The data was confounding. Georgie, who viewed Sunday school as a form of legally-mandated torture, had not only joined Missy's youth group but had, in a move of staggering incongruity, agreed to be baptized. Sheldon observed the anomaly, tracking the correlation: the arrival of Veronica Duncan, her family devoutly Baptist, her presence like a gravitational pull on Georgie's better sense.
Sheldon attended the baptism, standing beside his parents with an anthropologist's detachment. He saw Georgie, hair plastered and shirt white, emerge from the tank with a look of theatrical reverence aimed directly at Veronica, who smiled beatifically, her own baptismal gown clinging. The ritual complete, the youth group gathered in the fellowship hall for cookies and punch.
The system collapsed ten minutes later. A sharp cry, not of joy, cut through the murmur. Then Georgie stumbled back into the main hall, one hand clutching a spectacular, rapidly-purpling eye, his white baptismal shirt smeared with punch. Behind him, Veronica stood, chest heaving, her fist clenched, her expression a fury of righteous betrayal. Pastor Jeff was caught mid-sip, his face frozen in horror.
Mary gasped. George Sr. surged forward. "What in God's name—?!"
"She hit me!" Georgie yelped, voice cracking with pain and humiliation.
"You kissed me!" Veronica shot back, tears of anger now mixing with the holy water on her cheeks.
"Right after we promised ourselves to God! It was disgusting!"
The air left the room. A sacred space had been profaned, and Georgie was the obvious heretic. The ride home was a nuclear silence. George Sr.'s grip on the steering wheel turned his knuckles white. Mary cried quiet, shamed tears. Missy stared out the window, furious at her brother for ruining her group.
Sheldon processed. The variables aligned: a high-emotion ritual, a misreading of spiritual intimacy for romantic permission, a catastrophic, public correction. He undersrood that Georgie was a teenager who didn't understand the intricacies of informed consent.
For Veronica, the baptism was a transcendent, liminal moment—a public declaration of faith and spiritual rebirth. Her smile and euphoria were directed inward and upward, part of a covenant with a God she wholly believed, not with Georgie.
By kissing her, he profaned her sacred moment. He mistook a ritual about divine love for a scene about human romance, dragging a profoundly spiritual act into his own personal drama. This wasn't just a misreading; it was a thematic trespass.
It was an act of emotional substitution and violation. It exposed the danger of living inside one's own narrative without checking the reality of others. Georgie's sin wasn't primarily lust; it was solipsism—the assumption that his internal world was the only one that existed. Veronica's punch, therefore, was more than just anger; it was a forceful reassertion of her reality, her narrative, and her bodily autonomy against his imposing fantasy.
He found Georgie later in the garage, not with frozen peas, but holding a stolen ice pack from the church kitchen to his eye, staring into the oily darkness.
"You interpreted a shared sacred experience as a unique romantic bond," Sheldon's voice cut through the quiet. "You confused spiritual elevation with mutual attraction. It was a category error of monumental proportion."
"Get out, Sheldon."
"No.You require analysis to prevent future failures that may lead to more than just humiliation." Sheldon stepped inside, his tone clinical, dissecting the disaster.
"Veronica wasn't smiling at you in that moment. She was experiencing the neurochemical aftermath of a profound ritual. You were context, not content. By kissing her, you reduced her sacred moment to a transactional one. You became just another boy trying to get something from her, in God's own house. Her response, while violent, was a logically defensible boundary enforcement."
Georgie flinched. The truth was worse than any punch. He hadn't just been rejected; he'd been sacrilegious. A creep in a wet shirt.
"What do I do?" The question was a defeated whisper.
"First, you understand the depth of your error," Sheldon said, sitting on a crate. "This isn't about a misread signal. It's about a fundamental failure to see her as a person on her own path. You used her faith as a tool for access. That is the behavior I personally despise. It is objectification in its purest form. Imagine a guy does the same with Missy. How would she feel about it? How would you?"
He let that hang, the word 'objectification' ringing in the greasy air. "You must apologize. For violating the sanctity of her moment. For assuming her consent was implied by the setting. The apology must acknowledge her anger as completely justified."
"She'll never speak to me again."
"Probably not. The apology isn't for reconciliation. It's for your own moral recalibration. And for the integrity of the system." Sheldon's voice softened, almost imperceptibly.
"Georgie, attraction is not a plan. Building a connection requires a shared framework of respect, built over time. You cannot skip steps. Especially not by using her God as a shortcut."
The following day, Georgie, his eye a lurid shade of violet, asked Pastor Jeff to accompany him to Veronica's house. He offered a stumbling, earnest apology, written with Sheldon's unsentimental guidance. He did not ask for forgiveness. He stated his error, acknowledged her right to anger, and promised to keep his distance.
Veronica, from her porch, listened with folded arms. She accepted the apology with a stiff nod, and closed the door.
Walking back to the pastor's car, Georgie felt hollowed out, but clean.
Pastor Jeff sighed. "That was a hard lesson, son."
"Yeah," Georgie said. And for the first time, he thought about what he'd almost failed to learn.
That night, Sheldon noted the change in his brother's demeanor—the absence of swagger, replaced by a pensive quiet. The flawed algorithm had been overwritten with a harder, better code. Georgie had learned that some boundaries were not just social, but sacred, and that respecting a woman meant respecting her whole world, not trying to storm its most private gates.
It was, Sheldon calculated, a more valuable lesson than any he could have learned from a book. A lesson written in pain, shame, and the clear, blunt force of a righteous fist.