Hymnal Surrender

Jenna Gardner was thirty-four years old and she had been singing alto in the choir at St. Michael's for exactly two years, which was entirely her mother's fault. Her mom had spent a full year saying things like, "Jenna, honey, church is where the decent ones hide," and "You're not getting younger, and that delivery route isn't going to introduce you to anybody," until Jenna finally caved just to get some peace at Thanksgiving. She'd walked into the basement rehearsal room on a damp Thursday night in October expecting bad coffee and worse harmonies, and she'd gotten both, plus a surprisingly solid group of people who needed a second alto badly enough that they adopted her on the spot.

The decent ones her mother had promised came in a steady trickle after that. There was Dave, the bass who ran a hardware store, who took her to Applebee's twice and talked about gutters the entire time. There was Paul, a retired teacher's nice son, who was so polite she'd nearly fallen asleep in her soup. Every one of them held doors, paid checks, said all the right things, and left Jenna feeling like she'd been on a very long, very dull elevator ride. She'd told her friend Kelly once, over cheap wine, that what she wanted was for some man to look at her like she was a woman and not a real nice gal, and Kelly had said girl, same, and they'd toasted to it and moved on, because that was the kind of want you didn't expect to actually get answered.

Then, three weeks ago, she'd matched with a guy on one of those apps she only opened when she was bored in the truck between stops. Cedric Griffin, thirty-seven, construction foreman, divorced five years, no kids, picture of him in a hard hat with forearms that made her sit up in the driver's seat. He wrote actual sentences. He asked actual questions. And by the third day of messaging he'd told her, plainly, no wiggling around it, that there were things he liked in bed that took a patient hand and a willing partner, and if that wasn't her thing, no harm, he'd still love to take her to coffee.

Jenna had stared at her phone in the cab of her delivery van for a solid two minutes, ears hot, before she typed back that maybe she was willing if he was patient. He'd answered with a single line that she'd reread probably fifty times since: Patience is the whole job, and I'm good at my job.

Coffee had been two Saturdays ago, at the place on Fifth with the bad art, and it had been, honestly, the best date of her adult life. He'd listened like listening was a skill he practiced. He'd told her he wanted to come hear her sing before he did anything else, because choir practice sounded like a whole evening to him, and she'd laughed and said it was a basement with a dusty piano and he'd said perfect, dust and all. So she'd given him the address, and the day, and then spent the entire week pretending she wasn't counting down to Thursday.

She was not pretending very well by the time Thursday actually came.

The rehearsal room at St. Michael's was all worn carpet and folding chairs and that upright piano nobody had tuned since roughly the invention of the piano, and by seven fifteen the alto section was in its usual corner, and Jenna was in her usual seat, second from the end, water bottle and pencil and the folder with her name Sharpied on it. She was watching the door the way you watch a door when you're trying real hard not to look like you're watching a door.

Marcy, the soprano next to her, elbowed her. "Who are we waiting for? You keep looking at that door like Jesus is coming through it."

"Nobody. Friend of mine might stop by," Jenna said, which was true, every word, and Marcy gave her the look that said she didn't believe a word of it.

At seven twenty the door opened and in came Cedric, and the first thing Jenna thought was that no photo had done the man justice. He was tall and broad through the shoulders in a plain gray button-down with the sleeves rolled, forearms and all, and he had that easy way of moving that said he could carry a piano up those stairs by himself and had probably done worse at work that morning. Gene, the choir director, was on him in about four seconds, shaking his hand, and Cedric was saying something polite that made Gene laugh, and then his eyes swept the room, found the alto section, and found her.

He didn't wave. He didn't point. He just looked at her, and his mouth moved, and she realized he was mouthing one word at her, slow and deliberate, with a smile under it that had no business being allowed in a church basement.

Later.

That was it. One word, and Jenna forgot the entire alto line of the piece they were starting, which she had known for three weeks and could have sung in her sleep. She came in half a beat late on the entrance and then wobbled through the whole first phrase with her face going warm, and Marcy leaned over and whispered, "Who is THAT and why does he know you," and Jenna whispered back, "I told you, a friend," and Marcy said, "Uh huh, a friend," in a tone that had a whole wedding planned in it already.

The hour dragged and flew at the same time, which shouldn't be possible but was. Every time Jenna looked up from her folder, which was more often than she looked at her folder, he was there in the back row with the tenors, sight-reading with an ease that made it seem effortless, and every time she caught his eye he'd have that same small smile, like the two of them were sharing a secret that had not even been spoken out loud yet but was absolutely going to be. Once, during the long quiet stretch of the offertory piece, he mouthed something longer at her, and she squinted at his lips and figured out he was saying, you sound better than coffee, and she had to cough to cover the laugh, and Gene gave her the stink eye from the piano, and it was worth it.

At eight thirty Gene called it, and there was the usual shuffle of folders and chairs, and Cedric came over through the folding-chair traffic without bumping a single chair. Up close he smelled like soap and sawdust and something warm underneath, and he was taller than she'd remembered, or she'd remembered fine and just forgotten what it did to her.

"Hey," he said. "You really do sound good. I wasn't just saying that to get in a church basement."

"You absolutely were saying it to get in a church basement."

"Partly," he admitted, and the grin came out all the way, and Marcy, still hovering with her coat half on, said, "I'm Marcy, I'm keeping an eye on our alto," and Cedric said, "Good, she should have somebody doing that," and Jenna told them both to stop it before she lost her mind.

They walked out to the parking lot behind the church together, past the lit sign and the empty food pantry boxes, and he stopped at a blue Silverado, big and clean, and opened her door for her, which she'd have rolled her eyes at from any other man and which from him felt like part of the whole patient-hands thing he'd promised. He pulled out of the lot and told her his place was a few blocks past the church, and about a block in, at a red light, with both hands still on the wheel, he said, "Can I kiss you before we go any further? Because I've been wanting to since the coffee shop and I'm done waiting for the door of my building."

"God, yes," she said, and he pulled the truck over right there, half up on the curb of a shuttered laundromat, and leaned across the console and kissed her, and it was not a polite first-date kiss, it was a kiss with intent behind it, his hand coming up to her jaw and tilting her into it, and Jenna made a noise into his mouth she hadn't made since, well, she honestly couldn't remember when.

When he finally pulled back, neither of them was breathing right, and the light had changed twice behind them, and some guy in a minivan went around them with a honk that neither of them acknowledged in any way.

"Okay," he said, voice gone low and rough, thumb still resting at her jaw. "I'm going to say the thing now, the thing I've been sitting on for three weeks, and you tell me if it's too much." He watched her face, waiting until she nodded. "I have been thinking about your ass since our very first message. Before I even saw your picture. You typed something that made me think of it, and then the picture, and then tonight watching you sing, and I've been patient, I have, but I'm telling you plainly, I want my hands on it and I want to hear what you sound like when I get there. Slow in everything else. Not slow about that."

Jenna sat there with her heart doing laps and her face burning and her whole body one long yes, and she heard herself say, "Then drive faster."

He didn't drive faster, not really, because the speed limit was the speed limit and Cedric Griffin struck Jenna as a man who did not run lights, but his hand found her knee on the seat and stayed there, thumb moving in small circles, and somehow that was faster than anything. He pulled into a complex a few blocks from the church, third building back, second floor, and held the stairwell door for her and didn't touch her again until they were inside with the lock turned behind them.

The apartment was clean in the way she figured a divorced man's place gets clean, everything squared away and nothing on the walls yet, a king bed with a dark comforter, one lamp on instead of the overheads. He took her jacket off her shoulders, hung it up, then turned her around by the waist and looked at her in the lamplight for a second.

"Okay?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said. "Okay. Just, I've never actually done the thing you described."

"I know. You told me. And I want you to know I heard it, and I'm going slow on the setup even if I'm not slow about the rest." He kissed her once, soft, then pulled back. "Now let me see you. Can I undress you?"

"You'd better."

He worked her choir polo over her head with a patience that should have been funny and absolutely was not, then her bra, unhooking it with a single practiced motion and setting it on the