Chapter 26 #3
‘When I asked Danni about you, she told me you were with Ikenna.’
It stumps me. ‘Danni?’
‘The blonde from work who always stands too close. She’s in charge of the well-being group.’
‘I know who she is. When was this?’
‘March,’ he admits.
‘March!’
He grimaces as if embarrassed. ‘Yeah, March. Danni has intel on everyone.’
‘This was when you were sleeping around. So, this is about sex.’
Cian makes a frustrated sound. ‘It doesn’t matter what my original intention was, because from the first time I spoke to you I realised—’
‘I wasn’t as easy as you’d judged me to be?’
‘I was going to say I realised I liked you more than that. Instantly, I liked you more.’ He switches his mouth. ‘I admit, I judged you at first. There were all these photos of you in the work group chats, and I thought . . .’ He closes his eyes and leans into me with a sigh.
‘Bit of fun?’ I fill in.
He rights himself and there’s a tinge of shame on his face.
‘You always seemed busy or distracted at work and I heard you were with Ikenna so I didn’t make a move.
Then you show up at my dad’s place with your ridiculously short skirt and crazy laugh and you’re rambling about our gardens backing onto each other and ripping me for my school photos.
’ At this he squeezes me against his body.
‘You were nothing like how I thought you would be. I kept making excuses to hang out with you. Trying to convince myself we could be friends. I thought friends was doable, because I wasn’t ready for anything else and I could tell, the more time we spent together, that you weren’t either.
The more you told me, the more it kept me from acting on anything. ’
‘So, it’s all on me. You never made a move because you thought I was, what, still sad?’
‘Yeah. In a way, it was like you were the one just out of a relationship.’
He’s making excuses. ‘There was no relationship. Me and Ikenna, we weren’t serious, I’ve told you that.’
‘I’m talking about Kasie.’
It stumps me.
‘She was everything to you,’ he says. ‘I could hear it in your voice when you told me what happened to her. I could hear it every single time you spoke about her.’ He stops to put his mouth against my shoulder.
‘You had so much going on. Sometimes you’d be sitting next to me yet you felt far away, in your own thoughts.
I liked hanging out with you and making you laugh.
I didn’t want to complicate it by hitting on you.
So yeah, I held back. Because I could see you were heartbroken. ’
I don’t know if he’s right. If the pain and darkness and exhaustion I felt then was because I was trying to carry on living while my heart was broken.
He reaches up to wipe a tear from my cheek and doesn’t let me go when I try to pull away.
‘I tried to bring this up with you,’ I say, ‘about us being more than friends, and you ignored it, completely.’
‘I didn’t know what to say.’
‘Then you freak out after we see your ex and I ask you about her,’ I remind him.
‘I handled that badly.’
‘You kissed me and fobbed it off as a drunken mistake.’
‘It was a drunken mistake. It shouldn’t have happened like that. It should have happened like this. I’m sorry for fucking up. At so many points. Nicole has been going in on me so hard. You have no idea.’
‘Nicole hasn’t helped.’
‘No,’ he agrees. ‘She just confused me more. One day she’s telling me to stay away, the next she’s telling me to talk to you, then it’s back to her being mad at me and telling me to stay away. I wanted to talk to you, but you couldn’t even look at me.’
‘This is too much, Cian.’ And this time he allows me to move away from him. I feel him watch as I move around the room, pulling on my clothes.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes. It’s just a lot. Can we step back?’
He nods and then also begins getting dressed.
‘I want to ask you something,’ he says as I walk him to the front door.
‘I was thinking – this is so awkward . . .’ He leans against the wall.
‘Would you be up for doing something together? Going somewhere that’s not my dad’s house, or here, or work, or a slightly nationalistic café in the middle of nowhere. ’
Do something. ‘What, now?’
‘No. I’m trying to organise something with you. Something like a . . . why am I getting nervous?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what you’re trying to do.’
‘I’m trying to ask you out. Is that weird?’
I’m aware I’m smiling at him yet not answering.
‘Is it something you’d want to do?’ he presses.
Why, after all the things that have taken place over the last few hours, is this making me blush? ‘Yes,’ I reply.
‘Great,’ he says, stiffly. ‘Great.’ He pulls on his coat and pushes back his hair, in a move that makes it more of a mess, then stops to let out a short self-conscious laugh. ‘I feel we’ve done things in the wrong order.’
‘It’s fine, I always sleep with someone before the first date. It cuts out all the uncertainty of whether I like them or not.’ What I don’t clarify, as I watch him leave, is that the wrong order is falling in love before a first date.