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His shoulders unclinched only to immediately inflate.
She remembers.
Feigning high-browed surprise, he pretended, or at least attempted, not to know her. It was silly, to him more than anyone. The old form of Fionn—the arsehole one—sometimes acted before the new. That boy was so ingrained into him, it was difficult not to let him take centre stage when he feared his true self might be rejected. He was also far more equipped to deal with a scenario as strange as this.
What were the chances of him seeinghertonight? The one person who had the potential to change everything when he needed nothing to change. The person he once believed could change currents, and winds, and minds, and lore a thousand years older than them and their parents combined.
When she skittered off through the door behind her, a red hue kissing her rounded cheeks, the internal form of him reached out to her. Whispered, “Wait.”
But she didn’t look up.
And he didn’t feel any better.
Drawing his hands down his damp face, he was tempted to knock it off the desk.
For fuck’s sake.
He’d embarrassed her for his own gatekeeping. There was no need when their conversation only had to last all of five minutes. Though for seeing her, he hoped it might be longer. This only told him it had started already, her presence alone having the capability to change what needed to be a linear night.
With placid eyes, he found the clock behind him above the entrance doors. He often did this when thinking about time; sought it out to ground himself. The clock was oversized and a Padauk redwood, its delicate hands weathered as if it was designed to age like a human.
He found it to be a genius construction if intended. In comparison, he found himself to be stupid for not immediately deciphering its Roman numerals.
But when he did decipher it, he noticed something odd; the clock’s four was marked by IIII instead of the usual IV. The book he’d sourced the cause of this anomaly from (paraphrastically titled by Fionn’s memory as “Roman Superstitions”) spoke of the old Latin spelling for Jupiter being IVPPITER, and how people were fearful to engrave part of a deity’s name onto the astronomical invention.
Fionn empathised because his own Catholic upbringing took many years to shed.
Áine returned then, the sight of her having him abandon all trivial pondering. Her complexion was back to its pale tone, and the attention he gave to the towel in her hand was interrupted by a twinkle in her eye he was confident she hadn’t left with.
It made him audibly gulp.
“So, you want a room?” She asked.
“Well, yes. If you have one.” His bag slipped, and he let it fall to the floor. There were more pressing issues at hand. Like hiscertainty he’d say something kind to her. Anything to hear her melodic voice again, thick with homely Kilkenny musings that made words as simple as ‘room’ and ‘school’ sound much longer and haunting than need be. Just the idea made the heat in his neck, hidden by his hoodie, rise into his ears, but he’d prevail—the new him. No. Thebetterhim.
As she went about her business, he spotted a curl kept falling over her eye no matter how hard she blew it away. And so, finding the right words suddenly came easy.
“Does it bother you much?”
She cocked her head at him.
He took this as the go-ahead to explain, “The curl. Does it bother you much?”
Áine stared into his eyes, embedding them in a purposeful way. It took all the strength of his jaw not to part his lips into a smile he knew would rise higher on one side. But before, all those years ago in rare exchanges when he did smile at her, it also spurred her own. So maybe she didn’t mind its crookedness.
Whether she knew it or not, defiance came out of Áine’s flared nose as she went to tie up her hair with angst he didn’t recognize her for.
A plea stuttered from his mouth for her to stop.
“What?”
“It’s just . . .”
“What is it?” she repeated.
“Ah no, it’s nothing. I just thought . . . well I just thought it was really lovely the way it was.” Somehow Fionn’s anxiety didn’t get the better of him for saying this. The rollercoaster was parked, and the heat on his ears was softened. Because even though she comprised far more than her external form, he liked her hair, even when they were younger, and it was muchmuchwilder. Other parts of her face were beginning to unlatch portals to memories he didn’t recall ever storing: the mole above her lipshe’d touch when reminiscent. The scar on her chin’s curve that was slightly whiter than the rest of her, prompting a different answer to how she got it every time he’d asked.
“You’re in luck,” she said. “There’s one room left. But for the one night is all.”
