Did that mean that if I hadn’t felt it, I’d never feel it? Not in the same all-consuming way?
We were definitely closer to the city now. I couldn’t help but lean into the glass window, almost pressing my nose to it as I tried to take in everything passing us by. There were rows of Georgian town houses with different-colored doors, the knobs in the center. A tall stone church on one corner had a banner outside advertising some upcoming festival, a reminder that even these buildings that looked so old were in daily use. When we took a turn I caught a glimpse of the most perfect camellia I’d maybe ever seen in person—vibrant red, its petals unfurled in soft folds I could imagine painting, layering color thick and wet and then sponging some of it away to create the velvety texture. And then we were heading down anotherstreet, and I missed my little flower the second it was out of sight.
I hated to admit it—god, Ihatedto admit it—but I could understand a bit more of what Niall had meant by hisIf you haven’t traveled, you haven’t livedcomment. I couldn’t deny that it was incredible, just seeing a city that looked so different from what you were used to, that you never knew you’d be able to see in real life.
Well. Or whatever passed as real life.
“It’s a roller,” Eamonn said, and I glanced back over at him to see him still focused on the road ahead.
The shortness in the way he spoke mixed with his accent—I swear, it took me a minute to figure out what he was saying sometimes. I couldn’t tell if he’d just uttered some obscene Irish word, if he’d been calling out some passing landmark, what.
“The window,” he said, then made a little circle gesture with his hand that was strangely endearing. “You can roll it down.”
When I just stared at him, he sighed, reaching over me. We were stopped at a light, but he only had a few seconds to start turning the crank for my window before traffic started moving again. I finished the job until I’d rolled the window all the way down.
It was too chilly for this, probably. And yet it was exactly what I’d wanted, and I didn’t know how he’d known that. I’d been hesitating less because I didn’t know how to work a manual window and more because I knew it didn’t really make any sense, this sudden urge to feel the air on my face. I curled myfingers over the top of the cold metal door as I leaned out a little.
This had to be real…right? The bite of wind at my cheeks, the way it shot right up my nose and cleared my head. The cacophony of sounds, honking cars and people talking on the sidewalks andlifehappening all around us.
“Careful,” he said, glancing over at me, but I didn’t know what he’d be cautioning me against. I wasn’t sticking that far out of the car. I was wrecking some of the lovely warmth that had built up from the car’s heater over the last half hour, the warmth from his own body that I’d felt in those few seconds he’d leaned in to roll my window down. But I didn’t care.
I looked back at Eamonn, reaching up to hook my finger in a strand of hair that had blown over my mouth. He tracked the movement before turning his attention back to the road.
“I think about it a lot, actually,” he said.
I gave him a quizzical smile, even though he wasn’t looking at me anymore. “What?”
He flicked the turn signal on with the pinkie of the same hand that was resting on the steering wheel. Already he seemed more at ease than he had before, like maybe he’d needed the fresh air, too.
“Time,” he said. “I think about it a lot.”
Seven
When we reached the embassy,Eamonn pulled up to the curb, the engine still running.
“Well,” he said. “Here you are.”
Of course he was just going to drop me off. He told me he’d give me a ride into the city, and that’s exactly what he’d done. My fingers fumbled a bit with my seat belt buckle, and on instinct I double-checked that I wasn’t leaving anything behind even though I hadn’t brought anything with me.
“Thank you again,” I said, leaning in through the open window after I’d closed the door behind me. I probably should’ve rolled it back up, as a courtesy, but I was getting that impression again off Eamonn, the one that said he’d appreciate it if I left him to his weird little car and his punk cassette tape and his drive back home.
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Yup.”
I gave him one last wave from the street as the car pulledaway, and it took all my strength not to run after it, not to say,Wait, don’t leave me here, you’re the only person I know. But I watched the red hatchback round the corner, and then I turned to head to the embassy.
Which was…closed.
Okay, so it was a Saturday. But surely places like this were meant for people exactly like me, who were in a foreign country and needed help? What if I needed help on a Saturday? Why couldn’t I conjure up a place that wasopen?
There was a sign posted with a number to call, but it already felt so defeating. I’d barely been able to imagine what I might say to someone in person, much less over the phone. Not to mention, I still didn’t have a phone to make any such call.
I started walking around the perimeter, telling myself that if I saw someone who looked friendly enough, I’d stop and ask. There was a family of four, a dad with a beard and two teenage kids and a mom who’d stopped to read something off her phone before they all headed in the opposite direction. There was a couple who seemed nice, one of them gesturing wildly with their hands while the other one threw back his head and laughed. They all looked so happy, sonormal, and I felt like I didn’t even know how to talk to people like that right now.
I’d never been one to believe in magic. Not since I was a kid, anyway. Back then, I read all the books about families of tiny people who lived in the walls, a girl who travels to the farthest-away mountain to break an old curse, a witch’s glass eye that causes trouble when buried in the yard. I’d even invented fantastical stories of my own, lying back in my bedlooking up at that rose-printed wallpaper in my room, imagining fairies that lived in the flowers and would come out when I wasn’t around.
But that was all children’s stuff. As an adult, I didn’t believe in fate or ghosts or miracles or anything like that. I certainly didn’t believe that it was possible to close your eyes in one place and wake back up in another.
The stone base to the fence wasn’t too high, so I stepped onto it, pulling myself up by the rungs so I could press myself against the fence. I hadn’t thought about those wallpaper fairies in some time—not since college, when I would take a break from the “serious” art I was trying to make to get my watercolors out and work on my little fairies at night in my room.
