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She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.
“Maybe next time,” she said, despite them both knowing full-well there wouldn’t be one.
If he hadn’t once been so unkind to her, he would have marked her words as cruel. But he was, and so he couldn’t possibly consider them as much.
Only fair.
Only balanced.
Áine stood, albeit a little wobbly and paler in tone.
His hand tore from his neck to help her steady herself. “Here, let me,” he said, heaping himself up to her aid.
She recoiled from his touch to habitually smooth her pinafore pleats, how she’d done twice already in his company. Not to have his own hands dangle, he returned them cowardly to his pockets so shallow they made his shoulders hunch, preparing him for the morbid journey back to his room.
“Áine, I—” Fionn hooked his words to throw them writhing back into the sea of his brewing despair. Because what could he say to change the mind of someone whose views and beliefs were undoubtedly set in stone? “I . . . I suppose we should head back.”
She nodded and left the room, giving no indication of whether or not he was to follow.
In a daze, he followed her anyway, absent of her touch and full of a sudden and undoubtedly irrational fear she’d planned this; a scheme to bait him into vulnerability so he’d know the embarrassment of rejection. To be lassoed into suspense only to be abandoned there.
He still couldn’t bring himself to be cross at her. If anything, he now thought,Good for you. I’ll take this suffering to know that it gives you peace. That your thirst for a long-awaited revenge has been slaked.
But was this it? Fionn knew he was spiralling, that these thoughts were irrational. It seemed the cruel irony of his wanting to drown in Áine’s power had become twisted, and he realised drowning meant he couldn’t breathe.
Or hear.
Or speak.
Or think straight.
Following with distance down the hallway, he clutched his stomach beneath his hoodie, gripping where dark hair swirled down his navel in the hopes it would stifle his anxiety. Then he scanned her with a tilted head, as though she were purely an apparition of observation. It gave the intended desire because for all of five seconds of truly looking, he concluded Áine wasn’t the type to seek revenge.
Entering the foyer, the weight of silence pressed onto his body, squeezing his gasping lungs so hard he wished even the pumps she wore would make some sound to soften the discomfort.
Leaving him on the guest side of reception, she circled around to resume her employee duties so impassively stiff he wondered if the last few hours had happened at all. Everything felt somehow misaligned, having his arteries ache like they weresending blood to the wrong places, making his organs work overtime to righten things.
“Two ticks, and I’ll have the key card sorted for you. Okay?” She said, twice before he heard.
He managed a nod, his eyes finding the chandelier above, so he could blame his clenched jaw, or the thick coating glazing his eyes on the glisten of light. There was a panic setting into his skull so fast now that he worried it might give him literal brain damage. It was a fear that had him race against his mind’s threatening collapse, thinking of all the ways he could stay without looking utterly pathetic. If he offered to mop the floors or wash the plates left in the sink, how it might buy him more time.
But then again, he’d only ever wanted to bask in a reciprocated company, and this was no longer that. No longer exciting and lustful. It seemed the inward consideration of being hopeful, particularly about her feeling the same, also ran the risk of making Fionn foolish.
He sought out a word to ground himself. The simple understanding of what he suffered often softened the disarray. And though the word that struck a light in his mind was a long one, it was the most fitting;
Torschlusspanik.
It signified time running out and the accompanying trepidation. It literally translated from German to English as “gate-closing-panic”. Yet, what the saying failed to determine was if the gate was locking him in or out? If it was manned? And if it was, were they beckoning on him to cross its threshold faster, before permanent closure, or shooting at his feet?
Just thinking about the word, Fionn knew what he was meant to do;
nothing.
He was to leave by her request and nothing more. The gate was closed. With this realisation, the panic stopped and mollified him. He didn’t need to clutch his stomach anymore to revert the pain.
A beeping noise drew him back.
