Once more I debated kissing her, but before I could move she just smiled and headed for the building. When she left, there were tears in her eyes.

GRACE

THE THANK-YOU PROGRAM was a nightmare. I couldn’t keep my mind on what was going on. When I realized it was finally drawing to an end, I slipped out as unobtrusively as possible and practically ran to my car. I didn’t want to socialize or talk about my anonymous friend; I just wanted to get home.

I jumped into my car, and under the cover of darkness that had finally fallen, tears suddenly cascaded down my face. My soul hurt. Seeing Jack in church gave me so much hope, and yet somehow I knew there would be no eternal change made today, and the uncertainty of whether or not there ever would be was agony. Every minute I spent with him sent me deeper into what I was pretty sure was love. The thought of ending our relationship made me want to curl up and bawl. But when I analyzed our behavior, how intimate we’d become, I couldn’t deny I was setting myself up for trouble.

I felt trapped. It was my own fault, and I knew how to get out, but I felt frozen the way you are in a nightmare, with the eighteen-wheeler barreling down on you and your feet rooted to the concrete. I wasn’t willing to give him up, pure and simple. I’d found someone amazing who made me feel amazing, and I was not willing to cut myself loose. There had to be a way to plant my feet on the slippery slope of intimacy and prevent our relationship from progressing too far until …

Until what? What was going to happen that would allow us to tumble down that slope in wild abandon? Marriage? That was what I was supposed to wait for, and yet I knew that I didn’t want to marry someone who didn’t love God the way I did. And I had no guarantee that Jack would ever feel that way.

But hadn’t God brought us together? Hadn’t He gotten Jack to church? Why would God bring us together if we weren’t supposed to really be together?

I felt like my heart and mind were on the verge of exploding. I wanted to scream and rage and cry out of sheer frustration. Then the sound of voices floating through the night air startled me, and I realized the other musicians were starting to exit the church. Resigning myself to being decisionless, I quickly started my car and snaked my way out of the lot toward home.

When I entered the apartment, the scent of something delicious hit me, and I was suddenly hungry. Jack, however, was nowhere in sight. I dodged Joker as she darted between my legs and went toward the bedroom, calling his name, and ran smack into him.