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Despite that tiny trait, his understanding struck Áine with surprise embarrassingly blatant in her widening eyes, already too big by her review. She took to chewing her lip, latching the piece of skin on the cusp of ripping off at this point. Who was she to expect he wouldn’t know such things? Him. A person who she didn’t know at all in their current form.
“I didn’t become stagnant for six years, Áine,” he jested, reinforcing his theory that they shared thoughts.
Christ, maybe he’s right about that.
The tenderness in his words made her feel less bad.
“It’s not that,” she lied. “I’m just delighted to know someone who’s heard of it.” Aloud it sounded more pretentious than planned. She clenched her eyes to outwardly chastise herself so that he’d know too. Padre Pio in the corner was frowning at her when she opened them again. “Sorry, I’ve a habit of being an arsehole at times. That’s new by the way if you were wondering if I’ve changed at all over the years.”
Yes, she wore her intelligence with pride, but the line of unkindness to that was a fine and evermoving one depending on the company.
“You’re not an arsehole. It’s fair to be surprised.” He tousled his hair as if to settle into the conversation and leave her self-depreciation behind. “I came across it only this year when reading in general about philosophy. Socrates, Marx, and the like. And so, I’m reading Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics, and he’s talking about this place”—he stretched his hands wide for emphasis—“a place between two extremities; the mean point, virtue, whatever you want to call it. And like you said, it’s basically a place of happiness, if you follow the rule that it doesn’t actually have rules and just do your fucking best. That’s my interpretation anyway because I’m aware Aristotle wrote it for a higher class than our own.”
She found Fionn’s voice, seductive and twanged by his accent, came alive when submerged in the topic, and his body leaned closer and closer to her, the deeper he ventured into that engrossment.
What’s more, it madehercome alive, too. Made her smile meet her eyes. Made her momentarily think she could happily exist without the palate cleanser of misfortune.
Fionn never would have let enthusiasm outwardly prevail when they were younger, no matter how much passion ignited in him.
Áine was rapt for it all. Passion was a characteristic she considered terribly sexy. So much so, she crossed her legs beneath the table and squeezed them tight as if to lock that sexual thought inside its source.
“So, what’s your vice? And is it that of excess or deficiency?” She asked in a heavy breath to distract from her nefarious ways.
Her own vices that came to mind were unanimously deficient; pettiness and stubbornness in droves. Although shehad, at times, and by times most weekends, bypassed balance for the territory of excess too. That mostly came in the form of spiteful resentment for her mother and separately, an indulgence in wine, cigarettes and a pink vibrator. Áine scratched that last one. There was no such thing as an excess of self-pleasure. To be pleasuredwasto be balanced.
She winked when Fionn didn’t answer and said, “Maybe you don’t have a vice?”
Fionn had retracted himself militantly upright to pull the neck of his hoodie like it had become sentient and wished to choke him.
She considered the possibility of him having an allergic reaction to the eggs in the batter and scrambled her mind for the appropriate action of First Aid.
Check airways. Check pulse. Chest compressions.
“My vice was gambling.”
“Oh,” was all Áine managed to say for the second time tonight. The first, because that evening all those years ago when he was attacked had made sense now.
I’m an idiot.
Addiction wasn’t something Áine was predisposed to. Neither had she come into it for anything her own world had thrown at her. She looked at Padre Pio again because she didn’t know what to say other than words of sympathy Fionn would hold no value on, and maybe Padre would know.
Fionn beat them to it, surely to quench the awkward silence. “The lads used to joke that Paddy Power was my best friend. And stupid me thought it was normal because we all bet in some form; horses, football, casinos when the pubs closed.” His head bobbed for each example. “Now I know I was doomed from the get-go. The perfect brew of disaster; my genetic predisposition to addiction, and my father’s awful parenting in the wake of Mam’s death. Learning this was good though because I feltless . . . less responsible I suppose, and the ease of the burden progressed my recovery instead of it becoming an excuse.” He exhaled a long breath that seemed to release more than just air. She was tempted to inhale its excess as if it might take the shape of empathy she was often lacking. But for this want, a weary concern crept into Áine like Tetanus, stiffening her frame against the chair.
Had she become his secret confidante again? His means to an end.
“I guess the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.” Fionn said this with an apathetic twist she wasn’t buying. The pain was too thick in his busy eyes. “It’s ironic when most of my hardship as a child was caused by gambling. There were days after Mam died when I went without dinner because that bastard lost it all. And then I grew up, and even though I used tohatethose days, hate how much my belly ached from hunger, I still ended up missing dinners. I was convinced that if I could just win back what I’d lost, I needn’t worry about dinner for weeks.” He finished with a constricted shrug. “Never fucking worked though.”
“If anything, it means it wasn’t your fault. Learned behaviour is a hard habit to break.”
Áine’s wince instantly deepened. She hated her weak response. It was too textbook because all her family were ever addicted to was complaining.
“So what about now?” she asked.
“Well,” he said with a cheeky smile she wasn’t expecting but welcomed. “Now I’m recovering. Sober, you might say. That’s where I’ve been the last few months—rehab. It’s done me a world of good.”
Life really did have worse plans for you.
“Well isn’t that great. I’m proud of you.” Áine wondered if it was appropriate to feel proud of his achievements when shecould barely be considered his friend; that a feeling such as that wasn’t reserved for her.
