Covet Thy Neighbor

year. What’s your schedule like this weekend?”
    “Busy, as always.”
    “Yeah, same here.” I spun my key ring on my finger to give my hand something to do. “Monday?”
    “Monday works,” he said with a nod.
    “Cool. Meet me—well, I guess just come by my place Monday morning.”
    “Can you give me your address?” he deadpanned. “Not quite sure I remember how to get there.”
    “Smartass,” I muttered. “How does eight sound?”
    “I’ll be there.” He took another step, and was outside the shop. “Have a good night, Seth.”
    “You too.”
    I deadbolted the door behind him. For the next ten minutes or so, I focused on cleaning up my workstation. Once everything was put away, I flicked off the lights, locked the shop, and went upstairs. As I stopped in front of my apartment door, the knowledge that Darren was close by—just on the other side of that door a few feet away—prickled from the base of my spine all the way up to my scalp.
    I imagined myself walking across the hall, knocking on his door, and asking if he wanted a hand with putting some lotion on that tattoo. And as long as I was back there . . .
    No. I actually wasn’t in the mood for that. When the hell was I of all people not in the mood for sex? Tonight, apparently. And yet I was still tempted to go over there. Not to suggest we get into bed, though. I just . . . I just wanted to be in the same room with him.
    And I also wanted to be on the opposite side of the planet from him. I wanted Monday to get here so we could go hiking, and I hoped to hell a meteor landed in Tucker Springs on Sunday night so I wouldn’t have to face a trail and a full day alone with him.
    Fuck, I didn’t know what I wanted or why.
    Shaking my head, I let myself into my apartment. I closed the door and closed my eyes. Tonight had been weirder than any of the evenings we’d spent together, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. On what it was that had left me more unsettled than any other time with him.
    Every time I was anywhere near him, my world made a little less sense. I wasn’t sure what to make of a gay minister who smoked pot, had the occasional one-night stand, and now had a tattoo. He flew right in the goddamned face of everything that had fucked up my life a few years ago, and he contradicted every reason I’d kept Christians at arm’s length out of self-preservation. Every reason I kept him at arm’s length.
    And my mind kept wandering back to that tattoo. To the simple words and numbers above a not-so-simple filigreed cross: Matthew 5:44. Mark 12:31.
    I knew those verses, damn it. I knew them. But no matter how much I ran through all the Scripture I still had memorized—and probably would until the day I died—I couldn’t pull up those two.
    Finally, I went to one of my bookcases in the living room and pulled the dusty black Bible out from between the Apocrypha and the Qur’an.
    I thumbed through it to the book of Matthew, and quickly found the chapter and verse from Darren’s tattoo, 5:44. “But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’”
    Then I turned to Mark and found 12:31. “The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
    My heart dropped into my feet. I closed the book, set it on the coffee table, and pushed it as far from me as I could. Until my fingertips could barely touch it, never mind put enough pressure on it to gain any more distance. Then I sat back on the couch and just stared at it.
    Stanley hopped up on the couch beside me. I petted him as he kneaded the cushion and purred, but I still stared at that damned book.
    No wonder I remembered those chapters and verses. They’d clicked in my head, but some subconscious barrier had kept me from joining them to the actual words because I knew them, I knew them well, and it wasn’t a memory I could face while I was inking Darren. Or even while I was in the same room with him.
    “ It says ‘love thy neighbor,’ Mom. It doesn’t say ‘thy straight and approved neighbor.’ ”
    “ Don’t you dare throw Scripture at me, Seth. ”
    “ Why the hell not? And isn’t there something in there about ‘judge not lest ye be judged’? ”
    “ It also says to love thy enemy. And I do. But I won’t welcome my enemy into my home. ”
    “ I’m not your enemy. I’m your son. ”
    “ Not anymore .”
    And then there was that click, and to this day, the