By the time I’m done on my phone, Grace is calling out, “Text me later,” and ducking into the driver’s side seat of her car.
I wave as she drives off, then turn to Pastor James when he remarks, “She is aggressively excited about this idea.”
Nodding my head, I reply without thought, “She went to a party over the weekend; I think she feels guilty about it. Grace is always a lot, but even I started to get annoyed by her enthusiasm today.”
James glances over at me. “A party, huh? Did you go, too?”
“I didn’t want to go, but when she went without me, I had to go pick her up.”
“You’re a good friend,” he tells me. Casually shoving his hands into his suit pockets, he asks, “Did you stay a while?”
I don’t want to talk to him about the party, and I don’t want to tell him anything about Grace that she wouldn’t share herself, so I clam up again.
Apparently sensing that, James goes on like he’s not waiting for my response. “I remember my first high school party—not the kind like we have in youth group, obviously,” he adds, a bit knowingly. “There was a girl from church that I liked. She wasn’t in my crowd of friends, wasn’t involved in the church beyond Sunday service, but she was pretty, and she had the nicest smile. Made me happy just looking at her, you know?”
I crack a smile and nod my head.
“But she had this awful boyfriend. Football player, on the wrestling team—his whole family was. Three brothers, every last one of them Longhorns. I don’t know if you knew him because he’s a year ahead of you, but his younger brother was a halfback, just graduated last year, went off to Penn State. Duncan Bradwell?”
“Oh, yeah, I remember that name.”
He nods. “Yeah, well, his older brother was in my class, and all the girls loved him. I’m sure you know how that goes.”
Carter immediately flashes to mind and I nod my head. “Yeah, I know how that goes.”
“He was a real jerk, though,” he says, glancing down and shaking his head. “A real rage-monster. He got mad over everything. Something didn’t go his way, he couldn’t handle it. Bad attitude, but Mandi must’ve seen something in him. So, anyway, when I got invited to this party, I thought maybe it’d be a chance to talk to her, or maybe I would see Duncan in a different light when I saw him on his downtime, and I’d be able to understand what she saw in him and make my peace with it. Maybe kill that ill-fated crush, or if it was my path to be with her, then maybe start a friendship. I was open to either outcome. I wanted to follow the path I was meant for, not force my own will.”
I nod my understanding.
“It was a rough night. Everyone was drinking alcohol and makin’ questionable decisions. Duncan and Mandi got in a fight and he stormed off, yelling about what a bitch she was being—pardon my language. Mandi was in tears, telling her friend she was only trying to make him happy and she didn’t know what she’d done wrong.”
I grimace. “That doesn’t sound like much fun at all.”
He smiles, shaking his head. “It wasn’t. I, uh… I’ll admit I wasn’t completely sober myself at that point, and when I saw Mandi crying and her friend assuring her that Duncan would calm down and come back, I had just enough liquid courage in my veins that I wanted to go tell her not to wait for that guy, that I thought he was a real jerk and she deserved someone who would never treat her the way he did.”
That sounds like James. It’s not like high school was that long ago for him, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised he’s mostly the same person. “Did you tell her that?”
He nods his head. “I did. I marched right over there, took her off to the side away from her friend, and told her how great I thought she was, how mad it made me to see someone treating her that way and making her cry. She accepted my comfort, hugged me, I thought I was walkin’ on sunshine.” His voice levels out with a slightly self-deprecating edge. “Then Duncan came back, and all the sense I thought I’d talked into her leaked right out, and she went running right back to him.”
“That stinks,” I murmur sympathetically.
He shrugs. “You can’t save everybody,” he tells me. “Mandi had her own path to follow, and she learned her lesson the hard way. He kept treating her badly because she allowed him to, then he cheated on her with one of her friends and broke her heart.”
“That’s terrible.”
He nods his agreement. “Some people aren’t good-hearted, Zoey. We might want them to be, we might offer our hand and try to pull them up, but you know what? It’s much easier for them to pull us down. Mandi thought she could change Duncan, but all she got for her effort was broken. Following Duncan led her onto a different path than the one she started out on. Even after they broke up, she was stuck on that sinful path. She never made it back. When her first crisis occurred and she realized Duncan had led her somewhere bad, she could have made a change and turned back around. She could have come back to church, picked up the pieces after that painful mistake, and made better choices going forward, but she didn’t. Now she’s 23 with 2 kids by 2 different men, not married to either of ‘em. Her life isn’t what she wants it to be, but she allows it to stay that way. That’s the thing that determines your path. It’s not mistakes you might make, it’s not detours off the straight and narrow. It’s knowing when to say enough is enough, when to stop taking that crap, and when to turn back toward the light and away from whatever tempts you to stray from it.”