Shame on Me

I feel my throat growing tight with unshed tears and I have to clear it to keep them at bay. I will not cry right now.

“I wish you would have let me look through your place. What if whoever left that note was still there?” Matt asks.

“Are you crazy? That’s like something straight out of a horror movie. You never go back into a house looking for the bad people. It always ends with a machete to the face,” I argue.

“A machete, huh? Do you normally have a lot of people with machetes after you?” Matt asks with a laugh. “I’m seriously considering turning the truck around and going back to the police if that’s the case.”

“Like I said, I probably just made a big deal out of nothing. I’ll get hold of Andy first thing tomorrow and put the fear of God into him.”

“And if it wasn’t that little weasel, what then? Your friends aren’t sick and twisted enough to do this as some sort of joke, are they?” he asks.

I’m not going to lie; it warms my heart even more that he called Andy a weasel.

I laugh easily at the idea that Kennedy and Lorelei would sneak into my house and leave a note like that for me, the heaviness of my thoughts from a moment ago disappearing quickly. “Okay, I think it’s safe to say Lorelei would have never done something like that. She would have used bigger words to drive her point home, and she would have been more polite. Like, ‘Please discontinue your inquisitive ways or we shall be obliged to damage your appendages,’” I tell him in my best Lorelei voice.

“I would have to agree even though I’ve only talked to her for a few minutes. But what about Kennedy? She carries a gun and she sounds scary,” Matt says with a dramatic shiver. The smile on his face proves that he believed me when I said they wouldn’t do something like this, and he’s trying to distract me by making light of the situation.

“Well, it’s close to something Kennedy would have said, but hers would have had more cursing. ‘Get your fucking head out of your ass before I punch you in the goddamn face.’”

Matt and I laugh together as I describe my friend’s personalities to him with just a few sentences.

“I’m glad you called me,” he says softly as he pulls into a driveway of a gorgeous Cape Cod home and puts his truck in park.

He doesn’t give me a chance to reply as he jumps out of the truck and comes around to my side, opening the door for me and taking my hand to help me down. Hand in hand we walk up the steps of his front porch, and I stand to the side, admiring his profile as he unlocks the front door.

As soon as we walk inside, Matt hits a switch and bathes the living room in light. I have to say, I’m a little shocked at what I see. I assumed his place would look similar to Andy’s apartment: mismatched furniture, no pictures on the wall, still-unpacked boxes littering the floors, and takeout containers in the kitchen. Matt’s home is tastefully decorated and spotless. There aren’t any signs that a woman used to live here, but it also doesn’t look like a bachelor pad. It’s gray and black and full of leather, and I love it. I notice a framed picture on an end table next to the couch, and I walk right up to it and lift it up for a better look. In the picture, Matt has his arm around the shoulders of an older man; it almost looks like a before-and-after picture. I can tell right away that this is Matt’s father and also how nicely Matt is going to age. His father is a handsome man with the same bright blue eyes and dark hair as his son, except he has a few gray hairs at his temples and wrinkles around his eyes.

“This is a great picture. I’m assuming this is your dad?”

Matt comes up behind me and looks over my shoulder. “Yep. That’s Eric Russo. Obviously, he gets his good looks from me.”

I laugh, setting the picture back down and turning around to face him.

“Can you show me where the bathroom is? I want to wash up a little. And if you have anything I can use as pajamas, that would be good too. I didn’t think to grab anything when I went racing out of my house like a chicken.”

Matt places his hands on my shoulders, sliding them up my neck until he cups my cheeks. “I’m sure I can find something for you to wear. And you aren’t a chicken. I would have gone screaming into the night if someone left a note like that for me too.”

My heart skips a beat as he places a kiss on the tip of my nose before grabbing my hand and pulling me down the hallway.