Page 70 of Dead to Rites

After that, Jude headed off to his bookshop, and I went home. It was a quiet sort of day, the kind I hadn’t had much of lately. I took Chauncey for a long walk and looked at all the Halloween decorations in the neighborhood, carved my jack-o’-lanterns after that, tried to read a little because watching TV just felt wrong. I’d given Hazel only the barest bones of my plan because I knew she would disapprove, and I didn’t feel like getting into it with her.

As I was in the kitchen, trying to decide between TJ’s chicken korma or a grilled cheese sandwich, my phone pinged.

A text from Adam.

We’d texted earlier, since he’d wanted to go out again this Tuesday, but I’d told him I didn’t think this week would work because of everything that was going on.

I heard about the break-in at the bar. Are you all right?

I’m fine. The police didn’t find any real evidence, but we installed a new door and a lock, and it’s been quiet since. Thanks for asking.

He didn’t text back right away, and for a moment, I wondered if he’d decided that was the end of our exchange.

But then my phone pinged again.

Maybe we can try next week after things quiet down.

I sat there and stared down at my iPhone for a moment. Adam Emerson was a great guy. I knew I should have been trying to go out with him again. Jude and I were friends working together on an extremely knotty problem. There was nothing to stop me from dating Adam…except a certain set of feelings about Jude that I couldn’t quite ignore.

Hell, I didn’t know a single thing about Jude’s sexuality. He could be gay. Or he could just be uninterested in general, which would have made a life in the priesthood a heck of a lot easier.

But then I thought about the way our eyes met sometimes, the way we seemed so easy with each other.

Well, except when we were arguing.

Anyway, I’d been in enough relationships to know that, while Adam was a great guy, we didn’t have the same chemistry. Or at least, I didn’t believe we did. Maybe if we’d been solving a mystery together, things would have been different, but somehow, I didn’t think so.

If I hadn’t been feeling so scattered, I might have come up with a gentle way to let him down easy. But my brain couldn’t think of the kind of eloquent reply that would let Adam know he was wonderful and none of this was his fault, so I took the coward’s way out.

Okay. I’ll text you early next week.

He replied with a thumbs-up emoji, probably his way of letting me know he’d gotten the signal but was still going to hold out a little hope, just in case.

Holding back a sigh, I put my phone down on the counter and got out the package of TJ’s chicken korma. Even grilled cheese seemed beyond my resources right then.

I’d just shoved the little plastic tray with its carefully perforated top into the microwave when I gave up, grabbed my phone, and called Celeste. She picked up on the second ring, over a wall of noise that told me she must be at a bar somewhere.

“Hold on, let me get somewhere I can hear you.” A door closed with a thump, and everything went quiet…well, all right, mostly muffled. “Okay,” she said. “What’s wrong? You only call when something’s wrong.”

Stung, I protested, “That’s not true.”

“Lorelei.”

When I heard that note in Celeste’s voice, I knew it was time to drop the b.s. “Fine.” I leaned against the counter and said, “There might be two guys…and I might be dealing with it kind of badly.”

The sound of a breath came through my phone’s speaker. “Two. That’s a new one. Okay, start talking.”

So I did — I told her about the bookstore guy with the hazel eyes who used to be a priest and had way too many opinions about my life, and the gorgeous ER doctor I kept stalling because I couldn’t make myself feel the thing I was supposed to feel.

Celeste listened the way she always did, which was to say that she interrupted me constantly.

“So you’re telling me the hot doctor is into you, available, and uncomplicated, and you’re hung up on the broody ex-priest who argues with you.”

A succinct summation of the situation. “Well, when you put it that way, it sounds stupid.”

“It sounds like you,” she said.

I didn’t bother to contradict her, mostly because I knew she was right.