“Oh yeah?”
“It’s a very early one,” he said. “From before he started paying Mussolini all those compliments.”
I snorted a laugh, reaching up to run my hand along his arm. “Why is that always the way it devolves? Let’s hear it.”
Eamonn scrunched up his brow. “I’m going to fuck it up now that I made it a thing,” he said. “But it goes:
Shy one, shy one,
Shy one of my heart,
She moves in the firelight
Pensively apart.”
If he’d been reciting it with too much passion or emphasis I wouldn’t have been able to look him in the eye, but he spoke the words almost conversationally, one of his hands drifting casually under the hem of my T-shirt, where he rested his warm palm on my bare stomach.
“She carries in the dishes,
And lays them in a row.
To an isle in the water
With her would I go.”
He slid his hand into my shorts, although he didn’t venture any farther than just below my waist, his fingertips grazing my tattoo.
“She carries in the candles,
And lights the curtained room,
Shy in the doorway
And shy in the gloom;”
The tattoo thing was on purpose, too, because he rubbed a circle over it with his thumb like he knew exactly where he was touching. My breath caught in my throat as I arched my back automatically, wanting to pay attention to what he was saying but distracted in spite of myself.
“And shy as a rabbit,
Helpful and shy.
To an isle in the water
With her would I fly.”
His voice held a note of finality in that last part, and I knew the poem had come to an end. He was still stroking me in a slow, hypnotizing rhythm with his thumb, much higher than I wanted him to be.
“It’s important that you know she’s shy, huh,” I said, my voice coming out a little breathless.
“I like the domesticity of it,” he said. “The carrying of the candles, the dishes laid in a row. I always found it restful. Peaceful. But wistful, too, yearning, this idea of flying together to some magical water isle. The fact that he says hewouldgo. Does that mean that they’re both grounded in the here and now, but he’d be willing to leave it, as long as it was with her? Or does that mean that she has somewhere else to be, somewhere that he can’t go but wishes he could?”
Shy one of my heart. I didn’t know if it was a good or a bad thing, that I reminded him of this poem. “Do you think of me as shy?”
He seemed to really consider that, his gaze traveling over my face. “Yes and no,” he said finally. “There’s something very composed about you, as I said back at the house.Pensively apart. Something a little untouchable.”
“You’re touching me right now.”
Eamonn bit back a smile, looking down to where his hand was in my shorts, sliding down my slit, parting me with his fingers. “And you’re feeling shy about it,” he said, circling my entrance, teasing me. “Admit it.”
