Chapter Thirty-One
Thirty-One
It might’ve been the most delicious spaghetti I’d ever had.
I recognized that it probably had less to do with the food itself—although the sauce was very good, the whole meal hot and hearty and satisfying.
Eamonn had apologized for not having bread or cheese, not being able to offer me much to drink beyond some filtered water he poured into one of the mugs for me, but I didn’t need anything more.
“At least let me do the dishes,” I said, when he gathered up our empty bowls.
“No chance,” he said. “There’s no dishwasher, so I do everything by hand. And I’ll probably leave the scrubbing until tomorrow when I hopefully get hot water back.”
Tomorrow. It was hard to even think about tomorrow.
I still had that weird feeling that his power issues were connected to me somehow, that when I’d blown in I’d knocked his electricity out, as wild as that sounded.
If his power came on, maybe that would be it for me.
Maybe that was how I’d get sent back to my own reality. Wouldn’t that be a good thing?
I let my mind drift a little, only vaguely conscious of the sounds of dishes clattering against each other, running water, a cabinet being opened and shut again. I blinked out of it when Eamonn came back to the table with a plate of cookies, a small tea light candle balanced next to them.
“These lemon biscuits are all I have,” he said, “and they might be a little stale. But if you want to make a wish, here’s a candle to blow out.”
My gaze jumped from the plate to his face. Cookies? He’d brought me…birthday cookies. With a candle.
“Which, of course, I’ll immediately light again,” he said, giving me a crooked smile. “Since we need all the candles we can get. Happy birthday, Jess.”
My vision blurred as I stared directly into the flickering flame, and I realized that part of it was that my eyes had already filled with tears. I tried to wipe them away, to not make it obvious that I’d started to cry.
It wasn’t just that he’d marked my birthday in some way, although that did mean a lot to me.
It was that he seemed to see me more than anyone else I’d ever been with before, seemed to know me better than people who’d known me for years.
And I couldn’t tell if I was in some kind of dream or fantasy, if that was the only way to explain it, because maybe my subconscious had just invented a man who would light me a birthday candle to make a wish on.
What would he say if I told him all that?
“This is going to sound really strange,” I said. “Okay? But bear with me.”
If he was alarmed that I was more emotional than I should be over a plate of cookies, over the fact that my response had been to warn him that I was about to unleash something weird, he didn’t show it. He just sat back down, looking at me across the table. “Okay.”
“I’m worried that back in Florida, in my actual life, I’m in a coma,” I said.
“And none of this is real. It feels real. Walking around Dublin, the food we ate, driving in your car, going to your old house, god, you feel so real to me, talking to you, touching you. These cookies, this candle. But I could make a wish, blow it out, and everything could disappear. Do you know what I mean?”
Of course he didn’t know what I meant. He probably thought I’d completely lost my mind.
But he took my hand, rubbing his thumb along my palm. “Do you remember at the bus stop, when I picked those flowers out of your hair?”
“Yes.”
“In that moment, I felt…” He swallowed, clearly trying to figure out how to express it.
“I hadn’t reached for anyone like that in a long time.
It wouldn’t have even occurred to me. To touch someone, to want to touch someone, to feel like I could.
But I saw those flowers in your hair, and I wanted…
I don’t know, I wanted. Your hair looked so soft, and I wanted to know what it would feel like.
I wanted to help you, to make something better for you, even if in a small way.
And then I couldn’t believe I’d actually done it.
Reached out and touched you, barely touched you, but it hit me like an electric shock.
Not just the touch but the wanting. I don’t know, I feel like I’m not saying this right. I’m not always the best with words.”
I squeezed his hand. “You are killing it with your words right now, believe me.”
It was obvious that he hadn’t understood what I meant, that he’d interpreted what I’d said in his own way.
That when I said coma he thought I meant only that I hadn’t felt fully alive back in my previous life, that I’d been stuck in some holding pattern, going through the motions of my days.
And that was true, too. But of course my use of the word coma had been more literal than that.
He must’ve thought when I worried that none of this was real, I meant that more figuratively, like where things that happen on vacation when you’re outside of your normal routines don’t feel like they could ever be part of your daily life.
And maybe that was also true, because even if this were real I didn’t know that it could work, or if there could ever be a future in it.
“So go ahead,” he said, pushing the plate a little closer to me. “Make a wish. I’ll still be here.”
I wasn’t so sure about that, but I closed my eyes, trying to think about what I’d even wish for.
I didn’t want this time with Eamonn to end.
But I also didn’t want the door to my old life to shut behind me, felt panicked and unsettled at the implications of what that would even mean.
Would I see my parents again? Mari? Would I have any connection to everything I’d built for myself over the last thirty-seven years?
My life might not be perfect, but it was mine.
I wish it could all be true, I thought, and blew out the candle.
When I opened my eyes, Eamonn was still there. He was watching me, and I almost felt like he could somehow see inside my brain and know exactly what I’d wished for, that it was at least partially for him. Then he took a bite of one of the cookies and made a face.
“Oh, fuck,” he said. “These are definitely stale. I’m sorry.”
I took a bite of one myself. The lemon flavor was pleasant, but the texture was a weird blend of too chewy and too hard at the same time. Still, I ate an entire cookie, and went back for a second. “They’re perfect.”