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“Nothing.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Dublin 2016
Áine
It was rare that Áine felt lost for words. Words were her anchor to the world. They were her life source and means of amassing information to debate on. Being quiet to have silence was almost always a premeditated decision.
This wasn’t that.
This was a silence under duress.
Triggered by learning Fionn was immigrating to Australia, and she really wouldn’t see him for sixty years, if ever, had sent her body into an unexpected state of shock.
What came to mind next was typical of Áine; an examination of the threat response: flight, fight and freeze. It was apparent what she was suffering from, she deduced that quickly. Her exterior had run briefly sedentary. Stuck because she was terrified. However, terrified of what, shedidn’tdeduce quickly. Because it wasn’t as if his leaving would alter her life, nor his staying.
She shoved a chunk of pancake into her mouth to secure another second to think before resigning herself to a vapid response, “That’s really great, Fionn.”
His top lip curled in an unexpected, devious way she both lovedandresented.
“You seem disappointed,” he said.
The way he said it, so confidently and smooth, made Áine want to tell him he should have retracted theseem. You’re disappointed, he should have said.
She could accept she just wanted to counter with this because it was a way to protect her vulnerability. Remit the conversation with that of something specific to deflect; a common habit of Áine’s.
But this wasn’t a debate, and Fionn wasn’t the opposition.
It struck her then, as she suited herself to another pancake with rims blacker than the circles around Fionn’s eyes—they had become cold now, the pancakes, not his eyes—she had nothing to lose. No worry about the fallout or rejection. But she supposed it was more than that; Fionn couldn’t be lost because she never had him.
So overcoming the fear, though with a hesitancy that literally shook her bare legs, Áine decided to resume their old theme of honesty. “Iamdisappointed.”
Fionn folded his arms onto his stomach as he leaned back. They thickened to a size the teen version of him would have only fantasised about.
Her fingers prickled with the urge to touch them. She squeezed her upper thighs instead.
“Why’s that?” he asked, his lips curling higher again.
Áine usually loved this question; why. It was endless. A place that had its own compartment in her head, filed by colour.
Now she didnot love the question but answered anyway: “Because, and I’m only guessing this is the truth considering I’ve had all of thirty seconds to think about it, but it’s been kind of lovely to see you tonight . . . and the idea of that never happening again makes me very sad.”
Fionn pillowed his head with interlocked fingers, though his face remained still. Beautifully still. And yet she could tell byhis personalised, minute shifting eye movements that something even more beautiful was stirring inside his brain.
“Feels strange to say this out loud, like it might break the spell or something, but I always believed you could read my mind when we were in school. Did you know that?” he asked rhetorically. “So much so, sometimes I was afraid to think things in your presence in case you figured it out. I’ve only now realised you weren’t reading my mind at all. You were sharing the thought, weren’t you? But I suppose you already knew that too.”
So it wasn’t rhetorical orevena question.
All the same, she needed him to say it. “What’s your point?”
His elbows dropped to the table, rattling all the cutlery. Then his eyes settled on her mouth so directionally heated she anticipated they might melt the butter coating her lips. That she would have to write this all down on her notes app later because she was sure no contender of replication existed to whatever it was she was feeling right now.
“Áine, if this is the last time I ever see you . . . I’d be very sad too.”
A weightless feeling hitched her breath, but the opportunity to reach out and touch him when she had the chance was missed by his next words, somehow more honest than the last:
“Listen, I have to come out with it before the chance goes. How I treated you when we were young—” his throat caught the last word. “It was awful. I really am sorry. I’d like to say it was because I was young and fucking terrified of losing my friends when I’d already lost everything else, but they’d just be excuses to abate how mortified I am about all of this. Because I never took into consideration that you obviously exceeded those friends in . . . in every way. I suppose what I’m trying to say in a roundabout way is, I was a fool.”
