“What color did you end up wearing?”
“Black,” he said. “I was a stubborn fuck. And I thought I’d go mad in that house, the way she had something to say about everything, the way she was always giving out to me about one thing or the other. I only saw it as love later—too late—when I realized all she ever wanted was for me to be safe and happy and good.”
Eamonn cleared his throat then, giving a little cough before taking a long swig of his bottled drink. It seemed more about putting himself back together than easing any thirst, and he took his time setting his hand back on the gearshift, automatically checking the rearview mirror.
“She visited me every week, though,” he said. “Until she got too sick. It came fast. She died my first year inside.”
I didn’t know what to say.I’m sorryseemed inadequate, when I’d already said it to him before when he’d told me abouthis mother. But I realizedthiswas the part that haunted Eamonn about his incarceration, not the details of what exactly he did or how he got caught.
For a while we just kept driving, the only sounds the steady hum of the tires and the music, too quiet now to make out most of the words, and a slight buzz that came from one of the vents until Eamonn switched off the heat.
“I was fortunate to only get three years,” he said. “Arson can get you life, depending on certain factors. There weren’t any people or buildings nearby, it was my first offense, and the fella who owned the garage we’d taken the car from wrote me a character letter for my sentencing.”
“That was nice of him.”
“You have no idea,” Eamonn said. The side of his mouth lifted in a smile, but even in the dark I could tell it wasn’t a real one. “Murphy was my old boss.”
I remembered what he’d said about how he’d landed a good apprenticeship out of school but blown it, and I felt like I understood more of the picture now. Eamonn had stolen a car from the place he’d worked, set it ablaze, andstillthe man had written a letter in support of him. That was beyond nice. It was practically saintly. But I thought it had to speak to something about Eamonn, too, that the man would feel inspired to do something like that.
“When I got out, jobs were hard to come by,” Eamonn said. “This might shock ya but a lot of people don’t want to hire criminals. You have a great interview, say yes sir and no sir in all the right places, but you fill out the forms and there’s that one question and then you never hear back. I worked two daysas a house painter until someone must’ve looked me up, and then they were real apologetic about it but said I wasn’t the right fit. Murph came through for me again—he was the one who knew a guy who knew a guy with a job at a garage with a flat above where I could live. So I worked there for several years until the owner decided to up and move, and he sold it to me on pretty decent terms. And that’s how I came to have the garage. It’s more than I deserve, I know that.”
I could argue that last point, but I could tell that Eamonn was already agitated from the turn the conversation had taken, was ready for a subject change. He’d gotten that restless set of his shoulders again.
“And your shop does what, general car repair stuff? Oil changes and tire rotations and new…engine parts, I’m sorry, for some reason I’m blanking. Carburetors? That’s a thing.”
This time his smile was more genuine. “That’s definitely a thing,” he said. “I’ll do all of it, but I’m not the fastest around, since it’s just me and a lad I have helping me out part-time. I do a lot with cars that are a little fussy, that need some babying. Like bringing this car here back to life. I’m probably not the one if you’re looking for an oil change in fifteen minutes on your way to work.”
The place I took my car promised it in five, although it felt like somewhat false advertising since the wait alone usually took up to twenty minutes. “You can’t do an oil change?” I said, deliberately misunderstanding him. “That seems like Mechanic 101.”
“Truly don’t know how they let me have a business license,” Eamonn said.
I thought back to the first time I’d met him, when he’d offered to take a look at my car even though his shop was closed and had no power. I thought about how he said work didn’t leave him much time to date. Somehow I knew without him needing to tell me that the fact that it was mostly just him at his shop, the fact that he lived above it…he let it take up most of his time, because he genuinely liked his job but also because then he didn’t have to open himself up to anything else.
“You’d have more time to date,” I said, “if you weren’t babying cars so much. Just saying.”
He rolled his head from side to side, likemaybe, but then he was biting back a grin like something about that was particularly funny.
“What?” I asked.
There was a truck in front of us going extra slowly on the single-lane road, so Eamonn checked the oncoming lane to make sure it was clear and then went around. He glanced over at me like he was checking that the move hadn’t freaked me out or made me feel unsafe, or maybe he was just gauging how I’d react to whatever he was about to say.
“Is it my turn to ask a question now?”
I’d thought we weren’t naming it, this game we were playing. But my last question had also been a big one, and something about the way he was setting this one up made me feel like it might be a doozy, too. I sat up straighter.
“Sure,” I said.
“Do you really think multiple orgasms are a myth?”
It took me a minute to remember the context, what I’d said back in the bookshop. I felt myself flush from my head to mytoes. “Not a myth necessarily,” I said. “Just a lot rarer than they seem to be in romance novels.”
Eamonn made a sound in the back of his throat, a kind ofhmmthat I couldn’t tell if it meanthmm, interestingorhmm, you must be broken. I found myself wanting to defend my position.
“I’ve never personally experienced it,” I said. “I don’t think. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had good sex—I’ve had lots of good sex, believe me.”
“I believe you,” he said.
I knew that I was entering the territory ofThe lady doth protest too much, that the way to make my claim convincing wasn’t to double down and keep insisting. If Eamonn had said that—I believe you—with any placating gentleness, I would’ve shut right down. But he just said it matter-of-factly, like he did in fact believe me.
