His lips twitched at my use of the wordeejit. “If anything, liking dogs improves a person. If anything, I’m braggin’ on myself.”
“Right, exactly.” I shook my head, figuring I had to explainsomeof this to Eamonn or he’d think I was talking complete nonsense. “Sorry, I was thinking back on something your brother said. I said I wastrash forsomething, and he didn’t like it that I was putting myself down or whatever. And I tried to explain to him, that’s not putting myself down, it’s just a figure of speech.”
I tried to think back on what I’d even said that had prompted Niall’s criticism, and I realized it had been because I’d been about to say I was trash for big families.In a roundabout way, I thought about telling Eamonn,I was trash foryou.
Eamonn didn’t respond for a long time. He continued to ruffle the dog’s fur around his neck, and there was something hypnotizing about it. By the time he spoke, I’d almost forgotten the thread of conversation in the first place.
“I know I can be self-deprecating,” he said. “I’m sure I don’t always even know when I’m doin’ it. I think it’s also a very Irish form of humor, which is why it’s interesting to me that Niall doesn’t like it. It doesn’t bother me if other people say stuff like that, especially when it’s clearly a joke. But it might get to me if I thought the person really meant it, that they saw themselves in a negative light that I didn’t think was true. If it was someone I cared about.”
This was deeper than I’d meant to get over theI’m trash forlinguistic construction, but I understood what he was saying. There was a difference between a little joke and an actual expression of low self-esteem, and sometimes the line between the two could get blurry, even in your own mind.
“Like I was surprised you called yourself plain, in response to the Becfola story,” he said. “When you’re so pretty.”
There was something to the simplicity in the way he said that. Even the word choice—so pretty. That suddenly felt like the highest compliment, to be called pretty. Like we were both teenagers on the cusp of our first kiss, and those were the only words he could think of.
Which was ridiculous. We weren’t teenagers, and we weren’t on the cusp of anything. My hair fell over my cheek and I resisted the urge to tuck it behind my ear, wanting to hide behind it instead. “I wasn’t fishing,” I said. “I guess that’s another problem with self-deprecation sometimes—it can make people feel pressured to say something nice about you.”
“If anything, that relieved some pressure,” he said. “I’ve been trying not to say it all day.”
He bent to bury his face in the top of the dog’s head, murmuring something I couldn’t catch. The tips of Eamonn’s ears were a little pink, and I didn’t think it was just the cold. He had nice ears. I wasn’t sure I’d ever noticed a man’s ears before, but his had a nice shape, and I wondered what he’d do if I bit down on one earlobe, gently. If I pushed my fingers through his short hair, the same way he’d been petting the dog. What it would feel like to have him bury his face in me like that.
“That might be where Niall was coming from, is what I’m saying,” Eamonn said finally, and my mind had wandered so far away from anything to do with his brother that I had to call it back with a jolt. “I know he can be a little…uptight. If memory serves. So he might’ve taken it too seriously, hearing you call yourself trash and wanting to let you know that he didn’t see you that way. Knowing Niall, it may have come out wrong.”
With your brother,everythingcomes out wrong, I wanted tosay. But there was never a good time to reveal that you knew full welluptightwas just a euphemism forbit of an asshole.
I reached over to scratch the dog behind the ears, which was partly about wanting to pet the dog, but probably more about wanting to have my hand closer to Eamonn’s.
“What about you?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Is there anyone in your life you wouldn’t let call themselvestrash?” I asked, then rolled my eyes at myself. “Are you dating anyone. That’s what I’m getting at.”
“Oh,” Eamonn said. “No.”
I thought that was all he was going to say, but then he sat back on the bench, letting the leash go slack in his hand. The dog had settled since we’d first brought him over here, and had lain down now at Eamonn’s feet, his big body covering both of Eamonn’s boots.
“I don’t really date,” Eamonn said.
I raised my eyebrows. “Like…ever?”
“I’ve dated,” he said, putting an emphasis on the last syllable. “But I don’t anymore.”
“Did you have your heart broken? Take a vow?” I knew I was venturing dangerously close tonone of my business, but he’d said it with such finality that I was dying to know what was behind it.
The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Nothing like that,” he said. “Nothing exciting. I just don’t have time. With work and everything.”
Admittedly, I had no idea what went into being a mechanic, how hard the job was or what the hours were. But any place I’dever taken my car had closed down by seven at the latest, and some places were closed on weekends. I thought back to what Eamonn had said about his days, how it was wake up, go to work, rinse and repeat. I thought he could make time for dating, if he really wanted to.
“When was your last relationship?”
He looked up toward the sky, like he had to think about that. “Three years ago? She was a nice girl. Even the way she broke up with me, she couldn’t have been nicer about it.”
I hated that I felt a pang of jealousy over that—why, because she was nice? Because she was the one who’d ended things? I had no right to any of those feelings, had no right to any of this information, really, and yet I couldn’t help myself. “Why did it end?”
He shrugged. “She didn’t see her future when she looked at me.”
“Did you see yours, with her?”
