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Áine idly read the blurb of a book titled:Bury Your Wart with a Potato. Then lobbed it back into the discount basket at the back of John Hegarty’s Newsagents. The entire room smelled like old carpet and wet cigarettes. Or maybe wet carpet and old cigarettes.
Her father had been in town to meet John over a toaster bought the week before. He’d stuck a knife in to fish out his burnt soda bread. And so, had picked Áine up from school when returning it for a new one.
Dennis Meaher was barrelled and middle-aged, with most of his hair but few of his front teeth. Half at most, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He just ate his bags of chips with his back teeth instead.
“Don’t be gettin’ used to this now. Me collecting you and all that,” he’d said in a jokey way on their walk up the busy main street, like she’d ever think as much. She supposed that was the point in some messed up way.
She ran her fingertips over the display of Biro pens, letting them dip into the slight divots between.
Touch felt different now. Even plastic felt noticeably stiff when before it felt like nothing to ever give thought to. The before in this circumstance was what had happened between her and Fionn in the back of English class.
They had barely spoken a word to each other all week, which wasn’t unusual, but the number of times she’d caught him looking at her by the lockers, mouth agape, like maybe something promising was on the tip of his tongue, thatwasunusual.
She wondered what it tasted like now; the tip of his tongue. Her teeth clenched at the thought of it. She ran her own tongue along the back of them, like it needed to be caged in case it escaped, and all her urges spilled out onto the lino floor in heated reds and pinks.
“Áine, pet.” Dennis waved her over, his other hand still in John’s during what appeared to be a deal.
Áine learned young that Dennis knew everyone locally. The type to have stories about wild nights in the pub tucked away in his back pocket and solely remembered for a later point of creating familiarity in situations just like this, if he needed an under-the-table agreement.
This was the only reason her mother bought tins of Quality Street chocolates for the Garda over the Christmas holidays. “Cheaper than paying for road tax,” she’d said during an evening bout of wrapping them up at the kitchen table. Áine would sit next to her, an array of metallic bows stuck to all her fingertips until needed.
In her first step to join her beckoning dad, Áine’s neck craned over him to see who walked past the glass double doors going about their business.
“Fionn,” she whispered.
The balls of her feet threatened to leave the lino floor for that final glimpse of him outside school grounds. He was lighting acigarette, bare elbows bending where his school shirt was rolled up.
She hadn’t thought it was possible to be more attracted to him than last week, and yet the little dancing fairies in her belly suddenly felt spiked by their own dust.
“Áine,” her dad called again with a tone more like that of her mothers; reprimanding.
She found herself next to him in seconds, hands prickled with sweat.
“Daydreaming again, were ya’?” he said with a smile that always came after any sort of authority.
She didn’t answer.
“Ah, lovely little thing so she is,” John Hegarty said to Dennis, his grey quiff flopping atop hunched shoulders as he nodded Áine’s way.
“Lovely how?” Áine asked with a false grin shining up at him like she was a ‘silly little girl’ with genuine curiosity.
“Áine,” Dennis said low and slow, “come up out of that.” He was well used to her game by now. Used to her silence and the breaking of said silence with, more often than not, a cutting purpose.
“Ah, I just meant . . .” John rolled his eyes with a jolt of his head and left for the new toaster on the display stand next to the cigarettes and wine.
“Meant what?” Áine waited, chewing her snigger. Dennis gave her a nudge and a wink like it was funny enough that he didn’t altogether care about his reputation at that moment.
The sliver of attention from him made her stand taller, prouder.
John handed the new toaster to Dennis. “No black. Navy will do, yeah?”
“Makes no difference to me. Thanks again.”
“Don’t mention it. The company will know about the fault, Dennis.” He winked.
“That’s a lovelylittle thingto do, John, isn’t it,” Áine said.
John wiped the sweat collecting on his upper lip.
