Pete touched his tongue to the orange paste. Tears streamed down his face once again – a mix of happiness, loss, nostalgia, and heaven only knew what. ‘Chocolate.’
‘I recognised the chemical composition of the formula you sent,' Canine-Monk said. 'I thought this might be close enough. Before I joined the Siblinghood of the Peregrinating Shepherds, I was a chemist, you know. My little stash here should be enough to make this recipe you’ve sent. I confess, I never thought of making a hot beverage from it. But I think it will work.’
Canine-Monk got to work, gathering tools, setting everything up. As he worked, he asked Pete to tell him what brought him here.
‘I… I don’t know where to start.’ Pete bit his lips together, trying to stop the flow of tears. His father wasn’t here to tell him how unmanly it was to cry. Not physically, but the ghost of him wouldn’t let Pete go.
‘If I may make a suggestion…’ As Canine-Monk spoke, he ladled a pale pink milky substance into a pan on the stove. ‘Something’s upset you. Why not start there?’
‘Okay. I…’ The scent of hot chocolate wafted towards Pete, adding to his sense of overwhelm. ‘When I… That is, I believed… Or rather, I was always taught…’ He bit down on his lip – almost hard enough to draw blood. Closing his eyes, he breathed slowly and deeply – focusing on the warmth of the room, the plush upholstery of the chair, and the delicious scent of the hot chocolate.
After a few moments, he opened his mouth and spoke from his heart. ‘I was taught that the world was a certain way. That certain ways of being were right and other ways were wrong. That God was love, but that if we didn’t live up to what he commanded then he’d send us to hell. That loving the wrong person made you an enemy of God. That we had a duty to feed the hungry and clothe the poor and comfort the sick, but that immigrants were stealing our country and the poor had brought it on themselves. That God made no mistakes but that if you were born gay then you owed it to God to reject how you’d been made. That God made man to to lead women because women weren’t fit to—’
Pete fell into fits of cry-laughing at the absurdity of it all. By the time he got a hold of himself, he was a snotty, blubbery mess.
