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Aurnia
It was strange, hearing my name on someone else’s tongue.
Every time I heard it, my name, I heard Conor. I heard his gruff tone. I heard that undercurrent of anger and guilt and desire. I heard the way he said it like a curse. Like a prayer. Like a secret. No matter who said my name at that point it was Conor who I heard.
Whenever I realised that it wasn’t Conor, it was always the same strange sensation as when you wake up in a bed that isn’t yours, dragged out of the warmth and startled as if by a freezing bucket of water.
Rian’s hand on my shoulder made me jump.
“Hey, hey,” he said, coming around to sit on the coffee table across from me on the couch, “I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just that—”
“You’ve been calling my name?” I finished for him, smiling sheepishly and averting my eyes.
I was embarrassed for being frightened over something so silly. Still, I shifted in discomfort. Everything was fine. I was safe. Yet it took a while to shake off that strange sensation, that conviction that I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. Not who I was supposed to be with.
“You okay?” Rian asked, lowering his face to try to catch my eye.
I forced myself to look at him and nodded. “Great.”
“You kind of had that look that people say I get,” he said, still studying me with a cautious eye.
“What’s that?” I asked, dragging a hand that shook a little more than I’d expected through my hair.
Rian shrugged. “I don’t know. A sort of a faraway look. Like I’m somewhere else.” He chuckled. “I hadn’t really known what in the hell they were talking about till I saw you just now.”
All I could manage was a polite smile.
“Well, listen,” Rian said, clearing his throat and adjusting himself on the edge of the coffee table. He put his hands on my knees and then immediately took them off. He cleared his throat once more. He clapped his hands together awkwardly. “I have some good news!”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Um, good news for you, that is,” he added.
I frowned slightly. For apparently good news, Rian sure did seem hesitant to announce it. I watched his eyes go to the front door like he was hoping a client would waltz in out of blue.
He inclined his ear up toward Mason’s room, almost eager for us to be interrupted by a creaking mattress and a metal frame pounding against the wall. I think if it hadn’t been so quiet you could hear a pin drop, he would have feigned hearing the phone ring just to hop up and buy himself a few seconds of reprieve.
“Rian?” I asked, my suspicion growing by the minute.
“Well,” he said, scratching at the back of his neck, “it’s good news, is what it is.”
“You’ve said that already. Good news for me.”
“It is though,” he insisted, leaning forward earnestly.
This did not make me feel any less wary. I matched his leaning forward by leaning backward.
“Shite, I’m already making a hash of things,” Rian said, letting his head fall into his hands.
How do you make a hash of giving good news? If it really was good news there shouldn’t have been any bad way to give it. Which meant…
“I got you an interview for art school,” Rian blurted out.
His voice sounded happy, excited. It was certainly the voice of someone delivering good news. But Rian’s head remained in his hands, his eyes fixed on the floor between his rapidly tapping feet.
Good news wasn’t supposed to give you a pit in your stomach. It wasn’t supposed to make you feel like the floor was dropping out beneath you. It wasn’t supposed to give you the dread of…of…of bad fucking news.
“That’s great,” I said, though my voice was weak.
