#sorry loves

Boys are allowed on the premises for such occasions. Acne ridden and eager. Slobbering in singular objective. Animals sniffing around the fresh meat of their sister school, the crossing of streams reserved for holidays and holy feasts. Hormonal, hungry. A predator recognized by a predator known.

Pitch baby blues frost polar over the rim of his empty cup when you catch in his crosshairs. You and a boy.

Tall and awkward in his lank. Rail thin and more pockmarks than skin. A lopsided smile endears you, and blossoms one back at him. Grenadine tart simmered sweet. Effortless calculation that smells shy. Finger-tips play his shirt buttons like his heart strings connect them, while you butter him up with conversation-candy insinuation. Artificial adoration and pastel promises kept in the painted nails that twist at the small of your back.

Father Brennan clenches his cup like it's your arm. Flimsy plastic snaps and crumples egg shell in his palm. He had cut his teeth with the twinkle he sees in the boys leer, and was about as young and fumbling when he did. Dark splotches dried in history, blotting out how lurid. Bygone shenanigans lost with redacted youth. Squeaky moans and sweat in the back of cinemas. Too much whiskey, but not enough to subdue the hot-blood of an Irish scamp. Dark hair and eyes even darker. Tall, lean and mean. Not handsome, not pretty - but roguish.

All that was before. Before he picked up the collar, and slapped it round his throat to keep it caged, contained.

A new appetite learned to trick it docile. The wolf in gran's clothing. Tufts of fur hidden in a nice suit and polished loafers. Claws retracted and fangs filed blunt.

It paces the perimeter of its enclosure as he watches you and the boy. Your glossed curls catches the candy-colored lights, a pretty prism refracting rose peach longing and fuchsia curiosity. Playful, insolent. Shirley Temple bubbly, a maraschino cherry ripe and glistening popped between molars, your stem tongued to knots. 

It prickles the back of his neck, the jagged shadow come to play. His collar bobs around a growl. One that has so well smothered the urge, it feels separate from the man he is now. 

A revered Priest. A respected clergyman. An example. A leader.

He looks at the boys, these bratty pups, through the lens of sanctimonious reformation. He sees them for what they are, but a pot to their kettle he is not. Surely not good Father Brennan.

Vigilance the identifier, the recognizer, the labeler - not familiarity. He fed that to the wolf ages ago; a body buried and a beast sated. Two witnesses silenced for the price of asceticism. He watches you and the boy, the imitation wolf, and pretends it doesn't rouse the one in him. An old life. His youth, free and feeling. Dim pubs and the back-alleys between them. Smeared lipstick and stolen euphoria, getaways in haste through bedroom windows. The scathing eyes of mothers whose daughters wore burst-capillaries like their Sunday best, sucked purple and spread the exact diameter of his bite. Adversarial character flaw.