(This isn't as good as I wish it was, but I'm going on vacation Monday, and I didn't want to leave my "fans" without an ending. Please keep in mind, though I edited thoroughly, it was not given as much treatment as the other section. Do slay it, though.)

011. What The Bible Knows

The ice crashed around us like the sky was falling. I stood and waited while she tried to get her key into the lock. Nina’s fingers shook. I could have heard the key strike against metal as she continued to miss, if it hadn’t been for the ice beating the windows, the ground, my face.

The ice hit like it came from a machine gun. With each hit, my face lost more and more sensation, but despite that, I could still feel the cold searing my skin. I wrapped my hands around hers and pushed the key in the lock.

She turned it without my help.

“The cold’s gunna kill me!” Nina shouted once we were inside.

I pealed my coat off. “Only if it kills me first.”

She giggled. “Ice like that kills everyone.”

I watched her take off her coat, her scarf, her gloves, her sweater. Underneath it all was a long sleeve shirt; it was the only way to survive walking a mile in this kind of weather. Nina curled up on her couch.

“I’m so cold, Josie. Even my bones are frozen.”

I sat by her feet. “You’re bones are fine.”

She lied with her head towards the cushions, arms wrapped around herself.

“I’m so, so cold.”

I was, too. I was so cold I couldn’t feel my heart beat. I wasn’t sure I had one anymore.

Her jeans were rolled up to her ankles, and her tennis shoes were digging into my leg. She hadn’t taken them off at the door. I pulled on the laces, then the shoes, until they slipped off. Nina didn’t notice. “Do you know what today is?” I asked, setting them on the floor.

She looked up from her pillow-arm fort. “No?”

“It’s been three months since I got lost and found you.”

Nina giggled and threw a pillow at me. “If you aren’t going to let this cold kill me, then you should help me warm up.”

I hid my blush with the pillow. What I wouldn’t tell her: it was two weeks and four days since I kissed her. Since she sinned.

“Would you really want me to do that?” I asked, throwing the pillow back after I had regained myself.

“I’m cold, Josie! We ain’t got a good heater so you might as well do me some use if you ain’t going to teach me math.” Her hand grabbed mine and pulled me to her.

The way she hungered for my touch scared me, but I couldn’t tell her no. Nina kept her head to the cushions and I wrapped myself around her. It was a Josie-Couch sandwich, and Nina was the innards.

She kept my hand tightly in hers. She squeezed it with so much love, I thought my fingers would pop on the ends and spray blood. I ignored how close I was to her. Instead, I counted the dots in the couch fabric. One, two, three…

Nina pulled on my fingers. “I want to tell you a secret,” she whispered.

Her voice tickled the hairs inside my ear, and I felt a small fire light in the back of my brain. My stomach felt like it was in a washing machine: left, right, left right, churn churn stop. I wanted to throw up.

“Okay.” I stopped counting the couch dots and forty two.

“It’s about my momma,” she started. “What I told you. That’s not why she left.” Nina let go of my fingers. She took a breath, but didn’t look at me. She kept to herself. “You can’t tell nobody, but I saw Momma kiss someone, kiss a woman, and she told me she didn’t love Father anymore. That’s why she went to Arkansas.”

It was the first time I truly had nothing to say. I felt like my tongue had been cut off. She rolled over and looked into my eyes. “I haven’t seen my momma in a long time, and I miss her so much.” Her hands found their way around me and she hugged me, curling her head against my chest. “You remind me a lot of her, Josie. She was just like you, she was…”

I whispered to myself, “A sinner.”

Nina heard me. She wriggled and sat up and looked at me with flames in her eyes.

“No,” she said, in a voice unfamiliar to me.

Nina put her hands around my face and stared into my eyes. I smiled out of impulse—her hands were so soft.

“Like that,” Nina whispered. “That’s what she was. She was happy.”

Without another word she crawled up next to me with her face towards the cushions again. I wrapped my arms around her but couldn’t find the words to speak. I felt her shuddering underneath me, and I thought she might be crying.

I didn’t want to know if she was. Wasn’t she the strong one…? Didn’t she have God…?

She stopped shuddering, and I held her tighter. I think Nina fell asleep for a while, or if she didn’t, she lied still enough to fool me. I continued counting the fabric dots, one after another, starting at forty three and going on.

I could see the sun slipping away from the windows, letting darkness creep over us. I stopped 204.

“Are you cold anymore?” I asked.

“I’ll never be cold with you next to me,” she said, but it wasn’t as joyful as I had hoped. Her voice was laced with tears. “What do you think Father would do if he saw us like this?”

“Kill me.”

“I’d not let him. God says not to kill.”

I stirred behind her, because the fire in the back of my brain was spreading to other parts and I couldn’t think and my eyes were burning now.

“God says a lot of things.”

“You make me worry.”

I felt dizzy. “You make me worry, too, Nina.”

Somewhere in the house a faucet was leaking, and a clock was ticking, and the cat was meowing, and every noise possible was being made, but the house was still silent to our existence.

“Josie,” she whispered. I felt my dizzy spirit slam into me. “Do you ever think about hell?”

“Don’t talk about that,” was all I could think to say. I didn’t want her to think about it. I didn’t want her to know what she already knew.

“But I want to know. Do you think about it?”

The blood was rushing to my face, so I sat up. Nina rolled over and looked at me. Her eyes were red around the edges, swollen; she was still beautiful.

“I’m not sure I believe in hell,” I replied.

“Do you believe in God?”

“I don’t know.” I bit my lip and stared out into her living room. Jesus was being born on the fireplace, and crucified above the mantel. There were no seasons in Nina’s house. “Maybe I do, now.”

“Then why?” I felt her small fingers grab my hands again, begging that I lay next to her again. “Why would God do this, Josie?” He voice scared me more than her touch. “Why would God make loving someone a sin?”

I thought she was crying again and I thought I might cry. “I don’t know, Nina. What does the bible say?”

She frowned again and I felt her shudder against me. Nina sat up and wrapped her arms around me. We hugged, and I felt something wet and warm smudge against my arm. I didn’t mind being her tissue, but I didn’t want her to cry. I didn’t want to drown in her flood.

“I think you should go soon,” she whispered, after she had stopped crying.

“I want to stay.”

Nina shook her head.

“Father will be home soon and he’ll kill you and if he doesn’t then the ice will.” She was staring down into my lap, looking at my hand. Nina’s fingers traced the lines in my palm. “I worry about you walking home in that horrible weather.”

“God will protect me.” I ran my fingers through her hair and pulled her too me again. She struggled out of the hug and got up from the couch.

“I want you to have something.” Then she left the room. I watched her wander down the hall and into a doorway. She stayed hidden for a moment, then came back out with a book in her hand.

Nina held it out to me; it was a King James Bible. I took it, though it made me feel sick.

“What’s this for?” I asked.

“It’s a gift.”

She stared at her feet. Nina made eye contact like it was part of breathing; I didn’t want to know why she stared at floor now.

“Josie,” she cooed, and sat down next to me. “Josie, can I ask you something’? I know I’m asking you lots of questions but I want to ask you somethin’”

“Sure.” My stomach was in the dryer now; a constant tumult.

Nina leaned close to me, so close her breath stroked my throat and my chin and swirled with my own breath until our breath was one. “Will you kiss me again, before you go?”

I tried to say, “You never need to ask that,” but the words slurred as our lips met. Not in the failed way they mingled before, but as though they danced together, caressing her top with my bottom, until they split apart with the energy of nuclear fission.

Her face was pale for a moment, then bright red. Nina continued to stare at her feet.

“Please be safe walkin’ home,” she said.

“I will.”

Nina walked me to the door and I put my layers of warmth back on and I left. There was nothing else.

The ice had stopped, and only the bitter wind nibbled my face. Nothing on the walk home was significant; I spent it trying to ignore the biblical weight in my pocket.

I opened it as soon as I was home and in my room. On the front cover was written Leviticus 18:22. My fingers hadn’t flipped the pages of a Bible since my school project on creation myths, but a note tucked into the pages made it easy to find.

Underlined in shaky red pen:

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with woman kind: it is an abomination.

The folded note had my name written on it. I hesitated for just a second, wondering what would be inside it. It was from Nina. It was her writing. Her tiny scrawl, perfect cursive, so that the J was looped and the E curved farther out than normal. I opened it with shaking hands.

I know it says mankind but it’s the same thing as womankind. Thou shalt not lie with womankind as with mankind. It doesn’t say why. It just is.

I don’t need you tutoring me anymore. I’m sorry. Please don’t come over again.

It’s an abomination but God still loves you.

(I could see the hesitation in the next line. The ink shot to the right and shuddered for a moment until the words were written, firm and meaningful. Each letter was scratched into the paper; I could feel the indentations on the other side.)

I love you, too.

Nina

I didn’t cry then, but I did later. I cried when I slept, I cried when I thought of her, I cried when I saw an apple, or a Bible, or an aged math book. I kept the bible on my shelf, unread, because I was scared of what I would find. I kept the note with me, always, folded several times and tearing on the edges.

I walked to her house once, wondering if she would be outside, cleaning apples again, waiting for me. No one sat on the porch, and the apple trees had been cut down. The house looked more dilapidated than it had the first time I saw it.

I memorized the words of her note. I didn’t need the note anymore; I knew it by heart. I still kept it with me. I repeated sections to myself, and they became my mantra.

It didn’t matter that I was an abomination. Somewhere deep, too, I knew it didn’t matter that she loved me, because I’d never see her again.

It mattered because God still loved me.

THE END

There you go! Now that you've gotten to the end of God Still Loves You, I would like to thank everyone who has read the whole series, and has given me many amazing critiques. I am unsure of whether or not I will rewrite this. It ultimately depends on my effort and time. I do appreciate everything you have said, and this story meant a lot to me, so I hope it meant the same to you. Keep your eyes open; you may find a rewrite of this, or perhaps, in a year or so, a whole novel. Again, thank you!