Chapter Thirty-Three
Thirty-Three
Eamonn put his sweatpants back on but didn’t bother with his shirt, which might just be my favorite version of him.
Cozy and casual, at home in his body, literally at home in this space that he’d made his own.
We went back up to his apartment, where he led me up the spiral staircase, cautioning me to watch my step.
“I always wanted one of these,” I said. “Like a princess tower.”
“It’s very cool,” he acknowledged, “except when you realize that they put the bathroom on another level from the bedroom, and you have to use this staircase every time you want to go from one to the other.”
I immediately saw what he’d meant earlier about not being able to stand upright in half of his room.
The roof was so slanted on one side that I wouldn’t even be able to stand up underneath the ceiling, and he’d put a long, low dresser against that wall.
His bed was in the center of the room up against another exposed brick wall, neatly made up with a woven blanket in muted green, a heavier, softer blanket folded along the bottom of the bed.
“Be honest,” I said. “Did you run up here and make your bed earlier, or do you really make it every time you wake up?”
“I’m a big believer in making the bed,” Eamonn said, “but I did shove a whole pile of clothes in the basket when I came up here before my shower. My socks in particular, I leave ’em everywhere.”
I climbed onto the middle of his bed, sitting cross-legged on top of his covers.
He’d leaned against the wall facing the bed, watching me.
I thought about what he’d said back in the car, when we’d been talking about multiple orgasms. There’s a…
refractory period. His chest still looked a little flushed.
“There aren’t any windows in here,” I said.
He pointed up at a skylight I hadn’t noticed. “But its little window lets in the stars,” he said in a way that told me he was quoting from something. “I pretty much just use this room to sleep.”
I leaned forward a bit, craning to see through the window in the roof.
It was nothing but inky black sky, not a star in sight.
I listened to see if I could hear any rain, but it seemed to have stopped.
He’d placed his candle on the dresser when he came in, and it flickered next to my watercolor from the beach, which he’d propped up against a now-useless lamp.
Even in the dim light I could tell that there were a few blotches in the colors from the raindrops that had hit it.
“I finished the story of Becfola,” I said.
His eyebrows shot up, like he was surprised that I’d done that, or maybe surprised that I was bringing it up at all. “And?” he asked. “What did you think?”
So he didn’t even pretend to not know how the story ended. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I said. “That she gets with the young man, that she leaves the king’s world behind?”
“I told you I wasn’t the king,” he said. “I was worried you’d think I had notions that I was the man.”
He said it so straightforwardly, his face almost grave in the shadows of the room, that I didn’t even know what to say. Are you? I wanted to ask, but I knew it was just a story. Do you? I wanted to ask, but was afraid of the answer.
“It’s not even fair,” I said, making my voice light instead. “You Irish lads.”
His mouth still looked serious, but there was a smile in his eyes. “How do you mean?”
“All this romantic folklore. How is a girl supposed to resist any of that?”
“I guess we would say that you’re not.”
I leaned back against his bed, and I swore I saw his eyes darken.
“You should have your sister teach you more Irish,” I said. “Or learn more Yeats poems to recite. I don’t know, you could be unstoppable. At least with tourists—Irish women probably see through all this stuff.”
I didn’t want to think about him with another woman.
But I wanted to let him know that I understood this wasn’t meant to be anything permanent, that I didn’t expect anything out of him, that I wasn’t relying on him to be my metaphorical lover taking me away from a king who didn’t even exist. I was going to return to the real world, somehow, and to the extent our lives could be lived in parallel, he would be free to go on and use his romantic charms on anyone else he wanted.
He should date more. It was a waste not to.
He crawled over me on the bed, his arms framing my face as he looked down at me. “I only know one Yeats poem by heart,” he said. “You actually remind me of it, a little.”
“Oh yeah?”
“It’s a very early one,” he said. “From before he started paying Mussolini all those compliments.”
I snorted a laugh, reaching up to run my hand along his arm. “Why is that always the way it devolves? Let’s hear it.”
Eamonn scrunched up his brow. “I’m going to fuck it up now that I made it a thing,” he said. “But it goes:
Shy one, shy one,
Shy one of my heart,
She moves in the firelight
Pensively apart.”
If he’d been reciting it with too much passion or emphasis I wouldn’t have been able to look him in the eye, but he spoke the words almost conversationally, one of his hands drifting casually under the hem of my T-shirt, where he rested his warm palm on my bare stomach.
“She carries in the dishes,
And lays them in a row.
To an isle in the water
With her would I go.”
He slid his hand into my shorts, although he didn’t venture any farther than just below my waist, his fingertips grazing my tattoo.
“She carries in the candles,
And lights the curtained room,
Shy in the doorway
And shy in the gloom;”
The tattoo thing was on purpose, too, because he rubbed a circle over it with his thumb like he knew exactly where he was touching. My breath caught in my throat as I arched my back automatically, wanting to pay attention to what he was saying but distracted in spite of myself.
“And shy as a rabbit,
Helpful and shy.
To an isle in the water
With her would I fly.”
His voice held a note of finality in that last part, and I knew the poem had come to an end. He was still stroking me in a slow, hypnotizing rhythm with his thumb, much higher than I wanted him to be.
“It’s important that you know she’s shy, huh,” I said, my voice coming out a little breathless.
“I like the domesticity of it,” he said.
“The carrying of the candles, the dishes laid in a row. I always found it restful. Peaceful. But wistful, too, yearning, this idea of flying together to some magical water isle. The fact that he says he would go. Does that mean that they’re both grounded in the here and now, but he’d be willing to leave it, as long as it was with her?
Or does that mean that she has somewhere else to be, somewhere that he can’t go but wishes he could? ”
Shy one of my heart. I didn’t know if it was a good or a bad thing, that I reminded him of this poem. “Do you think of me as shy?”
He seemed to really consider that, his gaze traveling over my face. “Yes and no,” he said finally. “There’s something very composed about you, as I said back at the house. Pensively apart. Something a little untouchable.”
“You’re touching me right now.”
Eamonn bit back a smile, looking down to where his hand was in my shorts, sliding down my slit, parting me with his fingers. “And you’re feeling shy about it,” he said, circling my entrance, teasing me. “Admit it.”
It was true. I didn’t know how he brought this out of me—an uncharacteristic boldness, where suddenly I was doing things, saying things I never thought I had in me.
And yet every time he touched me I felt almost painfully exposed, laid completely bare in a way that made me want to hide away from it.
“See,” he said, curling one finger inside of me. “Me, I’m very shy. My heart’s beating so fast, even being with you like this.”
I pressed my hand against his bare chest. It really did feel like his heart was going a mile a minute. I touched his taut nipple with my fingertips, and he closed his eyes momentarily, his breath coming out in one ragged exhale.
“You had me against your front door,” I said. “I just gave you a blow job in the lobby of your auto shop. What else is there to feel shy about?”
“I know,” he said, stretching me with another finger.
For some reason, the way we were carrying on a full conversation, the things we were talking about, made the fact that he was still touching me there, that I could hear the wet sounds of his fingers working inside me, seem all the more explicit.
“I’m just still getting used to asking for what I want. ”
“And what’s that?” It came out half whisper, half whine as he brushed against my clit.
“I want to fuck you slow,” he said. “Please don’t get me wrong—I loved the car, and downstairs, all of it. But I want to take my time with you.”
He was already taking such sweet, delicious time. He was touching me but with no particular urgency, like he had all night to spend just with his hand down my shorts.
“Yes,” I said on a gasp as he pressed into me. “Yes, I want that.”
“What else?” he said. “What else do you want? Don’t be shy, Jess, not with me. If there’s something that would make you feel good, I want to do it.”
It was hard to even think, when he was touching me like that. I was tempted to say Keep doing what you’re doing or I like all of it. But I knew that he wanted a real answer. He wanted something specific, a fantasy I trusted him with, given freely so he could give it back.
“I liked when you held my wrists,” I said. “In the car.”
I’d crossed my hands above my head, confirming what I wanted him to do, and he pinned my wrists to the bed with one strong hand. “Oh yeah?”
He tugged my shirt up over my breasts, exposing me before he went back to stroking his fingers inside me.
Something about all of that—the pressure of him holding me down, the cool air hitting the tight buds of my nipples, the brief pinch he gave my clit—almost made me come right then.
But he withdrew his fingers, sliding them over my mouth, painting my own wetness onto my lower lip.