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“Yeah. I guess you’re right,” he said, only half believing her. “Anyway, the access to books was the real problem. The costs and yeah, I suppose being barred from the local library.”
“Why were you barred from the library?”
A fair question. One he guessed he subconsciously wanted her to ask in how he brought it up.
“I stole a book.” No hue touched him for his confession, which gave him enough grace to continue, “One about addiction I obviously didn’t want the librarian to see. I should’ve known the bloody alarm would go off on my way out.” Fionn threw his eyes to the beams again for some admittance of his foolishness. And yet, telling her he’d done this scummy thing continued not to embarrass him how it might if he had told an actual friend. That wasn’t to say he didn’t think Áine could be occasionally judgemental. She’d probably admit that herself, but perhaps her understanding of morality was similar to his, that it was circumstantial. “Looking back, I wasn’t in my right mind.”
He found her expression didn’t change until emerging from her stillness. Until she spoke quickly, with pupils thick in excitement, “I once stole a load of tampons from one of those bathroom dispensers at Heuston station. And not in an emergency situation. No. Just because I could. And there were five—FIVE—other people in there when I did it, Fionn. No priest could absolve me of my impulsive bullshit.” She waftedaway that thought. “It was open because of maintenance or something. I don’t even feel bad.”
If her story was intended to give him reassurance, it didn’t. But the humour of it did make him laugh—a trait of his that occasionally caused women to swoon.
Áine didn’t seem the type to swoon. If anything, he was one who was swooning. The one fawning over her grin which made the pulse of fading time touch harder onto his skin.
“You should try audiobooks,” she suggested.
He reflexively squinted a disgusted eye at the thought of not holding a book in his hands.
“I know. I know,” she started, her head bobbing to each repetitious syllable. “But we’re just not rich enough to have the luxury of those pompous fucking attitudes. I think that’s a good thing, you know; forced into being grounded humans. Forced into riding the line of moderation.”
Despite the hint of sarcasm, he deduced she meant it. That she wasn’t just tailoring her view to the conversation like most did to keep things pleasant.
“Maybe you’re right. No, youareright,” he said, angry with himself. “It’s the familiarity I like. But I’ve been listening to podcasts recently, so maybe that’s the perfect transition. Blindboy Boatclub is my hero, and I hear he’s planning on starting one.”
Her body rose at his mention, “Isn’t he amazing!”
Fionn was glad to know by Áine’s approval, he was onto something in listening to him.
“I saw him this year on the Late Late Show,” he told her. “He says to Ryan Tubridy with cool conviction,‘You want to know who my generation are? . . . My generation are either leaving the country or jumping in rivers’.”
Only in saying this aloud did Fionn realise how close the latter could have been, if Declan hadn’t offered him a place to stay and paid for rehab.
“I think I understand the struggle of audiobooks,” she started, perhaps sensing his desire to stay on topic. “There’s an element of silence to reading that it can’t offer. And I know that makes no sense because there’salwayssome voice reading the story to you, but when I’m in my room, and it’s just me, and it’s so fucking silent, I feel at ease. Now look, I also know that makes me a bit of a narcissist—”
“A narcissist?” He frowned and drew his hand over his stubble, dropping off just under his chin. For someone he considered a genius, he wished she had a better viewpoint of herself outside the realm of what she could intellectually offer to others.
“Well, I’m only finding peace in the sound of my own voice in place of the audiobook narrator. And sure, maybe narcissist isn’t the most fitting word. I also wonder if all this stems from my mother, which is typical of me to wonder and maybe not always called for, but when I was little, I had to learn to soothe myself. Withmyvoice rather than hers! Like—” She sighed. “Didn’t being the youngest mean I needed the most maternal affection?”
Fionn thought of his mam again in flecks. Her auburn hair, which Declan inherited. Her perfectly balanced touch. How even her chastising voice was never intended to incite fear. Because all she ever did was love him.Always.
“You didn’t deserve that,” he told Áine. Without realising, he’d edged forward right off his chair to kneel on one knee. He felt sturdy, like he was ready to take the weight of whatever she was about to give him. His hands skimmed over hers. They were bunched and tense, but she didn’t seem to mind as he peeled back her fingers to let him in.
“Sometimes I wonder if my own mother doesn’t love me,” she said, her voice creaking. “If I’m hard to love . . .”
Fionn’s throat bobbed to subconsciously block the honesty gearing to flow out of him. But he wouldn’t let the ingrained reflex stop him. He wanted her to know what he thought now. Because he’d been so fixated on taking a part of her with him, he hadn’t considered leaving a part of himself behind, for her.
“I don’t think you’re hard to love,” he told her, his voice stern and thick. “I think maybe people fear the inferiority they suffer from your presence. They’re afraid if they allow themselves to even contemplate a crumb of your love, they’ll be in agony if a day comes when they have to live without it. You’re not wicked or cold-hearted or a narcissist, Áine. You are actually so-very-kind, and I know I keep saying that, but it’s because it’s true! And I want you to believe me when I say it.” He thought there was some regressed truth in there for himself too, the part of suffering when tomorrow comes and he’ll have to live without her.
“I think that might be the most fucked up and nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.” Áine timidly smiled without her eyes. It drew all her curls into her face.
Taking his hands from hers, he tucked them behind her ears so he could see all of her face. Considered all the times what he felt for her was lost to fear, or the presumption she knew this herself.
“You’re remarkable. Don’t let anything,ever, make you think otherwise.”
Her eyes finally settled on his so he could consume their blue, flecked with green. It was as if their sole purpose was to feed his obsession. That they were created and built upon his desire to hold her attention.
The warmth of her presence flowed into his open mouth, nourishing his body.
He leaned then, filling half the gap so if she wished, she could close it . . . meet him there in the lonely place laid dormant for six years.
