Chapter Thirty
Thirty
Eamonn had to unlock the door at the top of the stairs, too, explaining that there was a side door that led from the shop into that entryway and so he just kept this one locked out of habit.
He was talking a lot, telling me more than he needed to, and I wondered if he was nervous that I was about to step into his apartment, still a little keyed up from what we’d just done downstairs, or both.
I wanted to assure him that I understood that he hadn’t been expecting company, that I wouldn’t hold it against him if he had some dirty dishes in the sink or clothes on the floor or whatever.
God knew the state of my own apartment wasn’t always perfect, and Mari was maybe the only person who could drop by unannounced whenever she wanted without me worrying that there might be a bra air-drying in the bathroom or a collection of candy wrappers on my nightstand.
But his apartment was fairly neat, from what I could see when I stepped in after him. It was dark, so I followed him into the kitchen while he rummaged in a cabinet until he came out with a few candles.
“Sorry,” he said, “we’ll have to do this like we’re in the eighteen hundreds. I should be able to get a fire going in a bit, though.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Really. I appreciate you letting me stay. Do you think…could I maybe use your shower?”
I’d been traipsing all over Ireland for the last couple days, so a shower sounded good anyway, but from the way he looked at me all I could think about was the way he’d come on my thigh a few minutes before.
“Of course,” he said. He grabbed the biggest of the three candles he’d lit, leading me down a narrow hallway toward the bathroom, where he automatically flicked the switch on the wall before giving me a rueful smile.
“I can’t get it through my head for some reason.
Do you think this will be enough light, if I set the candle here? ”
“I think so.”
It was a large bathroom, with the floor and walls both patterned in hexagonal white tiles, a low cupboard next to the door.
There was a single shelf on the sink counter that held various items he must use in his routines—aftershave, hand lotion, mouthwash, a texturizing hair product that told me he must’ve had longer hair at some point and had either styled it or at least thought about it.
There was a utilitarian bottle of hand soap next to the sink, but then a giant bottle of some kind of heavy-duty pumice lotion next to that which promised to cut through grease and leave your hands silky smooth.
Beside that was a hard-bristled brush made for scrubbing.
I thought of his hands, calloused, a little rough, but gentle.
They were careful, deliberate hands. They could also be urgent, desperate, and I liked that version all the more for the contrast.
“There should be a little hot water left,” Eamonn said, crossing over to the shower to turn the water on, holding his hand under the spray while he presumably waited for it to heat up. “I can’t promise how hot, or how long it will last.”
“I’ll make it work,” I said.
“All right, well, let me bring you a towel and something to wear.”
“You’ve been dressing me in your clothes all weekend,” I said, thinking of the jacket, the sweater.
“Oh, I know,” he said. “It has been incredibly on purpose.”
He was still testing the water, not looking at me, and in the dim light I couldn’t get a read on his expression.
“Well, yeah. It was cold.”
Whatever temperature the water was now, he seemed satisfied, because he shook out his wet fingers, wiping them on his bare stomach.
He crossed over to me, sliding the sweater I was wearing like a dress up around my thighs, his fingers brushing against my hips.
“I also like to see you wearing my clothes,” he said.
“It really does something to me. Me giving you that jacket was ninety percent she’s cold and ten percent she’s mine, and please don’t interrogate me about those percentages. ”
All I wanted to do was interrogate him about those percentages. “And this sweater?”
He squinted one eye, like he had to actually calculate it. “Let’s call that ninety-ten in the other direction.”
“I’m going to keep it.”
“You can have it,” he said, gently urging my arms up so he could lift the sweater over my head. “But for now, you don’t want to waste that hot water.”
He cupped my ass in one hand, his fingers curled under where one cheek curved into the top of my leg, and pulled me in for a kiss.
I thought maybe he meant to join me in the shower—an idea I wasn’t opposed to, even though my original thinking had truly been that I could use a quick refresh—but he just gave me a smile as he folded the sweater and put it on top of the cupboard. “Anything you need to use, it’s yours.”
I took Eamonn up on that offer, borrowing a razor from a package I found in a drawer, using his 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioner in the shower that I would’ve laughed at as being such a typical man item to have except…
well, it wasn’t like Eamonn had a ton of hair.
For efficiency’s sake, it probably made the most sense.
His bar soap had some kind of exfoliating grit to it, and it did smell like pine.
I knew I’d smelled that on him. The scent made me a little weak in the knees, which was ridiculous—probably it was more that I’d been doing a lot of walking, had been in a car for three hours, had just let Eamonn fuck me against a door.
I leaned against the shower wall, letting the warm water wash over me.
That last thought wasn’t helping my wobbly legs.
I didn’t want him to think I was normally that…
impetuous. Irresponsible. I was on birth control, I’d recently been tested, but it definitely wasn’t like me to have sex with someone that quickly, much less unprotected sex, much less sex without a conversation about all those kinds of things first.
Does it help if I’m in a coma dream? I thought, then had to laugh, water streaming into my mouth as I tilted my head back to finish rinsing out my hair. Fuck, if you couldn’t get railed against a door in a coma dream, when could you?
The water had become tepid by the time I turned it off, which I hoped was a testament to how little hot water there’d been to start with and not a sign that I’d really overstayed my welcome in Eamonn’s shower.
When I stepped out onto the tightly knotted bath mat, I saw that he must’ve dipped in at one point, leaving a towel and some clothes piled neatly on the bathroom counter, my toothbrush and paste and deodorant we’d bought back at the pharmacy sitting next to them.
The clothes were a pair of drawstring sweat shorts and a faded, slightly stretched-out black T-shirt that said The Pogues with a skull and crossbones in cracked screen print, and then under that The Boys from the County Hell.
He’d also put my old clothes on top of the sweater on the washer, my dress and underwear and even the string that had once been the bow, coiled up on top of the pile.
I quickly plaited my hair into a loose braid, not wanting to drip everywhere, doubling up the string and using it to tie it all up.
When I finally emerged from the bathroom, I padded back out to the kitchen.
Eamonn must’ve found more candles, because the lighting was still subdued but much brighter than before.
There was a fire going in the fireplace, something cooking on the stove, and he was standing shirtless over by the counter, glasses on, flipping through some mail.
I leaned against the wall. “You wear glasses?”
He glanced up. “Just for reading,” he said, taking them off to set them down on top of the stack of envelopes. His gaze traveled over me, from the messy braid to my braless state under his T-shirt to my bare legs and feet.
If he kept looking at me like that, I might do something outrageous like try to climb him like a tree again, so instead I glanced around his apartment, taking everything in.
It was a small place, but cozy. The kitchen and living area were practically one room, separated by a table with a couple chairs that Eamonn had already set with some plates, a candle in the middle.
The kitchen had cabinets painted a dusky sage green and a pantry set in one wall open with no door at all, revealing shelves of cans and other packaged foods.
He’d already set the clock from his childhood home on top of the mantel above the fire.
He must’ve gone out to the car to retrieve all our stuff while I was in the shower.
I crossed over to it, running my fingers over its face, hearing the subtle ticking sound that told me he must’ve found batteries for it.
It was almost eight o’clock at night. Strange, to suddenly be reminded of time again.
There was a bookshelf stuffed with books, not just lined up by spine but also stacked in front, wedged in any open space above a row.
I remembered what he’d said about keeping all his personal books upstairs, how the ones in the shop were just free books for anyone to take.
I stood in front of the shelf, tilting my head to take in all the titles.
He was a big Octavia E. Butler fan, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia, if the collections of those two authors were anything to go by.
He had copies of some of the books we’d talked about while walking around Dublin, including ones by Oscar Wilde, Tana French, Claire Keegan.
I ran my finger along one particularly cracked spine of a book he must’ve read a lot.
“That one’s the reason I need glasses,” he said.
“Atonement?”
“I stayed up all night to read it,” he said. “The whole thing in one go. I couldn’t stop. By the end my eyes felt gritty and tired, the crying probably didn’t help, and days later they still didn’t feel right. So I went to the doctor and turns out, I needed glasses.”
I thought about how he’d seemed to skim over the back of that book in the bookshop so fast, how he’d never actually looked at a menu.
The whole time, he just hadn’t had his readers on him.
“I’m not an optometrist,” I said, “but I don’t think that’s how it works.
I don’t think Atonement ruined your eyes forever.
You probably already needed glasses for a while. ”
“No,” he said. “It was Atonement specifically. I almost never cry, can’t remember the last time I did it. I could bring a case against the author personally if I was litigious.”
“We all could,” I said. “For emotional distress. I only saw the movie, but I couldn’t take it.
I can’t do stories where they fake you out and make you think people are in love and everything worked out in the end, only to find out that it was a dream or a story or a wish, and then the real ending is tragic.
I also hate when they’re at their highest point, so happy, they’ve gotten everything they’ve been wanting the whole movie, and then bam.
Hit by a car. Oh, and I can’t do kids dying, or getting sick, or really anything bad happening to them.
Also animals. Basically, if there’s anything tragic and unexpected in a movie I kind of want to know about it going in, so I can emotionally prepare. ”
He glanced up from where he’d been stirring the pot at the stove, smiling at me. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
He said it like he’d have any reason to keep it in mind, like we had all the time in the world spooling ahead of us to watch movies together, to read books and talk about them, to get to know all of each other’s personal tastes and preferences and quirks.
I liked the idea of that, even if I couldn’t stop the wave of sadness that suddenly overtook me.
For all I knew, I was the person who thought she was happy, thought everything was working out, and somewhere I was lying in a hospital bed.
I tried not to think about it because what would that do?
But something about it being Sunday night, eight o’clock—these were some of the worst Sunday scaries I’d ever had.
I just had to stay grounded. I focused on the ambient warmth on my legs from the fire, the sight of Eamonn with no shirt on, his pants hanging lower on his hips without the belt, his bare feet. I focused on the smell of whatever he was stirring, something savory and tangy.
“What are you making?” I asked.
He set the spoon down on a folded-up towel on the kitchen counter.
“Just some pasta,” he said. “I hope that’s okay.
The cooker is gas, luckily, and I had all the ingredients on hand—canned tomatoes, basil, oregano, red pepper flakes.
Are you allergic to any of those? I guess I should’ve asked before. ”
“No, it sounds perfect.”
He wiped his hands on his pants, turning the heat down on the burner. “I’m going to take a quick shower, if you’d keep an eye on it? Just stir it once in a while, and when I get out I’ll put the noodles on.”
“No problem,” I said. “Although I didn’t leave you any hot water. I’m sorry.”
I’d come into the kitchen to peer down at the sauce I was going to be babysitting, and he put a hand at my hip while he reached past me to grab a potholder, setting it down on the counter next to me.
“A cold shower will do me good,” he said, pressing a kiss to my temple. “Help me last through dinner.”
He gave my braid a gentle tug before heading up a spiral staircase that I assumed led to his bedroom. When he came back down a few minutes later with some fresh clothes in his hands, I knew I was right.
My apartment was all one level, so I tried to decide if his was bigger than mine or if it only seemed bigger because of the way it was laid out, the high ceiling created by having a lofted bedroom that left the rest of the living space open up top.
There was no denying it had more charm—the fireplace, that winding staircase, the wall of exposed brick.
In some ways, it was decorated to be fairly utilitarian.
No throw pillows on the couch, not a ton of artwork on the walls.
But there were homey touches, for all that.
Mismatched mugs displayed on a shelf over in the corner of the kitchen that housed his kettle, a wire basket filled with a couple bags of different loose-leaf teas.
Now that I was standing at the stove, I could see into an alcove that housed his washer and dryer, a basket on top of the dryer filled with greasy rags, like he’d been about to put a load in to wash.
There was a notepad stuck to the fridge with a partial grocery list scrawled on it—eggs, milk, pesto, fairy liquid, sun cream.
I wondered what fairy liquid was. I also wondered how old the list was—sun cream suggested it could be from back in the summer.
And right there in the pantry, a bowl of apples. I don’t even like ’em, he’d said, when he’d offered me his at the bus stop. It had stayed with me because I was trying to think if I’d ever known anyone to not like apples before.
I bit back a smile, giving the sauce a stir.