Tara Sivec - Shame on Me

“Maybe I’ve already found a great guy,” I mumble, sniffling in sadness.

“You’ll never find a great guy if you continue working as a floozy,” she counters.

“Oh, my God, I am not a floozy! I haven’t had sex with anyone since Andy!”

Of course the church chooses that moment to go completely silent. My mother looks around frantically and smiles embarrassedly to the people within hearing distance.

“At least wait until after Communion to talk about s-e-x,” she scolds in my ear, spelling out the word like I’m a toddler.

I make it through the rest of Mass without doing my mother any bodily harm and as we exit the church, she walks me up to the priest.

“Beautiful sermon today, Father Bob. You remember my daughter, Paige?”

Father Bob shakes my hand and gives me a warm smile. “Of course I remember her. It’s been a while since I’ve seen you at Mass.”

My mother looks pointedly at me and I immediately feel like I’m in second grade at confession for the first time and quickly drop Father Bob’s hand.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been a month since my last church service and I’ve been having impure thoughts.

“My mother mentioned you’ve had problems lately with some thefts in the church. I’m not sure if she told you, but I work for a private investigations firm,” I tell him, quickly shutting down my brain and thoughts of being impure with Matt.

“Oh, yes, yes. It’s really not as bad as it sounds. I’m positive it’s just some poor, homeless soul who has strayed from the path of God. All we need to do is say some prayers and everything will be fine.”

Father Bob quickly excuses himself before I can reply and rushes away to greet other parishioners.

I watch him silently for a few minutes and every once in a while he looks back over his shoulder at me, turning away quickly when he catches me staring.

“Father Bob looks guilty. I think he knows more than he’s letting on,” I tell my mother as we make our way to the parking lot.

“Paige Elizabeth! Father Bob is a saint. That man baptized you, gave you your First Holy Communion, and married you and Andy,” she admonishes.

“Yeah, and we see how well that turned out,” I mutter.

“Fran, Eunice, come over here and say hello to Paige.”

I turn in the direction my mother is looking and see her two friends quickly amble over to us. Well, as quickly as they can considering Fran uses a cane and Eunice is pushing a walker.

“Paige, it’s good to see you back at church. Did you hear that Harold Johnson is single?” Eunice asks.

Oh, for the love of God.

“Eunice, who in their right mind would date that man? He lives with his mother and collects aspirin,” Fran interjects.

“I’m sorry, he collects what?” I ask in bewilderment.

“Aspirin. Every size, shape, and color imaginable. He glues them to poster board and hangs them up all over his mother’s house. I think he’s a serial killer,” Fran explains, dramatically whispering the last part.

“I think it’s very artistic,” my mother says indignantly. “I heard he even has aspirin from Germany.”

“I’d be willing to bet next week’s bingo winnings that those are roofies hanging all over his mother’s house.”

We all turn to stare at Fran.

“What are roofies? Are those the ones from Germany?” Eunice asks.

Fran opens her mouth to most likely school Eunice on all things roofies, and I quickly change the subject before this conversation goes downhill any faster.

“So, what do you guys think about Father Bob and the thefts that have been going on here?”

Fran huffs and lifts up her cane to point it at me. “It’s just not right, Paige. What is this world coming to when a church isn’t even safe? We should all get guns.”

“Oh, my God, no! You should definitely not get any guns. That is a bad idea,” I argue.

“Can I get a gun at Kroger? I have a coupon in my pocketbook for a dollar off any item,” Eunice says excitedly.

“I say we handle this ourselves. Take back the church!” my mother shouts.

“TAKE BACK THE CHURCH!” Fran and Eunice echo.

I need to put a stop to this before it turns into all-out old-lady anarchy.

“No one is taking back anything! Mom, as soon as I get some free time this week, I will look into this, I promise.”

Talk of guns is forgotten as Fran and Eunice begin discussing what dessert they’ll be making for their Altar and Rosary meeting later this week.

“Don’t you go to any trouble now, Paige. You just give Kennedy a call for me. I’m sure she’ll be able to get to the bottom of it. In the meantime, I’ll give Harold your number. Maybe he’ll let you look at all his roofies.”

Grabbing three canisters of pepper spray from the junk drawer in my kitchen, I shove them into my bag. Slamming the drawer closed with my hip, I pause when I hear a knock at the door.

Maybe it’s Lorelei. She knows I used her computer at the office to pull up old court records of Vinnie DeMarco so I could get his address. She knows I’m planning on staking out his house to see if Melanie shows up. If I’m real quiet, she’ll go away. She won’t break the door down like Kennedy if I don’t answer.

“Paige, are you home? It’s Matt.”

The sound of his voice makes a lump form in my throat, especially since our last encounter wasn’t a pleasant one.

* * *

On the way home from church with my mother the previous week, I stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few odds and ends. As I was walking back out to my car, my arms loaded with bags, I ran into Matt. Literally. I was losing the grip on one of the bags and as I stepped down off of the curb trying to juggle them, I barreled right into him. Of course the bag filled with all of the items a woman needs to get over a man spilled out at his feet: a family-size bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, a gallon of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream, two bottles of Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup, a can of Reddi-wip, and a bottle of Moscato.

The universe hates me. I would have much preferred the bag of tampons and Midol had fallen at his feet.

I could do nothing but stare at him as he bent down to pick up everything I dropped. When he stood back up and wordlessly handed me the bag, he began to walk away without saying one word to me, and I finally shook myself out of the shock of seeing him again to speak.

“I swear I wasn’t following you,” I told him with a shaky laugh.

He didn’t find it funny. He stuck his hands in his pockets and stared out at the parking lot. He couldn’t even stand to look at me, and it made me want to sit down on the curb and immediately start making myself a Reese’s Fudge Brownie Hershey Moscato sundae.

“Did you get my text?” I asked him lamely.

“Yep.”

“Did you read it?” I tried again.

My heart thudded loudly in my ears. I knew this was my only chance to get him to understand and I was blowing it.

He sighed and turned back toward me, refusing to look at my face. His gaze landed somewhere between my chin and my neck. My plan of forcing him to look into my eyes and see that I was truly sorry wasn’t going to work.

“Look, I have a lot going on in my life right now and I just don’t have time for . . . this. Whatever this is. Or was. Fuck!” Matt cursed, his frustration with me evident.

“I’m so sorry, Matt,” I whispered, willing the tears in my eyes not to fall and show him how much it hurts that he doesn’t want anything to do with me.

“Yeah, well, I gotta go.”

And with that, he brushed past me and into the grocery store.

* * *

I shake the depressing memory of our encounter last weekend out of my head and rush to the door. I probably shouldn’t open it because he could very well be even angrier than Lorelei right now, but I want to see him. Even if it means I have to stand here and take it when he tells me how much he can’t stand me.

“I didn’t know if you’d answer,” he says in greeting as I fling open the door.

Just like every time I see him, I’m taken aback by how good he looks. Even when he’s frustrated or angry, I don’t want to take my eyes off of him.

“What are you doing here? How did you know where I live?”

“I stopped by your office to cancel my request for a PI, and when your friend Lorelei went into the back to grab the file, I snooped through your desk and found some address labels,” he tells me.

“Wow. That was pretty sneaky of you.”

“Don’t even start with me about being sneaky,” Matt warns.

He softens the blow by smiling at me. I missed that smile. I’m such a sucker.

“Are you going somewhere?” he asks, pointing to the bag flung over my shoulder.

“First, tell me why you’re here. If it’s to inform me what a horrible person I am, I already got that memo last weekend.”

He shoves his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and cocks his head. “You’re not a horrible person. I’m sorry for losing my temper at the diner and for being so shitty at the store. It was just . . . a lot to take in and I was confused and hurt.”

It takes everything in me not to reach out and touch him, not to wrap my arms around him and beg for his forgiveness. Even though I’ve been a sniveling mess since I screwed things up with him, and I miss him so much it hurts, I’m still me. Deep down I’m still the same strong, independent woman I found again after I left Andy, and I’m not about to put my heart on the line for someone until I know for sure the feelings are mutual. For all I know he just showed up here out of guilt for not giving me a chance to explain.