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Fionn’s pressing against the worktop softened.
“I wish you had told me back then.” Áine faced him with a plate stacked with six thick pancakes of various shapes.
Wanting her back still turned for the ease it brought to their conversation, he accepted it to see her face when time wasn’t on their side. “Told you about my dad?”
“Yeah.” She squeezed her eyes tight, and he realised she hadn’t pitied him. She just cared. He wasn’t all familiar withthat. That or the recurring feeling it stirred inside him to reach out with both arms to pull her close.
“I know we were never proper friends. To be honest, I don’t know what we were. But I could have helped. Well, maybe not . . .” she dipped her eyes again like she was regressing to the worth he had once foolishly placed on her.
“Hey!” He stepped closer. “You were always kind, Áine. I remember telling you that much. And sometimes you did help me. I should have said that at the time too . . .” He also wanted to tell her he wishedhehad been kinder. And not so he could have comfort during that awful time, but because she deserved it. Against this want, his courage slipped away to the floor with his eyes in tow.
It took all of a second for Áine’s new form to return, poised as she nodded towards the dining room they came through. The plate was balanced in her hand.
“C’mon. Enough of the depressing talk. Let’s eat.”
He followed and again wished Áine offered her hand. To feel her warmth how she’d given to him under the table in English when he needed it most. When he believed the ground might swallow him if she hadn’t held on.
Only in looking back did he realise that was the juncture where everything changed between them. Not for the better or worse, but just changed.
Áine placed the plate into the centre of a crooked corner table and sat with such a hard thump her curls crawled over her face. She blew them out with an exasperated sigh and fixed the oilskin to perfection.
“So anyway, your brother. Have you been over to see him?” With her fork, she voyaged the top pancake to her plate to smear butter over it from the dish. Fionn imitated her, aware she and her lingering eye were waiting for the answer to her very simple question.
He cleared his throat and shifted forward to pretend it was the chair causing him discomfort. “No, I haven’t seen Declan since he went. But I’ll be heading soon.”
“Oh, lovely. You’d do well to stay over there.” She pointed at him with her buttery knife, a sense of fake threat embroiled. “I wish I’d gone myself sometimes.”
“You still could,” he said, too enthused for a stranger to her life.
“No, I can’t. I’ve things I need to finish here.” Áine became noticeably focused on cutting her pancake into unnecessary pieces. “I’m going back to college to finish my law degree soon—very soon! This B&B is just a life layover. But anyway, when are you heading off for the holiday?” Áine’s head bobbed up and down to focus on both tasks; cutting and eye contact.
“That’s the thing. I eh . . . I guess I’m leaving in the morning.”
“Ah, I see.” She smiled with fluttering eyes, like he’d satiated some deep wonder in her. “That’s why you’re staying for the one night.”
Fionn hadn’t taken a single bite of food though he placed the piece of pancake to his mouth several times. He couldn’t understand why it felt as if he was breaking some terrible news to her when nothing about their lives connected anymore.
“It’s actually. Well, it’s not a holiday.”
“Oh no? Jesus, is it a funeral?”
“No, Áine. It’s . . .” He wished she’d figure it out for herself, so that he wouldn’t have to say it and run the risk of his voice catching on woes. But then the onus would be back on Áine for his inability to face his feelings, and he wasn’t that person anymore.
“Well, what is it then?”
“It’s for good! I’m leaving home for good. Believe it or not, tomorrow is my last living day on Irish soil.”
Áine’s bobbing head froze in some ethereal place between her pancake and Fionn. It was probably only five seconds at most, then she came to and shoved an overzealous chunk of pancake into her beautiful mouth. It was another five seconds before Fionn himself realised he hadn’t taken a single breath since telling her.
But in these ten seconds total, she—they—had shown their true reaction; his plans had disappointed her. And though they were fixed, he had to admit seeing her like that brought him a sensation of guilt-coated delight he suppressed from changing his neutral expression into something happier. She didn’t want him to go. Or, at the very least, the hypothetical possibilities encompassing his staying appealed to her just as much as they did for him.
And that alone, that moment of pure soul-bearing disheartenment dimming her near-constant bright eyes, made him wish the idea to leave had never come at all.
CHAPTER SIX
Kilkenny 2010
Áine
