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It might take a minute or two, but Áine would follow it up with something just as beautifully common, “You looked pretty happy with your friends this morning over by the lockers. I heard you laughing. Did something happen since?”
“I think I was just pretending, you know. Not wanting to bother them or bring the mood down.”
“It’s not bothersome to tell your friends you’re having a hard time, Fionn. It’s not our burden to maintain the happiness of others. That’s adult territory.” Her tone was sometimes reprimanding, like she couldn’t help it. But it also felt more as if she was just constantly trying to remind him he had worth. That his feelings had value.
He realised he felt better for being told these things. The compression in his head softened for a while.
Still, his guard always managed to rise up, to slip out of his mouth through the route of unkindness. “What would you know about having friends, Áine,” he’d say to shut her down. It was a loop, in the beginning, of her prying out his truths and him growing angry for it as if she’d bewitched him.
When Fionn had briefly recalled Áine in passing over the years, it was instead the surface things he remembered: The dimple pinching her chin, which she had mayonnaise stuck in on more than one occasion. There being no melodic ring to her laugh, and how it didn’t matter when it was always countered by the joy pulling her eyes tighter on their edges.
It was easier to remember traits he could see or hear. It was even easier to forget the ones he couldn’t, the ones that might have haunted him upon reflection. Because in comparison, not once in six years had Fionn considered who he had been in their relationship; an immature fool.
That old persona was like a scaly skin he couldn’t scrub off for years. Yet she had found a way to peel back that skin, breaching right through to his marrow where sadness sludged through his bones.
He decided then, for all of this, if he could do anything in their two hours of forced proximity, it would be to make Áinevery much aware he regretted his poor attitude, because she was marvellous all along.
The thought of this alone sent an anxious snake down Fionn’s throat to disrupt his stomach with worrisome venom. He clutched it, hoping she’d mistake it for hunger, which he was also feeling.
“Christ,” she shouted, her hands stretching to the chandelier like she praised its splendour. “You must be starving.”
Fionn’s tired eyes dropped to his still clutched stomach and then to her, the curl of his smile re-emerging. “I’m so hungry now I’d say I’m tempted to eat the arse off a low-flying seagull.”
“Well then,” she clapped her hands when coming around from the reception to lead the way. “Let’s fix that arse-eating temptation. I’ve been told I’m a feeder. I think it’s a farmer trait because I remember how much my mam loved cooking for the men who cut our silage.”
Her pumps were quiet on the carpet, and her pleat’s flapped with each step towards the adjacent door.
A sudden urge came to Fionn; he hoped she’d take his hand to lead him. He also considered it kind of Freudian, and squeezed the back of his neck again not to actually do it. A knot rolled under his fingers.
The dining room en route to the kitchen—a shrine of Catholicism—reminded him of his grandmother’s kitchen. When young, about the age he didn’t have many front teeth, he’d complain about the Jesus painting with the red light beneath, and how it would scare him because Jesus’ eyes would follow him around the room no matter where he hid.
In a wicked tone his gran would say, “Jesus is always watching”.
These were the words Fionn heard the first time he found the guts to have sex. In the back of Aoife Cooney’s Peugeot with his tracksuit pants just below the knee, it was Jesus Christ’sforeboding presence that had dampened his boner to all but a fleshy worm. And while to some that should have been a sign to practise abstinence, it made Fionn lose his faith entirely.
Good riddance.
Áine had led him to the door of a sterile-smelling room where the memory in her fingers found a seemingly hidden light-switch. Fluorescents lit up one after the other to reveal a long industrial kitchen where everything was bleached and tidied away for the night.
“You can help yourself to anything in the fridge except the ready-made sandwiches on the foil trays.” She wagged an authoritative finger at him. “They’re for the homeless group to collect later.”
“That’s nice of your boss, isn’t it,” he told her. “I wouldn’t say there’s many around here that’d be so charitable.”
Áine started down the narrow aisle next to a large worktop island, her head briefly inclined over her shoulder so he could see as she rolled her eyes. It momentarily hid the blue of her iris—a moment too long by Fionn’s consideration.
He buried whatever that threatened to unleash in him and quickly followed.
“No. Paddy is a fucking arsehole,” she started. “Myself and Daisy make the sandwiches with the day’s leftovers. His droopy eyes never notice. I swear, he’d rather let the bread go mouldy than allow someone to have it for free. Honestly, he’s a wankbag.”
Fionn grinned, wider for her back being turned again. He enjoyed hearing the wordwankbagflow unperturbed out of her mouth when she wouldn’t have dared in school. He also thought it suited her ingrained passion and that authoritative streak he’d just been ruminating on. If he’d met her on a night out his liquid courage would have told her it was sexy.
He flexed his hand and then clenched it, resisting that tempting route when he knew tonight could only go one way.
Rein it in, lad.
She opened the fridge, rattling all the jars in the door to the echo of her relentless angst.
Its light shone on her body so angelically Fionn almost reconsidered his abandoned faith. But when she bent to take a better look inside, the angelic form he swooned over was lost to the sight of her bum, popping ever so slightly in her angled position.
