“I think so.”
It was a large bathroom, with the floor and walls both patterned in hexagonal white tiles, a low cupboard next to the door. There was a single shelf on the sink counter that held various items he must use in his routines—aftershave, hand lotion, mouthwash, a texturizing hair product that told me he must’ve had longer hair at some point and had either styled it or at least thought about it. There was a utilitarian bottle of hand soap next to the sink, but then a giant bottle of some kind of heavy-duty pumice lotion next to that which promised to cut through grease and leave your hands silky smooth. Besidethat was a hard-bristled brush made for scrubbing. I thought of his hands, calloused, a little rough, but gentle. They were careful, deliberate hands. They could also be urgent, desperate, and I liked that version all the more for the contrast.
“There should be a little hot water left,” Eamonn said, crossing over to the shower to turn the water on, holding his hand under the spray while he presumably waited for it to heat up. “I can’t promise how hot, or how long it will last.”
“I’ll make it work,” I said.
“All right, well, let me bring you a towel and something to wear.”
“You’ve been dressing me in your clothes all weekend,” I said, thinking of the jacket, the sweater.
“Oh, I know,” he said. “It has been incredibly on purpose.”
He was still testing the water, not looking at me, and in the dim light I couldn’t get a read on his expression.
“Well, yeah. It was cold.”
Whatever temperature the water was now, he seemed satisfied, because he shook out his wet fingers, wiping them on his bare stomach.
He crossed over to me, sliding the sweater I was wearing like a dress up around my thighs, his fingers brushing against my hips. “I also like to see you wearing my clothes,” he said. “It really does something to me. Me giving you that jacket was ninety percentshe’s coldand ten percentshe’s mine, and please don’t interrogate me about those percentages.”
All I wanted to do was interrogate him about those percentages. “And this sweater?”
He squinted one eye, like he had to actually calculate it. “Let’s call that ninety-ten in the other direction.”
“I’m going to keep it.”
“You can have it,” he said, gently urging my arms up so he could lift the sweater over my head. “But for now, you don’t want to waste that hot water.”
He cupped my ass in one hand, his fingers curled under where one cheek curved into the top of my leg, and pulled me in for a kiss. I thought maybe he meant to join me in the shower—an idea I wasn’t opposed to, even though my original thinking had truly been that I could use a quick refresh—but he just gave me a smile as he folded the sweater and put it on top of the cupboard. “Anything you need to use, it’s yours.”
I took Eamonn up on that offer, borrowing a razor from a package I found in a drawer, using his 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioner in the shower that I would’ve laughed at as being such a typicalmanitem to have except…well, it wasn’t like Eamonn had a ton of hair. For efficiency’s sake, it probably made the most sense.
His bar soap had some kind of exfoliating grit to it, and it did smell like pine. I knew I’d smelled that on him. The scent made me a little weak in the knees, which was ridiculous—probably it was more that I’d been doing a lot of walking, had been in a car for three hours, had just let Eamonn fuck me against a door.
I leaned against the shower wall, letting the warm water wash over me. That last thought wasn’t helping my wobbly legs. I didn’t want him to think I was normally that…impetuous.Irresponsible. I was on birth control, I’d recently been tested, but it definitely wasn’t like me to have sex with someone that quickly, much less unprotected sex, much less sex without a conversation about all those kinds of things first.
Does it help if I’m in a coma dream?I thought, then had to laugh, water streaming into my mouth as I tilted my head back to finish rinsing out my hair. Fuck, if you couldn’t get railed against a door in a coma dream, when could you?
The water had become tepid by the time I turned it off, which I hoped was a testament to how little hot water there’d been to start with and not a sign that I’d really overstayed my welcome in Eamonn’s shower. When I stepped out onto the tightly knotted bath mat, I saw that he must’ve dipped in at one point, leaving a towel and some clothes piled neatly on the bathroom counter, my toothbrush and paste and deodorant we’d bought back at the pharmacy sitting next to them.
The clothes were a pair of drawstring sweat shorts and a faded, slightly stretched-out black T-shirt that saidThe Pogueswith a skull and crossbones in cracked screen print, and then under thatThe Boys from the County Hell. He’d also put my old clothes on top of the sweater on the washer, my dress and underwear and even the string that had once been the bow, coiled up on top of the pile. I quickly plaited my hair into a loose braid, not wanting to drip everywhere, doubling up the string and using it to tie it all up.
When I finally emerged from the bathroom, I padded back out to the kitchen. Eamonn must’ve found more candles, because the lighting was still subdued but much brighter than before. There was a fire going in the fireplace, somethingcooking on the stove, and he was standing shirtless over by the counter, glasses on, flipping through some mail.
I leaned against the wall. “You wear glasses?”
He glanced up. “Just for reading,” he said, taking them off to set them down on top of the stack of envelopes. His gaze traveled over me, from the messy braid to my braless state under his T-shirt to my bare legs and feet.
If he kept looking at me like that, I might do something outrageous like try to climb him like a tree again, so instead I glanced around his apartment, taking everything in. It was a small place, but cozy. The kitchen and living area were practically one room, separated by a table with a couple chairs that Eamonn had already set with some plates, a candle in the middle. The kitchen had cabinets painted a dusky sage green and a pantry set in one wall open with no door at all, revealing shelves of cans and other packaged foods.
He’d already set the clock from his childhood home on top of the mantel above the fire. He must’ve gone out to the car to retrieve all our stuff while I was in the shower. I crossed over to it, running my fingers over its face, hearing the subtle ticking sound that told me he must’ve found batteries for it. It was almost eight o’clock at night. Strange, to suddenly be reminded of time again.
There was a bookshelf stuffed with books, not just lined up by spine but also stacked in front, wedged in any open space above a row. I remembered what he’d said about keeping all his personal books upstairs, how the ones in the shop were just free books for anyone to take. I stood in front of the shelf, tilting my head to take in all the titles. He was a big Octavia E.Butler fan, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia, if the collections of those two authors were anything to go by. He had copies of some of the books we’d talked about while walking around Dublin, including ones by Oscar Wilde, Tana French, Claire Keegan. I ran my finger along one particularly cracked spine of a book he must’ve read a lot.
“That one’s the reason I need glasses,” he said.
“Atonement?”
