TEN
Tressa
Words like temptation and deliverance weighed heavy on my thoughts as I spent the next few days operating on autopilot and hunkering down in the nursery with Lucy, my planner and notebook in hand and making notes and calls to organize a winter festival, a St. Valentine’s sock hop, and a spring fling.
Instead of dancing, the version of the sock hop at St. Michael’s would be heavy on the games for kids and adults, plenty of potluck items for snacking and parish-made pastries. I’d already managed to convince a few sponsors to donate items, and the local community news section agreed to run some ads for us free of charge.
Bastien and St. Michael’s had so much to contribute, I didn’t like seeing its parishioners suffer just because the budget was down.
Ms. Watson, the retired church secretary, had even given me a hug after Wednesday night Mass, glowing with words of positivity about the good work I’d been doing for the parish and how lucky they were to have me. Bastien had hovered just out of earshot, lingering and aware of my every move, and I, his. I was so painstakingly conscious of every heartbeat that passed between us. When he entered the room, the air rushed out of my lungs, my knees shook, and my heart began an annoying, slow gallop in my chest.
Prickling palms and words like love chugged through my brain.
I hated every second.
My resentment for the tender spot I had for him grew by the day.
By avoiding him, I’d managed to make wanting him that much more forbidden.
I’d done the very opposite of what I’d meant to do.
Inwardly, I cursed him and then myself when I’d headed out the nursery doors one morning to pick up diapers and formula for a few of the younger kids and spied Bastien kneeling at the cross, heavy body swallowed by shadows. A play of golden light through one of the stained-glass windows created a halo effect around his head, and bent in pure benediction, lips moving silently, he nearly brought me to my knees.
He prayed with fervor, as if in his own self-inflicted penance.
My Bastien.
I watched, enamored, thinking of what a man like him said to God.
Did he ask for forgiveness for me?
Had I corrupted him?
Was I the siren sent to lead him to the pits of sin?
A vise grip clenched around my heart as he made a silent sign of the cross on his forehead, and then above his lips.
I wiped the tears off of my face with the sleeve of my sweater and turned the other way, escaping out of the door before he could see me.
Heart sinking in my chest.
