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“Stick up for yourself?”
She laughed one long, droning ha so loud he dipped his head to check if the people walking by were watching.
“Christ, you’re odd, Áine!” Seeing how fast his words wiped the smile off her face, he wouldn’t have blamed her if she left at this point. His inability to regulate everything inside made himwant to leave himself lately. Over the edge of the river, into the wet darkness.
She rightened herself into immediate smiling recovery, like she’d done it a thousand times before.
It was stupid, really, to think he alone suffered. There she was, her mother not even letting her get a haircut, and she still wanted to hand Fionn comfort when she should have been saving it for herself. He knew this was just the top layer of her hurt.
How did I get you so wrong?
Áine cleared her throat almost forcefully, “I don’t mind being odd, Fionn, would you believe? I like it this way. Well, I do most of the time. Sometimes it can make life a little harder, but I have nice friends, and I don’t think I’m too depressed or anything. But I also see you with your friends, and I’m under no illusion there’s disparity between us. Or that your friends think they could have me whenever they want. And maybe you think the same after last time, but I wouldn’t have let you if I didn’t want it too. It used to really frustrate me that I couldn’t convince people otherwise, but lately I don’t mind as much. Or I don’t care.”
Fionn just presumed because he was popular and easy to get along with that maybe people like Áine envied this. He scooted beneath himself as he wondered what was it about him that drew her in then. Made her call out to him in a fight or risk pneumonia to stay with him on the riverbank.
“I suppose I shouldn’t care so much about fitting in either,” he said, playfully scratching his hair while hiding a grin. “You probably think I’m stupid for wanting that.”
Sure that it was pity rounding her already doey eyes, his following breath didn’t come.Oh, he thought, realising his centre-of-gravity was a false one. The map was doctored to make him bigger and more important than he ever was in actuality. She’d caught him out. Ripped his sticky ego from his skin. Somaybe she didn’t think he was looking at her when he was spying on her writing. Maybe all this time she was just . . . kind. Or as he had put it to her two weeks previous, she was ‘nice’.
Whatever Áine locked in her stare, she chose to release: “Fionn, what are you but the creation of judgement and perception? Do you know what I mean by that? As in, do we—you and me—do we get a say? DoI? Or do we live silently in some blighted void of external opinion? I actually want to decide for myself who I am and who I will be. I want to live in the content mindset that no matter the external influence of my protracted life, I am me—Áine. And that’ll be enough. Well, I hope it will. And you should want that too!”
His heavy exhale of realisation regrettably covered her face in condensation. Regrettably, because he wanted to see her face again. It was as if she was giving him a secret key to a world most didn’t know existed.Here,she was saying. Take this and be happy.This might stop the pain.Just be you. Because, in my eyes, you are enough.
A prickle of temptation ran over his fingertips as if the key was a physical one he could take from her hand, which he suddenly wanted to hold.
No.
He plucked another cigarette from the idle box, cupping it and the lighter to avoid the breeze. It was a key he was too afraid to take when all he had, all hewas,were his friends and popularity and pride. “Right. Well, I’m . . . sorry,” he mumbled before inhaling with lips clenched hard to the butt. “I guess I forget I’m one of those lads who peaks in school when people like you are only starting out.”
“Ah here. Look, I don’t hold any of it against you! Honest to God, I don’t. I know I’m not the easiest girl to get along with. You’re more suited to chatting to the pretty girls, but—”
“That’s not true.” All his joints offensively clenched—which he thought was at least better than another outburst.
“What’s not true?”
“I’m not attracted to just looks. I dunno. The lads show me pictures of tits on their phones and stuff. And to be honest, I never get it. I say they’reunrealat the time, but it all goes over my head.”
“So you don’t like tits, is it?” A hint of teasing embroiled her tone.
“No! Jesus Christ! I do. I do!” She really was odd and took all his few clear thoughts out of sequence—when she wasn’t aligning them. “It’s hard to explain. I prefer who they are attached to more. I need that part first.” What he chose not to say was the ‘first’ didn’t exist before whatever happened between them the other night.
Áine’s bushy brows arched. “Is that why you put your hand on my leg after class a few weeks back? Because you like the person attached to my tits?”
Honesty suddenly found him easy, and he decided against his fear that being authentic might not be the worst thing. “I might. Because you’re very kind, Áine. Did you know that?”
“So I was nice a fortnight ago, and now I’m kind, but in neither situation was I considered pretty?” She pressed these words onto him with subtle enjoyment.
He smirked at her teasing game and the way she managed to get one up on him. When other people did that to Fionn they usually sought to embarrass him, but not Áine. It was clear she just enjoyed the challenge of ‘winning’ a conversation.
He brought the cigarette to his stuttering lips as he considered what she said. “I’d say you are pretty, yeah.”
Maybe even beautiful.
“And I suppose you would like to kiss someone if you thought they were pretty?” Her face dipped into her scarf again.
He caught the pink filling her cheeks anyway.
Áine’s offer was blatant, and though he wanted to, he couldn’t bring himself to look into her eyes where he knew the truth of his answer lay.
