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“Savvy, please leave.”
Savvy scrambled from the table, curiosity flashing in their eyes as they passed him and ducked into the hall. Their bedroom door snicked shut.
O’Hara’s chest lifted on a breath and he clasped hands behind his back. He held his chin up. He didn’t look at Jonathan.
“Cancel. Stay for dinner.” Jonathan crossed the room. He pressed his fingers against the table, steadying himself as another wave crashed over him. O’Hara, less than a step away. Dark bangs across his forehead, lips ruddy, and eyes . . . refusing to look at him. “Go tomorrow.”
“I have some personal matters to—”
“Lies.”
Intense green eyes flashed to him, something silvery beneath the surface. Not sadness, something else. Something that reminded him of that moment on the boat, O’Hara swallowing and swallowing.
“You don’t want to meet me here.”
O’Hara straightened his shoulders but, there, in the right arm at his side, a tremble.
“It’s not . . .”
His lips peeled open to add something, and closed again. He attempted a smile. No dimple accompanied it.
Jonathan shifted, a half step; O’Hara’s sudden expelling of air shook over his jaw, down his neck. Eyes widened.
Intimate in a way they hadn’t been before.
O’Hara who could flirt sleeping, who teased ceaselessly, jumped into his bed, tacked posters to his ceiling. O’Hara who begged to be hand-fed donuts, who left his handprints painted on Jonathan for days, weeks . . .
“Jonathan?” A cracked whisper. Syllables moist, heavy against his skin. They clung there seconds after the sounds left. “I . . . It’s . . .”
It was as though, now Jonathan knew, now that things were becoming real, O’Hara didn’t know what came next.
O’Hara who knew everything, handled everything, didn’t know how to handle this.
Jonathan rocked back on his heels. He glanced sidelong, letting the tension break. Letting O’Hara breathe. Quietly, “We have to talk about it.”
O’Hara laughed without humour. “I pride myself on being able to talk about anything . . .” His eyelashes rested against crimson cheeks.
Jonathan stepped closer and cupped his face with his cooler hands.
A tremor. A smile that worked too hard. “I really do have some personal stuff to sort out.”
“It’s okay.”
O’Hara looked at him.
So much had come to light. It all appeared between them like ghostly roses waiting to be picked out and touched, made real. But O’Hara’s fingers were bare and, no matter how pretty the rosebuds, how sweet the scent, thorns would still prick.
Jonathan let his thumb caress O’Hara’s cheek. A sigh on parted lips. “You came early to visit me.”
A horn blared, sharp scissors shearing through the air, their breaths, figurative roses. The taxi had arrived.
Reluctantly, Jonathan dropped his hands. He caught the handle of O’Hara’s backpack and lifted it. O’Hara took it, abrupt, and slung it over one shoulder. He stepped towards the door and paused at Jonathan’s side.
Jonathan didn’t move.
“I—”
The horn blasted again.
O’Hara’s shoulder combed his. Then he was gone.
O’Hara spread-eagled over golden Greek art on his neatly made bed, camera shaking slightly.
Of all the myths, Orpheus almost-but-not-quite managing to bring his love back from the underworld frustrates me most. He goes to such lengths to get Eurydice back. They are so close to reuniting. So close to . . . maybe a happily ever after. And fear takes hold . . .
Chapter Fourteen
Making Mr O’Hara eat his words, and the courting crossover
For days, O’Hara’s ghost followed him. In the cat treats he found under the couch, the shampoo left in the shower, the suds-ring in the clawfoot bath, the sheets, softer from nights of twisting, the pillow that smelled of honey.
In Australia, in his cosy terrace apartment, was O’Hara haunted by Jonathan?
“What are you thinking?”
Savvy’s voice pulled him to the study, where he was supposed to be helping them with their English essay. “Where were we?”
“I’m done.”
“Hm.”
Savvy swivelled around on the chair and followed Jonathan’s gaze to the empty space where O’Hara’s poster used to hang.
The image of O’Hara’s joyous smile flickered to an image of O’Hara not smiling at all. In his dilapidated terrace apartment, alone, sad. No one apart from Nash there for him. Few friends. No family.
All the same backstory: parents didn’t want us.
Savvy cleared their throat.
“Sorry.” Jonathan straightened. “I need a walk.”
He retraced a thousand steps he and O’Hara used to take around town: their weeping willow, the shore, wading in the ankle-deep sand. The wharf. Heavy steps of hurt stamped out in figure eight loops around the blocks.
Each step stirred in his veins, like the darkening clouds shifting closer to town. At the first sting of hail against his cheek, he moved faster. Down the streets to the house. He opened the gate and strode to the front door. His fist was white as he pounded it against the solid wood.
The hail thickened, pinging against his legs, his back. Ice scuttled down his collar.
The door opened.
