Jess did end up helping out part-time in reception at my garage, even though I assured her she didn’t have to do that. She said my systems were so antiquated that it was a pleasure to bring me into this century, and there were such long stretches of quiet in the reception area that she could work on her art at the desk, read one of the books from the shelves. Her voice on the phone did get to me sometimes, but we kept it professional at work. If anything, Paul was the one always going in there to tell her some wild story, until I could hear the sound of her laughing and had to come in and play stern taskmaster.
I filled the dog’s bowl with water now, setting it down and giving her a scratch behind the ears as she came up to start lapping at the water. Then I filled up the kettle and placed it on the cooker.
My glasses were on the counter, and I put them on beforepulling the paper out of my pocket, unfolding it to read it over again. There were parts of it I could practically recite from memory at this point, I’d gone over them so many times, but it still felt good to read through it.
It really was the small things. When we were lying in bed at night, and I got her to laugh loudly enough that I imagined it echoing down the stairs, filling up the whole space. When we’d both seen the same story in the paper and had been waiting to tell the other one all about it. I liked the art she’d hung up on the walls, the way she stretched her feet on the couch as she was reading, even the half-empty mugs of tea she left in various places around the flat. I liked hearing her come through the front door.
Jess and my realhow we metstory was impossible to tell anyone, almost impossible to believe. When she’d laid everything out for me that first day when we’d gone back to her place, I could tell she was nervous that I wouldn’t believe her or that I’d think her head injury must’ve affected her grasp on reality. She really had been mugged, she’d said, only back in the States, and she’d hit her head and gone into a coma for two days. That part of the story never failed to make my heart race, to make my stomach twist even though I knew she was all right, that she’d woken up, that she was safe and healthy and alive. For the first time, I thought I understood what she’d told me back outside Saint Patrick’s, about being more panicked at the idea that your life might’ve gone a different way. It was the opposite of regret. It was gratitude on a level that was almost as painful.
The whole time we’d been together in Ireland, she’d beenin hospital back in America. It was tempting to believe we’d experienced some sort of shared dream, a form of telepathy, as mad as that sounded. And yet it had been more than that—she’d physicallybeen herewith me. When she visited my flat again for the first time, she pointed out the clock on the mantel, which we’d gotten together from the Leahys’ house, the watercolor she’d painted for me on the beach, which I’d framed and left propped on my dresser. She went full-on silent for a minute when she saw the long blue tie from her dress, which she’d left behind and I’d looped around my bedpost. She had actuallybeen here, and we didn’t know how.
It shouldn’t have made any sense, and it didn’t. And yet when I thought about it all—the way the electricity to my shop had mysteriously cut out just before she’d arrived on my doorstep, the way it was magically back on the morning I woke up without her in my bed. The way that there had always been something a little off about her time with me, in aspects I almost instinctively hadn’t wanted to question too hard—that she didn’t seem to have a hotel room, or an itinerary, or a good explanation for why she would’ve gone on a date with my brother and then shown up outside my garage. The way that I’dknown, from the very first moment that I saw her, that she was important to my life somehow. It didn’t take much to convince me.
Jess liked to call methe man of her dreams, but I’d always known she was real. Not only because I had the benefit of the artifacts she’d left behind, no awareness of her parallel self back in America. I knew that I could never dream big enough to conjure someone like Jess. My imagination wasn’t that good.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the dog messing with something, and when I saw what it was I almost tried to grab it before I remembered that would only make her think we were playing a fun game of tug-of-war. “Dilly,” I said in my firmest, lowest voice, although it was hard to maintain it with the way she was looking up at me. “Drop it, will ya.”
She whined a little but dropped Jess’ flower crown to the floor, and I scooped it up, rubbing Daffodil’s head to let her know that I appreciated her cooperation. The crown didn’t look too much the worse for wear. It was slightly bent on one side, and there were some petals on the ground, but it was mostly intact. I pressed the underlying wire to straighten that one place back out, setting the crown on the table just as I heard footsteps coming down the stairs.
Jess’ legs were bare, and looked impossibly long under my T-shirt, which hit her where I could just see a flash of her underwear as she descended the staircase. Since Mari was in town, Jess had spent a few nights sharing a hotel room with her in Dublin while they explored and caught up. By all rights Jess should’ve spent last night with her, too, but I was glad to have her back. I’d missed her.
She disappeared into the bathroom before coming back out to wrap her arms around me from behind. “Good morning,” she said, kissing my shoulder.
“Happy birthday,” I said, covering her hands with mine.
She pressed her cheek to my back. “You already said that.”
“I’m allowed to say it again,” I said. “I’ve got a twenty-four-hour window. Tea?”
“Yes, please.”
I reached up to grab two mugs, and her arms slid away as she crossed over to the table, picking up the flower crown there and looking at it.
“Daffodil thought it was hers,” I said. “I feel like that’s my fault, given her name.”
The dog had come over to rest her head against Jess’ thigh, panting up at her, and Jess ruffled the fur around her neck. The dog had missed her, too.
“She does love flowers,” Jess said. “Don’t you, Silly Dilly?”
I knew we were both thinking of that first bouquet Jess had ever brought me home with the shopping. I hadn’t had a vase so we’d scrounged up an old washer fluid bottle we’d cleaned out and cut the top off, leaving it in the middle of the table. It had taken Daffodil less than two minutes to have all the flowers pulled out and strewn across the floor. Now we still bought flowers but we put them in a vase on top of the mantel where she couldn’t reach.
I set a mug of tea down in front of Jess at the table. “I hate to think of what state your parents are going to be in today,” I said. “I know Mari can hold her own, but they were all still going strong when we left the pub last night.”
We’d managed to get almost everyone in town—Jess’ parents, her best friend, all my siblings. Mari and Niall were the only two people who could have even an inkling about how Jess and I had met. Mari seemed to have accepted the magic nature of the story, but it drove Niall absolutely mad, trying to understand how he could’ve possibly gone on a date with a woman who would later come to Ireland and meet me. That was half the fun of it.
“That wasyoursister’s influence,” Jess said now, referring back to the raucous get-together the night before. “I thought she was a mother! I thought she was a teacher!”
I knew Jess’ outrage was for show. She and my sisters got along amazingly well. Almost scarily well. They had their own separate group chat that made me nervous sometimes. “Kathleen’s always been the hardest partier of all of us,” I said.
“Oh? And where would you put yourself on that list?”
I blew on my tea, smiling as I thought about the times we’d gone out, just the two of us. Jess really liked to dance, and I liked to dance with her. “At times in my life, a very distant second. Now, I don’t know if I rank.”
Jess placed the flower crown on her head, adjusting it until the ribbons fell where she wanted them to. “What do you think?”
“That’s the look exactly,” I said. “Down to the T-shirt and bare feet and everything. Don’t change a bit of it.”
Jess glanced down at the old Pogues T-shirt of mine, which was basically hers at this point. She wasn’t wearing a bra underneath it, which was part of why I was more than happy to let her have it. “My parents might still be day-drunk, but I think even they’ll notice if I’m in my underwear.”
