Beginner's Guide to Gold Digging: Chapter 11

A Beginner’s Guide to Sunday Service

Crispin

The Morning of the Museum Trip

Holy Absolution was a nice church, if a bit more casual than I was used to. A lot of the parishioners were aging hippies by the look of them- no judgement, obviously, just wasn’t the vibe I usually saw in church. The part where it was Episcopalian instead of Catholic tripped me up too, though the services were almost identical. Albeit… Longer.

“I’m just saying, did they really need to have three people come up and respond to the sermon ?” I said as Rose, Julia, and I walked out of the church and entered the hot summer light. It wasn’t quite noon yet, so the peak of the day’s warmth was not yet upon us, but the humidity was downright swampy. “Or… Any people to respond to the sermon? I mean, it’s not like they went to divinity school.”

We walked up to Julia’s Subaru, Rose claiming shotgun while I stuffed myself into the backseat. “Look, Cris, I’m inclined to agree- there’s no reason service should take more than an hour- but like… This is what I have to work with now,” Rose said.

“She’s right,” Julia said. “I’ve had to bounce around a lot of different churches to find one that’s okay with someone like me. The Catholic Church… Could certainly be worse, but it’s still not exactly in favor of people like Rose and I.”

“I know, I know,” I said. “I’m just whinging a bit.”

“You do love to do that,” Julia grinned as she started the car. 

“How dare you?” I rolled my eyes. 

“Same way I always have, Winfield. With love and only a tiny bit of judgement,” Julia said as she backed us out of our spot and aimed us to the parking lot exit. “So, dropping you off at your place?”

“Lily’s place, actually. Naomi is gonna meet us there so she can take us to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.”

“Ohhh really?” Julia said as she navigated around ten cars stacked on top of each other in the middle of the road. “Did this plan just happen to come about spontaneously?”

“No, we made it this morning,” I said. 

Rose’s head whipped back towards me. While Julia kept her eyes on the road, I saw her jaw dropped in the front mirror. 

“This morning, you say?” Rose grinned. 

“It’s not like that,” I said, slouching.

“Then what is it like?”

I slouched further. “She… She invited me over last night.”

“Oh em Gee,” Rose said. 

“Nothing happened!” I said, basically a limp pile of limbs on the seat. 

“Uh-huh, nothing happened, right,” Rose said. “The same night you got her ban lifted from two bars-”

“Three, actually,” I corrected, from my place at the lowest of the lows. Guess all that limbo paid off. 

“The same night you got her ban lifted from three bars,” Rose amended. 

“And the same night she turned me down because she couldn’t stop talking about you for five minutes,” Julia added. 

“Wait, seriously?” Rose said. 

“Yeah,” Julia said, weaving past a fistfight happening on top of one of those trucks that they use to tow other trucks… You know, a truck-truck. “She wanted to know everything about Crispin here, sighed wistfully when she said his name, got mad when I called her his little pet name-”

“What?” I said, eyes bulging, heart kicking against my ribcage.

“Yup. I called her ‘angel’ once and she was all like ‘don’t call me that, only Cris can call me that.’ I swear, I don’t know why this girl is so determined to force herself not to like dudes, but she’s doing mental gymnastics worse than I was when I was trying to force myself TO like dudes! It’s insane- I’ve never seen a more repressed bi girl in my life, and I have never seen it from this particular direction. Usually it’s the other way around.”

I sat up, posture straightening. Good God, at this point three actual lesbians had come to the same conclusion regarding Lily’s sexuality. Maybe I wasn’t so crazy after all.

“It’s… Look, it’s different when you’re trans,” Rose said. “You grow up constantly being told you’re a guy, that you’re supposed to like the things that guys like, and for most guys that includes girls. Sexuality is another thing to unpack, and for most of us it doesn’t happen until we get past the whole ‘I’m a woman’ hurdle. And I had it easy- I only like guys. Being straight was just another thing I had to repress alongside being a girl. Once I admitted one, the other came pretty much instantly. Lily… She actually likes girls. It’s probably easier for her with girls because it was a part of herself she didn’t have to keep a secret.”

“Whereas liking guys is something she would’ve had to explore and think about in order to accept?” Julia said. 

“Exactly.”

“Yeah, and she’s literally only started doing that in the past month,” I said. 

“Aha! So you admit it- you see it too!” Rose said. 

“After last night… Yeah. I do. The way she was looking at me… That’s not how a lesbian looks at a… What did Lisa call it? A lesbro?”

“You would certainly know,” Julia said, a tiny pang of guilt on her face. Fuck. 

I took a deep breath, holding it in my chest until it burned at my lungs. I breathed it out, and the truth came with it. “Look, she’s… She’s in a weird place right now. I’m not gonna act like I remotely understand it, but she still is. But I… I want to help her through it. And I’m going to.”

“So, you’re gonna tell her how you feel, right?” Rose said. 

“Oh, God no,” I said. 

“The fuck you say, Winfield?!” Rose cringed. 

“It’ll just freak her out,” I said. “And before you say that it didn’t freak you out when Kyle said something to that effect, which I’m sure he did, Lily is not you. She’ll get scared and retreat back into her corner.” 

“She does have a certain black cat energy about her,” Julia nodded.

“Besides, it… If I do that, then it’s just about me and my wanting to date her.”

“And it’s not?” Julia said.

“No,” I said. “At least, not entirely. I do wanna date her for real. But… But I also want to help her through this. I’ve only known her a month but the idea of hurting her makes me want to commit self-defenestration.”

“You want to wake her up,” Rose said, putting a hand over her boob- HEART, hand over her heart, stop sexualizing Rose, for fuck’s sake- and smiling. 

“Something like that,” I said, looking out the window. “I want to… I want her to know she’s welcomed into my world how she is. However she is. However she wants to be. That’s the most important thing for me.”

One Week Later

“I just don’t understand why that other priest broke in to rebut Father Antoine,” I said. 

“Well, anyone can respond to the sermon,” Rose said as we piled into Kyle’s car. He picked us up that week, Rose climbing into the shotgun seat and giving her fiance a kiss while Julia and I sat in the back. Kyle wasn’t religious himself, but he understood how important Jesus was to Rose, so he’d found this church for her. 

He really was good for her. A tiny little part of me was jealous, but it wasn’t jealousy that he had Rose. Well, it mostly wasn’t. It was more jealousy that… That he understood the woman he loved perfectly. Knew exactly what she wanted and how to give it to her, while still maintaining what were by all accounts completely healthy boundaries. 

Wish I could say the same. Not that I loved Lily- obviously, we hadn’t known each other long enough for me to be able to say something like that- but… Still. 

“How was church?” Kyle said.

“See that guy on a soap box at the far end of the parking lot, shooting a t-shirt cannon at people?” Rose said, pointing.

“Yeah. He looks weirdly familiar… I swear I saw him at another place…”

“Well he burst in to rebut the sermon and started telling people to come to his church instead,” Rose said as we drove past the aforementioned priest. 

“That seems wicked douchey.”

“It was,” I confirmed. “It’s also why service took two fucking hours-”

“Bitch, bitch, bitch, that’s all I hear when you talk,” Julia grinned at me. 

I rolled my eyes as we made it out of the parking lot. 

“How’s it going with you and Lily?” Julia asked. She, like Rose, had gotten way too invested in this whole saga way too quickly. 

“It’s not,” I said. 

“What do you mean it’s not, I thought you were gonna wake her up or whatever.”

“I… I don’t actually think she likes me,” I said. 

“Oh come on,” Julia said. “There is no way that that girl-”

“Trust me, she is not interested in what I have to offer,” I said. 

“How do you know?” Rose said.

“Because… We hugged and I got… I had… I-”

“Raised your flag?” Julia said. 

“Pitched your tent?” Kyle said. 

“Got a massive hard-on?” Rose said. 

I groaned. “Kyle, make her stop.”

“Even if I could do that, I still wouldn’t,” the giant man said. 

“Of course you wouldn’t. Well, regardless, Lily looked so uncomfortable and so grossed out that it convinced me that no, she’s not into me at all,” I said. “She’s just feeling… Julia, what did you call it?”

“Comp het?” Julia offered. 

“Yeah, that.”

“I don’t think it’s that,” Julia said. 

“Why not?”

“Well, I’ll answer your question with another question: did she actually say she was grossed out or did you just assume that she was?”

I blinked. “Uh…”

“Yeah, I don’t think it’s comp het, bud,” Julia said, patting me on the shoulder. 

“Just tell her how you feel, man,” Kyle said.

“That’s what I told him,” Rose said. “He won’t fucking listen to me.”

I buried my face in my palms. 

“Are you hanging out with her again today?” Julia said gently. 

“Yeah. I’m taking her comic shopping.”

“Cool. If I can give a word of advice?”

“Fire away.”

“You need to tell her how you feel. Put the ball in her court.”

I groaned again. 

“See, now her, Cris has always listened to her,” Rose said. “That’s some cis girl privilege right there.”

“Get fucked, O’Neil,” Julia laughed.

“Oh, I do. Regularly,” Rose laughed, squeezing Kyle’s bicep.

Wish I could say I was laughing too. 

And One More Week After That, for Good Measure

“How was church?” Naomi asked as Julia, Rose, and I got into the limo.

“Weird,” I said. 

“Weird how?”

“Well, for one thing, Episcopalians do this thing where you get to respond to the sermon if you want-”

“Oh my God, get over it,” Rose rolled her eyes. 

“And today, the rebuttal was provided by a flock of emu.”

“Is… Is that a metaphor?” Naomi asked. 

“No, it is not,” Julia said. “This priest from another church showed up for the second week in a row, but this time he brought a flock of emu with him and tried to get them to attack Father Antoine.”

“The fuck?” Naomi said. 

“It didn’t actually work, though- his flock turned on him and chased him off down the street,” Julia continued. Then she pointed out the window. “Look, there they are right there.”

Indeed, the strange, strange priest was atop the pile of cars still clogging up the street (the number now boosted by a beaten-down truck-truck), fending off what Kyle apparently referred to as ‘raptor puppies’ with a crucifix and Holy Water. “What the hell is he doing? They’re emu, not demons.”

“Oh, they’re definitely demons,” Naomi said. “The Australian government went to war with emus and lost. Let that sink in.”

“Good God,” I said. 

“So, did you tell Lily how you feel?” Rose asked. 

“Just… No segue whatsoever, straight for the throat?” I said, narrowing my eyes at her. 

“Answer the question, Cris,” Julia said. 

“Seriously, Cris,” Naomi said.

“Oh, not you too!” 

“I’m just saying, every time I see that girl, she’s draped all over you. And it doesn’t exactly look like it’s just for show.”

I exhaled loudly. “I did not tell her. I almost told her at the comic shop last weekend, but I chickened out and asked her to pick out some comics for me to try instead.”

“Oh, sweetie,” Naomi said. 

“Cris, buddy, this is very clearly killing you,” Julia said. 

“So what if it is?” I said. “Why does what I want matter so much? I already have… Everything. I’m rich. I have a trust-fund and savings. My job is easy and I work with one of my best friends. And I’m a cis het white guy, so I’m playing America on easy-mode. Why does my not getting ONE THING I want matter so much?”

And then Rose and Julia both put their hands on my shoulders and squeezed my arms from both sides. Fucking hell, this was so not fair!

“Because you’re our friend,” Rose said. 

“Because we want you to be happy,” Julia said. 

“Dammit,” I said.

“You’ve got him cornered, ladies, keep going!” Naomi said. 

I groaned as loudly as I possibly could. “Okay, fine. Tell you what: my parents’ anniversary party is on Thursday. I will do everything in my power to give Lily the most magical, romantic night possible. And if I can get a private moment for just the two of us, I will tell her how I feel. There. Are you happy?”

“Yeah,” Rose, Julia, and Naomi all said in unison. 

“And you’re both coming too,” I said, pointing at my two oldest friends. 

“What? Ew, I hate your family,” Julia said. 

“I’m not crazy about them either,” Rose said. “Well, Lydia is cool. Other than that…”

“Y’all are the ones pushing me to do this. Therefore, by the transitive property, y’all have to be my wingmen. That’s the deal. And if you don’t… I will whine and pout and sulk until we’re all old and gray and arguing over bingo matches in the retirement home!”

“You’re an evil, evil man, Crispin Winfield,” Julia sighed. “But fine. I’ll be there. But I’m wearing a tux.”

“Go right ahead.”

“I’ll be there too. But I will not be wearing a tux,” Rose said. 

“Didn’t think you would,” I said. “Also, thank you both for being my friends and putting up with my shit. I’ve… I missed you both. A lot. I’ve missed this. The three of us. Going to church together, shooting the shit on the ride back. Yeah, you both drive me a little bit crazy, but still, I’ve missed having you both in my life.”

Then they… They both rested their heads on my shoulders. One on each side. 

“Missed you too, good buddy,” Rose smiled. 

“Same here,” Julia said.

I was nervous as all hell, but… Whatever happened next would be whatever happened next. And if nothing else, I’d have my two oldest friends at my side when it happened.