“When do you fly out?”
He must’ve been feeling a similar weight to what I had, the sense that something was coming to an end. Maybe it was just that typical Sunday-evening vibe as one week closed andanother one started, but we’d both been quiet on the three-hour drive back to the other coast.
“Well, I’ll need to work out the passport thing,” I said.
“I can still drive you in,” he said. “If you want.”
It felt like a roundabout way to ask if I would spend the night at his place. Or maybe that was just the question I wanted to answer. “If it’s not too much trouble.”
“No,” he said. “Definitely not.”
There was a low fog that hid the line of water from view until we finally stepped out onto the rocky beach and headed toward it. The rocks crunched beneath my feet, and I could feel them poking through the thin soles of my flats, so I had to step carefully to make sure I didn’t hurt myself. Eamonn took his hand out of his pocket to hover briefly at my elbow, like he was going to steady me, before he put his hands back in his pockets again. Now that he was wearing his work pants and the matching jacket, it really did make him look like a mechanic, all suited up and ready to go.
I wanted to ask him more about the man who’d given him the apprenticeship before he went to prison and then still felt kindly enough toward him to write a character reference, get him a job when he got out. I wanted to know how the man who’d taught him to be mechanically inclined in the first place, the one who’d probably shown him how to fix a faulty boiler and troubleshoot other problems around a house, could just up and leave one day and start another family without looking back.
“Do you come out here often?” I asked instead.
“Not as much as I should,” he said. “I forget how pretty thewater is, every single time, and then when I see it again it hits me all at once. It’s overwhelming.”
I glanced at him, expecting to see him staring out at the sea like I had been, but he was looking at me. We’d inched nearer to the sandy shore, the waterline dangerously close to the edge of our shoes. Eamonn would be fine with those big old boots of his, but if my flats got wet they’d be miserable to walk in. I kicked them off, leaving them on the dry part of the sand.
“I’m going in,” I said.
“It’ll be cold.”
“I know,” I said. “I can handle it.”
Turned out, I could just barely handle it, because the water wasfreezing. I gave a shocked yelp the minute it washed over my bare feet, turning back to look at Eamonn with what I was sure was aholy fuckexpression because that was all my face could do. He laughed, giving a head shake that I could read clear as day.Told you so.
“You should come in,” I called.
“I’m grand, thanks.”
That accent, the way he dropped thehfrom the word. I still loved it, but it was shocking how quickly I felt like I’d gotten used to it, how much less I thought of him asintriguing, hot Irish guyand more as simplyEamonn. He was watching me in the water, an indulgent smile playing around his mouth, and I thought,I could love this man.
That was as close as I allowed myself to get to that type of thought. I was still very conscious of the fact that this might not even bereal, although it felt impossible that it wasn’t, withthe sting of frigid water swirling around my ankles, the wind blowing my hair across my face. I’d known Eamonn for a little over a day, maybe I didn’t know him at all. I knew what Ifeltbut I also knew that you couldn’t always trust your feelings.
“All right,” he said, “you proved your point. You’re more badass than me. Can you get out of there now, before you catch your death?”
My teeth had started chattering. I stepped out of the water, making my way carefully back up the rocky shore to Eamonn, trying to avoid any sharp bits poking up out of the ground. I eyed my shoes, but my feet were still wet so I didn’t exactly want to slide them back in there.
“I really didn’t think this through,” I said, laughing. “Worth it, though. Now I can always say that I stood in the Irish Sea.”
Eamonn shrugged out of his jacket. “Hold on to me,” he said gruffly, and before I knew what he was going to do, he’d bent down to dry off my feet with the soft fleece lining of the jacket. His warm hand encircled my ankle, lifting my foot slightly to rub the cloth over my heel, making sure everything was completely dry before he slid that shoe back over my foot. Then he started in on my other foot and I had to clutch his shoulders, trying not to lose my balance.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said.
“I don’t want you to be cold.”
Maybe it was because of my own fanciful thoughts only a moment before, but those words suddenly felt very close toI could love you, too. They felt likeI will always be gentle with you, which had been rattling around my head ever since he’d said it. But I had to get a grip on myself, because this wasalmost a scarier way to lose touch with reality than it had been to wake up in Ireland in the first place.
Almost.
“You never met outerwear you couldn’t just use like a rag, huh?” I said, trying to turn the moment back into something light.
Eamonn huffed a laugh. “Yeah,” he said. “Hazard of the trade, I suppose. Bad habit. I figure that’s what the washing machine is for.”
He pressed his thumb along my arch, not even bothering to use the jacket, before bringing my other shoe closer so I could slide my foot into it. I thanked him as he stood back up, but it was hard to make direct eye contact, like we’d just been doing something way more salacious on a public beach than him drying off my feet. My toes were still tingling but not from the cold.
