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Conor
I half expected my key not to work.
I wouldn’t have really blamed them for changing the locks. For barring me from ever coming back. For barring me from ever causing more harm. If I was in Mason or Rian’s place, I probably would have done the same. Hell, that’s what I thought I was doing, too: protecting Aurnia.
My relationship with Mason and Rian had never been what you could call “smooth”. From the very first day the three of us all came to know each other we were fighting. Arguments, disagreements, and physical scuffles were normal to the three of us, despite the name we used of “friends”. But I wasn’t sure I’d ever known them to be as mad at me as they were when they were trying to get me to come back for Aurnia’s birthday.
That was a different kind of anger, and I knew it. Because while we could all hurt each other, it was unacceptable to hurt her. We were all big, strong men. All adults with our fair share of scars. All capable of picking ourselves back up.
But Aurnia? Despite turning eighteen, she was still a child. Still fragile. Still worth preserving in her beautiful innocence.
For the last week, I’d rarely had more than a few moments of painful sobriety, but their voicemails and text messages were still sharp in my memory. Mason called me a prick. A fucker. A selfish asshole who deserved to have his balls go through a meat grinder and his cock through a vegetable peeler.
Rian’s messages hurt more though. Of the two, he seemed more aware of what was going on between Aurnia and me. All he had to say was this: “She’ll be looking for you. She’ll be looking for you, and you know it, Conor.”
As the day grew closer and the messages more frequent, angrier, I just couldn’t. I couldn’t put down the bottle. I couldn’t stop myself from unzipping the plastic baggie tucked into my back pocket. I couldn’t slow down my motorcycle. I couldn’t keep the miles between her and me from increasing and increasing and increasing.
Maybe I stayed away because I knew I was in a bad way. Because I thought I would only ruin things for her, showing up the way I was for her birthday. Maybe I was doing it for her. Staying away because I knew I couldn’t stay away. Keeping my distance because I knew it’d be a matter of time before I pushed myself into her and claimed her when I saw her next. Because I’d proven, with my tongue on her clit and my fingers against her g-spot, I had no willpower when it came to her.
Or maybe I was just a selfish asshole who deserved to have his balls go through a meat grinder and his cock through a vegetable peeler.
I don’t know what it was that finally made my handlebars shift toward the exit sign two weeks later. It wasn’t like I’d resolved anything. My mind was still a fucking mess. My body was still broken. The past still hung over my shoulder. Its weight still made every breath a struggle, every step a mile. And I was still too old for her.
Mason and Rian had stopped trying to call after Aurnia’s birthday. I received no more texts. No more voicemails. So it wasn’t them who finally changed my mind.
The only explanation I could give was this: I was tired. I was so goddamn fucking tired. And I wanted peace. I wanted rest. I wanted to give up. I wanted to give in. I wanted Aurnia.
The drive back to Dublin was long. The last ten miles through the sleeping city even longer. When I found the apartment empty, I went to the only other place I was certain I would find her. The lights in the shop were out save one single bulb in one single lamp. I breathed in deeply outside the door. The key was in my fingers. All that was left to do was try it. Had I been shut out? Had I been cut off? Had any of them had any sense at all?
I prayed one last time the prayer that I had repeated across every mile: please, please let the door be locked. Let her be gone. Let her be out my reach. Out of my ravenous, all-consuming reach.
The key went easily into the lock. It twisted without resistance. I heard the click like a bullet entering the chamber of a gun. A loaded gun. That was me. A fucking loaded gun.
The door swung inward and she turned around at the sound of the little bell. She was in the shadows. As was I.
I expected her to be frightened. To be alarmed. An intrusion in the middle of the night. A pair of looming shoulders in the dark. A ghost having returned too late. But despite the unexpectedness of my arrival, Aurnia didn’t seem at all frightened. At all alarmed. At all even surprised.
She stood the farthest distance across the living room from me, a broom in her hands. The soft light from the lamp did not reach her so I could make nothing out on her face. All I could see was that she stood steady. All I could see was that she breathed evenly, slowly. All I could see was that she was a woman. A woman.
The door fell closed behind me. I locked it once more. Behind my back. Without looking. Without looking away from her.
I hadn’t planned what I was to do, what I was to say. I always intended for the door to be impenetrable, the locks changed. I imagined the shattering of glass. The splintering of wood. The wail of an alarm. I had no apology on my lips. No forgiveness sought in my heart. No soothing words, no tender caresses, no sensation of falling to my knees.
I stood there frozen. Mute. Not knowing what to do. Not knowing how to explain, to beg for forgiveness. Not knowing whether the space in her heart that I occupied was lost. My little thief gone.
It was Aurnia who moved first. It wasn’t to raise a weapon. It wasn’t to raise a call for help. It wasn’t to run away. To dash out of the room toward the back exit. To pick up the phone for Mason. For Rian. For Diarmuid. It was to step, slowly but unwaveringly, toward me. Even when I saw her coming toward me, her footsteps the only sound, even then I could do nothing but watch. Wait.
Aurnia passed by the single lamp with its single bulb and I caught sight of her face, if only for a moment. She was eighteen. Eighteen at last. But she was so much more. She was a child who had been abandoned and grown strong. She was a victim of abuse who had finally learned to throw a punch. She was a little thief who finally decided to take what she wanted, what she truly wanted. Her face caught the light, but just as quickly descended back into darkness. She moved smoothly. Surely. I sucked in a breath as she came to stop before me.
Aurnia said nothing as her eyes trailed over me. It felt like just yesterday that she was drawing me in my apartment. But how different was her gaze.
Before I could see her nerves. The flutter of her chest. The rapidness of her strokes on the page. The flicker of her eyes, afraid to look at me for too long. There was none of that there before me now. Aurnia studied the bruising round my eye from Nick’s heel without flinching. No colour flooded her cheek as she stared up at me.
I knew my eye was still ugly. The purples deep, the blacks deeper. The cuts were probably still caked with blood. My lack of sleep, lack of nutrition certainly didn’t help. The alcohol, the drugs. Even if Nick had never touched me, I would look rough. Look hurt. Look near death.
Aurnia took all this in, took all of me in, and did not turn away. Her eyes saw the messiness of my hair, saw the looseness of my jacket, saw the cuts and bruises on my knuckles, and neither of us moved. I was sure she could smell the alcohol on my breath. I was sure she noticed how my fingers didn’t stay quite so still at my sides, a lingering effect of the drugs. I was sure she took in every beaten and battered part of me.
And yet her gaze was steady. Her eyes met mine without judgement. Without anger. With nothing but a single intent: to see me. To see me clearly.
