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Coming from his stillness, Fionn ran his hands through his hair so that it smoothed all the wrinkles from his forehead and stretched his eyebrows. “Fuck Áine. That’s bad.”
She smiled and closed over the window. “Do I win the battle of misfortune?”
“It’s hard to compare a dead mother to a bad one.”
She laughed, although in hindsight worried she shouldn’t have. But then so did he in the way people often do when dealing with death or any sort of pain.
“I have to say,” she started on her journey back to bed, hand swinging around its frame. It made her feel light.
“What’s that?” he asked, lifting the covers for her naked return.
“You’re quite sexual in the act for a man who doesn’t want to talk about sex all that much.”
He swallowed. “A fair presumption, I suppose. I don’t really know what it is I struggle with. Because I obviously like having sex. I think it just depends on the person. Depends on the relationship. I feel quite ambiguous to sex most of the time, which I know makes me sound odd.”
“It doesn’t?”
“You think?”
“I know,” she said.
“C’mere to me.” He pulled her close before she had the ingrained urge to manoeuvre away.
And with that, just like she’d done many nights as a teen, she closed her eyes and thought only of Fionn O’ Rourke. Thought of the last time she ever saw him before tonight.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Kilkenny 2010
Áine
There was something wholly calming about being in a church. Be it the peaceful worship, community or wise words dripping off the old priest’s frail lips during Mass, it was universal knowledge that people in search of respite from their woes could find it in their place of worship.
This wasnotthe case for Áine, the respite part. Not anymore. Not since her interest in debate had started to direct itself inwards. Which was just reflection, she supposed.
Still, as Áine stood in the long dark corridor with her classmates in robes, it was exactly that she was feeling this evening; calm. Calm in the absence of her prevailing fear that someone might figure out she did like girls after all, and condemn her in front of the clergy. She quietly laughed in her chest until it turned into a cough she tried to stifle. Because it all felt so freeing now. Her days of boiling in Catholic guilt like a steam-screaming lobster were over.
Sure she wouldn’t take to the queue for her Communion this evening, she peered out to the pews, her neck straining. The foreboding tuts of her mam and dad from the audiencewere already loud in her head. But now she found herself to be a woman on a path to power and reclamation of all that she deserved, she would prevail. This was a realisation that struck her harder than any puberty or sibling fighting for the TV remote. A realisation resolute; she’d been baptising her tears at the hands of the church to no result because there wasn’t anything wrong with her.
She was just bisexual.
And by her regard, she was ready to have fun. To take the body of another in her mouth when it was by her request, not the churches.
Although that venture would not be with any of the dozen or so girls currently crowding around her in the bleak light, so close that all she could smell was an exhaustive compilation of floral-infused perfumes intended to seduce later in the night.
Áine didn’t judge. She intended to do similar herself, dressed with that goal in mind too. This was reason enough in the eyes of the priest, and his God, that they’d need to cover up in gowns if they were to take the altar to sing for graduation.
What was probably less important was for the first time in Áine’s life, her hair was straight. Her sister Deirdre had styled it for her, and if it wasn’t for the perfumes, the burning smell might still be persisting in her poor nostrils. Deirdre also did her make-up, which Áine might have found strange not six months earlier. But since Deirdre had moved out with her current boyfriend her attitude toward Áine had been promoted to kindness. It was like the real world had made her realise her poor treatment of Áine in the past might not be as normal as their family once maintained.
Áine didn’t hold it against her, and she adored the look Deirdre gave her because it lifted her cheeks and softened the roundness in them. She had even plucked Áine’s eyebrows into thick sharp lines, just peaking at their ends. Áine wishedshe’d done this much sooner; it made her feel beautiful to look in the mirror as opposed to the slight dread always incurred beforehand.
To accompany, though not without a slight restriction on her groin, her outfit, awarded to herself from the pittance paid of her summer picking strawberries, was the nicest thing she ever wore; a high-waisted, olive linen pantsuit that flared on its ends, and a matching blazer she’d chosen to leave unbuttoned so her basic white crop top was visible. Or at least it would be later, when she got her gown off. She pulled at its neck where the tag was itching. Then battled a creeping camel toe with a tug and a half-second squat.
The priest, Father Murphy, walked to the front of the crowding girls, his arms raised like he worshipped them more than his God.
Wearing heels for the occasion, the unexpected thrill of seeing him beneath her when she was so used to craning her neck up to him on the altar, presented Áine with an itch on her lips to say something she shouldn’t. But considering the church made it impossible to officially leave, this was as good a chance as any to see if there were alternative ways to challenge it.
“Can I ask you a question, Father?” she whispered, her back against the wall to straighten her out another inch higher again.
