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The waves of Sligo greeted Ray that morning. His feet just nearing the edge of a cliff where, if he jumped, the water below him would meet his fall. He doesn’t remember the last time he had been one of those kids who jumped off and let the water catch them. He didn’t know either if it was still safe to jump into. Just the other day, he saw one of the younger ones take a flight off the edge, maybe it was.
Ray takes a seat at the edge of it. Unsafe, he thinks, and a bit illogical for someone like him to take a risk, but it was too early for anyone to be up at that hour. The sun rose on the other side of where he had lived and not where the sea greeted him.
It was just yesterday when [the] former Dean Thomas Cardinal Lawrence had knocked on the door. It was half planned and half a surprise to Ray when he saw his figure standing before him with a small luggage by his side. Half planned because Thomas had been asking him when he could visit him and when he wasn’t busy, and half a surprise because Ray didn’t think he would push through with it.
Boredom, he thinks, might be the sole motivator. Thomas stayed in the guest bedroom that was right across from his. From the trip, he ended up sleeping for longer than he would have liked in the room, his travel clothes still on, and his feet hanging off the edge of the bed because he was too tired to remove his shoes. Ray only closed the door and let him be for the next hours. It was dinner when he finally woke up, apologizing profusely to him.
Truth be told, he was happy to be seeing Thomas again after his elevation to archbishop and after he resigned from his position as both the dean and a cardinal. But another part of him wasn’t so sure if it was wise to have him stay with him for a while.
There was a silence that filled the room that neither of them could fill. It had been three years since they last saw each other. Ray knows this, and he knows he knows this, as well. And no amount of messages to each other could possibly help them remember the familiarity that was there.
No, it was just slow. It was the lack of acknowledgement that time had passed them.
“Rather cruel of you to be out here without me, Ray.” He nearly jumps at the voice behind him. His hands were nearly pushing him off the cliff. “Sorry, shouldn’t have surprised you.”
“Your Eminence, it’s rather early.” He watches the way Thomas takes a seat beside him. A bit reluctant at the way Ray was seated at the edge, prone to falling.
“You haven’t grown out of that habit?”
“I do fear you would always be… Your Eminence, to me.” Ray laughs, almost joking. Half a joke. He knew him for so long, and called him that for so long, he forgot how his name had felt on his tongue.
“And you’ll always be Monsignor O’Malley to me.” He tries to recall when he had ever called him Archbishop O’Malley, seriously, and not out of obligation because of his new position within the church. Thomas stayed smiling at him, and he could only return it. “Penny for your thoughts? I imagine something must have led you to this horrifying cliff.”
“It’s nothing, Your Eminence- Thomas, rather.”
“Confession, then?” Ray turns to him, seriously. If it wasn’t a secret that could be said out loud in the open and easily led by the air, they had turned it into a confession. A misuse and misguided practice of the sacraments, but it had made things easier for both of them.
“I don’t believe this one needs to be bound by confession.”
“I thought you said it was nothing.”
“Well, yes, that’s why there’s no need for it to be bound by confession.” Ray was trying to figure out what point he was trying to make to him. The confused expression on Thomas’s face nearly makes him laugh. “I’m just saying it’s nothing to be concerned about.”
The expression on Thomas’s face tells him he was doubting him, that there was a reluctance to move on from the topic. “You can tell me anything, you know.” And there was a certain seriousness in the way he said those words to him.
“I know.” His words sit in the air for a while. The cold breeze of the morning stirred past them, and he wondered if it was a good idea at all to have gone out. If he looked away from him, there was no doubt he could still feel the way Thomas stared at him. There was no point in prying, but he knew there was no giving him peace if Ray didn’t say anything.
“I watched a movie recently.” His gaze falters slightly before finally looking away and back to the waves of Sligo.
“What about?” Ray asks.
“It was these… two best friends who went on a trip. They were about to graduate, and the girl… had been in love with him for over 7 years.” Without looking at him, Ray knew he would get what he was thinking. “I know. Not my usual movie. I was just… curious?”
“Curious?”
“About the feeling.” There was a pause. “Perspective would be the better term. Of having liked someone for so long that the only way you could move on from it is if you confessed.” There was a point he was leading to, and he didn’t know what it was, or if he would reveal the point to him. “What do you think?” He turns to him again.
What did he think?
“You and I aren’t knowledgeable in that regard, Thomas.”
“Just a topic of discussion. Indulge me on this, would you?” He would. No doubt about it, he would indulge Thomas in it, and if he did indulge him in it, he knew there was no point of return from it. But he does so, anyway.
“A confession could be good.”
“But?”
“Sometimes it’s better to say nothing at all than to say complex and complicated feelings that are to be put in just simple words.”
“What if a confession is needed?”
“If you’re willing to risk it, then be my guest. While I agree it removes a heavy ache in your heart, it can’t happen to everyone.”
“Did you like someone?” The question was out of nowhere. Ray blinks at him, not pondering over the question but pondering where the question came from. Did he like someone? It wasn’t even supposed to be a question for men like them. The lack of a follow-up apology alarms Ray slightly.
“That’s… a strange question, isn’t it?”
“Sorry.” Thomas apologizes. “Curiosity. It’s not… not strange. To like someone, I mean. We are still human.” He would have asked the same question of him. He wanted to. Words were being carefully picked by him, and all at the same time, being blurted out to keep the conversation flowing. “I knew what it was like to desire, at least.”
Ray tries to control the expression on his face. His eyes widened, only ever slightly, and a pained ache in his chest returned after the last three years. It was still familiar to him. He only lets Thomas talk.
“I didn’t really do anything about it. I didn’t understand it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like you said, you and I aren’t knowledgeable in that regard.” A beat. “I wouldn’t know any better. I just knew there was a feeling.”
“What did you do then?”
“I confessed it within the four corners of the confessional.” Ray assumes it was Cardinal Bellini he had confessed his desires to. There was no other man in the curia whom he would confide in about “taboo” topics. He lets the silence fill their air as he looks down at the way their feet dangle down below the cliff. One mistake and they would both fall into the water below them.
For a moment, he thinks about whether the impact of suddenly jumping or falling flatly would be enough to take him out. Or if, as he fell, his last 7 minutes would be playing right before his eyes, and darkness would suddenly greet him. What would his last seven minutes consist of, anyway? Would seven minutes be enough to fit all he’s lived through and what he could have lived through?
“I did like someone,” Ray admits openly, and he could feel the shock from the other man as he focused on the way the waves hit the rocks below. “A bit of a hypocrite. But I didn’t do anything about it.”
“Why not?”
“People like us aren’t supposed to be given that chance, Thomas. It’s not supposed to come as easily, and it’s not supposed to come as difficult. It’s not supposed to be anything at all.” He realizes his choice of words. “Not that what you did was anything wrong. It’s just me.”
“You’re done, then?”
He lets the question sit for longer than he should have. “Yes.” A lie. Thomas wouldn’t know it was one. He feels the way his hand reaches for his back and rubs it. The gesture was reassuring, but it didn’t make the ache in his chest disappear.
“For what it’s worth, Ray, you are an expressive person.” Ray stills at the statement. Trying to gauge the expression on his face, when, for the first time in a while, he hasn’t been able to read. “Your… love would have gotten to them.”
For the last decade or more that they have spent together, Ray wonders where in those moments he let it slip past him. Had it spilled from his face when Thomas approached him for a favor, or when he had gone out of his way to go to his apartment to take care of him when he caught a fever, or was it the way he so happily greeted him back at work when he was gone for those months? The years of closely working together, it somehow didn’t occur to him that he would observe him the same way Ray did to him.
He hoped to God it wasn’t that case.
“I wouldn’t know…” Ray trails off. “I wouldn’t have wanted it to. But… either way, they wouldn’t bring it up, and I wouldn’t ever confess it.” He smiles weakly at him, and Thomas only nods in acknowledgement at that.
“I suppose that’s how it would end.” The warmth of his hand disappears from his back, and he watches the way he stands up from his seat and pats down his pants. “You wear your heart on your sleeve, Ray. That’s good.”