“Agnello di Dio, che togli i peccati del mondo, abbi pietà di noi. Agnello di Dio, che togli i peccati del mondo, abbi pietà di noi. Agnello di Dio, che togli i peccati del mondo, dona a noi la pace.”
I recited the words easily, even though I wasn’t facing the priest. My head was turned to the right so I could see the pew two back from mine on the other side of the aisle. She caught me looking again. Her pink lips curved just the slightest to show her amusement. A light slap to the back of my head made me face forward again. It was the third, maybe fourth time my mother had to force me to pay attention as if I were still a little boy.
“O Signore, non son degno di partecipare alla tua mensa, ma dì soltanto una parola e io sarò salvato.”
It was somewhat gratifying to know that out of my five siblings, I was not the only one who did not get up to receive communion. Massimo, Francesca, and my cousin Paolo all remained in their pew. Like me, they had already given their confessions. I returned my gaze to the girl behind me. She must’ve known I watched her because she gave a valiant attempt not to meet my eyes. That little quirk of her lips was there, though. She was my greatest sin. Since she was still seated as well, I assumed I was hers.
As the communion went on, my mind wandered. Too often, it wandered back to Thursday afternoon, the reason I had found myself confessing to the priest. I knew it was wrong to think of her soft skin under my hands while I sat in mass. At this rate, I’d be in confession constantly, but I couldn’t help myself, not when it came to Celia Valecci. It was a good thing we would be married in another month. Guiltless sex.
I smirked and turned back to her again, but she was already looking my way. It took me about half a second to realize her intense stare and slight smile were not for me. I followed her line of sight to the two men in front of me, my brother and Paolo. Massimo glanced over his shoulder as if he felt her stare. When he regarded her for several seconds too long, my eyes narrowed, but when I turned those narrowed eyes on Celia, she was already facing the front again, expression blank. For a moment, my gaze bounced back and forth between my brother and my fiancée, wondering if I had missed something. When neither of them paid the other any further attention, I dismissed the dark thoughts that had begun to creep into my mind.
Resisting the urge to turn around and make cartoonish heart-shaped eyes at Celia, I tried to focus on something else—or, in this case, someone else. Tessa Mavros and her family sat one row ahead of mine across the aisle. She and Francesca were the same age and had gone through school together, but Tess and Massimo had been best friends for as long as I could remember. Her family was frequently at our home, and my parents and siblings loved her like a daughter and sister. Sadly, she and her family were moving back to her father’s hometown in Greece in a few weeks, which explained the flash of grief on Tess’s face while she looked across the aisle at Massimo. In only a couple of seconds, I saw how raw her pain was. I understood. She was going to miss her closest friend, and he was going to miss her. We all were.
Tessa glanced away without ever realizing she’d had an observer, and I gave up the fight and went back to making eyes with Celia. She and I were best friends once upon a time, too, but unlike my brother and his best friend, Celia and I had fallen in love. It just seemed like the natural progression for us to take the next step into marriage. My parents weren’t thrilled. My mother had been sixteen when she married, a whole year younger than Celia. My father had been eighteen like me, yet they thought we were marrying too early. We weren’t dissuaded from our course of action, though. My parents had been married for almost twenty-five years, and by all appearances, had a healthy, stable relationship. In fact, they were pregnant again—sixteen years after their last child—and delighted about