so...God?

"Is tomorrow really Monday?"
Kathleen asked this mostly rhetorical question from her spot on everyone's favorite chaise lawn chair. Her empty plate rested on her stomach while her left hand lazily brushed the still-damp grass. Mellow had been the theme word for the weekend. My Llama had taken the weekend off so that Grant could go to a big family celebration with Maria. I'd had a date with a guy from work Friday night, but had made it home by 11 p.m.; Phil and John came over then and Kathleen and I proceeded to smoke them at a 5,000 point game of spades before sending them home in a rainstorm sometime around 2:30 in the morning. It was still raining on Saturday, so Kathleen and I spent the day baking and watching movies. Sunday afternoon the sun came out again and they guys decided to grill. As the light began to turn purple and indigo, we all lounged around the guys' backyard, bellies full of Tod's amazing burgers and Maria's equally amazing dulce de leche. It was the kind of atmosphere that made people want to talk -- you were relaxed, satisfied, and you couldn't really see anyone that well.
"So John," Tod said, blowing out a thin stream of smoke from his cigarette. "You've been here a while now."
"True."
"And even after months of living with you, playing with you, hanging out with you...I have to say, you're still a very mysterious guy."
John laughed. "I don't try to hide anything," he said.
"Also true," Tod replied. "But it's not so much things you're hiding...I mean, we've all heard the stories and we all know about your weakness for macaroni and cheese with pickles -- which is disgusting, by the way -- it's more just the way you are."
I could just barely see John smile in the fading light. "I see," he said. "Well, that is mysterious I guess. But maybe not in the way you mean. Because it's not really me that's mysterious. It's God."
The peaceful, comfortable silence we'd all been marinating in got a bit thicker. I can freely admit that God is never something I'd talked about with any of my friends, and not something I'd really given much thought to. I held my breath wondering if we were about to have a heavy conversation, an argument, or if people were just going to get up and break the evening's summery spell. And a small part of me just wanted John to elaborate, because Tod was right.

change?

Okay, I'll be honest. I left Waffle House buzzing, and not just from the copious amounts of sugar in my maple syrup-and-whipped-cream-topped French toast. After my conversation with Pete in the truck, it was as though the CD in my head that had been skipping on the same song for the past few months had finally fixed itself and was playing my favorite songs again. A tiny part of me entertained the idea that maybe Pete and I could work things out romantically speaking, but I shut that train of thought down pretty fast. Mostly because I knew that my level of trust for Pete was still pretty low. And partly because I knew that if Pete and I got back together, Kathleen would officially lose it. But SXSW was officially awesome and the band blew everyone's mind. So much so that John decided to stick around a while; the guys cleaned out the storeroom above the detached garage (which was air conditioned thanks to Phil's studio being the half of the above-garage space) for John to sleep in. When I asked John how long he was planning on staying he just smiled and said "Until it's time to go."
Pete was around more after we got back from the festival; there were nights when the rumble of his old Chevy woke me up just before the sun did, but for a few months at least things seemed back to normal. Sort of.