“I stayed up all night to read it,” he said. “The whole thing in one go. I couldn’t stop. By the end my eyes felt gritty and tired, the crying probably didn’t help, and days later they still didn’t feel right. So I went to the doctor and turns out, I needed glasses.”
I thought about how he’d seemed to skim over the back of that book in the bookshop so fast, how he’d never actually looked at a menu. The whole time, he just hadn’t had his readers on him. “I’m not an optometrist,” I said, “but I don’t think that’s how it works. I don’t thinkAtonementruined your eyes forever. You probably already needed glasses for a while.”
“No,” he said. “It wasAtonementspecifically. I almost never cry, can’t remember the last time I did it. I could bring a case against the author personally if I was litigious.”
“We all could,” I said. “For emotional distress. I only saw the movie, but I couldn’t take it. I can’t do stories where they fake you out and make you think people are in love and everything worked out in the end, only to find out that it was a dream or a story or a wish, and then the real ending is tragic. I also hate when they’re at their highest point, so happy, they’ve gotten everything they’ve been wanting the whole movie, andthen bam. Hit by a car. Oh, and I can’t do kids dying, or getting sick, or really anything bad happening to them. Also animals. Basically, if there’s anything tragic and unexpected in a movie I kind of want to know about it going in, so I can emotionally prepare.”
He glanced up from where he’d been stirring the pot at the stove, smiling at me. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
He said it like he’d have any reason to keep it in mind, like we had all the time in the world spooling ahead of us to watch movies together, to read books and talk about them, to get to know all of each other’s personal tastes and preferences and quirks. I liked the idea of that, even if I couldn’t stop the wave of sadness that suddenly overtook me. For all I knew,Iwas the person who thought she was happy, thought everything was working out, and somewhere I was lying in a hospital bed. I tried not to think about it because what would that do? But something about it being Sunday night, eight o’clock—these were some of the worst Sunday scaries I’d ever had.
I just had to stay grounded. I focused on the ambient warmth on my legs from the fire, the sight of Eamonn with no shirt on, his pants hanging lower on his hips without the belt, his bare feet. I focused on the smell of whatever he was stirring, something savory and tangy.
“What are you making?” I asked.
He set the spoon down on a folded-up towel on the kitchen counter. “Just some pasta,” he said. “I hope that’s okay. The cooker is gas, luckily, and I had all the ingredients on hand—canned tomatoes, basil, oregano, red pepper flakes. Are you allergic to any of those? I guess I should’ve asked before.”
“No, it sounds perfect.”
He wiped his hands on his pants, turning the heat down on the burner. “I’m going to take a quick shower, if you’d keep an eye on it? Just stir it once in a while, and when I get out I’ll put the noodles on.”
“No problem,” I said. “Although I didn’t leave you any hot water. I’m sorry.”
I’d come into the kitchen to peer down at the sauce I was going to be babysitting, and he put a hand at my hip while he reached past me to grab a potholder, setting it down on the counter next to me. “A cold shower will do me good,” he said, pressing a kiss to my temple. “Help me last through dinner.”
He gave my braid a gentle tug before heading up a spiral staircase that I assumed led to his bedroom. When he came back down a few minutes later with some fresh clothes in his hands, I knew I was right.
My apartment was all one level, so I tried to decide if his was bigger than mine or if it only seemed bigger because of the way it was laid out, the high ceiling created by having a lofted bedroom that left the rest of the living space open up top. There was no denying it had more charm—the fireplace, that winding staircase, the wall of exposed brick. In some ways, it was decorated to be fairly utilitarian. No throw pillows on the couch, not a ton of artwork on the walls. But there were homey touches, for all that. Mismatched mugs displayed on a shelf over in the corner of the kitchen that housed his kettle, a wire basket filled with a couple bags of different loose-leaf teas. Now that I was standing at the stove, I could see into an alcove that housed his washer and dryer, a basket on top of the dryerfilled with greasy rags, like he’d been about to put a load in to wash. There was a notepad stuck to the fridge with a partial grocery list scrawled on it—eggs, milk, pesto, fairy liquid, sun cream. I wondered what fairy liquid was. I also wondered how old the list was—sun creamsuggested it could be from back in the summer.
And right there in the pantry, a bowl of apples.I don’t even like ’em,he’d said, when he’d offered me his at the bus stop. It had stayed with me because I was trying to think if I’d ever known anyone tonotlike apples before.
I bit back a smile, giving the sauce a stir.
Thirty-One
It might’ve been the mostdelicious spaghetti I’d ever had. I recognized that it probably had less to do with the food itself—although the sauce was very good, the whole meal hot and hearty and satisfying. Eamonn had apologized for not having bread or cheese, not being able to offer me much to drink beyond some filtered water he poured into one of the mugs for me, but I didn’t need anything more.
“At least let me do the dishes,” I said, when he gathered up our empty bowls.
“No chance,” he said. “There’s no dishwasher, so I do everything by hand. And I’ll probably leave the scrubbing until tomorrow when I hopefully get hot water back.”
Tomorrow. It was hard to even think about tomorrow. I still had that weird feeling that his power issues were connected tomesomehow, that when I’d blown in I’d knocked his electricity out, as wild as that sounded. If his power came on, maybe thatwould be it for me. Maybe that was how I’d get sent back to my own reality. Wouldn’t that be a good thing?
I let my mind drift a little, only vaguely conscious of the sounds of dishes clattering against each other, running water, a cabinet being opened and shut again. I blinked out of it when Eamonn came back to the table with a plate of cookies, a small tea light candle balanced next to them.
“These lemon biscuits are all I have,” he said, “and they might be a little stale. But if you want to make a wish, here’s a candle to blow out.”
My gaze jumped from the plate to his face. Cookies? He’d brought me…birthday cookies. With a candle.
“Which, of course, I’ll immediately light again,” he said, giving me a crooked smile. “Since we need all the candles we can get. Happy birthday, Jess.”
My vision blurred as I stared directly into the flickering flame, and I realized that part of it was that my eyes had already filled with tears. I tried to wipe them away, to not make it obvious that I’d started to cry.
It wasn’t just that he’d marked my birthday in some way, although that did mean a lot to me. It was that he seemed to see me more than anyone else I’d ever been with before, seemed to know me better than people who’d known me for years. And I couldn’t tell if I was in some kind of dream or fantasy, if that was the only way to explain it, because maybe my subconscious had just invented a man who would light me a birthday candle to make a wish on. What would he say if I told him all that?
“This is going to sound really strange,” I said. “Okay? But bear with me.”
If he was alarmed that I was more emotional than I should be over a plate of cookies, over the fact that my response had been to warn him that I was about to unleash something weird, he didn’t show it. He just sat back down, looking at me across the table. “Okay.”
