"Morning," he said. To the room. To everyone.
His eyes landed on mine for exactly the length of a normal glance , friendly, easy, the same as always , and moved on.
"Morning," I said. To my phone.
Kieran immediately launched into something about the loss, about their winger, about the seam in the coverage that I had already identified at two in the morning, and the table moved into its rhythm, and I answered the questions I was asked and made the points I needed to make and functioned at a completely professional level.
Shay laughed at something Mivo said , the real laugh, sudden and bright , and I turned a page on my phone.
He was fine.
He was so convincingly, completely fine that I spent the next twenty minutes conducting a quiet and involuntary study of it , the ease of his shoulders, the warmth in his voice, the way he reached over and stole a piece of Kieran's toast without asking and Kieran pointed at him and he pointed back and neither of them stopped talking. He was entirely himself. Loud and warm and present and giving nothing away.
And I thought: this is costing him something.
I knew Shay O'Brien. I knew every version of his silence and every frequency of his loud and I knew, with the certainty of four years of close attention, that this particular ease , this specific, calibrated, pitch,perfect fine , was the performance. The thing underneath it I had seen last night, raw and real in the amber light.
He was protecting me.
The realization landed quietly, without drama, and did significantly more damage than the sleepless night.
I looked at my coffee.
He was fine so I could be fine. He had kissed me and I had said we can't with my hands in his shirt and he had woken up anddecided to give me room, and he was doing it by being so exactly himself that I had almost believed it.
Almost.
Chapter Six
Shay
I was fine.
I was magnificently, comprehensively, structurally fine. I had woken up in the hotel room with the city light still coming through the curtains and Felix's bed already empty , because of course it was, because Felix operated on a system and the system did not include lying in a hotel bed processing the previous twelve hours , and I had looked at the ceiling and I had assessed the situation and I had concluded: fine.
I was at breakfast. I was at the airport. I was on the plane. I was in a car. I was in my apartment, door closed, shoes still on, sitting on my couch with my keys still in my hand and my bag still by the door.
I was fine.
My phone said 4:47 PM.
I sent Charlie a voice message at 4:53.
It was ten minutes. I knew it was ten minutes because I could feel myself going , the thing I did when I was performing fine for everyone, including myself, and there was no one left to perform for and the quiet of the apartment had a specific quality that asked questions I hadn't prepared answers to. I talked. I talkedabout the bar and the walk and the hotel room and the amber strip of light and his hands , both of them, Charlie, both hands, fisted in my shirt , and the half,second of stillness before he kissed me back and what it felt like and the two words and the thing he hadn't said that I was absolutely, definitely not mapping for meaning.
I talked about the morning. The breakfast table. The way he'd set my coffee down across from his and sat with his phone and looked at me with a completely normal glance and said nothing and I'd said nothing and we'd both been so perfectly, killingly normal that Hartley had raised an eyebrow at me and I'd pointed at a pastry until he looked away.
I talked for ten minutes.
Then I sent a second message.
"Okay forget I said that."
My phone rang.
I looked at it. Charlie Drayton, the contact said, with the photo I'd taken of him at Mivo's birthday last season , the one where he was mid,laugh, mouth open, completely unsuspecting. I kept it because he hated it. This felt relevant right now.
I picked up.
