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“He got a ring,” says Claire.
“Oh! Oh my God.” Claire looks — Claire looks vaguely nauseous. “Are you happy?”
She half wonders if she’s going to get a “What do you mean, of course I’m bloody happy,” in response, but instead Claire looks even more like she’s going to throw up.
“Yes,” her tinny voice repeats, and the frame rate slows down for a moment, so she has time to watch Claire’s face contort into several different micro-expressions of anguish-with-a-chance-of-smile before something breaks through. “Yes, and I am, but —”
“What do you mean, this is all you’ve ever wanted!”
“Yes,” wails Claire, and Fleabag barely has time to look up from her phone screen before she almost walks into a sidewalk pole, “but what if it’s too good to be true?”
“Is it?”
“What?”
“Is it too good to be true? Is he an asshole?”
“Of course not,” Claire snaps. She looks good, no longer the rail-thin sister who was probably anorexic. There are smile lines on her face.
There’s a bit of a pause.
“I’m really happy for you,” she says, pushing open the door.
“Thanks,” says Claire, vaguely put out. Fleabag pushes open the door of the Tesco’s and thinks absentmindedly about creamer: she’d normally never go all the way for a single ingredient, but they’ve run out at the cafe and it turns out only so many people will take their coffee plain. The wedding will be lovely, probably, after Claire gets through at least five aneurysms while trying to plan it. Normally, she’d be worried about getting married after only six months, but she’s never seen Claire happier.
She’s in the dairy aisle, wondering how to get the cheapest creamer that won’t taste abysmal, when it happens.
“Claire, I have to go.”
“What, did something happen?”
“No, nothing —” he’s looking at the cheese. He’s going to turn his head in a moment — ” nothing’s happened. I have to go.”
“If something’s happened —”
“Nothing’s happened!” she whisper-yells, trying to hold the creamer up to her chest and move and also whisper into the mic so she can convince her sister she hasn’t had some sort of psychotic break, and then something in the paper packaging tears and she spills shitty creamer all over herself.
“Oh,” says a voice.
She’s keeled over in the aisle, holding the empty carton like some kind of baby. There’s creamer in her hair. She straightens up — more is spilling — and turns around. He’s shorter than she remembered and so alarmingly solid. His hair looks like he’s actually slept. He’s holding a basket with two of his fingers — again, so solid and strong — with some cabbage in it.
He blinks. “Did you need help with that?”
She laughs awkwardly. “Might’ve, but it’s gone now.”
For a moment, he just stares at her, and she’s taking in all of him. The wrinkles on his face, his shoes, his eyes — oh, those eyes. She tries to remind herself that time has passed, but he doesn’t look any different — probably that uniform. Maybe loving God keeps you like that, a fly trapped in holy amber. Repeating the same thing, week after week after week. She doesn’t know if it’s something she wants to thank Him for.
“Hello?!” comes a very tinny yell.
“Sorry, Claire —” she says, fumbling to tap on her phone, and hangs up.
The priest takes a step forward, goes for the floor, grabs the bottle of creamer off of dirty linoleum. It’s slipping away from him. “Oh, I’m sorry — did I make you —”
“No, it’s just my sister — she’s getting engaged.”
“Oh! Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” he says, like it’s somehow his fault he’s helping her clean up the creamer in the Tesco’s aisle. Which it sort of is.
“No,” she laughs, and oh no the laughs are building on themselves in a nervous waterfall. She should be helping him. She’s frozen. “No, don’t be, it’s to, uhm, her boyfriend! Who she left the, the wedding for. If you remember.”
“Well that’s great then!” He’s finished scrambling around and is tumbling what remains of the creamer boxes into her (sopping wet) arms. He’s realizing what he just did. “Oh - I’m so sorry.”
He sounds like a broken record. “I will take that one,” she says, trying to sound charming.
She wonders if when he buys the cabbage he’ll take it home and put it in the tiny fridge in the parish and be gentle with it and make sure he eats the entire thing before it goes bad. She wonders if he feels any special affection for the cabbage, if he cares about everything in his life like that, if he loves everyone who comes into his parish with a sort of special care. If he thinks about her like that.
“Well," he says, and for a moment there’s the hope that he’ll usher her to a bathroom with flickering fluorescent LED lights and stare at her and maybe help her wash dairy out of her blouse until they kiss on the countertops — “I’ll, uhm, I’ll see you around.”
“Yeah.”
He’s backed away. He’s staring at her. Somewhere very far away, the cash register beeps.
Eternity passes, only it’s five seconds and takes its order to go.
“Goodbye,” the priest says, and then he walks down the Tesco’s aisle, fluorescent lights bouncing off his ironed collar, turns the corner, and disappears.