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“We kissed last week, didn’t we?” he said in protest.
“We didn’t,” she countered as a matter of fact. “I think you were a bit more focused on getting my knickers off.”
Hearing her recall the moment back to him stiffened his body all the way to his tongue, which felt much too big in his mouth. He spoke despite the feeling, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that, Áine. It wasn’t right. And it’s no excuse, but I don’t think I was in my right mind.”
“You regret what happened?” She nodded like of course that was the logical explanation.
“No! I regret not having the common fucking courtesy of kissing you first. Asking you out to the cinema or something.”
“I don’t mind, Fionn. I liked it.”
“Would you have liked it better if I had kissed you first?”
It was her seeking distractions in the stars now. “Yeah, that might have been nicer.”
Fionn flicked the cigarette butt into the water, finding her already inching closer and her breath more audible.
“And how about now,” she asked, turning back to him.
He daringly reached out to lower her scarf so he could see all of her face. See her lips and her dimple. See her hopeful eyes that sent heat into his chest in a way that never happened with other people.
He tilted closer to her, allowing himself to be guided by whathewanted. But as she closed her eyes and he pressed his lips to her for just one perfect moment, he thought himself not worthy, and that her source of that very thing—worth—would be drained to compensate for his lacking.
He pulled from her. “I’m sorry, Áine. I want to, but I can’t. I just can’t.”
Her disappointed eyes opened, glistening under the streetlight as he swung his legs over the opposite way, so she wouldn’t be forced to see any more of him as he rejected her.
I’m pathetic.
“Fionn, wait!”
“I’ll see you in school tomorrow, alright? Mind yourself,” he called back.
Then he was gone, pacing into the night with all his insecurities in convoy, while she stayed. Abandoned. A girl who was happy to be herself as he continued on his brisk way with hands shoved into pockets. Not as Fionn, but the blighted version of him influenced by all the judgement he was too weak to face.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Dublin 2016
Fionn
A torrent of terrible feelings weighed on Fionn, burrowing into the pit of his stomach where he hoped they’d digest just to be free of them. The tiny room, formerly a gift, had become smaller and hollowed to the shape of him alone. Within this smothering constriction, his lips jittered, still inches from Áine’s. Inches from the fading path in a yellow wood she’d chosen not to venture.
“Sorry,” Áine whispered from unmoving lips like she was a dummy to the ventriloquy of sudden sense that he wasn’t worth kissing.
Fionn huffed a slight laugh, his hand cupping the back of his neck as he made peace with her decision.
That wasn’t to say he didn’t have the urge to forfeit all his future love for how insanely wasted it felt in this moment. But wasn’t it fitting? Only right for the balance of the world’s axis that she’d chosen to reject him when he had all but emphatically pleaded her lips delicate touch.
Now he understood all those years ago how she felt when he left her in the cold at a riverbank.
He wished his current self could visit past her in the dire moment. Take her hands in his as he swore it wasn’t her fault. That it was the boys. He was just too afraid of what wouldhappen next. Too pervaded by virulent fear that the illusion of who he was to her would be tarnished by the truth of his misfortunate life. If he let her in, she’d be forced to see his hidden parts, beyond the mess of his house. And no one in their right mind, by Fionn’s youthful regard, deserved that.
A stanza from a W.B. Yeats poem came to him, blooming the riverbank memory both more sad and more beautiful into his ever-tortured mind:
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
