She was in town for the summer, and he wanted her more than he ever wanted anything before, even more than the high school football championship ring on his finger, which had been the most important thing in the world to him.
There were those who thought he had it all together. A handsome, muscular quarterback of his high school's football team, in a small town in Alabama where high school of football was the most important thing in the world, and the teenage boys who played it walked around like kings of that world. And, if that was not enough he had the certainty of having God on his side.
"Dad, can I ask you about something?" Josh Gibson asked his father. "I know it's a sin to have lustful thoughts, but what do you do about it?"
"You pray and you concentrate on other things," his father instantly replied, more like a rote answer than a deeply held religious conviction.
Josh knew his father was not as devout as his mother. What he did not know was that years earlier, when he was the high school's quarterback, he personally deflowered every pretty girl in the school. He continued the partying and the easy supply of women as a college quarterback.
But, then, something happened. A girl he had done one night and all but forgotten about within days, accused him of raping her. For the first time in his life, the swaggering, brash Michael Gibson felt fear. The police threw out the case and Michael vowed to avoid those sexy and easy women and go for a good church girl.
"When those thoughts come like demons, how do I fight them?" Josh asked.
Michael did not know what he getting himself in for when he married that good church girl, did not know years later he would have a son as devout as his mother, who he could barely speak to if they about anything other than football .
"What kind of thoughts are we talking here, son?" Michael asked. "They're about normal stuff, right? With a girl?"
"Yes!" Josh exclaimed, shocked by the question, but, then, he felt a painful irony.
Cyndi's father was a gay man, a writer from L.A., where Josh knew such things were more acceptable than in his small town.
"If there's a girl at the church youth group you think is pretty and you want to take her out, that's OK," Michael said.
"What if I think a girl is pretty who isn't a Christian?" Josh asked.
"You mean she's not a good Christian girl?" his father asked. "Her family just goes to church on Christmas and Easter?"
"Do I have to tell you?" Josh asked.
"No, son, you don't. It's that Bennett girl isn't it?"
Cyndi Bennett, the Latina daughter of the gay writer from California renting the house next to the Gibson family for the summer, seemed to Josh to combine every attractive trait of Salma Hayek and Selena Gomez.
Josh looked away.
Michael puts a hand on his son's shoulder.
"What religion is she?"
"She doesn't have a religion. She just likes yoga.
She said her spirituality is from that."
For a moment, Michael was his younger self, talking about girls the way he once did.
"I've seen that yoga stuff on TV. Whoa boy!"
It was then that Christabel Gibson crarged into the room.
"You will not go anywhere near that little harlot!
That Jezebel!" she yelled at her son.
She realized something, and it made her even more upset.
"That's exactly what she is! Jezebel was a princess! The daughter of a Pagan king who did her father's evil bidding! A seductress who led godly men astray!"
"I was handling it," Michael meekly replied. He could command men and boys, but could never stand up to his wife.
"You were not handling it since you did not tell him he would never talk to her again no way, no how! You want to be the nice parent! You want to be easier on the kids! But, this time it's my son's soul at stake!"
She broke down crying.
"Mama, I don't want to hurt you," Josh pleaded.
"Hurt me? This is every Christian mother's nightmare! She's the daughter of a homosexual who writes filthy, sinful novels!"
