I devoted myself to my rhythm with new urgency, like this really was about me getting something I wanted, like there were actual stakes to getting him to come in my mouth. When he finally shuddered against me, pulsing and hot, I felt a surge of triumph like I’d really accomplished something.
Eamonn drew me to him as I stood back up on shaky legs, wrapping his arms around me and squeezing my ass. He kissed me, opening up my mouth with his tongue, no doubt tasting himself, until he pulled back to kiss my ear. “Where did you come from?” he whispered.
I hugged him tighter to me, resting my cheek against his bare chest. It was only then that I was reminded that the entirefront of this space was windows, that even though it was late at night and mostly dark inside the room, we’d still technically been doing all of that on full display. I thought of myself when I’d first come upon the garage, peering in through the windows. I thought of Eamonn using this room in the course of his usual days, ringing people up at the counter, refilling the coffee when he remembered to do it.
“I don’t want you to think that’s how I actually get a job,” I said, and I could feel his chest rumble with a laugh.
“I don’t want you to think that’s how I would actually do my hiring,” he said. “Is it awkward now to ask if you’d like to see my bedroom?”
“Not at all,” I said, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. “That was the whole reason I wanted a tour in the first place.”
Thirty-Three
Eamonn put his sweatpants backon but didn’t bother with his shirt, which might just be my favorite version of him. Cozy and casual, at home in his body, literally athomein this space that he’d made his own. We went back up to his apartment, where he led me up the spiral staircase, cautioning me to watch my step.
“I always wanted one of these,” I said. “Like a princess tower.”
“It’s very cool,” he acknowledged, “except when you realize that they put the bathroom on another level from the bedroom, and you have to use this staircase every time you want to go from one to the other.”
I immediately saw what he’d meant earlier about not being able to stand upright in half of his room. The roof was so slanted on one side that I wouldn’t even be able to stand up underneath the ceiling, and he’d put a long, low dresser againstthat wall. His bed was in the center of the room up against another exposed brick wall, neatly made up with a woven blanket in muted green, a heavier, softer blanket folded along the bottom of the bed.
“Be honest,” I said. “Did you run up here and make your bed earlier, or do you really make it every time you wake up?”
“I’m a big believer in making the bed,” Eamonn said, “but Ididshove a whole pile of clothes in the basket when I came up here before my shower. My socks in particular, I leave ’em everywhere.”
I climbed onto the middle of his bed, sitting cross-legged on top of his covers. He’d leaned against the wall facing the bed, watching me. I thought about what he’d said back in the car, when we’d been talking about multiple orgasms.There’s a…refractory period.His chest still looked a little flushed.
“There aren’t any windows in here,” I said.
He pointed up at a skylight I hadn’t noticed. “But its little window lets in the stars,” he said in a way that told me he was quoting from something. “I pretty much just use this room to sleep.”
I leaned forward a bit, craning to see through the window in the roof. It was nothing but inky black sky, not a star in sight. I listened to see if I could hear any rain, but it seemed to have stopped. He’d placed his candle on the dresser when he came in, and it flickered next to my watercolor from the beach, which he’d propped up against a now-useless lamp. Even in the dim light I could tell that there were a few blotches in the colors from the raindrops that had hit it.
“I finished the story of Becfola,” I said.
His eyebrows shot up, like he was surprised that I’d done that, or maybe surprised that I was bringing it up at all. “And?” he asked. “What did you think?”
So he didn’t even pretend to not know how the story ended. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I said. “That she gets with the young man, that she leaves the king’s world behind?”
“I told you I wasn’t the king,” he said. “I was worried you’d think I had notions that I was the man.”
He said it so straightforwardly, his face almost grave in the shadows of the room, that I didn’t even know what to say.Are you?I wanted to ask, but I knew it was just a story.Do you?I wanted to ask, but was afraid of the answer.
“It’s not even fair,” I said, making my voice light instead. “You Irish lads.”
His mouth still looked serious, but there was a smile in his eyes. “How do you mean?”
“All this romantic folklore. How is a girl supposed to resist any of that?”
“I guess we would say that you’re not.”
I leaned back against his bed, and I swore I saw his eyes darken.
“You should have your sister teach you more Irish,” I said. “Or learn more Yeats poems to recite. I don’t know, you could be unstoppable. At least with tourists—Irish women probably see through all this stuff.”
I didn’t want to think about him with another woman. But I wanted to let him know that I understood this wasn’t meant to be anything permanent, that I didn’t expect anything out of him, that I wasn’t relying on him to be my metaphorical lovertaking me away from a king who didn’t even exist. Iwasgoing to return to the real world, somehow, and to the extent our lives could be lived in parallel, he would be free to go on and use his romantic charms on anyone else he wanted. Heshoulddate more. It was a waste not to.
He crawled over me on the bed, his arms framing my face as he looked down at me. “I only know one Yeats poem by heart,” he said. “You actually remind me of it, a little.”
