“I’m worried that back in Florida, in my actual life, I’m in a coma,” I said. “And none of this is real. Itfeelsreal. Walking around Dublin, the food we ate, driving in your car, going to your old house, god,youfeel so real to me, talking to you, touching you. These cookies, this candle. But I could make a wish, blow it out, and everything could disappear. Do you know what I mean?”
Of course he didn’t know what I meant. He probably thought I’d completely lost my mind.
But he took my hand, rubbing his thumb along my palm. “Do you remember at the bus stop, when I picked those flowers out of your hair?”
“Yes.”
“In that moment, I felt…” He swallowed, clearly trying to figure out how to express it. “I hadn’t reached for anyone like that in a long time. It wouldn’t have even occurred to me. To touch someone, to want to touch someone, to feel like I could. But I saw those flowers in your hair, and I wanted…I don’t know, Iwanted. Your hair looked so soft, and I wanted to know what it would feel like. I wanted to help you, to make something better for you, even if in a small way. And then I couldn’t believe I’d actually done it. Reached out and touched you, barely touched you, but it hit me like an electric shock. Not justthe touch but thewanting. I don’t know, I feel like I’m not saying this right. I’m not always the best with words.”
I squeezed his hand. “You are killing it with your words right now, believe me.”
It was obvious that he hadn’t understood what I meant, that he’d interpreted what I’d said in his own way. That when I saidcomahe thought I meant only that I hadn’t felt fully alive back in my previous life, that I’d been stuck in some holding pattern, going through the motions of my days. And that was true, too. But of course my use of the wordcomahad been more literal than that. He must’ve thought when I worried that none of this was real, I meant that more figuratively, like where things that happen on vacation when you’re outside of your normal routines don’t feel like they could ever be part of your daily life. And maybe that was also true, because even if thiswerereal I didn’t know that it could work, or if there could ever be a future in it.
“So go ahead,” he said, pushing the plate a little closer to me. “Make a wish. I’ll still be here.”
I wasn’t so sure about that, but I closed my eyes, trying to think about what I’d even wish for. I didn’t want this time with Eamonn to end. But I also didn’t want the door to my old life to shut behind me, felt panicked and unsettled at the implications of what that would even mean. Would I see my parents again? Mari? Would I have any connection to everything I’d built for myself over the last thirty-seven years? My life might not be perfect, but it was mine.
I wish it could all be true, I thought, and blew out the candle.
When I opened my eyes, Eamonn was still there. He was watching me, and I almost felt like he could somehow see inside my brain and know exactly what I’d wished for, that it was at least partially forhim. Then he took a bite of one of the cookies and made a face.
“Oh, fuck,” he said. “These are definitely stale. I’m sorry.”
I took a bite of one myself. The lemon flavor was pleasant, but the texture was a weird blend of too chewy and too hard at the same time. Still, I ate an entire cookie, and went back for a second. “They’re perfect.”
Thirty-Two
“You know,” I said whenEamonn was rinsing off the cookie plate and stacking it on top of the others in the sink, “I never did get the full tour.”
“There’s not a lot to it,” he said. “I moved in here when I was young and just grateful to have a job that came with a place to live, so I barely looked at the flat. If I had, I would’ve noticed that there are holes in the floors and I can only stand upright in half the bedroom.”
The bedroom was exactly what I was hoping to see, but I felt shy suddenly, like it was too forward to even ask. “What about downstairs?” I asked. “I’ve been dying to check out the books.”
We each took a candle down the same flight of stairs we’d come up earlier, and even standing in that small entryway again made me feel flush with fever. I stood close enough behind Eamonn while he worked the key in the side-door lockthat I could smell that pine soap on him, or maybe I was smelling it on myself.
It was strange to finally be inside the waiting area, when it was the first thing I’d seen of Eamonn or his shop, technically. There was that checkered linoleum floor, some chairs set up around the rim of the room, a table with what looked like the stuff to pour a paper cup of coffee.
“So do you make coffee for your clients?” I asked. “Or customers? I don’t know the right word.”
“When I remember,” he said, setting his candle down on the front corner. “I admit, I sometimes forget this room is even here. If you were waiting for your car to be ready and went to pour yourself a drink, there’s about a fifty-fifty chance there’s anything in there. But I try.”
“You said you have a guy who works here part-time? Maybe it could be something he helps with.”
“Paul is twenty-one and comes in with his shirt inside out more often than not,” Eamonn said. “He’s sound, an encyclopedia of car models and parts, but I don’t know that I would trust him with the coffee.”
I smiled. I liked the idea that maybe it was Eamonn’s turn to mentor someone, the way that he’d been mentored by the man who’d given him his first job, the person he’d bought this shop from. It seemed to me that he’d probably built more of a community around himself and this shop than he gave himself credit for. I walked around the edge of the room, skimming over titles on the book spines that lined the walls. He’d said that these books were anyone’s for the taking, without any particular significance or special connection, but I still likedlooking at his collection. There were quite a few I recognized—mass-market bestsellers from the last twenty years, some of the Sweet Valley High series I’d read as a teenager even though my namesake was a complete asshole in them. He even had some romance.
“Youhaveto read this one,” I said, reaching to pull a purple spine I recognized out from the shelves. “This book altered my DNA. It’s so sexy and angsty and good.”
“I’ll read it,” he said. “Just leave it there with the coffee so I don’t forget.”
“To read the book, or to refill the coffee?” I said, but set the book down where he’d indicated. I crossed over to the front counter, touching a finger to the top of an old-fashioned rotary phone that sat there.
“That doesn’t work,” Eamonn said. “It never has—it came with the place. All the actual calls get forwarded to my mobile.”
“What you need is a receptionist,” I said.
“Oh?” He grasped me by the waist, lifting me up to seat me on top of the counter. “Are you volunteering?”
