Chapter 11 #2
“What are you doing out here alone?” she asked, bending down to stroke his ears.
He stepped forward and prodded her armpit with his nose, as though he was trying to hug her but lacked the arms. This almost unbalanced her and she burst out laughing.
“Someone’s happy to see me.” Was there any greater salve for sadness than the cold nose of a friendly dog?
“Miss, you can’t have that dog in here,” came a stern voice from the other side of the quad. Chloe looked up to see one of the porters coming toward her with a torch. She instantly felt nineteen again, in trouble for flouting the rules.
“Oh, he’s not my dog,” she said, stroking Richard, because now he looked anxious, with his tail tucked beneath him, ears pinned back.
“How did he get in here?” the porter asked, as he headed toward her. When he got close, he reached out a hand to take Richard by the scruff of his neck.
“Oh, no, I know who he belongs to. He’s allowed to be here, he’s a support dog,” Chloe said, pulling Richard toward her. The porter, who looked a lot younger than she remembered porters being, gave her a skeptical look.
“Is he registered in the logbook?”
“I expect so. He’s John Elton’s dog. He’s on the alumni committee.”
“John Elton?”
“I know it sounds like a made-up name, but that really is his name.”
The porter checked his watch. “You’ll need to take responsibility for him, or I’ll have to shut him in the office. He can’t be running loose around college.”
“I’ll take him,” Chloe said, hugging Richard. The porter gave her a curt nod, then marched back toward the porter’s lodge.
“Looks like it’s you and me, my friend,” Chloe said, bending to take her heels off, enjoying the feel of bare feet on cold paving stone. Richard tried to lick her face, and she cradled his face between her hands to stop him, laughing at this enthusiastic display of affection.
The night air cooled the heat on her skin.
Somewhere in the distance, she could still hear the music, but it felt faraway—a different world.
She ran her hand along Richard’s velvety back, relishing this moment of peace.
Here, there was no need to explain herself.
No version of her to be edited. Maybe John had the right idea with Richard: dogs accepted you as you were, you didn’t need to impress them, and they didn’t require batteries.
“There you are,” came a voice behind her. She turned to see John, out of breath, running through from the front quad.
“The porter was about to throw him in dog jail,” Chloe told him.
“Sorry, thank you, he slipped his collar. Something must have spooked him,” John said, bending down to put the collar over Richard’s narrow head.
“What were you running from?” he asked Richard, but Richard couldn’t explain.
As John caught his breath, his shoulders dropped.
She could see he was relieved to be reunited with his dog.
“What are you doing out here?” John asked her. “Was there an intermission in the awards ceremony of who’s winning at life?”
“You mean the yearbook? I think that was just a bit of fun,” Chloe said. She didn’t know why she was defending it. It hadn’t felt at all fun to her. John cleared his throat.
“Your boyfriend certainly made an impression,” he said, and she couldn’t read his tone. “I meant to ask, whereabouts is he from in Ireland?”
Oh no. Questions. She wasn’t prepared for questions.
“Um, the south,” she said.
“Oh yeah, whereabouts? My nan is from Killarney.”
“You know, I can’t remember. I’m terrible with place names,” she said. Now his gaze shifted toward the star-studded sky.
“I’d swear his accent has been getting more and more Dublin as the night goes on.”
So, it wasn’t just her who’d noticed the accent shift. Damn. “Yeah, that happens when he’s had a few,” she said, then in a cod French accent, “Wot eez zees, ze accent inqueezition?”
He laughed, surprisingly loudly. “What was that?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, laughing too now. “I was going for French, but maybe German?”
Their eyes met in the low light, and the laughter lingered there.
“You going back in, then?” he asked.
“Not yet, bit talked out.”
“I’ll stop talking.”
“No, I meant in a crowd—all that small talk. It’s exhausting.”
“Talk only feels small when it lacks authenticity,” he said. She felt a prickle of recognition. The people she admired most, like Kiko and Valerie, were fiercely authentic. They didn’t chameleon who they were to fit different situations.
“Do you ever feel like you’re living in the wrong era?” she asked him.
“All the time,” he said plainly. “You remember what I used to be like.”
“I liked how you were,” she said, and he briefly closed his eyes, acknowledging the compliment. “I sometimes feel homesick for places I’ve read about in fiction. I know that’s ridiculous. To yearn for places you’ve never been, places that don’t even exist.”
She expected him to laugh at such a silly sentiment, but he didn’t, he looked like he understood.
“There’s a Welsh word you’d like: ‘hiraeth.’ A deep longing, homesickness for a home you can’t return to, perhaps a home that never was.”
She smiled. “That’s perfect. Can I keep it?”
“Yes,” he said, lifting his hand into the air, closing his fist around it, then passing it to her. “Here is my hiraeth.”
She pressed it to her heart.
He cleared his throat. “But we shouldn’t romanticize the past.”
“I spoke to Sean,” she said, the words slipping out too quickly, like she’d been waiting for someone to tell.
“Oh yes?” John asked, looking at her intently now.
“It was really awkward. I spend so much time looking back, thinking about who we were back then. But I’m not sure Sean thinks about it at all.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” John said. Their eyes met and he quickly looked around, turning to walk toward the bench at the corner of the quad. “Shall we sit?”
She followed him, but Richard climbed up onto the bench beside him before she could sit down.
She laughed. “Richard, we’ve talked about this,” he said, pretending to be stern.
“When there are other people around, you have to pretend you’re not a chair dog.
” He snapped his fingers near the ground, and Richard got down.
“Sorry. He thinks he’s human. It’s a problem. ”
Chloe sat in the seat he’d vacated, her arm nudging against John’s on the small bench. She could feel the heat radiate off his body. “You were saying, about Sean,” he prompted.
“It’s weird, having a conversation with someone you used to know so well, and suddenly it feels like talking to a stranger.”
“People aren’t perfect communicators,” John said gently. “Sometimes they don’t know how to say what they mean, to say what matters.”
“You do. You always know what to say.” She said it without thinking, then realized it was true. John glanced sideways at her, a melancholy look in his eyes. He reached down to stroke Richard’s head.
“I don’t. I’ve spent my life not saying the things I should have.” She didn’t know what he meant by this, but before she could ask, he said, “Why did you change everything?” His voice was soft now, the moonlight catching the laughter lines around his eyes, the small scar on his forehead.
“What do you mean?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.
“Your hair, your style, you look totally different.”
“You don’t like it?” she asked, surprised he would notice.
“I like how you always look,” he said plainly, holding her gaze, like he saw straight through this evening’s curated facade.
There was something else in his eyes too now, a friction, the same edge that had been there on the bus.
She felt very aware of how close they were sitting, of where her arm was touching his.
She quickly hugged her arms around herself, turning her face forward.
“Well, it’s nice to get dressed up sometimes,” she said, shifting the tone, trying to be flippant. “Remind people I’m more than big hair and big dreams.” She said it with a grin. “You look different too.”
“Because I used to dress like I was interviewing for a job in Churchill’s war cabinet.” He pushed a palm against his face, and she laughed.
“It was a whole vibe. ‘Hashtag war cabinet chic’ is all over Instagram now.” They smiled at each other, and she felt that spark of a joke finding its audience. “Do you remember how much we used to argue about the best time in history to have been alive?”
“I remember,” he said, gently nudging her shoulder. “You said nineteen twenties Britain. I said Crete in the Minoan golden age.”
She nodded. “Right. I wanted jazz clubs and scandal. You wanted ritual sacrifices and ‘extensive trade routes.’ ”
“It was a golden age, the clue’s right there in the title,” he said, sighing through a smile. “I found this whole Reddit thread a few years ago, on the best and worst times to be alive. There were some outlandish suggestions. I nearly sent it to you.”
“Why didn’t you?” she asked, and felt the mood between them shift. He looked up to the sky, shook his head, just a fraction. There was something he wasn’t saying. “Why did you say that at the bus, about us not being friends?”
“I don’t know,” he said, looking suddenly tired. “It’s probably not an end-of-the-night, four-glasses-of-wine conversation, Chloe.”
“Come on, this is a no-small-talk zone, remember? Tell me.” She pushed, nudging him again.
“You want the big talk?” he asked, and it felt surprisingly loaded.
“Yes.”
“Fine. It felt like we were only friends when Sean was around.”
She blinked, caught off guard. “You don’t think all those hours we spent together made us friends?” He slowly shook his head. “What?”
He sat forward on the bench, elbows resting on his knees, hands in fists beneath his chin.
“I was your friend when it suited you. When you needed a musician.”
“That’s not true,” she said, but guilt stirred in her chest just the same.
“It was. I could never say no to you,” he said, quieter now.
“But you loved being involved in the theater; we all did.” Her brow creased.