“Oh yeah, whereabouts? My nan is from Killarney.”
“You know, I can’t remember. I’m terrible with place names,” she said. Now his gaze shifted toward the star-studded sky.
“I’d swear his accent has been getting more and more Dublin as the night goes on.”
So, it wasn’t just her who’d noticed the accent shift. Damn. “Yeah, that happens when he’s had a few,” she said, then in a cod French accent, “Wot eez zees, ze accent inqueezition?”
He laughed, surprisingly loudly. “What was that?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, laughing too now. “I was going for French, but maybe German?”
Their eyes met in the low light, and the laughter lingered there.
“You going back in, then?” he asked.
“Not yet, bit talked out.”
“I’ll stop talking.”
“No, I meant in a crowd—all that small talk. It’s exhausting.”
“Talk only feels small when it lacks authenticity,” he said. She felt a prickle of recognition. The people she admired most, like Kiko and Valerie, were fiercely authentic. They didn’t chameleon who they were to fit different situations.
“Do you ever feel like you’re living in the wrong era?” she asked him.
“All the time,” he said plainly. “You remember what I used to be like.”
“I liked how you were,” she said, and he briefly closed his eyes, acknowledging the compliment. “I sometimes feel homesick for places I’ve read about in fiction. I know that’s ridiculous. To yearn for places you’ve never been, places that don’t even exist.”
She expected him to laugh at such a silly sentiment, but he didn’t, he looked like he understood.
“There’s a Welsh word you’d like: ‘hiraeth.’ A deep longing, homesickness for a home you can’t return to, perhaps a home that never was.”
She smiled. “That’s perfect. Can I keep it?”
“Yes,” he said, lifting his hand into the air, closing his fist around it, then passing it to her. “Here is my hiraeth.”
She pressed it to her heart.
He cleared his throat. “But we shouldn’t romanticize the past.”
“I spoke to Sean,” she said, the words slipping out too quickly, like she’d been waiting for someone to tell.
“Oh yes?” John asked, looking at her intently now.
“It was really awkward. I spend so much time looking back, thinking about who we were back then. But I’m not sure Sean thinks about it at all.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” John said. Their eyes met and he quickly looked around, turning to walk toward the bench at the corner of the quad. “Shall we sit?”
She followed him, but Richard climbed up onto the bench beside him before she could sit down. She laughed. “Richard, we’ve talked about this,” he said, pretending to be stern. “When there are other people around, you have to pretend you’re not a chair dog.” He snapped his fingers near the ground, and Richard got down. “Sorry. He thinks he’s human. It’s a problem.”
Chloe sat in the seat he’d vacated, her arm nudging against John’s on the small bench. She could feel the heat radiate off his body. “You were saying, about Sean,” he prompted.
“It’s weird, having a conversation with someone you used to know so well, and suddenly it feels like talking to a stranger.”
“People aren’t perfect communicators,” John said gently.“Sometimes they don’t know how to say what they mean, to say what matters.”
“You do. You always know what to say.” She said it without thinking, then realized it was true. John glanced sideways at her, a melancholy look in his eyes. He reached down to stroke Richard’s head.
