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Aurnia
It wasn’t like I hadn’t punched people before.
Growing up the way I did, bloodying your knuckles on someone’s cheek for the first time was as much a rite of passage as those rich kids learning to ride their shiny new bikes. It was all pretty much the same, hitting someone. No matter who they were. It always hurt. A pack of frozen peas always made my knuckles feel a little better.
But there was something about my fist connecting with Conor’s cheekbone in that freezing rain that was different. It was as if Conor was somehow harder. Made of marble. Made of stone. It was as if I knew that the cracks I heard along my knuckles as my punch connected would never heal. That the swelling would never go down. That the blood would always be there, frozen peas be damned.
I wasn’t known as a particularly fair fighter. How could you be in the house I was raised in? You fight clean, you lose. So dirty it was. Dirty it had to be. Dirty was king.
I didn’t wait for Conor to recover from the shock of being punched in the face by his “starry-eyed innocent”. As he raised shaking fingers to that delicate skin just beneath the eye, as his wild eyes tried to focus. Tried to find me. Tried to figure out who in the hell I was and what in the hell just happened.
I didn’t wait. I attacked. I launched at him. I gave him all I fucking had.
“You eejit!” I screamed, throbbing fist balled like the other at my side. “You goddamn, fucking gobshite, Conor!”
I shoved at his chest. He stumbled backwards and I advanced.
“You have everything that I’ve ever wanted. You have a career. Something you’ve built for yourself from the ground up. Something good. Something you made. You have your days filled with art and creativity and passion. Day in, day out you have the chance to draw the world you want to see. The world you desire. You have a fam—”
My voice choked on that word. It got caught in my throat. Something I didn’t want to release. A hidden desire. Private and delicate and painful. To say it, to say that, above all else, was what I wanted. To see that I didn’t have it. To come face to face with the cold, hard truth: I wanted something I would never have.
It hurt. It fucking hurt.
With eyes squeezed shut, I forced out the words I’d never said aloud, “I want nothing more than a family, Conor, and you have one.”
When I opened my eyes, Conor’s fingertips had fallen from his cheekbone. They still trembled, but now at his side. The muscle of his left leg spasmed. His skin was pale and his face glistened when a passing headlight illuminated it. He looked like any goddamn second he was going to pass out.
All I wanted was to go to him. To hold him. To throw his arm over my shoulder and take some of his weight. All I wanted to do was punch him in the fucking face again. And again after that.
I clutched at my dripping-wet hair as I screamed in frustration.
“You just don’t see,” I growled angrily. “Why don’t you fucking see, Conor?”
Conor remained silent. This was, it seemed, the worst thing he could have done. I wanted him to yell back. I wanted him to grab me and shake me. I wanted him to punch me back. But he just stood there. Already resigned. Already gone.
“That tattoo,” I said, pointing my finger at his stomach like I was holding a loaded gun, “that tattoo, that phoenix of yours? It’s a lie. It’s a joke.”
I was growing desperate. Trying to provoke him to something. To anything. To me. He could wrap his fingers around my throat. He could drag me away. He could fuck me right there on the ground. Anything that brought him to me.
But he seemed every second to be slipping further and further away into the shadows. Soon I was sure that not even the whipping headlights would be able to reach him, be able to find him.
“You’re not rising toward anything,” I shouted at him, voice high-pitched. Panicked. That’s what it was. Panicked.
“You’re still there in the ashes, Conor,” I shouted, wanting to hit him again. To make him feel something. Anything. Me. Fucking me! “You’re not just there in the ashes. You love the ashes. You feel safe in the ashes. You never want to leave those lovely fucking ashes.”
I hardly knew what I was saying. It was like stabbing in the dark. I was trying to hit something. To draw blood. To hear the noise of something hurt, but alive.
“Look at what you’ve done to keep yourself there,” I screamed over the rain, arms waving crazily. “You shut down any idea that might bring business to Dublin Ink. You yell at customers and practically turn away money. You go over past due bills again and again like you’re self-flagellating instead of doing literally anything to spread the word that the place even exists!”
I tugged at my hair again when there was still no response from Conor. The only change in him was the slow blooming of a bruise on his cheek. The slow swelling of his black eye.
“You keep Rian and Mason at arm’s length. Never sharing everything. Always withholding. We didn’t have to be a secret because you were scared they would judge you because of our age difference. We had to be a secret because family shares everything and how could you wallow in the ashes if you had a family? People who love you? People who care about you? People who would do anything for you? Goddammit, Conor! Goddammit.”
I ran at him and my fists railed against his chest, but he wasn’t like stone. He was stone. I was trying to break through stone with nothing but flesh and anger.
“Why won’t you go to a doctor if your leg brings you so much pain?” I asked, and it was like I was begging. “Why do you want to feel it so intensely after all these years? Why do you want to fear a storm cloud like a child? Like a fucking child?”
I was gasping for breath. Exhausted. Drained. I stumbled back and I knew why. It was useless. All my yelling. All my screaming. All my fighting. It was for nothing. Conor was never mine to have. He was never even there, there for the having. He was in a morgue in Limerick. More than a decade in the past. Frozen. Glassy-eyed. Heart not beating.
