Hello there! :-) I’ve never seen Fleabag, and watching this scene makes me really, really, really want to.

Here to report that I did pick up on most of the subtext, but I questioned whether the priest saying “I love you” back came from him having feelings for her and denying them for his loyalty to God.

I tried to figure it out with the body language as the scene played out. For a second it almost seemed like he was close to kissing her and then turned his head the other way to stop himself. And his emotion when he said he loved her too made me wonder.

Those are my initial takes — a case study if you were at all interested. It wasn’t totally clear to me, but I guess that’s the good thing about our books: our readers aren’t just dropped into the ending. They’ve been studying our characters the whole time. If we’ve done a good job of dropping breadcrumbs of subtext all throughout, our character arcs can prove delicious!