His ex-girlfriend found it, the only girl he’d ever cheated on found it.

Sabrina’s new number wasn’t listed in his contacts, Max had blocked her old one when she bombarded him with texts, calling him a pedophile after she discovered, through his best friend’s girlfriend, that Max had screwed a nineteen-year-old behind her back, one of the students under his teacher assistant’s wing. Sabrina contacted the school, the John Wilmington School of Economics at South Westchester University, and with just a pump of the penis into a young vagina paired with Max’s loose lips, bragging about the lay over cheap beer and a losing game of darts, everything in his life was suddenly gone.

That had been five years ago, a slate wiped clean then marked up again, but with less broad strokes. Max, ungraduated, friendless, and broke, went where every desperate man goes when the rain is hammering down and there’s no umbrella to grasp–into the inviting arms of organized religion, The Church of Latter Day Saints to be precise.

But, really, it had found him. Max heard the doorbell to his apartment that he was facing eviction from due to lack of funds and his inability to find a job what with all the thoughts of suicide occupying his mind like a cheap piña colada air freshener chokes a room. It was unclear how Max managed to peel his body off the couch, adhering due to sticky perspiration, also reeking of defeat, to answer the door. But his mustered energy had been a godsend, literally, because what’ll encourage and warm the soul of a broken man like the high-wattage smile of a young Mormon.

“Hi,” Cliff said after a robed, unshaven Max opened the door, squinting at the sunlight he hadn’t seen in weeks.

It was all so beautiful to the worn man, the whole of Cliff. This boyish Mormon, probably the age of the student he fucked, was muscled and fastened in such a lithe yet harmless way: sturdy neck, developed forearms jutting from a clean, white sleeve, cuffed; and downy, platinum hair that covered his body in a manner that said, “I’m soft to the touch.” If Max were gay and Cliff had a different god, the 25-year-old loser in stained sleepwear would’ve asked for a kiss. But that would be too much, even in a fantasy world. And, Cliff, as his white, bright nametag clearly stated, was enough just standing there, a gift of visual radiance, calming Max where drugs, pornography, and microwaved food had failed to do since his world imploded like a hydrogen bomb carted down a pock-marked California road.

“Howdy,” Cliff said, dipping his head to the right; a gentle breeze ran through his shiny hair. “Can I interest you–”

“Yes!” To Max, it would’ve been unfounded to deny this young man anything when he’d been so generous with his appealing, healing energy. Max wanted more.

And more came. In the form of warm lodging, tasty, well-rounded meal; and a community of friends as smiley as Cliff, different but somewhat similar to the pals he had before Sabrina got her thick hands, brawny from years of softball, into their perceptions and opinions of Max.

But who cared about the ones who had spit and slammed their goodbyes when Mormonism gave a person more than access to brotherhood; it was the added purpose and promise, Max thought, squeezing himself into the white, full-body underwear, trying to ignore the new, buzzing texts from his ex-girlfriend.

But so what? So she had got a new number, continuing her mission to pulverize his life, those competitive, tenacious softball years a hard thing to unlearn, but Max knew, thanks to Cliff’s mentorship, that he had the forgiveness of God.

“Gonna send this to everyone u know, fag!!”

If Sabrina had watched the full video, she would know that the man licking Max’s bare feet was “the fag,” and that Max was actually “the master.”

It had all been a means to an end, answering an ad looking for “homosexual sympathetic” foot models. Neither Max nor his feet were gay but he needed to keep the lights on and pay his bills after Sabrina left him and the University dumped him.

Quivering at his past, Max slipped on his sheer black socks and averted his eyes, wanting his feet to belong to someone else. To calm himself down, he repeated his favorite Bible quote, “The Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against him.”

Max had rebelled, but that was behind him—devil in the rearview.

As he secured his white button-up shirt against a body, tighter than it had ever been, thanks to Cliff’s workout routine, his phone buzzed once more.

“Wait until Grandma Trappers sees this!” Sabrina’s text read.

This activated the sweat glands, particularly in…his feet.

Another ping. “I hear ur Mormon now! U think ur religious buddies will like ur little movie! Not so PG!!”

Max unbuttoned the top button, needing relief, though it was Cliff’s pet peeve: “As missionaries of God, His flock, we must set an example of visual tidiness.”

His fingers re-fastened the button even though he was having trouble breathing, lungs both empty and too full.

Sabrina sent him emojis, a foot and a tongue.

Then Max swore he heard a cell phone pinging from another room in the Smith home. Cliff’s parents had taken him in without hesitation, hugs at the ready, smiles as bright as their son’s–Mr. and Mrs. Smith imparting their way of smiling that they learned from their parents.

There was a knock at Max’s bedroom door, two thunks.

“Morning, buddy,” Cliff called before he would certainly barge through the door. Mormons had a habit of knocking then entering without permission because how could anything unclean or untoward be happening in a nonsecular home?

Max’s phone buzzed again when the bedroom door did, indeed, fly open. Without a smarter thought leading to a more sensical action, Max threw his phone into the nearby wall, denting the nautical wallpaper, the same ship cresting the same mighty wave over and over again.

That was Max’s room in the Smith household, the aquatic-themed one with heavy-looking anchors hung and seal figurines that Max tried not to make fun of, even in his mind, turning to prayer when he did: “Dear God, let it be clear that the Smiths rescued me as if I were shipwrecked and dying.”

Cliff’s smile only dimmed a fraction as he looked from Max’s sweating figure, missing the finishing touch of a cinched black tie, to the cracked phone on the plush cobalt carpet. “What’s up? Where’s your tie?” No one, not any of the other hundreds of missionaries who Max had shaken firm hands with were as devout, routine, and dedicated to God as Cliff.

“I, um…I…” Max struggled with words, too aware of his tongue and what it could do. If, in that very moment, someone filmed Max, suddenly “the fag,” tongue-washing Cliff’s, “the master’s,” feet, they’d make a lot more than the $300 Max garnered on his first and last foray into gay porn.

The nautical room, still dark from the early morning, lit mainly by a desk lamp with a starfish glued to it, brightened further by the glow of Max’s pinging phone. Despite the slash of a crack through the screen, Max could make out that this new notification was from Bernie, his ex-best friend.

Max swallowed, defeated. The only reason Bernie would be hitting him up, after all this time, was if Sabrina sent him the video.

The phone made more noise.

This new text was from Grandma.

Max crumpled down to the bed.

“Careful,” Cliff said. “You’ll wrinkle.”

Rubbing his face, Max tried to find the words that would absolve him in God’s eyes, get his feet unlicked, which, once his master role had finished, revealed itself to be the decidedly more sticky and humiliating position.

“Cliff—” Max was interrupted by his phone as if it were an active pinball machine, distracting smacks and blinking lights, his high score of deep shame rising and rising. “Cliff…I got to be real with you…”

The blonde younger man stayed standing, clearly avoiding the wrinkle risk, but offered Max an inviting, open hand that said, “Continue…”

“I know…I know I said I was being honest with you when I said fu—Um, when I said sleeping with that student of mine was the worst thing I ever did, but, I gotta be real with you. I did…let…a guy…” Max’s eyes roamed the entire room, trying to gain any sliver of leverage to free himself from this horror. “Lick…my feet, but only cause someone was filming it—For money! Cause I was broke!!” Max closed his eyes and held his hands out defensively. “I’m not into that stuff! AT ALL! I swear! It, uh, it was only for the money! And I know I’ve been living here with your family and you’ve all been really,” his voice broke, “kind, but I just…I didn’t–God give me strength…I didn’t–”

Words failed Max as he finally looked to Cliff, hoping for mercy, praying he’d somehow be on the receiving end of that blinding smile once more, even if on terms of sayonara.

Cliff stuck out both hands, lifting the fingers. “Stand up.”

Sniffling, Max did as instructed and when he stood, Cliff fastened his top button and worked the shirt collar so that it stood up.

The young Mormon then silently went to the dresser with the ceramic beach ball on top and opened the drawer filled with identical black ties, all rolled into tight circles, but not too tight to invite a crease.

Max could only watch as Cliff wrapped the tie around his neck and, with a gentle swiftness, worked the material into a perfect knot, two even black stands dripping down. It brought to Max’s mind, when he’d been baptized at the Smith’s local church, getting dunked in an all-white, expensive jacuzzi, parked in between two long sections of pews.

But this intimate moment with Cliff meant more. This was no necessary sacrament, it was a kindness, done so with deft hands amid the calming scent of Cliff’s amber aftershave.

With a swallow, Max cleared the mucous at the back of his throat and Cliff patted his shoulder, saying, “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more…”

Max raised his eyebrows in someone else’s guest room, refusing to believe this situation (the soft sheets, the colon-friendly meals, the pristine white bathmat that said “God loves you and so do I”) could hold after what he had done, after what a little stepping out could do to a promising young economics major with hopes of one day being a senior market analyst. “You’re not gonna–”

“Do what, throw you out on the street?”

Max raised a shaky, anxious hand, heading toward his pristine, slicked-down hair, but Cliff grabbed it in time. “Don’t.” And placed it back at Max’s side. “You made a promise to God and the Church, asking for forgiveness about what you’d done. In God’s eyes, you’re forgiven. You got the go-ahead from the bishop for Pete’s sake.”

It was true, Max had done those things, but there had to be a give, his sin too severe.

Cliff slid Max’s Bible off the dresser and handed it to him. “Besides, it was verified that you weren’t the one…” The young Mormon’s eyes clouded with dread. “Doing the licking…”

A spray of coughs left Max’s mouth and he nearly dropped his Bible. “She sent it to you?!”

“I don’t know this ‘she,’ but did we have the higher-ups do a full background check on you before you crossed our threshold?” Cliff punched Max in the chest, which hurt a little coming from such a strong, virile man. “Come on, Max, we’re not Amish…Now, hurry, we’ve got a promise to keep and His word to spread.”

It was what Cliff said every morning. And these words never failed to make Max smile, knowing that he had something important to do with his day, a ship to keep afloat. But really, Max loved hearing it, and anything Cliff said, because the young Mormon man always punctuated this mantra with that dazzling smile–living proof that the glow of Christ’s perfect love, God’s truth, was real.