left us behind with that fake fern. That thing will survive the end times, talk about resilience.”