She smiles, looking off-guard and embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. I promise.”
I open my mouth, then close it. Maybe I’m coming on too strong. “It’s fine.” I wave the whole thing away. “People assume my ‘ascension’ was driven by business interests as much as spiritual. It makes sense, since our ministry is so large. But for myself—I was content in the outreach post.”
“You did the apps and the TV channel, the publishing, right? Before your father…”
“And radio, and publishing, yes.” Before my father died in 2014, and I got bumped up in the Evermore hierarchy. “That’s what I like to do. But as Dad got older, he got tired.”
“And that’s when you started stepping in?”
“I wrote the sermons starting about a year before he passed. It was just going to be a break for him. I did it once when he was sick with diverticulitis. There were always other writers, for when Dad got tired. That’s not unusual when someone does this for as long as he had. The creative well runs dry.”
“Of course.” Her pretty face is empathetic.
“When he passed away, the board of elders did a search of sorts.”
She nods. “But they chose you, unanimously. My dad told me.” Her grandfather was one of the elders at that time. “He said there was no one like you.”
I lift my brows, and she shrugs. “Clearly, it’s in your blood.”
I press my lips flat. “If you think it’s clear.”
“My best friend is a doctor,” she says. “Fifth generation. And her family is from Pakistan, so women doctors aren’t without obstacles, at least not in their country of origin.”
I have one last bite of my kefta briouat before the waiter steps over to take our first-course plates.
He serves the second course, and Megan looks at me thoughtfully over her chickpea soup. “I just wondered how you saw yourself in the grand scheme of things. I didn’t mean to question your sincerity.”
I give her a forgiving smile. “It’s okay.”
“You must get that a lot.”
“Sometimes.”
“Because people think your family made their money that way. Via the church. Is that it?”
I nod.
“No one from this area, though,” she muses.
“Most people from the Bay area know that’s not true,” I agree.
“Your family helped repair after the earthquake.” When I only nod—what they really did was invest after the earthquake—she says, “You must have a lot of love for what you do. Do you have time for hobbies?”
I feel the weight of my phone in my pocket and tense my leg beneath it. “I like sailing,” I manage. “Snowboarding. I read a lot.”
“What do you like reading?”
“Mostly dry theology. Nonfiction. Mysteries, sometimes.”
“What’s your top read of the last year?”
I swallow hard. Confessions of The Fox. I won’t say that. I settle on, “Asymmetry, probably. By Lisa Halliday?”
Her face is blank.
“The Great Believers was really good, too. American Prison—that one I wouldn’t call enjoyable, though.”
Still blank.
“Educated?”
She perks up. “I liked that. And I have the sense you’re better-read than I am. Did you read The Apostles’ Creed?”
I grin. “I gave a quote for the jacket.”
“Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism?”
“You read that?”
She nods, looking half amused and half abashed.
“What did you think?”
Her face lights up. “I liked it. And I thought it was important. Painfully relevant. I don’t think I know anyone else who’s read it.”
I lift my glass. “To obscure theological treatises.”
“To extreme nerdiness.”
We reach across the table to clink glasses. After that, she has some of her soup, and I, mine.
“Tell me something else about yourself,” she says as she looks up. She makes an expression that’s très dramatique. “Tell me something no one knows.”
I keep my face on lockdown, twisting my lips slightly upward at the corners as I inhale slowly through my nose—and firm up my mask. “Are we talking secretly afraid of butterflies or more like not a fan of Martin Luther?”
Her eyes widen as my lips twitch. “Are you…”
I smirk. “Am I what?”
“Are you scared of butterflies?”
I lift one brow.
“You’re scared of butterflies!”
I lean forward, waving my hand in feigned embarrassment, as if I’m signaling her to keep her voice down.
“Why butterflies?”
I look around before whispering conspiratorially. “Grasshopper bodies.”
“Grasshopper bodies? What! They have soft, velvety—”
“Grasshopper bodies.” I give her the look I give to kids at Evermore Academy to keep them in line. Then I smile and push my chair back. “Excuse me. I’ll be right back.”
I can hear her laughing as I head toward the men’s room. With every step, I feel my iPhone in my right back pocket.
In the stall, I take a long, slow breath and admit that I like her. The mutual friends who set us up were right—she’s kind. And beautiful. And thoughtful. She’s a good conversationalist, and I bet she’d be a great wife.
I put my hand over my chest, thinking of what I’d need to do to be with her. It doesn’t matter.