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All the same, she meant it.
He took to chewing his thumb how he did in school when nervous. “Thanks. To be honest, I don’t really talk about it or enjoy how it makes me feel to do so. Although you kind of pry these things out of me without trying. And I mean that in a good way.”
Hearing this softened her frame again. Maybe his trust in her was a compliment.
Maybe it always was.
“What about smoking? Do you partake anymore?” she asked, feeling the crave for nicotine resurfacing on her skin like a pulse not of her own.
“Socially, I do. Why? Areyou offering?”
“Yeah. I think we both need one after that.”
With the little time they had she needed an excuse to get him to come outside with her, so the five minutes of submitting tohervice wouldn’t be wasted.
“I remember a time when you’d never put a cigarette in your mouth.”
Áine stood and fixed her pleats. “There was a lot I wouldn’t put in my mouth back then.” She looked Fionn dead on, until it was him who was looking for help from Padre Pio.
The power in seeing him this way curled up into her spine, making her feel almost feline. Made her feel in charge. “Do you mind helping me with the crockery?”
He immediately stood to her ask, him with his re-reddening ears she felt a wave of power for shepherding to the surface.
She stacked two plates, leaving the others for him even though carrying them all herself would be easy. Because this ask of him wasn’t to reinforce his manliness. She was just afraid iftheir hands weren’t occupied, they’d again be in each other’s, and a can of worms neither of them needed would be opened.
En route to the kitchen where a draft was already biting by her knees, she reconsidered; she didn’t know if Fionn wanted that at all. That, like her, he’d just become flirtatious as a general means of communication.
Shit.
Wishful thinking had struck.
Áine’s tongue slid over her teeth when it occurred to her that this wouldn’t be the first time that would happen on this wet autumn night.
What’s more, the masochist in her didn’t mind this possibility all that much, or perhaps, even at all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dublin 2016
Fionn
When dumping their crockery into the kitchen sink without care, Fionn’s neck craned to fawn her; Áine, just for grabbing her cigarettes from the jacket hanging on the back door’s hook.
Every second spent with her now was just another in his fighting battle to resist her. But he would resist. He had to. Australia was the only way forward. Ireland had grown too cold in his heart. It didn’t beat right anymore. And he needed it to beat right if he wanted to stay better.
She dipped for the tin of peas from the floor’s puddled corner when an inevitable stream of thought came to him;
Fionn was always a popular lad. He was likeable and easy to get along with, but he had only objectively believed that. On the inside, it was different. Darker. There was no logic to the negative when the fondness people had for him was recurring, but the self-depreciation had become instilled in him so that even in death, he’d be surprised by the great turnout for his funeral.
This trend of popularity was upheld in rehab, where he thanked his lucky stars there was support during tempting moments—and there weremany, tempting moments.
Those weeks were the turning point really, where he learned that underneath the external disposition of him people were drawn to, he wasn’t as awful as the picture he’d painted of himself in the shadow of his father.
Instead, he was beginning to notice the parts of himself he liked in the light of his mother. Beginning to notice what she’d passed down: patience, regulation, empathy, and how they distanced him from the temptation. Because even though she didn’t live in the end, it wasn’t for lack of trying.
And then with Áine; kind Áine, though he was sure she could tell he felt this depressive way in school, when in her company it didn’t matter. He somehow forgot he didn’t like himself for a while.
God, if only she hadn’t stopped him from responding, when inferring her but wasjuicy,he would have told her the one thing she had wrong; he didn’t know how much she’d liked him. Not beyond the limitations he’d placed on her anyway.
