Where the Devil Says Goodnight (Folk Lore #1) - K.A. Merikan Page 0,24

that ultimately couldn’t go anywhere. Maybe Radek was right and this really was the right time to leave the past behind. What kind of future did he have seducing tourists and pining after a priest? Any sensible person his age who couldn’t be a part of a family enterprise had long left. He was on his own, and he’d die alone, loveless, and friendless, if he couldn’t make a difficult decision now.

Without Radek to keep him company, Emil’s thoughts insistently returned to his two moments alone with Adam. The night after their second meeting, Emil awoke sweaty, to a whisper he could have sworn was Adam’s, but the priest returned in Emil’s dreams several times more, which always left Emil with a sense of loss by the time he opened his eyes.

He was pathetic. Almost thirty and desperately lonely, he’d latched on to the first guy who’d shown the slightest sign of interest. It was time to put an end to this. Leave Dybukowo and fuck his way through Cracow until he could convince himself that the strangers who partied with him gave a flying fuck about him or his problems.

He was going later that day, and if Radek was still single, Emil could let off some steam and quench the thirst that plagued him every time the handsome priest jogged past his house. It was a ritual by now, and despite the logical part of Emil’s brain telling him no, he couldn’t help but think of it as their ritual.

Every day in the past two weeks, Adam went out for a jog at precisely 8.00 a.m., and despite there being so many paths crisscrossing the meadows, fields, and woodland, he always chose the one by Emil’s house. They hadn’t spoken much since the brief yet unpleasant confrontation by the church, but Emil still found himself on the porch each day, having his morning coffee and cigarette while Adam ran by his homestead in shorts that revealed toned legs.

They would acknowledge one another with nods, with the exception of that one time when Adam had stopped to ask about the crows insistently nesting in the trees around Emil’s house and took his time applying sunscreen during the brief chat. But as desirable as the priest was, Emil was over trying to get into his pants, and acted as if nothing worth noting had transpired between them before. If Adam had chosen this route because he liked to feast his eyes on Dybukowo’s most handsome bachelor, then Emil could have the satisfaction of being the object of the repressed priest’s thirst.

But this morning felt different, because as Emil fed his animals and made his liquid breakfast before walking out into the May sun, he did so knowing this familiar routine would have to change. In just a couple of hours, he’d board the bus to Sanok and catch the cheapest—if slowest—train to Cracow. He had a gig there. It wasn’t anything earth-shattering, but Radek had somehow convinced one of his friends to hire a man with no official qualifications to renovate a newly-purchased apartment, and pay said man—Emil—a normal wage.

It would be hard work, and Emil would need to YouTube the shit out of the stuff he had little knowledge about, but since Radek had offered him a free stay in his room, the cash would stack up. If he did well, not only would he finish that job with a neat sum to kick-start something new but also get some references.

Two weeks back, he hadn’t considered a week-long trip a possibility, but for once in his life, the stars had aligned, and a chance meeting at the store led to Zofia, an elderly neighbor, offering to take care of Emil’s animals for a couple of days. He’d been apprehensive about leaving Jinx with someone else, since the horse was unruly at times, but Zofia assured him she had taken care of her own horses in the past, so Emil bit the bullet and chose to trust her.

He closed his eyes, taking a drag from his cigarette to a silence so perfect suspicion made him look up to the trees growing around his property. For once, there wasn’t a single crow in sight, but before he could have considered possible reasons for their unusual absence, Adam’s shadow climbed down the sandy road before the man himself jogged from between the trees. This was the halfway point of a route of approximately six kilometers, but he wasn’t out of breath yet. The