Photo - Kent

**

Giorgio meets up with Father Kent and the sparks begin to fly...

Mike was showing Father Kent through the house later, glad to have something to do to take his mind off the strange interlude at the publishing company that afternoon. He'd gotten home and had been unable to stop thinking about it. He went running in the park but all he saw was himself and Jax walking hand in hand everywhere he looked. It had really bothered him to act as if he didn't know her when, the truth was, he did know her and he wanted to spend every day of the rest of his life with her.

The priest had shown up looking more like the coach he used to be, dressed casually in a t-shirt and pair of shorts with a backwards Yankees cap on his head. He was duly impressed with the house from the ground floor up, amazed at all the lavish décor and beautiful furnishings. The Monet in the sitting room on the fourth floor, one of the esteemed water lilies series, especially caught his eye.

"Wow! I can't imagine having a painting like that in one's house," he said as he admired it. "It's got to be worth millions. I thought they were all in museums."

"There are plenty of rare and valuable paintings in private homes," Mike told him. "Especially in this neighborhood. The owners often lend them to museums for exhibits. This one was at the Met for a special Monet exhibit when I was a kid. It's ridiculously valuable, maybe even priceless. And it just sits up here with nobody to see it. We're the first two to look at in ages, except for Henry the housekeeper and the cleaning crew."

Father Kent glanced at him searchingly. "Don't you get lonely in this house, Mike? It's cozy and comfortable, but it's an awfully big place to be alone all the time."

Mike laughed. "Yah, I do. That's why I want Giorgio to move in. He's got a room up on the next floor."

When they got up there a few minutes later, the priest looked around the bedroom Giorgio used with an amused smile. "Nice place, but it sure doesn't look like a room Giorgio would stay in. Way too girlie for him."

"Right. The general consensus for the whole house is Marie-Antoinette or Victoria's Secret. Totally girlie. Lace and frills galore. Guess I'm just used to it. I never lived anywhere else."

But Mike knew if he opened the closet and Father Kent could see all Giorgio's leatherboy clothes in there, he'd think differently. So he steered him away from the closed door, just in case.

"He doesn't stay here enough to have personalized the room," Mike went on. "This is part of New York history here and my dad would have fits if I changed any of the décor. He's seldom here but he's very proud to own this house and keep it in its original condition. Just my rooms upstairs have a personal touch because I actually live in them."

Mike watched the priest's expression as he looked around the room with a wistful smile. He was probably thinking about Giorgio, Mike figured, as he pulled out his phone to check the time. It was a little after eight-thirty, and he expected Giorgio to be coming at any minute now. He'd told him to to come right up, not bother to call first. That way it'd be a total surprise for both him and the priest. Mike showed Father Kent the lavish bathroom en suite with Giorgio's room, with its step-up drapery-framed tub and hand-painted shower stall and elegant crystal light fixtures.

The priest shook his head with a grin. "Very swank. After living in the seminary for several years, this house is the epitome of luxury."

"That must have been a lot like prison." Mike shuddered at the thought of it. "I don't think I could last a week at one of those places."

Father Kent nodded solemnly. "You have to have a strong vocation, a love of God above all things, and the patience of a saint. And even then, it'll just about drive you nuts."

It was then they heard a call from out by the stairway.

"Yo, dude. Where are you?"

Father Kent looked toward the hall. "Who's that?"

Mike led him out of the bathroom back into the bedroom. "It's Giorgio. He's done at the pizza shop and often stops by after work."

Father Kent's expression changed with sudden emotion and his face hardened. "You didn't say anything to him about what I told you, did you?"

"No way," Mike said as he crossed the room. "I would never do that. I'm in your bedroom, G," Mike then turned and called out into the hall.

When he turned back to the priest, the man was staring at him stonily with his lips pressed together in a tight straight line, his expression inscrutable. Mike could judge nothing about his feelings from his stance, but he did look angry.

"Hey, I'm sorry," Mike said in low tones. "He often comes by after work and I figured you'd like to see him."

Father Kent stood motionless, waiting, staring at the door. "Yes, I'd like to see him. I just don't know if I'm ready to."

A moment later Giorgio swept into the room carrying a pizza box, his handsome face smiling, bringing along with him his highly-charged aura of energy and masculinity and good old soul that made him somebody who everyone he knew loved and were always happy to see.

The smell of pizza filled the room as he looked at Mike and said, "Yo, bro! Who you got here with ... ?"

And then he saw Father Kent.

"Holy shit!" he exploded in frank amazement, his eyes popping wide. He was completely dumbfounded as he looked from Father Kent back to Mike and then back to Father Kent again.

"It's Kent, G," Mike said to him. "But now he's Father Kent, the new priest up at Sacred Heart."

"Jesus Christ!" Giorgio blurted, and he threw the pizza box at Mike, who caught it and watched him walk over to the priest."Father Kent? Ohmygod! So you did become a priest?"

Mike watched as they grabbed each others' forearms and held onto each other tightly, both laboring under extreme emotion.

"Yes, I went all the way, Little G. I'm a priest now. And you – whoa ... you grew up. You're ... you're almost as big as me. I guess it's no longer the coach and the kid now, huh? Just two big ole dudes."

Mike walked out into the hall. He couldn't stay in there watching. It was like a last five seconds knockout at the Main Event at Madison Square Garden, or a last-play field goal needed to win the game at the Super Bowl. Or like Apollo and Mercury meeting and the sparks flying. He was trembling with emotion as intense as theirs and he didn't even know why - it was about them, not him, he told himself. He hurried upstairs with the pizza, knowing there had to be more to it than he could ever understand, and that it was really none of his business and he didn't have to know everything about it anyway.

He got out some plates, knives, forks, and napkins and set the table by the galley, then set out cans of beer, A few minutes later as he was gazing out the French doors at Central Park, he heard voices coming up the stairway.

"This is Mike's workout room," he heard Giorgio saying. "You can see how awesome all this gym equipment goes with this old French Revolution decor. In fact, the only thing French this house doesn't have is its own guillotine."

The priest laughed at that and then they moved on through the rooms, eventually walking out of the hall into the den.

"Hey, Mike," Father Kent said to him. "This is really cool up here. I like the way your bedroom looks lived in, and this room too." Then he noticed the long wall of windows. "Wow, look at that view."

"Central Park, midtown, and the Upper West Side," Giorgio told him, walking over to the door and opening it. "And a big roof terrace out there. Go on. Look around. You can see most of the skyscrapers and the Empire State Building. The new Freedom Tower all the way downtown too."

Father Kent stepped out to look around and the screen door shut behind him. Giorgio turned to look at Mike with flashing eyes, grabbed him by his shirt collar and picked him right up off the floor, shaking him.

"You son of a bitch!" he hissed. "Don't you ever do anything like that to me again! I'll break you in half, you fucker. I coulda had a heart attack down there!"

"Whaaa ...?" Mike cried. "What the fuck?"

"Just shut up, bro. He liked me when we were teens. He had a thing for me. I knew it because we were on the same damn wave length. And I felt the same way about him. And all that time we could never do a goddamn thing about it because it was taboo and we were ... fuckin' ... good Catholic boys ... and it drove me crazy and probably him too!"

"I didn't know," Mike gasped. "How the hell would I know something like that was going on?"

Giorgio looked out to see where Father Kent was and saw him looking out over the ledge toward midtown. He dropped Mike down, swiping at a tear sliding down his cheek.

"Of course you didn't know. What? Was I gonna tell you when you were thirteen that I had the hots for our football coach ... and I knew he did for me too?"

Mike blanched, his heart thumping. "Okay. I would not have liked hearing that when I was thirteen. I'm sorry if it was too much a shock. But he told me the same thing this morning, that he's been crushing on you all these years, and I thought you two should get together. He didn't know you felt the same."

"The fuck he didn't. He knew, all right," Giorgio insisted.

"No, it was something else, G. Something crazy happened while I was there and he felt he needed to tell me about him and you ..."

"Bullshit! I know he knew I felt the same. He wanted to tell you. So you'd set us up. Fuck! And now he's a priest, damn it. He probably gives my mother Holy Communion at Mass in the morning. Every morning when she's there praying for me, so I won't be queer anymore."

Mike frowned, feeling he had really fucked things up. "I'm sorry. I just figured it'd be the right thing to do."

Giorgio grabbed him again and kissed him right on the lips. "It was, bro. Thank you! I'm just in a fucking state of shock. I love you, Mike. But he's the one dude I know I can probably love more than you."

And with that he was gone, outside onto the terrace to show Father Kent all the sights. Mike plopped down onto the leather chair by the door, his head spinning.

Then he pumped his fist up with a jab and a little hiss. "Yo ...

"Yo! Yo! Yo!"

**

"Great views, Mike," Father Kent was saying, holding Giorgio by the shoulder as they stepped inside. "Don't you guys dare go out there drunk or high."

"Hell no," Giorgio grunted. "We seldom drink and never do drugs. But Mike's always threatening to jump off there in order to end it all."

"Why's that?" Father Kent asked as he and Giorgio crossed the room to the table.

Mike had opened the beers and cut the pizza and put it on a plate. It was already cut at the shop but no matter how good you cut it, the melting cheese still gelled it together again.

"Sit down. Eat," Mike said, doing the same himself. "I don't always say that," he told the priest, wrinkling his brow at Giorgio as he took a seat. "I've just been saying it the last couple days in jest because I've been upset about Jax."

"Well, don't do it, Mike," Father Kent said, grabbing the beer in front of him. "Call me first. I've had a lot of suicide prevention training. Besides, you'd get impaled on that iron fence down there. That's not a good way to die."

Mike shuddered at the thought of it. "I'm not going to jump. It's just a figure of speech. I want to live. With Jax. Somehow she's going to be all right, is what I'm hoping for. Did you go see her tonight, G?"

Giorgio was holding a piece of pizza in his hand and it was dripping streamers of cheese all over the plate and on himself too.

"Jeez," Mike laughed before Giorgio could answer his question. "For an Italian boy who works in a pizza shop, you sure don't know how to eat a piece of pizza. When are you going to learn?"

"One never learns how to eat pizza," Giorgio defended himself, kicking Mike under the table. "It has a mind of its own and does what it wants, no matter how good you get at eating it."

Giorgio was nervous, Mike realized. Meeting Father Kent so suddenly had knocked him for a loop. So he asked again, "Did you stop to see Jax?"

Giorgio was now using a fork to catch the errant cheese. "Yes. I went there at six. She was okay. A little pissed, I think, because we found out where she works and she knows it upset you, Mike."

"What happened?" Father Kent asked, cutting a piece of pizza with a knife and fork, as sensible non-Italians tend to do.

Mike told him how they had delivered pizza that afternoon to a publishing company office that just so happened to be the place where Jax was interning. He did not, of course, tell him the more sordid details of the event.

"So now she's upset because I know she owns the publishing company," Mike said. "She figures I'm mad at her because she didn't tell me about it. But I understand. She just didn't want to complicate things more by my bugging her to look at my books."

"Jackson and Parks Publishing Company," Father Kent mused. "Her Uncle Parks lives off of Park Avenue near the church. He's still a big shot at Sacred Heart. Her dad, Jackson Lupins, was a deacon there. He had a lot of money, hundreds of millions, and if she got any of it, she's really rich. I remember him because I was an altar boy and I knew all the lay members involved with the liturgy. He was a very nice man. He was also the high priest of that Satanic cult, Infernum Sanctorum. It was quite a shock when the details of that story came out. No one would've expected that kind of behavior from him."

He thoughtfully popped a piece of pizza in his mouth. "Who knows what the hell those cult members did to her? Her dad, obviously, abused her. But often the other men also abused the victims at the ceremonies to appease good old Satan. And sometimes actually killed them. There was a case in Ohio recently in which a priest had sacrificed a nun, killed her in a Black Mass held at a chapel in a hospital where she'd worked as a nurse. Stabbed her on the chest several times in the shape of a cross. And this happened thirty years ago. Law enforcement and Church hierarchy knew what happened and worked together to cover it up."

"You've got to be kidding," Giorgio said. "They'd cover up a crime like that?"

Father Kent nodded. "Yes, that and worse. The Church had more power back then and people respected it a lot more than they do now. Nowadays reporters and lawyers are anxious to rip open the Church's wounds and make headlines and sue for big money. That's what happened in this case. Some nosy reporter was looking for a scoop and reopened the investigation. All the hushed-up evidence was found, including actual nude photos of the nun's body with the knife wounds. The priest went on trial and was convicted, and he's in prison now for the rest of his life."

"Damn!" Mike couldn't comprehend it. "Killing a nun at a Black Mass and getting away with it? That's insane. Why do these religious people turn to the devil?"

"They believe in him and his powers," the priest answered. "If you believe in Christianity, you most probably believe in Satan. He's an intrinsic part of it. The evil part. Some religious people are willing to go over to the dark side to get what they want here on Earth. Screw heaven and the afterlife. They want it all now. Satanic worship has been going on as long as Christianity has."

Giorgio stabbed a small piece of pizza with his fork. "And the Church always criticized paganism so harshly. At least pagans worship gods, not the devil like these rogue Christians do."

Father Kent set down his knife and fork and took a swig of beer. "Boys, we have to get together with Jax and talk. With this cult active in the area, she's in a whole lot of danger. Will she come here to see me?"

"I'll talk to her tomorrow," Giorgio said. "She's very stubborn about it, but I'll make her understand. I'll try to get her to come here Thursday night."

"Not tomorrow?" Father Kent asked. "The sooner the better."

Giorgio looked at Mike, then back to the priest, his face reddening. "Mike and I have something to do tomorrow night."

"Then make it Friday. I have a CYO meeting Thursday night and I'll be busy late setting up baseball game schedules. I've got to get all that laid out now by the weekend."

Mike agreed to that. "Friday then. And we've got to know what Jax is doing at all times, especially if she slips into that other personality. If she goes down to the House of Pain and they realize she's been marked with that tattoo ... shit, she's in real big fucking trouble!"

**

Giorgio and Father Kent left Mike's house a little while later. It was a warm spring night, dark now, and Giorgio had the Jeep with him. He was going to drop Father Kent off at the rectory on his way home to nearby Yorkville. The Jeep was a standard shift vehicle and Giorgio had to shift gears as he drove up Madison Avenue. The two of them had been quiet, not saying much, but as they were stopped at the light at 75th Street Father Kent placed his hand over Giorgio's on the shift stick.

"I'm really glad we met up again, G." he said.

Giorgio kept his eyes on the road, shivers streaking through him at the man's touch. "You're gonna call me that too now?"

"I always did. That's what Mike called you, and some of the other boys."

Giorgio looked over at him with a frown. "Do I have to call you 'Father'?"

"No. No way. Just call me Kent, like you always did."

The light changed, and Giorgio shifted and drove on. "So what the fuck happens now? You still gonna ignore me the same as you did back then?"

Father Kent was speechless for a moment, his mouth open in a little O. He let out a pent-up breath. "Ignore you? You were just a kid. You were in your teens those years - fourteen, fifteen ..."

"Old enough to know how I felt about you, and how you felt about me. You couldn't hide it from me, Kent. I knew! And you knew I knew."

Angry, Giorgio downshifted needlessly just to underscore his emotion with some noisy engine roar.

Father Kent moved his hand up to Giorgio's shoulder. "Look, I wanted to be a priest. I could have gotten into trouble if I so much as touched you. You were jail-bait. I was eighteen-nineteen. It's against the law. I could've been barred from the seminary."

Giorgio snorted. "Bullshit! You were always touching me, just like you are now. Your hands were always all over me, especially on my ass. The other boys joked about it. I got in three fights because of it."

Father Kent winced. "Oh boy. I ... I didn't know about that. Come on, I was just being a coach. They all do that."

"Fuck you! You only did it to me, not the other boys. And they all noticed." Giorgio felt like he was boiling over. Pent-up emotion from the last eight years was making him tremble. "I wouldn't have told anybody if you had tried to be closer to me. You knew that. You could have at least talked to me. We could have gone to the park and jogged, or shot some hoops, sat on a bench and talked. Something. Anything."

The priest squeezed his shoulder. "Kid, no way could I have been alone with you like that, even out in the open park, and not grabbed you and had you in my arms. Really, G. Don't you understand?"

Giorgio looked at him, an aching inside he'd almost forgotten about now threatening to overwhelm him. "I guess I do but it fuckin' sucks. Damn stupid laws, the government's and the Church's. We were both old enough to know what we wanted, how we felt. And you know it!"

He looked back to the road and turned right onto 80th Street. "But what about now? What the hell happens now? And don't give me that priest crap. You've been gay all your life and nuts about me for years. I know it! There's no excuses now. I'm fuckin' twenty-one years old."

The Jeep shot down the block and roared through the light and across Park Avenue. Father Kent grabbed the rollbar overhead to hold on.

"Take it, easy, kid. What's the rush?"

"And stop calling me 'kid'!" Giorgio snapped at him. "I'm a man. It's not like it was before. We're two men who have been in love with each other for years already. And there's nothing standing in the way now."

Giorgio had pulled up to the curb in front of the rectory. Father Kent slid his hand down to Giorgio's elbow and held him there. "I'm being groomed to take Monsignor's place when he retires in two years. I'll be pastor of Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish."

Giorgio narrowed his eyes. "I'll move in with Mike and be your lover. It's only a few blocks away from here. We can have that whole fifth floor to ourselves. I don't give a fuck about the Church and I don't think you do either. It's just a job you're good at. And I don't care what kind of work you do. I care about us, you and me. And if you're not ready for it, you'll be living here in the neighborhood and I'll hound the goddamn crap out of you until you give in."

"Yikes," Father Kent muttered softly to himself. He turned and sat looking forward in the seat. "Why don't you go around and park in the back? We can go inside and talk. Monsignor and Father Blinn will be up in their rooms, probably asleep by now."

Giorgio shifted into gear and zoomed over to the driveway and sped up through the school buildings. Talk? He wanted to break the fucker's earlobes or something. This was no time for talking. Fate had been working its ridiculous worst for both him and Mike lately, and now it had brought Kent back into his life. He'd never expected to see the man again, even though he'd thought and wondered and imagined about him almost every day since he last saw him. He pulled the Jeep into a parking spot in the school yard behind the rectory and turned the motor off. He knew if he went inside the parish house with Kent, it wasn't going to be to talk.

"Come on," the priest urged, climbing out of the Jeep. "We can go in the office." He laughed self-consciously. "Sorry, but I can't take you up to my room."

Giorgio jumped out without even opening the door. "Yah, whatever."

"G! C'mon, cut me some slack, huh? When I came back here to Sacred Heart I knew I might see you again, but I didn't dare give it any thought. You could have been gone, moved away or in the service, or off to college. You could have been married. You could have been dead. I didn't dare even think about it and now I ... I don't ... I don't know what to do."

Giorgio bit his tongue so he wouldn't say anymore as they walked to the back door of the rectory. He understood that Father Kent was facing a difficult dilemma, but he didn't give much of a fuck. He'd carried this secret in his heart for so long that now, with the man actually here at his side again, he felt like he was going to explode. They went in the back entrance and down the dimly lit hall to the office. Father Kent opened the door and flicked the light switch on and they stepped in. The lighting was dim, the curtains at the windows drawn closed, and it was quiet. Giorgio couldn't even hear New York outside.

Father Kent grabbed him by the elbow to lead him over to the chairs by the desk. "Let's sit here and talk. And don't get so angry and tough. It worked great in football where that kind of attitude matters. But it just doesn't fly right here and now. We ..."

"No!" Giorgio growled at him. "I'm not listening to that crap. I don't need to be coached. I know exactly what a man needs to do."

He spun around and grabbed the priest by the shoulders and pushed him across the floor and banged him up against the wall, staring wildly at the handsome man's shocked face.

With a lone tear sliding down his cheek, Giorgio hissed, "You listen to me, dude. You broke my fucking heart into a million pieces when I was a kid because you wouldn't have anything to do with me other than at football. I knew how you felt and you knew I felt the same. I saw it every time you looked at me, talked to me, touched me, always patting my hot little ass like a nice coach when I knew what it was you really wanted.

"And I know all about why it couldn't be. I heard it all my life too. Why I'm not supposed to be like this. Why it's wrong. Why it's a sin. Why I'm gonna go to hell. And I don't give a fuck about any of those whys anymore. It's all bullshit, kept alive and in rotation by complete assholes desperate to be controlling others. And if you're still under the spell of it, Kent, I swear I'll beat it the crap out of you, if I have to knock you senseless to do it. I'm ready to fight. You yourself, Sacred Heart, the Church, the fuckin' Vatican in Rome. I'll see it all come tumbling down to rubble before I'll ever let it hurt me again like it did when I was a kid with its lies and bullshit and hatred aimed at those like us."

The priest lowered his head and rested his forehead on Giorgio's. His hands moved up Giorgio's back, slid up to his shoulders and he pulled Giorgio to him, enveloping him in his arms. "I'm sorry I hurt you, G. I'm sorry the Church hurt you. I'm sorry the Church hurts millions of good people and spreads the hatred and lies it does. But it's my life. I can't just run away from it. I can't just ..."

"I understand that," Giorgio interrupted, his heart banging as he pressed his hard muscular body against that of the priest. "You don't have to leave the Church. Just don't shut me out anymore because of it."

"I won't. I swear I won't," he whispered as their embrace completed and they were fastened to each other against the wall.

Their mouths groped at each other's hungrily, kissing, probing, searching for the lost moments of barren years when the false ideals of intolerant others and power hungry hypocrites stifled the love and passion in their hearts and minds and souls ...

**

Thanks for reading everyone. Please vote for this chapter and leave a comment. Then read on. Things get positively creepy at the Strato mansion in the next chapter ...