TWENTY ONE

 

Christmas was a month away. Exactly a month. And Judah had exactly a month to try to pull a Christmas play together, with a bunch of children who were not exactly interested in doing what he had to say.

Not since Stephen had stopped coming to church, and even to choir practice.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened. Stephen’s father, after all, hadn’t wanted him there in the first place. Judah had been so sure that they had been making progress on that front, that Will was, or had been, more and more, coming to accept Stephen’s place in the church, but that had been before Judah had walked out.

Which had left everything a mess, he thought. The kids, of all ages, had adored Stephen, had looked up to him. Both Jesse, who was playing one of the three Wise Men, and Ruby, who was, of course, starring as Mary, were barely paying attention in practice anymore, and they seemed lost, forlorn, without the leader of their little group there with them.

The younger kids had all demanded where Stephen was many, many times, and Judah had had to tell them that he didn’t know for sure, but that no, he didn’t think that Stephen was coming back. Which made him the bearer of bad news, which didn’t exactly make them seem to want to listen to him much.

If work could possibly be the answer to a broken heart, Judah knew that he would be better in no time. Stephen had mostly taken over the Christmas play, leaving Judah free to do the other things which his job entailed. Now, he had all of that on his plate again, and neither Ruby nor Jesse was suited in temperament to take over. Ruby was too domineering, Jesse too easygoing. Either would spell disaster.

One more disastrous rehearsal down and Judah slumped in the pew as the children swarmed around him into the waiting arms of their parents. He was exhausted because, on top of all of the work he had to do, he wasn’t sleeping very well at all. In the hubbub, he knew that no one would notice if he just took a brief break.

Or so he thought. Until he felt someone’s weight settling beside him on the padded pew, one of the children, he figured, at least until he opened his eyes. No. Not one of the children, but definitely a familiar face.

Isaac, one of the openly gay men in town, one who was married to another man. Isaac and his husband, Ben, had been coming to church for a while now, which Judah had always taken as a sign of success. They had been made to feel at least welcome enough that they would come, and that meant something to Judah.

“Hello, Isaac,” Judah greeted him, trying to force a smile onto exhausted lips that did not want to cooperate. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“I just came to pick up Ruby,” Isaac told him, and Judah nodded tiredly. He still wasn’t quite sure that he understood what the relationship was there. Ruby looked far more like Isaac than like Ben, but Isaac didn’t seem old enough to be her father. He had been curious, but now, he was too tired, too worn down, to care. “But then I saw you sitting there, and you looked like you might need someone to talk to.”

Judah sighed softly, but a faint smile did come onto his lips in response to that.

“Isn’t that my line?” he asked because he was the minister, the pastor, the counselor. It was his job to offer to talk to people, not to talk to anyone else, and those were lines that he had always regarded as being very firmly etched. He knew his role.

“I understand if you don’t want to tell me what’s wrong, but I can tell when someone is worn out, and you’re almost there.” Isaac’s voice was earnest and, much to Judah’s shame, it made his eyes prickle, way at the back, in a way that he wasn’t at all comfortable with.

“I’m just tired,” Judah told him, and it was only half a lie. He was exhausted, way down to his bones, and he knew that he would sleep like a baby if only he could lay in bed with Will beside him. But that wasn’t going to happen, and he was going to have to get used to it. “I lost one of the children that I was counting on.”

“You mean Stephen,” Isaac told him, and Judah blinked and looked at Isaac thoughtfully before nodding. “He hasn’t been around much, has he? Ruby’s been pouting about it. She only sees him at school now.”

“Yes,” Judah said the word, though it hit him with an impact like a sledgehammer to the stomach to think of Stephen and, by extension, Will. “It’s given me a fair bit more work. Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Maybe I can help,” Isaac said, his voice thoughtful, and Judah arched an eyebrow. How could the local bartender help, he wondered, and that must have shown in his face because Isaac tilted his chin up proudly. “I forgot. You don’t know my past. In this very church, before the Baptists sold it to the Methodists, I used to help out. My father was the pastor here.”

Judah hadn’t known that, and he suddenly looked at Isaac with quite a bit more attention.

“What makes the son of a Baptist preacher become a bartender?” he asked, and Isaac gave a tiny little smirk and a shrug before he answered.

“Ben was a bartender, so when everything went to hell, I joined him. He gave me a job, a life. My parents kicked me out, and then my father, it turned out he was stealing from the church.” Isaac had his chin raised, as though expecting Judah to disapprove somehow—like he was bracing himself for it. “He got a local girl, just a teenager at the time, pregnant. Ruby is my half-sister. And then, when he was caught, he ran away. He’s the reason that the Baptist church couldn’t regain a foothold in this town, no matter how they tried.”

Oh. Well. That cleared up a whole lot of Judah’s questions. He searched Isaac’s face, saw the kindness in his brilliant blue eyes. This was a good man, just as Ben was. This town was full of good people.

And he had been so scared. Now that it didn’t matter anymore, now that he had no chance of anything with Will, he could admit to himself that he probably could tell the people of his town that he was gay, and they would accept him. They had, after all, accepted Isaac, who’d apparently had a pretty crazy father.

“Did they, your parents, kick you out because you realized that you were gay?” Judah asked, and Isaac nodded a little. Sighing, Judah dropped his gaze away from the other man’s eyes, and he spoke words that he didn’t usually say to anyone. “My parents would if they knew about me.”

Isaac was quiet, but Judah felt the weight of a hand settling on his shoulder, just a light squeeze, but it somehow made everything come into focus. He had just told someone in the town about his secret, the one that he’d been keeping for ages, and he knew that Isaac had understood.

“Is it Will?”

The words were said so quietly that even Judah, sitting right beside Isaac, had to lean forward to hear them, which was a relief, because the church, while slowly emptying, was still filled with chattering parents and loud children. The bustle covered a lot of it, but Isaac still respected Judah’s privacy.

Slowly, Judah forced his eyes back up, making him look into those lovely eyes again. He had thought that he might see something wrong there, some sort of judgment, but he didn’t. Those eyes were still kind and gentle and full of empathy, so completely unlike anything that Judah would have expected on those rare occasions that he had considered what it would mean to come out.

“Yes.”

Judah didn’t even decide to say the word. Yes, it was Will. Yes, that was the reason that Stephen wasn’t here, the reason that Judah had all of this work to do. It was Will, everything was Will, and the reason that Judah’s heart kept beating and his lungs kept the air flowing through his body was Will.

“But it’s over,” he added, and Isaac frowned slightly, but nodded again. This man was very tactful, Judah was finding, and he would trust him to keep a secret.

“If you’ll have me, I’d like to help,” Isaac admitted, “with the church. I took care of it, kept it clean, while I worked here. It’s been nice being able to come back with you in charge, but I still miss the work. I did reception, too. Kept everything in order.”

Did Isaac even know what a precious gift he was offering Judah? The work of even this small church was a lot for one man. So even just offering to lighten his load was a huge deal, but on top of that, Isaac had listened to Judah without judgment. Had taken his secret and validated it.

If only it hadn’t happened so late. If only Judah could have had this conversation before he and Will had ended, maybe they wouldn’t have had to end at all. If only he could grow wings, he could fly to Will right now and take him away from Jack, and he knew full well this was all completely ridiculous, he really did.

It was just sort of tragic, the whole situation. Not that Will would have necessarily even wanted to be with Judah for real, but at least there would have been a chance. A chance, which was more than they’d had in the first place.

“Thank you,” Judah whispered around the lump in his throat. And he knew, somehow, that Isaac knew that he wasn’t just thanking him for the offer. “If you are serious, I would love to take you up on that.”

He had the budget, after all, to hire someone to help him, he just hadn’t managed to find time to find someone that he could trust. So God, it seemed, had seen his need and sent someone to him, help in the form of this lovely, kind, generous man.

“Okay. When can I start?” Isaac asked, and Judah, despite his misery, despite the way that he felt like Will was burning through his veins and etched into his soul, couldn’t help but feel a slight lightening of some enormous weight, a burden that he could now share.

“Tomorrow. Or as soon as you can,” he whispered fervently and saw the brief flash of Isaac’s understanding smile before the other man rose to his feet and nodded to him. It wasn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world for Judah to trust someone, but he knew that he had made a good choice in trusting this man.

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow,” Isaac told him, and then he was gone. He and Ruby, who was looking after him curiously, no doubt wondering what her half-brother had been speaking to Judah about so intensely.

The world still seemed a very black, bleak place, but at least his biggest worry had been assuaged. He had been wondering if he could somehow manage to keep going, to lose himself in his work, but his work had been overwhelming him.

With Isaac around, he might have some chance at keeping this church going. It didn’t bring Will back, so the comfort was a bit of a cold one, but he still knew that he owed Isaac more than he could ever repay.

The misery was still there, and Judah was starting to think that it would never fully go away. A cold comfort might be all that he could have, but it was a great deal better than nothing.