Free Emily and the Priest by Selena Kitt Page A

ty awesome. I’d be happy to be your roommate.”
    “Really?” Alexis sniffed, pushing a frizzy mass of auburn hair out of her eyes. She offered Emily a tentative smile.
    “Yeah, really.” Emily smiled back, and she knew in that moment that they were going to be roommates.
    It took another twenty minutes of talking and “processing” for Alexis to come to the same conclusion, but in the end, that’s exactly what they decided. In fact, Jenny and Eve left looking kind of let down and confused by the way Emily and Alexis smiled and talked about moving all of Emily’s stuff into Alexis ’s r oom. Eve would be moving into the room Emily had miserably shared with Jenny since the beginning of the year.
    “Oh, Emily , can I talk to you for a minute?” Father Mark touched her shou lder and she looked back at him, her heart instantly threatening to stop. Jenny and Eve exchanged looks, whispering together as they took off down the hall.
    Emily waved a reluctant Alexis on , back toward the dorms . “I’ll meet you at your room !”
    “ Our room,” Alexis corrected her loudly, clear ly for Jenny and Eve’s benefit. They were still whispering at the end of the hallway. Alexis had obviously caught on to the fact that, while the two blondes wanted to live together, they evident ly didn’t want their rejected roommates to feel happy about it.
    “Have a seat.” Father Mark closed the door of his office behind him, nodding a t the chair Emily had just vacated.
    “Am I in trouble?” She sank slowly down, looking at him across his desk with big eyes as he settled into his chair .
    He smiled, shaking his head, and Emily visibly relaxed. “No, I just wanted to catch up.”
    She and Father Mark had semi-weekly talks. She’d started going to him after the pranks began—he was the school psychologist—but she’d refused to tell him her suspicions about Jenny being the culprit, and their conversations had eventually turned to other things. She enjoyed them immensely, and she had a feeling he did too.
    “ But I did want to tell you that your mother called me. Again. ”
    “What now?” She sighed. Her mother had come to him with one concern after another all year long, even though Emily had stopped telling her about all the mean tricks the girls had continued to pull. Emily suspected her mother just liked chatting up Father Mark. Not that she could blame her.
    “She’ s just concerned about you. ” He leaned forward, looking concerned himself . “I know what it’s like to have an overbearing parent, trust me.”
    “Your mom too?”
    “My dad.” He leaned back in his chair, putting his feet up on his desk . It had been strange at first, seeing him so casual in his cassock and collar, but she was used to it now. “Some day yo u’ll look back and realize your mom just loves you and wants the best for you.”
    “So you and your dad get along now?”
    Father Mark hesitated. “Unfortunately, I haven’t talked to him in years.”
    “Well, gee, Father, that was some pep talk.” Emily snorted laughter.
    He shrugged. “We had a falling out. We’re both very stubborn people.”
    “But he’s your dad!” she protested. “Whatever it was, you should call him. Talk to him. Even if my mom is a pest, I can’t imagine cutting her out of my life.”
    “It was the other way around.”
    “Oh.”
    He smiled and dropped her a wink. “But see, now you feel better about your mother don’t you?”
    She did. “Sneaky.” She stuck her tongue out at him.
    He laughed. “ So… be honest. Have there been any more incidents?”
    Of course, she lied. “No.”
    She wasn’t about to tell him about last week’s prank—someone had put her name and n umber on the bathroom wall at St. Luke’s offering free blowjobs to all interested parties, apparently, because her cell phone hadn’t stopped ringing since, asking for service. She’d let the battery die and hadn’t recharged it, realizing at that moment that she’d probably