It was the summer after my senior year of high school, only a few months until I would be shipping out to the University of Tennessee. I had just gotten my driver's license, and I needed a job for the gas money. Thankfully, my church's custodial staff was a few hands short, and my dad knew just the right people to get me on the Saturday cleaning crew.
For my first day, I pulled my blonde hair into a ponytail and shaved the peach fuzz from my face. I arrived early at six-am and found my coworkers already waiting for me. David and his cousin Meghan.
I hadn't been to church regularly in a while, and if it wasn't for my new position at the place, I would probably have never attended again. David, meanwhile, had just completed two years at an out of state community college and had only moved into town and joined the congregation a few months prior. So, it was my first time meeting him face to face.
I stepped into the church lounge where they were finishing breakfast, and my eyes snapped to his. David's cool gaze seemed to slice right through me. He sported a form-fitting black tee and dark jeans, even in that summer's extreme humidity. He had cropped his auburn hair short and given it a slight swoop in the front. And on his face, he wore a knowing smirk, as if to say that I was as much or as little as he'd been expecting.
I shot out my palm. "Hi, I'm Adam! I've been looking forward to working with you."
He ignored my hand and turned back to his newspaper. "There's coffee in the pot and donuts on the counter. We start in fifteen minutes."
His cousin Meghan shook my hand for him. She and I had interacted only a few times in the past. All I really knew about her was that she'd just graduated from some Christian high school across town and that she used to sing in the church choir. She was a tiny thing, her scalp coming to just under my chin. Her sweatshirt and pants hung loose from her slender frame. Sometime since I'd last seen her, she'd dyed her long hair neon blue.
"Nice color!" I said. "Where did you get it done?"
"At home a few nights ago when I was just sitting around, bored."
"You did it yourself?"
"Sure! It's not hard once you figure out how to do it. You just have to, like, mess it up five or six times in a row until the whole process finally clicks." She flicked my ponytail. "You sure have a lot to work with. I could do yours sometime."
"Appreciate it, but I don't think blue would really be my color."
"It wouldn't have to be blue. There are loads of options. A whole rainbow's worth. Like, literally!"
"I'll think about it."
Not looking up from his newspaper, David said, "Ten minutes, children."
Over donuts and coffee, Meghan and I discussed the finer points of long hair maintenance. When David's timer hit zero, we started my first Saturday shift.
We did the sanctuary first. David and I vacuumed while Meghan scrubbed the windows. Even under the AC and not that many square feet of floor, I worked up a good sweat. No wonder Meghan had arrived in gym gear. Whenever they weren't looking, I'd pull my boxers out of my crack and unpeel my balls from my thigh.
David barely perspired, but his jeans, like his shirt, appeared a bit too tight. In one legging, a massive bulge ran a third of the way to his knee. Every time he stretched, his shirttail would hike up and expose a forest of belly hair.
In her loose-fitting sweat-clothes, Meghan did far too good a job concealing whatever kind of body she was packing.
We vacuumed the hallways, offices, and Sunday school classrooms. We wiped down the wainscoting and polished the windows, inside and out. David handed Meghan and I a set of buckets filled with spray bottles and scrub brushes, and he dispatched us to the bathrooms while he did the mopping throughout the building.
My first day on the job, we finished at four-pm. On average, though, we'd be out of there by two. Our lunch breaks would generally hit at eleven-thirty. We'd take half an hour if we'd ordered a pizza delivery, a little longer if we had to run out and pick something up.
Meghan insisted upon bowing our heads and praying aloud before the meals, usually with all three of us holding hands. My turns came easy, even if I didn't believe a word of it. Just, "Thank you, God, for this food, and please let us have a great workday." Each time, David would repeat by rote, "Thank you for this and all Your many gifts. Please, keep us truly grateful." Meghan, however, would hold miniature sermons at the table. She'd pray straight from the heart, wishing good fortune upon everyone she knew and praising the Lord for even His most inconsequential blessings.
Often, I'd glance up to see if she was nearly finished. A lot of times, I found David already sneering at me in disapproval.
David would silently read from either a book or his unfinished morning paper while he ate. That was fine by me. The only things that ever seemed to come out of his mouth were orders. "Redo that window. You left streaks all over the glass." "We empty out the vacuums once we're done with them. Get in that habit." "Wrap that band around the trashcan liner. Do you want the bag to collapse into the can when Pastor John tosses his coffee in there?" And the one time I'd dared to say, Jesus, man, just chill out a little: "Watch that mouth! We are in a church here."
So, during lunch, Meghan and I steered our own conversations. We'd go from hair care to summer plans to our mutual love of anime to what classes we'd be taking at the University of Tennessee in the fall. On the third Saturday, I found her droning on about her Bible study group and the modern-day interpretations of the book of Leviticus. As soon as I saw an opening, I changed the subject to beaches.
"Oh my Gosh!" she said. "It's been, like, years since I was there last!"
"My family's trying to go to Hilton Head sometime in July. That leaves me about a month to make myself presentable."
"Gotta get rid of the old farmer's tan, huh?"
"I've got to get the rest of my body to match it, more like. That and I've got to myself tightened up a little."
"I definitely need to do some of that before I even think of slipping into a swimsuit."
I scoffed, "What're you talking about? You look great!"
David raised an eyebrow from his newspaper and final slice of pizza. I couldn't tell if the look he flashed me was one of suspicion or mere annoyance.
Meghan said, "Well, I want this to be the summer I finally rock a bikini, so I've got to say sayonara to this little tummy I've put on."
I had only caught brief slivers of it beneath her shirttail, but I could already tell it would be far from unappetizing in a two-piece. It wasn't like I was hiding a six-pack, either. Not like David and his furry abs. If he wasn't in the room, I might have acted upon my temptation to suggest that Meghan and I lift our shirts to compare.
We discussed fitness. How many pushups we could do. How many sit-ups. Our record times for running a mile. Eventually, David sighed and flung his paper plate into the trash. "We're doing the foyer next," he said. "You two have five minutes to wrap this up."
I watched him leave. His ass even looked wound more tightly than usual, the cheeks stiff and lifeless in his jeans. Once he was out of earshot, I muttered, "Douche."
Meghan blushed. "Adam...!"
"Well, he is, isn't he?"
"David's just...different."
