Chapter 2: A Culinary Miracle and a Dorky Confession
The days bled into a pattern of salt wind, sawdust, and quiet company. They worked on the rectory with a patient, unspeaking rhythm most of the time. Riley would arrive mid-morning, often with two thermoses—coffee for himself, tea he’d learned Paul could vaguely taste—and they’d assess the day’s damage. Paul fetched, held, and learned. He sanded char from salvageable beams until his palms were stained black, a tangible proof of work that prayer never provided.
His own uselessness gnawed at him. One afternoon, holding a support post steady while Riley secured it, he voiced it. “My skill set is embarrassingly specific. Prayer. Finding undead monsters. Becoming one. It doesn’t translate well to domestic architecture.”
Riley drove a nail home with three sharp blows before glancing up. A faint smile touched his mouth. “You’re holding the post straight. That’s a skill. And you don’t complain. That’s a virtue. I’m fine.” He chuckled, a low, warm sound. “Honestly, you’re a better assistant than most guys I worked with inside. They’d never shut up.”
The small faith between them, fragile as a bird’s bone, thickened into something stranger and sturdier. It was in the way Riley would wordlessly pass him a tool before he asked; in the way Paul learned to have a bandage and a bottle of water ready when Riley nicked himself.
One blustery afternoon, Riley arrived later than usual, a faded canvas satchel over his shoulder. “Missed lunch,” he grunted by way of greeting, stepping over the threshold into the main room, which now had three solid walls and a ghost of a fourth. He pulled out a plastic container, still steaming faintly at the edges. “Brought extra.”
He handed it to Paul. Inside was a generous portion of chicken fillet, pan-seared and seasoned with something that smelled of lemon and thyme, beside a mound of bright green broccoli.
Paul’s heart, that silent, stubborn muscle, clenched with a gratitude that felt too large. He hated broccoli. He had always hated it—the texture, the faint bitterness, the way it smelled like damp earth. But he had no kitchen. He had no right to refuse a gift of warmth. “Thank you, Riley. This is… kind.”
They sat on a low, finished section of the floor, their backs against a wall. Paul ate methodically, savoring the perfectly cooked chicken, forcing down the broccoli with the discipline of a man used to far more unpalatable offerings. When he was done, he felt a pang of guilt. “I should cook for you next time,” he said, wiping his mouth. “A proper thank you.”
Riley, nearly finished with his own meal, snorted softly. “You? Work a culinary miracle? With what kitchen? Your magic communion wafer maker?”
Paul felt a sudden, unexpected surge of playfulness. It rose in him like a bubble, light and strange. He set the container aside and leaned forward, his unnervingly brown eyes sparkling with mock solemnity. “You doubt me? I’ll have you know I can prepare a God-sanctioned meal anywhere. Observe.”
He stood up, walked a few paces to where the foundation met the weedy earth at the edge of the ruin, and with a reverent flourish, plucked a single, slender blade of grass. He returned, held it aloft between his thumb and forefinger, and presented it to Riley with the gravity of a sommelier offering a rare vintage.
“Behold. A salad,” Paul intoned.
Riley stared. He stared at the blade of grass. He stared at Paul’s utterly serious, slightly twitching face. A beat of total silence passed, broken only by the distant cry of a gull.
Then Riley barked a laugh—a short, shocked, genuine sound. “You are such a dork.”
Paul’s composed expression shattered into a wide, unguarded grin. He laughed too, the sound rusty but real, and the blade of grass fluttered to the floor between them. The laughter felt like sunlight breaking through a decades-old cloud. It was a genuine, weightless light in his chest, a sensation so foreign he almost didn’t recognize it. He hadn’t felt it since before Jerusalem, before the cave, before the blood. He was just a man, laughing at a stupid joke with another man.
The ease lingered after the laughter faded. The afternoon sun slanted through the tarps, painting warm stripes on the new pine floorboards. They went back to work, fitting planks for the subfloor, and the conversation unspooled lazily between the sounds of hammering and sawing.
“So what did you do?” Paul asked during a lull, nodding towards Riley’s hands, which were calloused but moved with a precise, educated grace. “Before.”
Riley shrugged, measuring a cut. “Finance. For a few years in Boston. Was good at it. Numbers made sense. Clean.”
“But you didn’t like it.”
“Hated it.” Riley marked the wood with a pencil. “Felt like building houses made of smoke. My hands were bored. So I’d garden. And, uh…” He shot Paul a sidelong look. “I’d street race. Out on the old county routes.”
Paul paused, a nail halfway to its mark. “You’re joking.”
“Nope. Had a ’69 Mustang I rebuilt myself. Could take a corner like it was on rails.” A ghost of old pride flickered in Riley’s eyes, then faded into something more rueful. “Different kind of prayer, I guess. Faster.”
“Metal,” Paul said suddenly, later, as they were packing tools away.
“What about it?”
“That’s what I did. Before. I was in a band. Sang for a group called Penitent. We had a minor following in Milwaukee.” He said it quietly, as if confessing.
Riley leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms. A real smile, not a smirk, softened his features. “No shit. Get out. You, in eyeliner and leather, screaming about the apocalypse?”
“The apocalypse and… nuanced theological despair, yes.” Paul’s smile was shy. “We opened for Obsidian Casket once.”
Riley just shook his head, amused. He reached into his satchel, pulled out a brown paper bag, and from it, a raw yellow onion. He peeled a layer and took a crisp bite right out of it, like it was an apple.
Paul stared, his nose wrinkling. “That’s horrific.”
“It’s good,” Riley said around the mouthful. “Clears the sinuses. Want some?”
“I would rather drink holy water laced with silver.” Paul shuddered, then added, “I hate Marvel movies.”
Riley stopped chewing. Swallowed. “Thank Christ. Everyone thinks I’m a monster for saying it. They’re just… shiny, noisy cartoons. No stakes.”
“No soul,” Paul agreed, vehemently. “All that power and no consequence. It’s boring.”
They stood there in the half-built shell, the orange peel of onion in Riley’s hand, the scent of cut pine and sea air around them. The realization settled over Paul not with a crash, but with the gentle finality of a dust mote landing.
They were just talking. Two guys. One who used to crunch numbers and race cars, who ate onions like popcorn. One who used to scream into a microphone about damnation and now slept in a church. The island’s labels—convict, addict, vampire, priest—fell away, useless and ill-fitting. Here, they were just dorks. Finding, against all odds, a patch of common ground in the ruins. It was simpler than salvation. It was better.