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RELIGIOUS ANXIETY WAS SOMETHING SHE COULDN'T DENY BEHOLDING.

She had spent her whole childhood under the watchful eyes of priests and nuns; listening to their words, seeking penance for her "sins", and confessing every week like she was running from Satan. She was deemed too stuck up, the "mom" friend throughout most of her childhood until she had Father Paul tell her she was a bastard child and would be damned to Hell either way. He had said it with such nonchalance, as if this was a fact that she should've accepted since she was a mere infant. (Why do you try, James, when, in the end, you'll never see those gates?) She had ran to her parents, tears streaming down her face and worry etched deeply into her heart. She could recall the way she asked, while they remained unaware of her turmoil, if she was doomed to suffer-- was she not her father's daughter? She was always told they were so similar. She was always by his side. (Us James's gotta stick together, buggie.) They wouldn't lie to her, would they?

Jamie remembered the tears that streaked Carolyn's face as James explained that it was all so complicated. That her mother, her "real" mother, loved her dearly but thought that her father was a better fit to take care of her. It was a bunch of chatter she didn't understand. But she did understand one thing: her mother, who she loved so dearly and wished to be like her, was not really her mother but a stand in. It was something that made her mind muddled but Carolyn looked so broken as she held her child's cheeks in her hands. 

You'll be my daughter as much as they are, She had reassured as Jamie stared directly at the tip of her nose. I love you just as dearly and know you just as much. 

It'd been a mess trying to collect herself after that (she would argue that she never did) but she did trust them again. Although her religious resolve had shook, she didn't doubt that she could work hard and prove herself to be a good person. 

Then her father died.

There was this weird shift in herself where she blamed God. Her mother had always run her fingers through her hair and reassured her that all she needed to do was sit beside her bed, on her knees, clasp her hands tight, thank the Lord for his good givings, and ask God nicely for a good day tomorrow. He's always listening, everyone reassured. But Jamie had done the same, as she curled up in the bathtub, her mother silent as she poured cups of water down her back, shaky breaths leaving her as she cried. Jamie listened to the soft cries of her siblings in the other room while her grandmother tended to their tears. She had asked God one thing:

Could you bring my dad back?

He didn't listen. Jamie had woken the next day and it was just as barren as before. She could recall getting even more skeptical about his existence. Why would he want her to suffer? Her mother and her siblings? All mourning, all heartbroken over his absence. God had played some bitter part; he had made those men so desperate and so angry that they took her father from her. Jamie had lost her faith at some crucial point; she gave up on her confessions, her prayers. She no longer cared about kneeling before her bed, conforming to his will. She just wanted her father back.

NEW YORK TIMES  ( crime )                                                                                                          MAY 14TH 1978    

Man is gunned down in his corner store. NYPD Commissioner Michael Codd suspects that it may be linked to previous local robberies. Mourning wife pleads to public for any information.  (Read more below.)

Before anyone had arrested the men who had mercilessly murdered her father, there'd been rumors floating around that Jamie had accidentally shot him. Now, she wasn't sure when or where the rumor had started, but she overhead it reach its end. She had been playing with her mother's friend's children when she stumbled inside, breathless and eager to gulp down ten gallons of water. Jamie could remember stopping short when she heard the question hit the air: Maybe it was an accident. James always kept the gun behind the counter, you always hear about those stories of those poor kids shooting their parent. She was over him, wasn't she? Jamie wasn't sure why but that accusation always followed her. The words. Those words were so hushed, as if the woman had feared the wrong person hearing and, technically, the wrong person had-- wrong people it would appear.

She heard the screech of a chair, possibly her mother standing and refusing to bother with the kitchen chair. There was a deep breath and it did not follow a release. Jamie peeked around the corner and say the clench of her mother's hands. One shot outwards and suddenly the mother across from her was clutching her cheek and staring at the other with wide, tearful eyes.

Leave my house.

Jamie watched her break down as the mother rushed to gather her children. All of whom, Jamie never saw at her house again. There'd been a part of her grief that she cursed God for making people believe she was that vile. Her family never participated in the rumors. Maybe it was the fear of their mother, or the fact that the men who did it had been roaming around freely. Her sister just gave her looks, as if they too pondered the truth behind them (Amelia didn't even know what was happening. Except the fact that the absence of her father was so traumatizing.) Derek, who was her only brother and two years her senior, never really spoke on the subject. He always appeared so deeply bothered but he never demanded answers or interrogated her; he coexisted with her, tolerated her presence. Jamie was never really hurt by his distance-- well, not until much later. While only being two years older, Derek was infinitely wiser. Like he could actually face down anything and outsmart it by a mile. She supposed that he had been the relief of everyone's pressure on her to remember, to recall, to tell them exactly what the men spoke like, looked like– Derek never asked.

She supposed that's what led her to shuffle inside the church. Her jacket clasped in shaky hands and eyes bouncing around the scattered people praying and talking amongst themselves. Jamie made her way towards the confessionals.

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned." Jamie, older but definitely not any wiser, sat in the confessional with thinned lips and sweat lining her brow. She could remember as a child shakily making her way into these boxes that felt like a sweltering place of penance, a place where, no matter what she said, she would be faced with the same hell she always faced. Begging for forgiveness. "It's been about 3,650 days since I last confessed. For which, I am terribly regretful."

She could hear the Father shift, as if he was preparing himself for whatever she'd done. She always found the Priests themselves so nerve racking to follow, to listen to. They moved so elegantly and with little emotion as if they'd seen it all and lived through it all. This one in particular had been a man she hadn't encountered, perhaps he was one of the poor souls that was condemned to listen to her sorrows "Are you here to request penance, daughter?"

That was another factor of following a religion that she had a vivid distaste for. Daughter. Everyone was supposed to be like family with one another– Daughter, Sister, Father. Jamie knew the whole point of religion was to give people something to grasp onto, to have faith that there was nothing once they died. She continued to grasp onto the strands of her last will to believe her father might actually be out there. Spirit, not body. That meant putting up with the Daughter, something that only her mother and father should've been able to label her as.

"I'm not sure, Father." Jamie mumbled, looking at her hands that fumbled against one another on her pant leg. Twenty-one years old and she was still afraid to speak her truth. She felt suddenly like a nine-year-old, her plaid skirt ruffled as she picked at it, admitting to stealing the last cookie her mother backed the night before. "May I confess and...you can tell me?"

"Go on."

Jamie drew in a breath, her cheeks flushed as she recalled everything she'd prepared to say. "I've been...lustful."

As a child they like to drill into your head the Seven Deadly Sins: Pride, Greed, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath, Sloth, and Pride. She had always feared those, picturing devilish figures looming with strings attached to various limbs as if they were a puppet being controlled. However, what happened the two nights prior had been of her own volition. She hated the flutter in her chest at the thought of it all, the giddy smile she had painted on her face until the next morning. Jamie was good. She understood what each sin meant, she had avoided every possibility of her enraging whatever God was out there any more than she already had. Yet, somehow in the mixture of drinks and laughter, she ended up falling hard against the fiery grounds of sinful lust.

To understand her panic, you have to know that she never really planned anything that happened on New Year's Eve. Jamie usually sent her mother a phone call, telling her happy new year before divulging herself into the darkness of the night. 

This New Year's, 1990, she found herself in new territory. 

Derek had a new girlfriend. She was tall, beautiful, a red heard whose personality was as aflame as her hair. Addison (who had given Jamie a strained smile and insisted on calling her Addie) wanted to take this chance to introduce herself to her boyfriend's family and establish dynamics. None of that information really matters, she's just setting up a very important scene. (It should be made known that Jamie believed, wholeheartedly, that Addison Forbes-Montgomery was a bitch.) By the end of the night, and the bottom of her tenth glass, she had found herself in a mess of blankets and limbs with the man she had openly disliked for a majority of her life.

She wasn't sure exactly what time they had stumbled from the living room to her room, but she was pretty sure it had to be around 10 pm. Their conversations had been fond the whole night, devilish smirks over the rim of scotch, dainty fingers swatting at his arm after a poorly timed joke. Jamie thought it was just some playful banter, some that made her feel lightheaded with giddiness. Suddenly it had gotten so intimate, and next her wall shook as he pressed her up against it. It wasn't as if she were planning to be shadowed by the figure of Mark Sloan or to even have his lips against her own but this was the natural progression of things. They wouldn't be interrupted due to the chatter and soft cheers of everyone in the living room. As she gently led them to the bed and loomed over him while his fingers gently wrapped around her neck, she briefly recalled how they'd both been through the same ropes. Forced into the same old teachings from the same old priests, they knew what this all meant but they didn't care or the alcohol in their system was fogging their minds and leaving their names weightless. It would result in a purgatory that both of them were locked inside for the rest of time.

Jamie always wondered if the rumors about him were true. If he could send a woman into nirvana with just a touch. When they were just teens, she thought it would be a scandal to even remotely think about her brother's best friend, let alone like that.

He really knows how to kiss a girl breathless! One of Jamie's friends– Samantha Riley– had proclaimed one sleepover, her eyes closed and a smile graced her lips as she fell against the sea of blankets. Jamie's face was scrunched, disgust filling her over the thought of the boy in the next room. He speaks so sweetly.

(Him and Samantha hadn't even spoken after that. That had sent Samantha into quite the fit and she avoided going to Jamie's for three months.)

She hated everything about him. But at the same time, blinded by teenage innocence, she wanted to know what the fuss was about. He was only a year older than her but he acted as if there were several, almost treating her as if she had the mind of a child and not sixteen. The one time he even expressed any type of emotion that wasn't smug pride had been the prom. One of which he had danced with her, spoke softly, and at the end of the night, they shared a kiss on her porch. He told her goodnight and she had an inkling of hope that maybe she wasn't being foolish–

Oh, but she definitely was. He showed up in her room the next day, saying that they couldn't talk about the kiss or anything related because things between him and Samantha were serious. Jamie didn't even know what that meant until Samantha Riley called her with excitement in her tone and said they were dating again. So she kept his secret for the sake of Samantha and her friendship.

New Year's felt like they were conjuring everything back into existence. All that was, a bunch of talk over assignments he'd never do, her pretending she was interested in helping him with math when she really just wanted to admit her school girl crush. Four years later and she was thanking God for whatever it was he did to lead her to this moment.

"James?" He asked lowly, eyes shadowed by the moonlight peeking through the blinds.

There was a pause in their movement, her head tilted and she was suddenly aware that she had lost her shirt. His fingers trailed from her neck to her jaw. She'd seen such varying hues of blue, but there was something so liberating about the Med student's shade reflecting the moonlight, exposing the sky and the specks of an identifiable color she couldn't place– a possible white added to the light. For a man so corrupted to the very core of his being, his eyes had an innocence that even Jamie herself could touch and believe. She felt herself take a moment to truly look at him and really soak in the expression he wore.

His touch was soft as he traced the small scars of her jaw line, his other cupped her bare hip. He hesitated in proceeding with the already mess of clothes strewn across the room and skin against skin.

"For now, just...do it for me." His voice was strained as she shifted.

Jamie wasn't sure what it was but her heart briefly ached at the implication. It'd only be tonight and nothing would matter. Take it all for him. Take everything that ruined him and turn it into something that he could capture. He could cherish and hold true to himself. She believed this is where she'd briefly become aware of what they were doing. James Shepherd was holding onto Mark Sloan as if her very life depended on it. In no way could she explain how, briefly, she felt as though they were out of place. 

She drew in a breath and clasped the fingers that traced her skin, smiling softly. "I'm here, Mark. I will be."

 Then it all happened and she had felt, for two hours, blessed.

"I let my need for someone to be there and to tell me what to...to...and I really just ruined it all, Father." Jamie finally decided to word this carefully. She spared the shadow beside her a glance, seeing him shift but there was no indication of his judgment. There was no way to know what he was thinking. That's what scared her most about priest-- they could judge so silently that it pulled her soul from her body and left her bare. "I don't think it's a sin but more of a betrayal of my brother's trust. Of course, lust is a very serious sin. I-I know that, I'm not saying it's not serious–"

"I understand." His voice was very weathered and, briefly, he sounded amused. "Betrayal is one of the heaviest guilts someone can carry. Betrayal of trust, of friendship, love, sisterly betrayal of a brother. They all consume us no matter the context. How did you betray your brother?"

Jamie's lip wobbled and she took a deep breath. "I slept with his best friend." There was a brief silence that she did not like at all. The patterns of saints lining the entrance of the confessional, staring her down as if they understood exactly what she had done. Saint Mary seemed to have the heaviest of glares, as if mocking her for failing-- not only feminism-- her brother in warning her against his friends. "He's a...he's very smug. I hate him– well, not hate him, of course but I, uh... I think I'm one of those people that need someone and he was there. He was sweet and it all just...I enjoyed it but I know Derek didn't want us involved with anyone especially Mark. I can't be blamed entirely, right? It's not like we're in the 17th century where I need a blessing to even look in a man's direction, let alone sleep with him. It didn't mean anything either! I-I just needed that moment of release. Which was very nice, by the way. Very...very nice."

There was more silence that Jamie had to look over to the window between them to see if he was still there. Her lips pressed together and her cheeks burned as she listened to the heavy sigh that the priest took and, ultimately, released. 

"Are you asking for forgiveness for doing something for yourself?"

Jamie blinked at the implication. "I-I'm saying that I've ignored what my brother told me–"

"How old are you, daughter?"

Jamie could never recall another instance where she had been asked her age. These things were supposed to be anonymous, and things like her age certainly had to be a violation of that, right? She would have to go to the library and search for some sort of holy sacraments--

"Twenty-one."

"Twenty-one years old." He hummed, she watched his head bob up and down. "Are you pursuing a career currently?"

"Erm... no, my mother has my little sister to take care of and a store so I put it off for now. To...y'know, help around with the shop and Amelia. Gosh, Amelia can be such a--"

"Twenty-one, working with your mother, sleeping with your brother's best friend..." She thought he was about to go on about how she had so much ahead of her. (Which she did believe to some extent. She could achieve something more interesting than seeing how much bait she could sell to the Upper East Side before Sunday close.) "Who cares?"

She, in all her years of desperate absolution, had never heard that.

Jamie blinked several times before she moved her whole body to stare at the side of the priest who seemed to now be staring back. "Excuse me?"

The priest appeared to shrug. "You're young, you haven't had the opportunity to live completely, so you slept with your brother's best friend on New Year's Eve. My sister did worse at thirty-eight." Jamie looked down to her shoes to soak in the fact that this man, who spoke for God and accepted apologies for him, was almost encouraging Jamie's behavior. "Doesn't seem like a sin but more of a young woman acting like a young woman. Have fun, live life. You never know when it's going to end and you don't want to wonder what if. The Lord will forgive you,...?"

Jamie drew in a breath at the pause. "Jamie."

"He'll forgive you, Jamie." He chuckled softly. "Now, if we're talking about adultery, I may have more to say on that than this."

Jamie fell back against the back of the confessional and stared at the top. There was Jesus staring down on his cross, permanently in a state of verge of death. That's how she felt. Obviously she wasn't as glorious as Jesus and what he had done. The man was a carpenter while he managed to conjure up such a following that her whole life was based on his teachings. While Jamie's congregation was an old WWII vet that still believed he was in his prime, a crazy cat lady, and the young lady who came by every weekend to buy a bag full of worms. (Jamie had a conspiracy against though that she was reselling her worms... she's yet to be proven guilty.)

"Was he worth it?"

The question made her chest sink. Was he worth it? Was Mark Sloan worth the worry and sweat that came with sleeping with him? Jamie was not entirely sure and, just like a lot of other unnamed women in New York, she would never know the truth. 

So, she released a snort and rubbed her face. "He's pretty."

"Ah," He released a laugh and suddenly his posture straightened. "Would it ease your mind if I offered you absolution, Jamie?"

Would it? Did she really want forgiveness or did she just want someone who didn't know her to listen to her problems? Really it could be either or. She was terrified of Hell. No matter how many times she told herself that she'd be okay, she always came back to the nightmare of the afterlife. She so desperately wanted to run from the small box, to forget this interaction, and feel relieved that someone knew and they didn't think she was terrible. Absolution? Did she want the weight of it all to bury her until she could no longer breath? Jamie pressed her hands against her face and folded within herself. 

There'd been an explosion of light that had briefly blinded her as she fell against him. Her cheek rested against his chest and she listened to the rapid heartbeat. Jamie wondered just how fast it could hammer in his chest before she became afraid that it'd suddenly break. She felt his fingers rest in her hair and they both listened to the cheers of New York as the ball dropped. A glamorized city celebrating a new year while two very idiotic people came down from euphoria.  

She suddenly started to laugh, closing her eyes. Jamie could almost feel the way his chest sunk with confusion. "Happy New Year, Sloan." She pulled back to stare at him, his blue eyes wide with wonder as she grinned. "Who thought you would enter 1991 with little old me, hm?"

He looked amused while the only emotion Jamie could feel was embarrassment. She sounded so terribly childish that she wanted to die. To just roll over, close her eyes, and die. Sure, the man next to her would be traumatized and forced into therapy-- but, hey! Give the med student a little practice with dead people (she'd already had her fill.)

Mark pushed some of her hair away and rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I never imagined I'd been in here... with you." He muttered.

Jamie frowned, raising her eyebrows as she pushed his hand away. "What, you were going to screw someone else in my room?" She laughed.

It should be noted, Mark did not laugh. 

Jamie grimaced in disgust and pushed herself off of him, huffing while Mark chuckled and caught her hand. She blinked and met his eyes, her brows raised at the sudden form of physical affection. He seemed to hesitate, almost like he was going to say something. Instead he gave her a smirk, tucking some of her hair back. "Hey, this is a pretty good alternative!"

When she woke up the next day, she was alone but she was in high spirits. She was hopeful that everything was going to brighten up. However, by the third day, she began to realize maybe Mark just wasn't jumping at the opportunity to be with her. He did, after all, leave her with a note stating that he had fun and they should speak again soon.

When Jamie realized she didn't even have his phone number, she realized that all of this was moving slowly. Actually, it didn't move at all. Then the guilt set in an--

That's how she ended up listening to a very upbeat priest. 

"May the almighty and merciful Lord grant you indulgence, absolution, and remission of your sins. Amen."

Jamie blinked away her tears. "Amen."

AUTHOR'S NOTE. . .

sorry for the lack of updates it's been Wild seeing as i graduate monday

anyway see you next saturday x

( rewritten: 3.14.22 )