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“Because of fucking consumerism and its weird little”—Áine’s hands contorted into attacking beaks for her emphasis—“little dependent relationship with tradition. It’s because of an ever-growing expectancy. Every year the price gets higher and higher, and the more events are created or heightened to fuel it. Gender reveals. Weddings. Hen parties abroad. Birthdays. Birthweeks. BirthMONTHS. Fucking every Catholic event ever. It’s madness! Everything good is lost sight of.”
She took the final drag of her cigarette, nostrils flaring.
With that, Fionn came to see exactly why she smoked.
He flicked his own away, a distant puddle satisfyingly sizzling its orange ring out.
“Sorry, I’m ranting,” she confessed with a teethy smile. “And I might want almost half of those things one day. Future me will probably despise this version of myself.”
His grin deepened. “You’re not ranting at all. Or, you are, but there’s nothing wrong with that! Sure what is life but a series of conversations whereby we learn, ingrain, and God forgive me, even judge?” He joked. “Better them be ones we’re passionate about than drivel concerning weather and, I dunno, optimum Instagram filters.”
“Well . . .” She tilted her head with a downturned mouth that suggested this piqued her interest. “Instagram filters might lead to a greater conversation about the unrealistic beauty standards created for today’s youth and how Influencers, the peddling ones especially, are completely rotten to their core. And I’m aware the topic is done to death, but could you imagine being a teenager in today’s society? No thank you.”
Fionn took her lead, eager to see her melt into another conversation. “I wonder, haven’t these standards always existed, just with less reach? I read an article once about a recommended diet for housewives of the fifties. In essence, it was a daily diet comprised of hard-boiled eggs and vodka.”
“Not far off intermittent fasting then,” she said with an annoyance he was sure wasn’t directed at him but at society as a whole.
“A lot of my mates swear by it. Me though,” he patted his stomach, “my metabolism leaves me in a perpetual state of dad bod territory that makes me look far more muscular than deserving for lack of effort.”
Though he hadn’t expected it or even found what he said all that funny, Áine threw her head back to laugh into the night sky like the unleashing of her laughter was always one built up over many days of mundanity.
“Christ almighty, I love a good dad bod. Especially a hairy one!”
“Oh, I’m sure I’ll have more hair than a gorilla by the time I retire.”
Her laughter grew so loud a local heckled down the alleyway: “Shut the fuck up ya’ bleedin’ head melt!”
Áine’s humour turned to deathly stone as she veered her leaning body towards the nightcrawler despite him being out of sight. “Why don’t you go to fucking bed for yourself ya’ moody prick! I’m sure it’s a fucking single because no one would have you apart from your mother!”
“Woah, Christ!” Fionn laughed, albeit somewhat nervously in case the confronting man came back. His fighting days were long gone, but then again, if the man came any closer to Áine, it would be the greatest regret of his life.
“Rude,” she huffed with a curling smirk that told Fionn she somewhat enjoyed shouting at the heckler. That it was another way to release the growth of her unwanted emotions.
He mirrored her, enjoying how she hadn’t an iota of care that he saw her. She wasn’t embarrassed by who she was. She was happily existing. It reminded him of something she once said when he was having a noteworthy hard night.
No. Stop dwelling on the past.
Áine, settling in herself, checked the time before chewing her lip in a way that rocked her jaw.
Even that he found to be sexy. The escalation of that recurring thought, how constant her sexiness was, it was getting borderline dangerous. He wondered if she brought that side out in him, and if she liked doing things with her lips so much would she enjoy his fingers brushing over them before pushing two into her awaiting mouth. He shook the thought away. “Something the matter?”
“Ah no, nothing!” she said. “It’s just that . . . well, it’s just forty-five minutes until your key card reboots. So, I’m wondering how you’d like to spend it?”
Taking from her urgency, Fionn grasped the stretched presumption she wasn’t being polite, after all. But really was making the most of the little time they had left.
“How would I like to spend the next forty-five minutes, Áine?” A smile crept onto his face. “Oh, I can think of a few ways.”
“A few? Funny, only one comes to my mind.”
A similar, albeit slightly more devious smile found her own lips, and for this, the heat began to tunnel inside his core. Because despite Fionn’s earlier desire to retreat from the depths of Áine’s reclamation of power, now and with certainty, he wanted to drown in it.
CHAPTER NINE
Dublin 2016
Áine
Stepping back inside the well-lit kitchen, Áine headed for the fridge with Fionn on her tail and her head lost in thought, just as he’d claimed of her too—the drifting off into themselves. But there was just one thing circling Áine’s mind on this short journey; a thing considered among the most fleeting emotions.
