Free The Proviso by Moriah Jovan Page A

will play racquetball with
you anymore. You’ve publicly humiliated more than one of your
professors and then forced them to defend the grades they gave you
in retaliation.”
    Bryce didn’t see himself that way. The man his best
friend had described was . . . horrible. Not a nice guy. Totally
not worthy of holding the priesthood.
    “ But get you to church or with your dad and your
spine melts. You just can’t admit that the women you like are the
ones who’ll go toe to toe with you intellectually and make you work
to get them backed in a corner—and then you go in for the kill
every single time. Funny thing? They like it. They come back for
more, stronger, better, to throw it right back at you and the
harder you have to work, the more you like it. They probably like
sex that way, too. I’ll bet you’ve wondered more than once what
it’d be like to slam one of those women up against a wall and fuck
her.”
    Bryce couldn’t breathe. How had he known? He fought
those images constantly, the ones that came to him unbidden when in
the company of women he found smart and . . . a little dangerous.
He wrestled with those temptations and had gone so far as to stop
talking to women he’d thought about in that way. He knew he
couldn’t resist them if he spent any time with them, especially the
brunette starlet who’d propositioned him with an explicit
description she must have pulled straight out of his fantasies.
    He gulped at that memory, at his desires, at his
shame—because he’d had to stop and think about whether he wanted to
say no or not.
    “ That’s who you are. Accept it, grab it, enjoy
the hell out of it, go on with your life. There is no reason for
you to deny who you are. You can still go to church and be a good
person. The church doesn’t care how you like sex as long as you’re
faithful to your wife. Face up to who you are and what you want,
find a woman who wants the same things you want, who can match you
in brains and in bed and you’ll be just fine. There is no sin in
that.”
    “ No, I— That’s not me. That’s not who I want to
be.”
    “ You’re never going to be your dad and there’s
nothing wrong with that. Fuck him if he can’t appreciate you for
who you are.”
    Bryce’s jaw ground and his hands clenched as he
fought the urge to plow his fist in his roommate’s face.
    “ Gah. Fine. Whatever. Go ahead and marry
Michelle. I’ll support you, I’ll be your best man, and I’ll never
speak of it again once the vows are said. But I’m telling you now,
you’re lying to yourself. Even if Michelle isn’t what I think she
is and you have a nice, quiet little life together, it’ll still be
the worst mistake you ever make—and you’ll live with it every
single miserable day, wondering what else you could’ve had if you’d
had an ounce of common sense and half that much courage.”
     
    *
     
    Bryce bent over and buried his head in his hands,
shuddering from the agony of that conversation ringing through his
head even after twenty years. Recalling it was a fairly frequent
ritual by now.
    Now, on top of everything else, he lived with the
anger and bitterness of a disillusioned zealot: the irreconcilable
differences between what he wanted and what his father had expected
of him; Michelle’s infidelity and public piety; Michelle’s war of
manipulation and deceit against which he had no defenses—
    —and most especially the deaths of his four children
and in such a catastrophic manner.
    Bryce had no place in these pews.
    Yet . . .
    This was his cultural identity, a good portion of
his own identity and what made him him. This church, this
lifestyle, was all he’d ever known, all he’d ever wanted to know.
He’d done everything asked of him, but now he felt empty,
abandoned, unloved—and had since the week after he’d walked out of
the San Diego temple at twenty-four a married man.
    Bryce went home after sacrament meeting unable to
stomach any more.
    Nobody had approached him to