~Leslie~
Crazy. Absolutely crazy.
That was all Leslie could think when she walked into her building that next week for a youth activity.
Okay, so it was technically Blake’s building. If it was her building, it would be the scene of recent renovations, with the last of the contractors and workers leaving the new, state of the art kitchen. It would have twinkle lights everywhere, with dainty feminine couches huddled in the corners. There would be the scent of cupcakes and other treats filling the air in welcome. And above all that, there would be patrons, young people there celebrating life and being dignified about it.
“AHHHHH!!!!”
Blake’s building was like a sick perversion of First Love. There were twinkle lights, couches, and plenty of young people, but the couches were threadbare and the young people were acting crazy, doing some sort of game where they were making themselves dizzy using a baseball bat and sprinting, then falling over as they took a first step. Then, there was whipped cream on faces as teenagers shouted at each other, laughing and cheering, looking to see if they were doing whatever it was that they were supposed to be doing faster than the others. And there was the faint scent of cupcakes because Leslie had been better to Blake than he deserved and had done those cupcakes he’d asked for, and she’d done them without charging him.
She was going to come at this differently than she had at first. His plans would fall apart on their own, and she would come off looking better in the end if she’d treated him with kindness. That and she’d felt a little convicted since their last meeting. If he was honestly doing ministry here, how could she despise him for that?
But this wasn’t ministry. This was insanity.
He must have seen her come into the chaos because only a few steps into the building and he was there, standing beside her as he surveyed all the adolescent idiocy.
“You made it,” he said, grinning. “I figured you were here earlier. The cupcakes smell amazing.”
She held up the key he’d made for her. “Slipped in earlier this afternoon in between deliveries,” she said. “What in the world is this madness?”
“Just some games to get them to work on team building,” he said. “Half of these students go to our old high school. The other half go to the new one out by the highway. And then, there are a few who’ve come from the next town over. They don’t know each other very well.”
Their town had grown large enough to need a second high school. Leslie didn’t know what was more incredible – that or the fact that Blake’s youth program was attracting kids from beyond their town as well.
Not that it was any of his doing. He was just starting this. And not like they were learning anything very deep. They were running around like animals, and –
“We’re going to start Bible study soon,” he said. “You’re welcome to come out and join us.”
“I need to ice those cupcakes I brought,” she said, counting heads even as she did so. Had she made enough? She hadn’t been expecting a crowd this size. “Good opening crowd, huh?”
“This is what it looks like on Sunday mornings,” he said.
She turned to him, her eyes widened. “You’re kidding. Our youth group was a third of this size.”
“Times have changed,” Blake grinned at her. “I came in over the spring once I knew I was coming to be the youth pastor and spent some time at the schools, eating lunch with the few students we had at the church then. Played football after school with a lot of them. And so by the time I showed up…” He gestured at the crowd, where one of the teams had apparently won whatever weird game it was that they’d been playing. That many students cheering together sounded even more massive in her building.
Blake’s building. Darn him.
Maybe he wouldn’t fail as spectacularly as she’d thought he would. The thought of his success here was a bitter one, and she swallowed it down with several words about how angry she still was, how he’d been wrong to ruin her plans –
“I need to get to work,” she said instead, stepping gingerly through the crowds and finding refuge in the kitchen. Taking a deep breath and reminding herself to be patient (crowds like this usually thinned out, especially when things got serious), she took stock of what she’d need to finish off her cupcakes, noting that Blake had moved in more of his own supplies to the kitchen when he came in this evening.
Snacks. Drinks. A whole assortment of processed foodstuffs that had no place in First Love, and –
She slipped her apron on over her head and muttered a few choice words under her breath, getting her own work started.
Keep it cool, Leslie. It won’t help anything to get all frustrated and let him see you lose it. In fact, that might encourage him to keep on with his plan to keep this building forever, just because he likes irking you because he’s the devil and –
“Not today, Satan.”
She said it out loud, surprised that she was able to hear her own voice. The volume in the next room had quickly and unexpectedly been lowered. He must have started his study out in the main room. Leslie found herself glancing up and wondering what it was he was teaching out there to have so grabbed up their attention.
Not her business. Very literally. She continued her work, catching snippets of Blake’s voice every once in a while.
Sin. Repentance. Redemption.
All things she knew about, better now than she had back in high school when she and Blake had heard them plenty of times in their own youth group.
Her mind went back to Blake at seventeen, sitting in Bible study on Wednesday night, freshly showered after football practice, the ends of his hair still wet on his shirt. A short sleeve shirt despite the chill in the air, his letter jacket thrown onto the seat next to him, not needed as his body still burned from the exercise.
Leslie had noticed his body. In intense detail and with even more intense feelings. More and more since that first kiss he’d given her in her kitchen a couple of weeks earlier. She was his girlfriend. She had a boyfriend. Someone who cared about her as much as she cared about him. Someone that she sought out at school and here at church, sitting next to him like she was, spending every free moment talking to him, and having all of his attention.
Except she didn’t have it all that day at Bible study. He’d been focused on what the youth pastor, Matt, had been teaching.
“When we come to Christ,” Matt had said, looking just a little desperate as it was obvious that he was losing the attention of half the room, like usual, “we become new creations. So living life should be different. Our lives should look different. Not because we live differently in our own power but because Jesus is making us into new creations, into new people. And it requires us to make changes.”
“What kind of changes?” Blake spoke up.
He always spoke up at Bible study. He always had questions, and he didn’t ask without really wanting to know the answers. Leslie often wondered if her own faith was half as strong as Blake’s, even as he was just starting to read the Bible and go to church, which she’d been doing since she’d been a little girl.
Matt seemed encouraged that someone was still listening. “It means that we begin to live for Him instead of ourselves. We choose to do things that are right instead of wrong. And when we don’t get it right –”
“When we sin,” Blake clarified.
“That’s right,” Matt nodded. “We feel regret. Guilt. Shame. Not that Christ wants us to live defeated because He’s already victorious over all of our failings. But I think He allows us to feel some of these things so that we’ll be moved to change.”
“To repent,” Blake said. “Which we do, because we’ve been redeemed.”
“Exactly,” Matt laughed. “Maybe you should be teaching the Bible study tonight, Blake.”
But Blake had been lost in thought, from that point until they’d closed in prayer. And then, he’d turned and smiled at Leslie.
And she hadn’t cared to hear anything more about sin, repentance, or redemption. All she wanted was Blake.
He’d taken his jacket in one hand and her hand in the other, confidently leading her out of the room where they didn’t linger, their feet pointing them outside where she’d meet up with Travis when he finished his deacon meeting, where Holly and Brooke would join them after their own youth Bible studies were over.
For then, though, it was just Leslie and Blake.
She leaned into him and kissed him, not caring that they were at church. She was in love with him. God understood that. There was nothing wrong with showing him, with loving him, with being who they were.
Blake had smiled at her. “You’re shivering,” he noted in that low, dreamy voice of his that Leslie loved.
Shivering from her proximity to him probably, from all that she felt.
“Maybe,” she said, her teeth actually chattering a little.
“Here,” he said, putting his jacket on her, smiling as he saw how it swallowed her whole. “Looks better on you. You should keep it.”
“I can’t take your jacket,” she protested, even as she relished the scent of him on it, knowing that she’d sleep in this jacket tonight. “You need it.”
“Well,” he said, slipping his arms around her, deep inside the jacket, so that he was covered by the varsity letters as well, “we’re going to be together forever, so it’ll be close by if I need it.”
Leslie finished the last cupcake in the kitchen, blinking past tears. Why did these moments still hurt her heart all these years later? How stupid was that?
She’d trusted too blindly, believed everything he’d said, and she’d be paying for it her entire life. Nothing to be done about it now, though. The sooner he was out of town and away from her the better, though.
She cleaned up her mess, pushing aside memories of those days as best as she could, taking a breath before she stepped out into the main room, putting the tray of cupcakes onto the counter as quietly as possible as Blake finished up his teaching.
“New creations,” he said, sounding more encouraged than Matt ever had back when they’d been teenagers. As well he should, because these teenagers actually seemed to be paying attention. That and there were so many more of them than there ever had been back at their church.
“We’re new creations when we come to Christ. So, all the things that you think it’ll be impossible to walk away from,” Blake continued on, “are the very things that Christ will use to change you into who He wants you to be. But before you get there, you need to come to the place where you understand that you need Him. That you aren’t perfect, that you have sin in your life, that you need Him to be restored to a right relationship with God.” He paused for a long moment, looking out at the students. “And I think that’s where we’ll close tonight.”
Well, that was an abrupt close.
“I want you all to meet Leslie,” he said, nodding over at her and smiling. “She’s going to be helping us out from now on. And she started that off tonight by bringing cupcakes.”
From now on. That sounded like an open-ended agreement with no deadlines or cut off dates. Leslie wasn’t sure how she felt about this, but she was a team player. (Or at least she’d pretend to be a team player, waiting for the moment when Blake’s group and his plans would implode on themselves.)
“Yeah,” she said, waving to the youth. “It’s all over here.”
That was the cue for her to get swarmed by legions of teenagers. She barely got out of the way before the rush of sweaty adolescent bodies was hovering over the cupcakes, eating and talking with abandon. After a few minutes, the dust and crumbs settled as they moved on and out of the building, done for the night.
They’d eaten every last one.
Leslie moved to tell Blake that he was in charge of a horde of monsters when she noticed that he was still surrounded, over in the corner. Not surrounded but praying with five boys, all of them in varsity football letter jackets, his hands on two of their shoulders as they all huddled together.
Leslie stepped back and took a breath, remembering how he himself had looked as he’d prayed all those times at church back when they were young. Just as serious as he was now as his words trailed over to her, about grace and forgiveness, about surrendering to Christ, and about life.
Maybe this was good work. Maybe she was wrong to let her emotions affect how she was seeing it.
Maybe she needed to reconsider what it was that she was doing.
She started quietly cleaning up the mess, looking up from her work only when she heard them all approaching the counter.
“They didn’t leave any?” one of the teens asked, his eyes wide.
“Afraid not,” Leslie said. “Some of them even ate the wrappers.”
“The girls,” another one of the boys said. “They don’t pick at their food like normal girls. They eat more than we do.”
“That can’t be true,” Blake said, stepping up as well and looking the boys over. “You guys are huge. There’s no way a bunch of tiny girls can eat more than you do.”
“They do, Blake!” the first said again. “And Allison… she…”
He gave his friends a knowing grin, making them erupt in laughter. Blake gave a confused smile as well, not knowing the inside joke.
But Leslie’s mind was back in high school, watching Blake’s friends whisper and laugh behind her back after the breakup, the shame of knowing just exactly what they were talking about…
And like that, she felt her heart hurt and harden all at the same time.
She ignored the boys as they said their goodbyes, turning around only after she was certain that it was just her and Blake left alone in the building.
“I’m out of here,” she said, planning on getting home as quickly as possible, unable to look at him without thinking of what he’d done, all the promises he’d broken –
“I want to hear what you think,” he said, grinning, oblivious to the pain she still felt, just like he’d been oblivious to it back then.
She hated him. She hated him so intensely in that moment, for being clueless and for all the pain he’d caused so long ago.
“First night,” he said, sitting at the counter. “Big night. How did you think it went?”
It went well for what he wanted to do here. But she wasn’t going to give him that.
“It was okay,” she shrugged. “I guess.”
He thought about this. “I thought it was a big crowd. What about you?”
It had been.
“Numbers aren’t everything,” she said wryly, hoping to hurt him. “Wave cupcakes at people and they come running. Numbers don’t mean anything.”
“You’re absolutely right,” he said, his grin wider.
Wait… what?
“Numbers aren’t everything,” he said. “But conversations like the ones I had tonight with some of those kids… God is doing something here. I know it.”
She couldn’t help herself. All the painful memories, paired with his smug smile now – smug over what God was doing, not him, but still – made the words come out of her mouth before she could stop herself.
“Well, you think you know everything, so that’s not surprising.”
He seemed surprised. But just for a brief moment.
“There you go,” he said, laughing out loud. “I like how you don’t take anything from anyone, least of all me. I always did like that about you…” He shook his head, watching her appreciatively.
This irked her even further.
“Well, I don’t like you,” she spouted off to him, irritated by the way he was smiling. “Never did.”
“Oh, you liked me plenty back in the day,” Blake said, raising his eyebrows at her suggestively.
Well, he had her there.
And her mind went without her permission back to a dark hallway at a party in high school, her back against the wall, her hands all over him, his lips insistent everywhere they landed on her body, pulling one another closer, never close enough, never enough –
She shifted uncomfortably, the memories bringing a wave of shame. Shame and longing because even if it had been the wrong time for the feelings, they’d been real.
Real then. Real even after he’d hurt her the way he had.
And he’d somehow sensed this, a look of regret on his face after he’d already said the words and spoken the memory out loud. Maybe because he’d dredged up the past, because he’d taunted her like he had, because –
“I don’t like you now,” she said again, not caring what his reasons were for any of it. “I hate you.”
And it was harsh, but it was the unapologetic truth. And what was more, she hated herself just a little as she saw the words land on him and hurt him as well.
“Well,” he said with a quick, surprised exhalation. “Well.”
It was as close as he would get to speechlessness, likely. So Leslie took the opening and rushed in with more words.
“And I’m done,” she said. “I thought I could help you, but… I can’t do this, Blake.”
And he didn’t try to stop her as she left him, unable to see through the tears that had sprung to her eyes, unbidden and unwelcome.