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“I suppose that doesn’t make you my unnecessary hero.AndI suppose neither of us want to be wet a second longer.” She leaned closer to him, lighter at the ready.
He closed the gap, hedonistically inhaling her personal scent of lavender and bizarre undercurrent of grease. Then, on their first attempt, a brazen, lip-curling thought suddenly came to him, “I didn’t know you had such hatred for people being wet. I thought women liked it when that happened.”
She winked. “Men too.”
Fionn’s stomach opted to spiritually levitate, making his expression anything but neutral. The sexual nature she emanated with so few words intoxicated him.
I should have kissed her in the work kitchen when she whispered into my mouth.
Six years ago, kissing would have been simple. Itwassimple. Now she felt unreachable. She was surely teasing him, he thought. Letting him know exactly what he worried about; the tableshadturned. She held the power. She got to decide and dangle.
Luring himself from his desires by the spark of fire, he followed up on her quip just to dampen the heat inside.
“Ahh.” He wagged his finger, cigarette locked between it and its adjacent. “This is true. Wetness makes for an easier, you know . . .”
“Ride?”
“Ehh, yep. Aha.” Fionn scratched the side of his head, searching for anywhere else to look. “That’s a . . . that’s the one.”
He wondered why he bothered making the joke when he was never good at talking about sex, even playfully. The sole exception to this was when actually in the act—when his sexual side took dominance and occasionally, upon request, the person he’d taken to bed.
Still, he was relieved the topic had pivoted to something less depressive than his gambling.
“Do you speak from experience there, Fionn?” Her gaze was to the light-polluted sky as she blew smoke at the rain like they had a personal grievance.
Christ, why did she have to say my name like that?he wondered. Say it like she laid claim to it the second she recognised him.
Even not looking at him, he didn’t find the courage to answer this time. He inhaled the cigarette, letting smoke roll down his throat far longer than he was comfortable with, then concluded he better say something else, something more casual: “I’m surprised you’re a smoker.”
Áine drew her watch from the sky, face dotted with speckles of rain as she inspected the cigarette like she never thought about it. Which was odd to him because she used to analyse everything.
“I suppose the answer is so simple I never gave much time to it.” She licked the rain from her lips, and though Fionn wanted the answer, he wanted to see her repeat that slight movement more. “Is this answer simple for a smart person or all of us normal people?” he asked.
Her eyes scrunched almost closed like he’d offended her. Like there was a burn in the wind blowing her way. “Fionn, youarea smart person. That’s not a compliment. That’s a fact. Fixed. Non-fucking-negotiable! And so, you’ll understand when I say the reason I smoke is that I too am smart, and smart peopleare inherently more depressed than . . . well, the not-so-smart. Ignorance is bliss is a state of mind I envy.”
He laughed. Somehow even when complimenting herself, she’d demonstrated humility. Fionn would have outright said stupid people instead, and not for lack of a better word.
“Smoking provides me a moment of peace in a world where I’m constantly looking for natural ways to find it.” She took another pull, the act elongating her rounded cheeks. “I only wish they were less deadly and more affordable, you know? I hate being a conscientious participant in consumerism.”
“Well isn’t that a fancy way of saying you don’t like spending money,” he said. And Áine laughed, with all her face, and that made Fionn happy. He liked the heat created by her. But the happiness, the happiness she swelled in him made him feel greater in worth when with her. He felt special. And that was for lack of a better word.
“Fionn, it’s not that I don’t like spending money, it’s that I can’taffordto spend it in a disposable manner. So maybe smoking is a vice of extremity how Aristotle says. It’s true though, the consumerism part. I fucking despise it. And it’s only getting worse in this ridiculously traditional nation. The two are connected in a really awful way when tradition shouldn’t be about money. Unless it’s designed for exactly that, like Chinese Joss Paper.”
“Chinese what?”
She shook her head, too engrossed in making her point to answer.
God, he loved when she became engrossed in something. They way it made her pull passionate expressions, made the breaths between words short and deeper.
When they were in class, those expressions never wandered to more provocative thoughts, how they briefly did now. Ifanything, at the time, he wished she’d settle down in herself to not draw attention to them.
“Look, here’s an example of what I mean,” she started. “Last time I was home in Kilkenny, Mam and Dad were off to a wedding; a second cousin or something in that region was getting married. A big shindig in the Lyrath Estate. Fucking secret singing chef and all, so I’m told.” Her eyes rolled with vexation, and the wind was picking up now, forcing her to battle her curls out of her face. “That morning, I’m eating porridge with honey while they bicker between me like I’m a ghost, about how much money to put in the card. Mam says two hundred would be best. Dad says one hundred. I’m siding with Dad, and not because I always do but because isn’t a hundred euro loads? In the end they put the two hundred in. And why?”
“Why?” He asked though he knew exactly why.
Maybe Áine was right.
Maybe I’m smarter than I give myself credit for.
