Chapter Eleven #2
Eamonn didn’t respond for a long time. He continued to ruffle the dog’s fur around his neck, and there was something hypnotizing about it. By the time he spoke, I’d almost forgotten the thread of conversation in the first place.
“I know I can be self-deprecating,” he said.
“I’m sure I don’t always even know when I’m doin’ it.
I think it’s also a very Irish form of humor, which is why it’s interesting to me that Niall doesn’t like it.
It doesn’t bother me if other people say stuff like that, especially when it’s clearly a joke.
But it might get to me if I thought the person really meant it, that they saw themselves in a negative light that I didn’t think was true. If it was someone I cared about.”
This was deeper than I’d meant to get over the I’m trash for linguistic construction, but I understood what he was saying. There was a difference between a little joke and an actual expression of low self-esteem, and sometimes the line between the two could get blurry, even in your own mind.
“Like I was surprised you called yourself plain, in response to the Becfola story,” he said. “When you’re so pretty.”
There was something to the simplicity in the way he said that. Even the word choice—so pretty. That suddenly felt like the highest compliment, to be called pretty. Like we were both teenagers on the cusp of our first kiss, and those were the only words he could think of.
Which was ridiculous. We weren’t teenagers, and we weren’t on the cusp of anything.
My hair fell over my cheek and I resisted the urge to tuck it behind my ear, wanting to hide behind it instead.
“I wasn’t fishing,” I said. “I guess that’s another problem with self-deprecation sometimes—it can make people feel pressured to say something nice about you. ”
“If anything, that relieved some pressure,” he said. “I’ve been trying not to say it all day.”
He bent to bury his face in the top of the dog’s head, murmuring something I couldn’t catch.
The tips of Eamonn’s ears were a little pink, and I didn’t think it was just the cold.
He had nice ears. I wasn’t sure I’d ever noticed a man’s ears before, but his had a nice shape, and I wondered what he’d do if I bit down on one earlobe, gently.
If I pushed my fingers through his short hair, the same way he’d been petting the dog.
What it would feel like to have him bury his face in me like that.
“That might be where Niall was coming from, is what I’m saying,” Eamonn said finally, and my mind had wandered so far away from anything to do with his brother that I had to call it back with a jolt.
“I know he can be a little…uptight. If memory serves. So he might’ve taken it too seriously, hearing you call yourself trash and wanting to let you know that he didn’t see you that way.
Knowing Niall, it may have come out wrong. ”
With your brother, everything comes out wrong, I wanted to say. But there was never a good time to reveal that you knew full well uptight was just a euphemism for bit of an asshole.
I reached over to scratch the dog behind the ears, which was partly about wanting to pet the dog, but probably more about wanting to have my hand closer to Eamonn’s.
“What about you?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Is there anyone in your life you wouldn’t let call themselves trash?” I asked, then rolled my eyes at myself. “Are you dating anyone. That’s what I’m getting at.”
“Oh,” Eamonn said. “No.”
I thought that was all he was going to say, but then he sat back on the bench, letting the leash go slack in his hand. The dog had settled since we’d first brought him over here, and had lain down now at Eamonn’s feet, his big body covering both of Eamonn’s boots.
“I don’t really date,” Eamonn said.
I raised my eyebrows. “Like…ever?”
“I’ve dated,” he said, putting an emphasis on the last syllable. “But I don’t anymore.”
“Did you have your heart broken? Take a vow?” I knew I was venturing dangerously close to none of my business, but he’d said it with such finality that I was dying to know what was behind it.
The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Nothing like that,” he said. “Nothing exciting. I just don’t have time. With work and everything.”
Admittedly, I had no idea what went into being a mechanic, how hard the job was or what the hours were.
But any place I’d ever taken my car had closed down by seven at the latest, and some places were closed on weekends.
I thought back to what Eamonn had said about his days, how it was wake up, go to work, rinse and repeat.
I thought he could make time for dating, if he really wanted to.
“When was your last relationship?”
He looked up toward the sky, like he had to think about that. “Three years ago? She was a nice girl. Even the way she broke up with me, she couldn’t have been nicer about it.”
I hated that I felt a pang of jealousy over that—why, because she was nice? Because she was the one who’d ended things? I had no right to any of those feelings, had no right to any of this information, really, and yet I couldn’t help myself. “Why did it end?”
He shrugged. “She didn’t see her future when she looked at me.”
“Did you see yours, with her?”
“No,” he said, so matter-of-fact there could be no doubt about it.
“But I was more willing to pretend. If you can’t see a future with anyone, it doesn’t feel like settling so much as being grateful for what you get.
But that wasn’t fair to her, either, so it’s good she didn’t let us stretch it out. ”
That was such a sad sentiment to me, but it wasn’t like I didn’t understand it. The decision to close yourself off, to stop yourself from wanting anything more—it came from a protective place, even if it ended up in a punishing one.
“It’s easy to get jaded about love,” I said. “I’d been feeling that way, too.”
“Until?”
Eamonn had bent to pet the dog again, so that single word took its time firming up in my mind. I’d used the past tense, saying I had been feeling that way instead of that I have. It hadn’t been a conscious choice, so I didn’t know why I would’ve made that distinction.
Until I woke up in another country and didn’t know how I got there. Until I felt that wind on my face, leaning out of your car window. Until I heard that violinist play a song that expands in my chest, every single time. Until now. Until you.
The sun had been warm on my face, but then the clouds moved, and I couldn’t feel it as much. It was terrifying, not knowing exactly where I was or why or what had happened to me. It was exhilarating, too, knowing that whatever else was true about this day, there was no denying that it was special.
But I couldn’t say any of that to Eamonn, obviously.
“Until I saw some daffodils,” I said instead. “It’s hard to feel jaded when the daffodils are out.”
We’d just started talking about whether we should do something else with the dog—if there was a place we could take him, if we should try to find him some water to drink—when a young woman approached us, out of breath from running.
She looked college-aged, and barely, wearing leggings and a Trinity sweatshirt and a headband that pushed her light blond hair off her face.
“Oh my god,” she said. “Thank you. I’ve been looking for him everywhere.”
Eamonn stood up, smiling at her as he handed the leash over. “He got excited by the birds,” he said. “He’s grand.”
The woman reached down to ruffle the dog’s head. He panted up at her, seeming pleased with all the extra attention he was receiving. “What’s with you and birds, huh?” she said in a baby voice. “You leave the birds alone.”
“What kind of dog is he?” Eamonn asked. “Lab mix?”
She straightened, giving us an overexaggerated apologetic look, like she knew she was about to deliver bad news. “No idea, I’m sorry,” she said. “He’s not mine. I walk him a few times a week for some extra money.”
I could tell this pained Eamonn on some level.
Not that he had any problem with a dog walker, per se, but just that there was a part of him that thought, If the dog needs someone to hang out with, then why not me.
If he lived in the city, he probably would’ve done that girl’s job for no money at all.
“Ah, well,” Eamonn said. “Glad the fella found his way back to ya.”
“Thank you again for watching over him,” she said, giving the dog another scratch around his ears.
“It was our pleasure, truly,” he said. “Best of luck.”
It was the same thing he’d said to me, only a few hours before.
The woman was walking away with her dog—or at least, the dog she was in charge of—and it was funny to think that we were already out of each other’s lives.
She’d needed help with something, Eamonn had provided it, and then they’d gone their separate ways.
That could’ve been me, all those hours ago.
Instead, I was here with him. The way he’d said our pleasure—I knew it was just a saying, a way to comfort the woman that it hadn’t been a hardship to watch the dog for a bit.
But I liked the way he put us together in a sentence like that.
I liked the idea that this day might be something we were both enjoying, not just separately but with each other.
“Damn,” Eamonn said, giving one last glance over his shoulder as we started to walk again. “We never got the dog’s name.”