Cal descended into a strange mood on the way back to Red Feather. He was quiet, but not inattentive, friendly, but not flirty or amused. He was half of himself and I couldn’t decide if that owed to our conversation about his faith, the fact that I was practically moving in, or my status as a former Party World employee. I smiled slightly at my own joke. He didn’t ask what was funny.
That night, he barely touched me. When I gathered the nerve to scoot against his side, he threw an arm over my back and went to sleep.
The next morning, though, he woke me with an almost painfully intense blowjob—the kind where he took me so deep that I wanted to scream. Then he tried to get out of bed without coming. I banded a leg around him and took hold of his shaft, one hand in his hair. “Let me,” I pleaded.
He did just that. He closed his eyes, braced his arms against the mattress, and hovered over me as I jerked him off. He came with a tortured groan, like I had hurt him.
But, afterward, his mood evened out. We exercised and showered and he held me. I would have paid to know what was going through his head, but asking about it might have brought him back down, and his dark moods worried me.
On the porch, coffee and cigarette in hand, he said, “Sometimes I think these desires I have are like an addiction. If I didn’t feed them, they might sort of fade.”
I pretended the words didn’t disturb me. “What would you want with me then? Ideally, I mean. If anything.”
“Close companionship. Affection. Nothing intimate.”
“I could try that, if it would help you. We could do that.”
“Could you?” he said thoughtfully.
I nodded a little.
“Then you’re stronger than I am”—he put out his cigarette, cupped the back of my neck, and kissed the top of my head—“because I can’t.”
Our days fell into a routine. We woke up and worked out, showered and ate breakfast, and read and wrote and talked throughout the day. Cal made our meals. A few times, he drove me to diners or hole-in-the-wall restaurants he liked. In those places, we talked only about his books or life. I wasn’t his lover then; I was the journalist. But at home, he reached for me whenever he wanted. He would toss aside his book and pull me out of my chair, or climb over me in bed, or push me against the tiles in the shower.
There were gentle moments, too, which surprised me more than his lust. Sometimes, he caught my hand or folded me into his arms, kissed me or ran his fingers through my hair. I started to let myself initiate those moments. When I wanted to feel him, I joined him on the couch and curled against his ribs or straddled his lap. He never pushed me away. He sighed, often, and said my name. He liked to grip my hair while he touched me. He liked me to suck on his fingers when he was inside of me.
The profile spilled out as if it had been percolating for weeks. I wove information about his new novel with a cautious narrative of his life, now and before. The House of Faith was the key I had needed—something engaging and true, separate from his nightmarish history with Jamie—to provide a framework for the article.
But the novel’s conclusion, in which Abigail unraveled and ended up in a psychiatric ward, bothered me on a personal level. It reminded me of what Cal had said about his faith—that it was like his bones and he would break apart without it—and I resented that bleak prospect, because I wanted him to be free. I had a vision of myself tearing him out of his socially imposed cage. That vision changed altogether if the cage became something I had to tear out of him.
“I can’t stand the way you ended this,” I finally told him one day. We were seated in our usual spots—Cal on the couch, me in an armchair, because closeness was a major distraction—and he was on his laptop. After three days of my presence, he had begun, I thought, to write. He would type and stare into space. He would whisper things to himself.
“Hm?” He looked up from his MacBook.
“This.” I gestured with the manuscript. “Abigail falling apart. I don’t like it. I want her to succeed without her family. I know she makes some bad choices when she gets away from them, but I want her to ... triumph, I guess.”
“Oh, you want the happy ending.” A smile glimmered on his lips.
“Not if it comes off as sentimental. I just think it would be more satisfying.”
“Michael, the whole point of the story is that she breaks faith with who she is. She can’t triumph. Her family and her faith are her identity.”
“People change, though. Life is about changing. I mean, I believed in Santa and the tooth fairy when I was a kid. Leaving that behind didn’t crush me.”
He chuckled. “God is a little more impressive than the tooth fairy.” He was in one of his good moods, when everything made him smile. I decided to go along with it.
“Should I be jealous?”
“Of God?”
“Yeah. Of your obvious infatuation with him.”
“Oh, completely.” He grinned and stretched out on the couch. I always let him take the couch because he liked to read and even sketch and write lying down, which would have put me to sleep. “We’re devoted to each other. Like I said; he’s impressive.”
“Tell me more.”
“About God? All right. He is ... wealthy beyond your wildest imaginings. Beautiful, powerful, frightening. Passionate. Creative, intelligent. Good. Incredibly demanding and jealous. He doesn’t share. He doesn’t change. His promises are forever.”
“So, he’s Christian Grey?”
Cal laughed and shook his head. “If that helps you think about him, sure. But unlike that guy, God is real, and actually worthy of respect and admiration. He’s also earnestly obsessed with us, for reasons unclear to me.” He tapped a finger against his lips. “Your Christian Grey comparison has some merit, I guess.”
I tried, for a moment, to reorient my vision of God from bearded, fatherly guy in the clouds to rich, attractive, domineering CEO. CEO of the universe? Businessmen had never impressed me, though, as most of them seemed greedy and nearly psychopathic.
Cal impressed me. Cal was also most of the things he had described: Beautiful, powerful, passionate, creative, intelligent, good, occasionally frightening. I gazed at him, my head tilted.
“I’ve never thought about God that way,” I said.
He smiled and closed his eyes. “I’ve never thought about him any other way.”