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“I know,” Diarmuid said, sounding more tired than anything. “I mean, yeah, I know.”
“I thought you knew me better.”
“I thought I knew myself better,” Diarmuid said so quietly that I almost didn’t hear him.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Diarmuid replied quickly. “Nothing. Look, forget it, alright? It’s just something that…happens sometimes. And I have to ask. Because, like you said, it’s wrong.”
“So wrong,” I said, letting my head fall into my palm.
“Of course it’s wrong,” Diarmuid said quietly.
The two of us were silent for a few moments, I guess each of us lost in thought. I turned to look once more toward the bedroom door. My shoulders came to rest against the wall and I slid slowly to the floor. Tired. Guilt-ridden. Confused. I pinched my fingers at my temple. Head hanging. Chin against chest. Defeated. Fucking defeated.
“Diarmuid?”
He took longer than I would have thought to reply. “Yeah? Yeah, I’m here.”
I sucked in a long breath. I couldn’t stop the exhale from shaking.
“I just… I just want you to know this…” I began, the words quickly stalling.
The night before flashed in my mind. Everything I’d wanted. At last getting everything I’d wanted. Aurnia’s eyes on mine. Her body beneath mine. Her heart against mine. I remembered the softness of her skin, the quiver of her lip, the way she gasped.
“You still there?” Diarmuid asked.
I rubbed my eyes. “I’m here.”
My gaze was once again on that door. Aurnia just behind it. As I thought of her, asleep in that bed, in my bed, I knew this: I wanted her. Fuck, how I needed her.
The only thing I wanted more than her was a life for her. A chance for her. A future for her.
“All I wanted to say was that I would never do anything to hurt Aurnia. I… I care about her. I want nothing but the best for her. I won’t let her make the same mistakes I made. You should know that.”
“Conor—”
“Look, this should tell you all you need to know,” I said, staring at the door. The closed door. “She doesn’t deserve the life I have. So I can’t. I can’t.”
Diarmuid was silent for a moment. “I know we haven’t been super close for a while. There’s been a sort of, I don’t know, distance. But…but if you want to talk—”
“I don’t,” I said. Too rude. Too brutish. Too cruel. But it was all I could manage. I’d watched my world fall apart one too many times. I’d lost the ability to handle it with good fucking manners.
“I’ve got to get to Dublin Ink,” I told Diarmuid and then hung up without waiting for an answer.
I would have flung the phone across the room if I knew it wouldn’t wake up Aurnia. I would have pummelled my fist into the drywall again and again and again if I could have done it without screaming my lungs out. I would have stormed out, but I was fairly certain that the door would have rattled so hard it would have brought the whole shitty building down.
I wanted Aurnia to hold onto her dreams for as long as she could. Just because mine were over didn’t mean hers had to be too.
So I stayed there on the floor. Silent. Absolutely silent. Gripping my wrists to keep myself still as I shook. Shivered like a little boy.
Afraid.
And alone.
And alone.
