Get dressed in a hurry and take the cab

I put the driver on speaker, telling him I’d be downstairs in two minutes, while putting on a somewhat thicker blouse. I ran down to the cab, and knew then for sure that I would be on time.

After fifteen minutes of ride, I realized I had not put on a bra while changing outfit. I had been absorbed by an endless scroll of awful global news, and had not been moving enough to notice until then. What the fuck! No bra at a fucking funeral? If anyone saw, I would look like I didn’t care for what had happened. Fuck! Too late now. I just had to hope that it wouldn’t be noticed, that my nipples shape wouldn’t show through the blouse.

A last-mile traffic jam stressed me out a bit, but I ended up being five minutes early. I found a few old colleagues already waiting in the hall of the cremating room. We greeted each other politely, as if someone’s **** had made us stuck up. Only one of my male colleagues took a peek at my breasts - much fewer than I was used to, but enough so as to make me feel self-conscious of my nipples. My old boss, the CEO, showed up after me, and I thought his behavior was much more open and positive than ours. If he wasn’t feeling guilty, why should I?

Gabriel, who I used to be closed to, arrived barely a minute before the doors would open. I stood up straight and greeted him with a large smile - at least as large as felt appropriate during the circumstances. He gave me a kiss on the cheek, speaking softly. He always had a perfectly measured behavior no matter the context. Blending in, not making the slightest wave. Still, I had been relying on him a lot when we were colleagues, and I had discovered that behind his stoic attitude sometimes lied anger or sadness, and that not speaking much meant he listened well. He cared a lot about being fair, just, and had a tendency to romanticism - in the literary sense.

A priest came up from behind us to open the door. The ceremony took five minutes, with only the priest speaking for Walter. It did feel like **** was surrounding us. The cold, the silence, the echo of the room. I felt nauseous. I remembered the one time Walter had left his phone unlocked on the table at the bar, like a dare for us to see him take. We had been teasing him on his **** standards in every matter, among which the fact that he never went anywhere without his phone in his pocket. After the tenth beer, he had gone to the toilets leaving it with us at the table. I had stopped the others from going through his browsing history or his pictures. All we did was take a few selfies of our dumb, blackout-drunk faces. I also did register my fingerprint as a way to unlock the phone. In between the echoes of the priest’s voice, I wondered if anyone remembered anything of that night.

At the end of the ceremony, we all came out of the room silently. I went to the toilets while the others were leaving the building. I tried taping a piece of toilet paper in front of my nipples and check if it helped with see-through. I thought it did, a bit. I suddenly felt more confident.

When I went outside, I felt the ambience had gotten more laid back. Some of them were chatting about how their lives were. Most of them had left the company too, and hadn’t been in touch with all the others. I felt obliged to talk to a few people, just to avoid being the first one leaving under their judging stares.

After ten minutes, two of them had left. Then it’s OK for me to go too, I guess. Coleen stopped me right before.

“I had some of the others agree to have dinner together” she said. “At Uragiri Mono, like we used to.”

Fuck no, I don’t want more time feeling guilty with you guys.

“It’ll only be next week-end” she continued, “cause Maya felt it was a bit early after today, and Gabriel is busy this Friday.

{Shame} +2