TWELVE
Tressa
Some mornings, I woke up justifying our secret brand of sin.
To whom, I wasn’t even sure.
Myself?
God?
The fantasy Bastien who lived every night in my head? The one who said everything just right and touched me with rough, dominant hands, his dark irises saturated with shame and guilt?
But the mornings I woke up telling myself that love breathed between Bastien and me, real and true and right in the eyes of man and God?
Those mornings were the worst.
The days my footsteps were filled with hope ended with nights that inevitably left me raw, my heart a little bloodier for even considering a love for him. Living alongside Bastien without beingwithhim had, itself, become a form of suffering. My mind grew a little more determined to find a way out.
I’d considered every possible option. Staying with my mom was off the table, her life since I’d left for college worse off than when I’d been with her. Countless medical issues after a lifetime of abusing her body were finally taking their toll.
I hadn’t seen her since I’d left anyway, and usually, the only time she called was when she needed money. I was okay with that, and on the rare occasion I could help her out, I did. But more often than not, I was forced to tell her no out of pure necessity. There were plenty of nights I had no choice but to eat noodles out of a cup just to buy textbooks for class, and still, those days seemed simpler than now.
I swallowed down the ache that always gripped my throat when I thought about things from my past lives. My eyes drifted to the file on my computer that held the application for low-income housing in a newer development across town. I’d found the article about the new apartments on the newspaper’s website, so the likelihood I would be picked wasn’t great, mostly because I didn’t have a salary to support much of a monthly rent payment.
I’d been thinking, if Bastien was willing to train Lucy, maybe she could take over some of his office work, and coupled with the nursery and the event organizing I was trying to implement, perhaps a full-time position at St. Michael’s was possible for her. At least enough to get her through the pregnancy with a roof over her head and a small community to look out for her.
The sense that it was time for me to move on was growing greater by the day. I felt it deep in my bones every time I locked eyes with him across the church pews during Mass.
And maybe down even deeper than that, I was running from a familiar rut.
A rut my mother had been stuck in all too often during my childhood. A rut where staying and loving a man who didn’t love her back was easier than leaving.
Well, maybe our circumstances weren’t quite the same, but at the core, as I saw it, they were.
I refused to stay the course when the course finished in a dead end.
Maybe even with a few epic crash and burns along the way.
That was not the life I intended to live.
Not the one I’d wished on stars for.
I wouldn’t stay and love a man who couldn’t love me back.
Bastien was married to the man upstairs, and I was his mistress.
Bile nearly choked me.
The idea that I could get certified as a nurse’s assistant suddenly sounded like a better fix than staying here for any longer than I had to.
Watching him. Feeling him in every part of me when he entered a room. Being so close, yet mountains apart. The rules in his world and the rules in mine were different. And his forbade his love for me.
I shifted in the hard wooden chair. Tucked as I was in a corner of the sacristy, ancient holy relics and silence permeated the room.
I stood out in this place.
Gold- and silver-plated items decorated the shelves, memories of evenings after Mass, watching Bastien clean and straighten the precious metals with such care and precision would leave a lasting ache in my heart forever. The way his hands had cradled the items, the bronze of his skin sending lightning strikes of pleasure careening between my thighs.
