Chapter Six
Six
When he turned the key in the ignition, the car immediately filled with an assault of loud punk music before he ejected the tape and turned the volume down on the radio.
Now it was just the sound of two Irish voices talking about some sports matchup, so low I couldn’t make out what they were saying.
“Sorry,” he said.
“What year is this car?” I asked, because a tape deck?
“Eighty-seven Renault Five,” he said.
That meant nothing to me, but still I said, “Ah. Cool.”
“It’s a bit of a project,” he said, almost like he was trying to apologize for it.
And for the next ten minutes, that was all we said.
I stared out the window at the passing scenery—squat little buildings tucked up against each other, scraggly trees that were starting to get some spring growth on them, the occasional cyclist that Eamonn had to navigate around on the side of the road.
We passed some water on the right, a group of colorful boats docked there, and I wanted to look closer, but it was outside Eamonn’s window and I didn’t want to risk staring at him.
I had so many questions for him. How long have you lived here?
and Do you like it? and What do you mean the power’s out at your shop?
But he didn’t seem particularly inclined to talk, so I didn’t break the silence.
Maybe he had his own questions for me, most of which I wouldn’t want to answer or wouldn’t even know how to start.
What brought you to Ireland? or How long were you planning to stay?
or Tell me a single detail about how you got here and make me believe it.
The car in front of us came to an abrupt stop at the back of a line of traffic, and Eamonn had to hit the brakes hard enough to make me pitch forward a little.
“Sorry,” he said again. He didn’t curse the driver or make a comment about how terrible the traffic was, which I didn’t even know I appreciated until I’d braced myself for something like that and it never came.
Angry men had always unsettled me, made my heart rate kick up, and in my experience driving had often been one of those times when it became socially acceptable to unleash some of that.
But Eamonn gave no outward sign that he was bothered by the traffic at all. He just flexed his hand over the stick shift, reaching up to rub the knuckle of his thumb against his mouth before traffic started moving again and he shifted the car back into gear.
“How old are you?” I blurted. Which, I definitely could’ve come up with a better opening question than that.
He glanced over at me, registering a moment of surprise. “Twenty-nine,” he said. “Why?”
Oh, fuck. Not even thirty? Niall had been right.
He was too young for me. Not that it mattered, or that I’d even been thinking of him that way, a few momentary lapses aside.
The I wish I was on a date with your brother had been a reaction to Niall being such a jerk, hoping to knock him back on his ass a bit.
It wasn’t like I actually wanted to be on a date with his brother, even if we were spending time together in some bizarre twist of fate.
This was a ride to Dublin, that was all.
“Aren’t you going to ask how old I am?”
The corner of his mouth twitched before he ran his hand over his chin and covered it up. “I know better.”
“I’m thirty-seven,” I said. As of yesterday.
“I don’t mind being asked. It’s funny, how weird we get about age.
Especially for women. Even when someone says something that’s clearly meant to be a compliment, like You don’t look your age or whatever, it’s like, how do you think that age is supposed to look? ”
I leaned back against the headrest, stealing a glance at Eamonn out of the corner of my eye.
I wondered how differently he might drive if it had just been him alone in the car.
Blasting his music, maybe singing along, maybe he would’ve muttered something about the traffic as he got snarled up in it.
There was a stiffness to him now like he was sixteen with his driver’s ed teacher in the car, and something told me that wasn’t how he usually was.
“Then there’s the question of whether I feel my age,” I went on, because it felt good to talk, even if I didn’t know if I was improving on the silence.
“Sometimes I guess I do, but again you have to wonder how a specific age is even supposed to feel. Like if I stand too long at the sink doing dishes, my back will hurt, and I’ll think, god, surely thirty-seven is too young for this to start happening? Is it?”
There was a pause before Eamonn seemed to understand that my question wasn’t rhetorical. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think pain discriminates.”
“But then something stupid will happen to hurt my feelings, and I’ll think, okay, you are way too old to be letting that get to you.
Like at work, they didn’t get me a birthday card.
Which is so silly, right? Who cares about a birthday card, especially one where I know it would just have the same messages written in it that are always there.
Happy birthday and a name, Have a great one and a name, that one partner who just puts his initials and that’s it.
But I’m the person who handles the birthday cards—I keep them in my desk, I pass them around with a folder of names to check off so the person knows who to give it to next, I make sure they find their way to the recipient’s desk with a couple pieces of candy the morning of their birthday.
I guess I just thought that someone else would take it over, when it was my turn, and it really bummed me out when they didn’t. ”
I was embarrassed that I’d said all that. The only thing more mortifying than caring about a birthday card, probably, was caring about it enough to rant to a stranger. “I bet you don’t dwell on these things as much. Age, time, whatever.”
“Because I’m twenty-nine?”
I tried to give him a smile to take any of the sting out of it. “Or because you’re a man. I don’t know.”
It was hard to talk about without it seeming like you did care too much.
How those little lines by my mouth did make me feel self-conscious, when I looked closely at them in the mirror.
How I worried that I should’ve achieved more by this age, how I thought I’d be some great artist by now instead of patching calls through and drawing doodles in birthday cards for lawyers who could afford to go to Europe.
I even thought about what the woman at the bus stop had said, about how being in love was an out-of-body experience in and of itself, when you were young.
Did that mean that if I hadn’t felt it, I’d never feel it? Not in the same all-consuming way?
We were definitely closer to the city now.
I couldn’t help but lean into the glass window, almost pressing my nose to it as I tried to take in everything passing us by.
There were rows of Georgian town houses with different-colored doors, the knobs in the center.
A tall stone church on one corner had a banner outside advertising some upcoming festival, a reminder that even these buildings that looked so old were in daily use.
When we took a turn I caught a glimpse of the most perfect camellia I’d maybe ever seen in person—vibrant red, its petals unfurled in soft folds I could imagine painting, layering color thick and wet and then sponging some of it away to create the velvety texture.
And then we were heading down another street, and I missed my little flower the second it was out of sight.
I hated to admit it—god, I hated to admit it—but I could understand a bit more of what Niall had meant by his If you haven’t traveled, you haven’t lived comment.
I couldn’t deny that it was incredible, just seeing a city that looked so different from what you were used to, that you never knew you’d be able to see in real life.
Well. Or whatever passed as real life.
“It’s a roller,” Eamonn said, and I glanced back over at him to see him still focused on the road ahead.
The shortness in the way he spoke mixed with his accent—I swear, it took me a minute to figure out what he was saying sometimes. I couldn’t tell if he’d just uttered some obscene Irish word, if he’d been calling out some passing landmark, what.
“The window,” he said, then made a little circle gesture with his hand that was strangely endearing. “You can roll it down.”
When I just stared at him, he sighed, reaching over me. We were stopped at a light, but he only had a few seconds to start turning the crank for my window before traffic started moving again. I finished the job until I’d rolled the window all the way down.
It was too chilly for this, probably. And yet it was exactly what I’d wanted, and I didn’t know how he’d known that.
I’d been hesitating less because I didn’t know how to work a manual window and more because I knew it didn’t really make any sense, this sudden urge to feel the air on my face.
I curled my fingers over the top of the cold metal door as I leaned out a little.
This had to be real…right? The bite of wind at my cheeks, the way it shot right up my nose and cleared my head. The cacophony of sounds, honking cars and people talking on the sidewalks and life happening all around us.
“Careful,” he said, glancing over at me, but I didn’t know what he’d be cautioning me against. I wasn’t sticking that far out of the car.
I was wrecking some of the lovely warmth that had built up from the car’s heater over the last half hour, the warmth from his own body that I’d felt in those few seconds he’d leaned in to roll my window down. But I didn’t care.
I looked back at Eamonn, reaching up to hook my finger in a strand of hair that had blown over my mouth. He tracked the movement before turning his attention back to the road.
“I think about it a lot, actually,” he said.
I gave him a quizzical smile, even though he wasn’t looking at me anymore. “What?”
He flicked the turn signal on with the pinkie of the same hand that was resting on the steering wheel. Already he seemed more at ease than he had before, like maybe he’d needed the fresh air, too.
“Time,” he said. “I think about it a lot.”