Maisy’s shoulders bounced up in excitment, turning on the ball of her foot to turn the other way. She lead him back down the side walk, heading towards her home. Her boots scuffed against the sidewalk, filling the silence between them for a moment. Maisy’s eyes traced his shoulder as he looked off away from her, losing herself in thought for a moment. Not many people intrigued her so much, beyond just pure attraction. Everyone had a story, but rarely could you just look at someone and know their story was compelling. His voice pulled her attention, turning her eyes up to meet his. “I know very little about you, Father.” Her brows furrowed. His friendliness was part of it, she assumed. He’d talk to everyone like he already knew them.
Maisy turned the corner to her white house, with a lush green yard. She unlocked the door, pushing it forward kicking away Annie’s shoes left in the middle of the entrance. “I’d make some comment about how my daughter never cleans up after herself, but half theses shoes are mine.” She joked lightly, running into the kitchen to grab a bottle of wine and two glasses. She emerged. leading him out back to the porch. “I write scripts, which isn’t really something I share for reasons. Anyway, I’m find people who aren’t what.. you expect interesting to write, but honesty is important to writing people, characters. I always want them to feel real.” She began to ramble, sitting in one of the chairs around a little table as she spoke.
“I don’t know if I’d be writing a priest exactly, but - you’re terribly alluring.”
Despite the small secretive smile her words drew out of him, Jack felt the small stirrings of guilt. Certainly there was a line to be drawn between what little personal life he had and the rest of himself that he dedicated wholly to the church and his parishioners, but there were still walls he’d erected and fortified regularly, parts of him he selfishly refused to give away. It was his own cross to bear. But when he spoke, his words were teasing, lighthearted as though they weren’t simply more walls he locked up tight. “And that, Miss Rhodes, is by design.”
His eyes traced the lines of her house as they made their way towards the door and even though what he knew about Maisy was only surface level, something about it felt like an extension of her. Especially when they made it inside and a medley of shoes greeted them. He only smiled, stepping around them, as he followed her outside. He hadn’t known that about her, actually, and he filed it away as another facet to Maisy Rhodes he hadn’t seen before. He listened quietly, nodding along as she spoke. In another life, his world had revolved around literature-- reading, writing, eventually teaching. It dragged a sort of melancholy into the air between them that he batted away as he took his glass of wine.
It was the word alluring that dragged his attention from the drink to the woman across from him and he let out a single surprised laugh. “Alluring?” He questioned, lips pulling down as he considered the word. “I don’t think that’s the word I’d use. Mysterious? Maybe. Charming? Definitely.” He grinned. “But alluring? I think you’re giving me way too much credit here.”
