Leap of Faith by Cassidy Shay (the giving tree read aloud .txt) 📕

"And you think throwing money at me is going to make up for it?" Under the surface, I know that that's not what he's trying to do. I don't know why I'm getting upset about it. I shouldn't be doing anything that could possibly ruin this weekend.

"No, Mikey, you know that's not what I mean by this.” He looks me in the eye, and his voice is stern. He means business. “I’m not going to fight with you today. I just want to make sure you're having a good time, and I'm your dad. This is one of the things that dads are supposed to do for their kids. And I know this isn't going to make up for everything that's been going on. But it's something that I want to do for you."

I sigh as I put the money into my wallet. "I'm sorry," I say. "Thank you. I'm sorry for being so difficult." 

The bathroom door opens and Amia walks out. She smiles at me, then grabs a baseball cap, flip flops, and a beach towel out of her bag. "Are you going to get changed?" she asks me, pointing to my jeans and sweatshirt. "I don't know if I want to be seen with the dumb tourist who was too stupid to wear climate-appropriate apparel." 

"Well. I guess you can just leave then." But I grab my bag and head into the bathroom. I come back out a few minutes later in my swim trunks and a t-shirt. "Let's hit the beach," I say.

We get down the wooden stairs to the beach, which is pretty packed with people. I didn't expect anything less, even though I wish there were fewer people.

We lay our towels down on the sand, and sit down to face the water. I know that we probably won’t go in, though. Amia hasn’t willingly entered a body of water since she was still wearing floaties.

"So what's your dad doing all weekend?" she asks after a couple minutes. "He's not wandering around all alone, is he?"

I shake my head. "No, he's got a few frat brothers that live here. We haven't come here in a few years, so it's been a while since he saw them. He'll probably go see them, catch up with them." 

"Oh, that'll be nice." She leans back on the towel and closes her eyes in the sun. "I just didn't want him to be all alone all weekend. I still kind of feel bad for crashing your family weekend. You and your dad could have gone out and had a fun weekend together." 

I grab her hand, silently admiring her thoughtfulness. "Well, I don't think what he has in mind for this weekend is something he'd want his underage son tagging along for. He's with his frat buddies, remember?”

"So you guys just brought me along so he could get rid of you. I see how it is," she says, joking. 

"Yeah, well, you know, I don't really like you at all. All my other friends were busy, so I got stuck with you. But rest assured, you were my last resort."

After hanging out on the beach for a few hours, we head back to the hotel to change. Our reservation is at seven, and we leave the hotel at about 6:30. She looks beautiful. It takes us about twenty minutes to walk to the restaurant, and the waiter leads us to a table on the balcony that overlooks the beach. It's an Italian restaurant, and the smell of fresh bread and garlic fills the entire building.

"This place is amazing," she says, looking at the water. "Have you been here before?"

"Yeah, we usually come here whenever we come down here. It's pretty good. I've never had anything that I didn't like. Of course, I always get the spaghetti, so what do you expect?" She lets out a small laugh, and then takes a drink of her water.

 She glances at the menu, and nods when she finds what she wants. "Chicken alfredo," she says. "You can't go wrong with that." 

The rest of the dinner passes quickly. After we pay, she grabs my hand and we walk outside, onto the beach. She takes her shoes off so that she can feel the sand between her toes, and I try not to laugh at how cliché she sounds when she says it. We take our time getting back to the hotel, and we even find a nice bench to sit on and visit for a while.

At about ten, we finally get back to the hotel room. There's a note from my dad on the night stand saying that he met up with his friends and doesn't know what time he'll be back. "P.S.- Behave," I read out loud, and she laughs. 

"You know, I'm getting this weird feeling that our parents want us to behave.”

About an hour later, we're sitting on the bed watching a movie. She has her head on my shoulder, and an arm around my waist. She shifts a little, so that she's looking at me instead of the TV. "Thanks for bringing me along," she says. "And for dinner. And just for everything you've done for me." She lifts herself up a little bit, and kisses me gently on the cheek. "You are one amazing guy, Michael Levis." 

She kisses me on the lips, and I'm a little surprised. She almost never kisses me first. In the several months since our first kiss, I’ve almost always been the one to kiss her first. 

After a few minutes, the surprise has long worn off, and something doesn't feel right. There's this girl, this beautiful, wonderful girl, and I love her- I really, really do. And here she is, kissing me. Everything should feel right. Everything should be right. Why isn't this right?

Her hand that's on my stomach moves, dragging my shirt and leaving a small sliver of skin exposed. When her hand touches it, it sends electricity coursing through my body. My skin is hot under her hand. But somehow, something is still wrong.

And it's not my parents' voices in the back of my head, telling me that I should stop, before things get carried away. 

It's something much bigger.

It's not a voice telling me not to let it go any farther. It's a calling, telling me that I should stop completely. 

That this isn't my purpose. 

That my path is going to lead me somewhere very different. 

This all happens in about two seconds, me figuring out what's wrong. I gently push her away, sit up straighter, and turn so that I'm facing her. I feel my heart breaking, and I know that maybe this isn't the best time to do this. But I know that it has to be done eventually. And if I don't tell her now, then she'll notice that I'm acting weird and it'll turn into a fight that will just cause more hurt. 

I feel my heart breaking, but I also know that this is the right thing. Amidst the pain is relief, because I've finally figured it out.

I sit in silence for a minute, staring at my hands in my lap, and when I look up, she's concerned. She's more than concerned. She's completely freaked out. 

"Amia, I have to talk to you about something." I gently grab her wrists and pull them toward me, and she lifts her face so that her eyes meet mine." She already has tears streaming down her cheeks, and I want to pull her into my arms and forget about this, carry on like it never happened. 

But I can't. 

"I want you to know that I love you,” I say, not knowing how else to start this off. “Nothing will ever change that. I have fallen completely in love with you. And that makes this so hard for me." I take a deep breath. "My whole life, it's kind of been a joke that I'll grow up to be a priest. It's the running joke at all family events. It's been constant. I always did my best to ignore it, because I never felt like being a priest was for me. I never felt like that's what God had planned for me.

"But these last few months, I've gotten closer to Father. I've learned more about the priesthood, and more about myself. And I've started to consider that maybe that is for me. Maybe that is what God wants for me." The tears keep streaming down her face, and she gently shakes her head. 

"I don't know for sure. But I really need you to understand this. It has nothing to do with you. I love you so much, Amia. And when you touch me, when you kiss me, even when you look at me, my body reacts so strongly. But my heart is telling me that it isn't right. Not anymore. We... we have to break up. I need to take time to discern, and I need to not have one foot in both doors. I need to make sure this is real. And it's not fair for me to drag you along while I do that."

I want to cry. I want to scream and yell and punch something and complain about how the world isn't fair. But I can't. I can't focus on what Mikey just told me. I can't register what it means, it won't soak into my skin. 

Because the second he stops talking, I can hear. 

I hear the whir of the AC unit underneath the window, and someone talking in the hallway. I hear the bed creak when I shift my weight, and hear the faint sound that his thumb makes as it draws circles on the back of my hand. 

I can hear. 

I go to the window, and slide it open. I hear traffic, two stories down. Cars running, driving down the road. I hear people on the sidewalk, and countless other sounds that blend together to form the sound of the city. 

I can hear. 

"Mikey," I say, and I can hear my own voice. I can hear my own voice. It's higher pitched than it sounds when I would hear it over the radio. "Mikey, I can hear." He jumps up from the bed, comes over to me. And I can hear his soft footsteps on the carpet. 

"What do you mean? Like, you can hear everything?" I nod, and he wraps me into a hug. When he pulls away, his face is practically split in half by a giant smile. Hidden behind the smile, in his eyes, is pain; it’s exciting news, but it’s not enough to make him forget what he just decided. "Amia, that's so great!" 

I walk over to my bag, pull out my sweatshirt. "Can we go to the beach? Please?" Without waiting for him to answer, I slip my feet into my flip flops and grab the door key. He's still standing by the window, watching me. "Come on, Mikey," I plead. "I want to hear the waves. I want to listen to all the sounds." Now, before this goes away.  This whole time, I've been waiting for silence to once again envelope me, to surround me and suck me back into itself. I can't help but think that this is all temporary, that