I was thinking about Eamonn’s dog again, about the fact that there was a deadline on our time together. I didn’t want him to think I couldn’t handle myself without him, even though truthfully I was terrified to be without him. He was the only thing keeping me from absolutely freaking out.
“What do you read?”
Whether Eamonn was a James Joyce fan or not, the very fact that he’d taken me to a site from such a classic novel told me that I probably shouldn’t sayromanceif I didn’t want to deal with any potential dismissive reaction. So instead I just shrugged and said,Oh, whatever, which made it sound like I’dbeen lying, like I’d never picked up a book in my life. I thought back to all those books I’d seen in the waiting area of Eamonn’s garage—god, it felt so long ago, and it had only been earlier that morning.
“Do you like to read?” I asked.
Now it was Eamonn’s turn to shrug. “Yeah,” he said. “Sometimes.”
It was funny that we were both so reluctant to talk about this. It should’ve been a shared point of connection, something we had in common, and yet we both obviously had our reasons for not wanting to get into it. I knew what mine were. I wondered about his.
In the distance, there were strains of another song I recognized, something other than “Riptide.” Ahead of us, a mother was pushing a stroller and walking with her toddler hand in hand. A raggedy stuffed monkey hung halfway out of the stroller, jostling with every bump on the stone street, until eventually it fell onto the ground as the mother and child walked on, oblivious. Eamonn scooped it up as we passed, picking up his pace a little to hand it to the woman, who accepted it with a grateful smile.
“My sister Claire had a toy like that,” he said once we’d joined back up.
“A stuffed monkey?”
“Hers was a bear,” he said. “But one of those where she wore it out with how much she carried it around all the time. Poor thing had no neck to it, she’d squeezed out all the stuffing. Clairebear, we used to call her.”
By now I could recognize the song I’d been hearing. Wecame upon a young woman dressed in head-to-toe black—black leggings, black sweatshirt, black beanie—playing her violin in the street. It was a song by the Cranberries. I could hear the vocals in my head, the surging way she sang the wordless notes toward the end, even though now it was just a single violin playing the melody. My eyes felt suddenly prickly and hot, and I turned and kept walking even as Eamonn lingered for another second before catching up.
“Your sister, or the bear?” I asked.
“Sorry?”
It felt silly that thirty seconds of a familiar song could get to me like that.Oh, my life is changin’ every day…It was a song about possibility, it was a song that always made mewantthings, in the exact way I’d told Mari I just couldn’t let myself do anymore. It was a song that made me feel like dreams could come true, like they did all the time. Wasn’t it the most seemingly mundane things that could be miracles? The difference between a child losing a beloved toy and having it tucked next to them in bed that night could be as simple as a stranger picking it up.
It felt too bittersweet, hearing that song right now, in these unusual circumstances. It made my chest hurt, like I was holding my breath. It made it hard to even speak.
Luckily, Eamonn seemed to figure out what I was asking before I had to say it again.
“My sister,” he said. “That’s what we used to call her. Still do, maybe.”
Thatmaybesaid more than he probably realized. It made sense that he wouldn’t be as close with Niall, who was all theway across the Atlantic and—at least in my opinion—also a complete jerk. But I wondered at these glimpses into the disconnect between him and the rest of his family, too. I was trying to think of how to phrase a follow-up question that wouldn’t feel too invasive when Eamonn directed my attention to a big curved building on the corner.
“That’s the shopping center,” he said. “If you wanted to browse around more. And then St Stephen’s Green is right over there.”
The building was huge, covered in glass and iron framework, green planters lining the front windows. But then beyond the street was the stone archway leading into the park, and I remembered that Eamonn had mentioned getting us to a more open place. He’d said that for my benefit, like he was assuring me that there were less busy spots to go, but it occurred to me thathewas the one who really didn’t like the crowds. I thought about how he’d described his typical day—boring, he’d said, wake up and go to work—and I wondered if he came into the city much at all, never mind the touristy areas.
“Let’s do the park,” I said.
There were no cars coming, although there was a modern-looking tram that was already disappearing around the corner. We went ahead and crossed the street, passing through a whole group of pigeons I expected to fly away as we got closer but who never budged. There was an old man standing in the middle of them, his eyes closed, two pigeons perched on his forearms to eat feed from his cupped hands.
Eamonn must’ve noticed that I’d been bracing myself fortheir mass exodus, because he grinned at me, boyish and easy. “They’re used to people.”
We walked under the stone arch onto the path surrounded by plots of green grass and tall, scraggly trees. Yellow and white daffodils dotted the landscape on either side of the path as we headed into the park.
“It’s really beautiful when all the flowers come out,” Eamonn said. “We’re early for it.”
“It’s beautiful now,” I said.
Eleven
There was music everywhere, becausewe’d walked a bit when we heard a full choir performing “Come On Eileen” from a bandstand in the middle of the park. People on picnic blankets dotted the grass, sitting cross-legged or leaned back on their hands or sprawled out, and a group of three teenage girls linked arms and started kick-dancing in time to the music before they fell out of formation, laughing. It was suddenly vitally important thatallof this be real—not just Eamonn but the man with the pigeons and those girls and this amateur choir exuberantly performing pop covers on a Saturday afternoon.
I thought back to that violinist playing “Dreams,” and then back to what I’d told Mari after that disastrous date, about how I didn’t want to want things anymore. That wasn’t true. It hurt, craving something so badly, especially when you didn’t know if you’d ever get it. But I didn’t want to be scared of that hurt.Like even now, strolling down the path with Eamonn, the sudden urge to hold on to his arm, to link my fingers through his and squeeze, to lean my cheek against his shoulder like we were any other romantic couple in the park on a beautiful day…the wanting of it pulsed like an actual pain, somewhere inside my chest. But it was nice, that ache. It felt like a song.
Eventually we reached a lake, brownish-green with the reflection of a much brighter green tree that had all its leaves already. There really wasn’t any barrier between us and the water—just the edge of the path we were on, and then right beyond the lip of it, the lake. I had a sudden vision of stepping off into the water, submerging myself up over my head. When I came back to the surface, maybe I’d be in my old life. And all that would be left of me here would be a few ripples, like the ones that bloomed out from beneath the birds floating on top of the water, briefly disturbing the lake until they disappeared and it became mirrored glass again.
