Look Who’s Getting Bold.
I stayed upstairs in my room during band practice on Sunday and Monday night while The Brash Heathens were putting in extra hours before their Vicar Street gig. In those last few days before the trial Jocelyn and I emailed each other multiple times a day, her continually skirting the subject of Noah and me steadfastly ignoring the subject of December 27th . I’d waited too long to say anything and locked myself in; I couldn’t see how I could possibly tell her about that night now. Still, my old conversation with Ajay niggled at me as I read Jocelyn’s words.
Ajay promised me he was going to be okay in there. I made him promise so maybe it doesn’t count, but he sounded like he meant it. He told me in a way he wants to go to prison, to feel like he’s making up for what he’s done. Then all I could think is that I don’t care what he’s done, I don’t want him to go to jail. It won’t make Melanie Cheng whole again. How can it help anything?
He said, “You always thought I was partying too much, being an asshole, and you were right. I need to figure out how to be someone better.”
I told him he didn’t need to go anywhere to do that, that he could change from anywhere. But it’s like you said, there’s no choice anyway. Sometimes we have to accept things. I guess that’s what Ajay’s trying to do.
I keep catching my mom looking at him with sad eyes when she thinks no one notices. My dad tries to be strong always—you know how he is—but my brother and I went to the gurdwara with him to pray. I know you don’t believe in things like that, but it helps.
Then Ajay’s court date arrived too soon—because it never could have felt otherwise—and I woke up at dawn, wishing for the thousandth time that I was on the other side of the ocean. Jack’s room was cast in weak blue light as I wrote Jocelyn, telling her that I was glad she’d been able to find some peace somewhere, that I’d be thinking of her and her family all day and to Skype me late that night, like she’d promised. Joss’s parents and Ajay didn’t want her at the trial so she and her sister would be waiting at home with her grandparents. Even if I’d been in Toronto, we would have been separate, but the nearness would have counted for something.
Instead I felt as though I existed in an entirely different world. Ajay’s court appearance was twinned with my script treatment due date and I trudged through screenwriting class in a fog, every moment feeling not quite real. I saw Gianni floor everyone with his summary of Questo Piccolo Grande Amore. It didn’t matter that his English language skills weren’t perfect; my classmates could hear the passion behind his every word. I could hear it too; I just couldn’t feel it the way I should’ve. All my emotions were with Joss.
The numbness made reading my completed treatment, which I’d tentatively titled Happiness is Easy, simple. No nerves like I’d had the week before, which must have been a huge improvement because as we strolled out of class together Clare proclaimed, “You’re a star.”
It was something you heard in Ireland often and basically meant you’d either done a good job or was the equivalent of telling someone, “You’re the best,” when they’d done you even a minor favour. I’d been in Dublin for a total of four and a half weeks at that point and didn’t need people to translate things for me any longer. I didn’t exactly feel like a tourist anymore either. I’d gotten used to the rhythm people talked in, an expressiveness that made North Americans sound dull and slow. I knew that “sloshed” meant you were drunk and a “dote” was a real sweetheart of a person. If you were really happy you were chuffed and if the lights went out you needed a torch, not a flashlight.
Some of those words my parents still used in each other’s company (my father having spent his first twenty-four years in Ireland and the following eleven in England, and my mom having grown up in a London suburb) but other words and phrases—plaster (Band-Aid), car park (parking lot), and fringe (hair bangs) they must have abandoned years earlier in order to be understood in North America. I wondered if I’d forget about those words once I flew home too, them and everything that I’d leave behind.
Clare, Gianni, and I had lunch together in a cheap sandwich bar around the corner from the IFI. The work day had barely started in Toronto; it was going to be a long afternoon and I forced myself to stay out with them; sitting at home alone waiting for news I wouldn’t get for hours and hours would’ve slowed the day further still.
We hadn’t sat down as a trio since the first day of class and I was surprised to catch Clare and Gianni making eyes at each other across the table. “Are you kidding me?” I asked Clare when Gianni went off to the bathroom. “Is something going on between you two?”
“Not how you mean,” Clare declared as she squeezed a slice of lemon into her water. “He’s just a massive flirt. Anyway, he’d be more your type than mine. Why don’t you give it a go? He’s not bad looking and he has great taste in films. I reckon he could make you forget that guitarist no problem.”
“You’re the one flirting with him,” I pointed out. “Why don’t you give him a try if that’s the way you feel?” It was true; Gianni had a lot of good points. He was kind of like a daily vitamin; I usually walked away from him feeling better, more energized, than I had before. I was definitely fond of him, just not in the way Clare was suggesting. “Anyway, who said Gianni was my type?”
“You both like those arty intellectual films with open endings and lots of silent pauses.” The way Irish people pronounced films it usually came out sounding more like filums and Clare was no exception.
“It takes more than that to make someone your type. Besides, I’m not over my drama craving yet.” I said it like I was kidding, but Clare looked me straight in the eye like that was the truth of the matter.
About twenty minutes later the three of us were splitting the lunch cheque and going our separate ways, me towards Westmoreland Street to catch a bus home. Dublin was a compact city, every point within walking distance, so it wasn’t odd to run into familiar faces in the street, but when I saw Darragh rushing down Crown Alley in a scruffy denim jacket and dark wash jeans it didn’t feel like a coincidence. I called his name before I could regret it and he stopped directly in front of me, looking harried.
“Hey, Amira,” he said stiffly. “You just finished class?” He glanced at his watch and then distractedly over his shoulder. “Are you on your way home then?”
If I’d had any illusions that he’d shown up in Temple Bar because of me they disappeared in a flash. He was as disinterested as a person could be without seeming rude and his left eye was back to normal, like that Saturday night in Temple Bar had never happened between us.
I didn’t answer at first and then Darragh really looked at me. Nobody should be able to hook you with a stare alone. It was almost criminal and I felt myself getting defensive. “Yeah, I’m still grounded,” I replied. “And I have a lot of work to do.”
Darragh’s eyes were fixed on mine and his hands disappeared into his pockets. “You missed a good night on Saturday.”
“I heard.” Zoey hadn’t gotten home until close to one o’clock. She’d said they’d stumbled across a free outdoor showing of Inception in a Dun Laoghaire park after dinner. “So what are you doing in Temple Bar on your day off?” I asked, instantly wanting to take back the question; I had no business checking up on him.
Darragh bit into his cheek and his reluctance to answer was an answer in itself. Something to do with Ursula.
“Forget it,” I added. “You don’t have to answer that. I’ll just…I’ll see you around.” I should never have gotten myself into this. It’s not like he’d led me on. I was fully aware of the Ursula situation and now I spun to go before I’d turn sour on him.
“Wait, Amira.” He stepped in front of me, blocking my way. “They’ve put Ursula’s sister into an in-patient program at the hospital, but she’s still in a bad way.” His eyebrows drew together as the distance between us seemed to grow. “I’m really sorry about all this. It’s mad; Ursula and I have spent more time talking during the last week than we ever did before.” Darragh was squinting, despite the overcast sky. “And you looked fantastic on Saturday, you know? Seeing you does my head in. I can’t…” He shook his head, his left hand soaring into the air. “I can’t balance you and this whole emotional thing Ursula’s going through. I’m still buzzed from the gig last night as well. My head isn’t even sitting on my shoulders at the moment.”
“What about what you said about still being able to tell you things?” I fought a pout, silently trying to talk myself out of the idea that he was the best friend I had within three thousand miles.
His hand suddenly skimmed my arm. “Did something happen? Do you need to talk?”
“The trial’s today, but we’re five hours ahead of Toronto; there won’t be any news until later.” I wrapped my arms around my stomach and stood back. “Forget it. I’m making a fool of myself and I hate the way that keeps happening with you.”
“No, no. That’s not what’s happening.” Darragh was throwing one of his hands around again. “I’m acting like a gobshite. I told you that being around you while we’re on hold like this does my head in. But talk to me. Tell me everything—when will you hear from your friend?”
“We’ll be Skyping in the middle of the night probably. I never told her about December. I guess I’m a coward.” Gritty anxiety pebbled my throat.
“You’re not,” Darragh insisted, planting both hands on my shoulders. “It’s a touchy situation. You’ve been there for her as best as you could. What happened that night doesn’t make any difference.”
I nodded, mutely digesting his words and the empathy that seemed to leak from his fingers deep into my bones.
“So Vicar Street went well?” I asked, latching on to the least complicated thing he’d mentioned. As confused as I was about the mishmash of things we’d just said to each other, I was happy for Darragh about the gig. Zoey had still been asleep when I’d left for class in the morning, his report of the night would be the first I’d heard.
“We went down a storm,” Darragh replied earnestly. “Ah, it was brilliant. You should’ve been there, Amira. Zoey was completely on form. If I didn’t know her she’d have given me chills. Lost Souls Dinner Hour are going into the studio soon and then they’re touring the U.K so there’s a good chance we’ll be opening for them again, especially after how last night went down. Some mad French girl wanted me to give her my shoelaces and a few of the blokes from Mental Wealth came down to see us as well. Rory and I went back to one of their flats and jammed a bit after. They had this rented electric violin and there was an incredible sound off it.” The way he said the word incredible made it sound twelve feet high and he looked larger than life in front of me, not just because he was this achingly good-looking Irish guitarist but because he was so deep into the experience of it all.
“What’re you doing now?” he asked keenly, as though the first part of our conversation had never happened and that whatever we were to each other didn’t need to be contained by the crooked lines we kept drawing for ourselves. “It sounds like you should keep busy today. Do you want to play some pool?” He smiled at my bewildered expression. “I’m sorry. I sound like a complete lunatic, don’t I? I never got to bed last night and I just had this horrible conversation with Ursula.” He blanched at the memory and I instinctively reached out and sort of shook his hand.
“Just now?”
“Mmm,” he confirmed, gripping my hand back. “She’s gone for an interview in a place in Merrion Square now, but she was in really bad form—she should’ve just cancelled. Anyway, I thought I’d spend a couple of hours in town and get my head together.” He clamped his lips together and dipped his head. “We’ll have a friendly game of pool then, yeah?” He glanced imploringly up at me, his head still tilted towards the ground. “It’s seven that you have to be home by, is it?”
“Technically,” I told him. The warmth of his palm against mine made me smile. “But they’ll expect me for dinner and anyway, I don’t know how to play pool.”
“That’s okay.” He grinned back at me. “Trust me, I’m a good teacher.”
So Darragh patiently instructed me in the art of pool, interjecting questions about screenwriting class and Happiness is Easy as I actually potted some balls (including the cueball and one of his). The uncertainty between us would’ve given me a dull ache behind the eyes only I was entirely focused on Darragh doing things like leaning over to take shot after shot and unbuttoning his denim jacket.
Afterwards he proclaimed himself starving and we walked back to Temple Bar together, towards a restaurant called Milano. Since I’d already had lunch I watched Darragh wolf down meaty pizza as I sipped coffee and nibbled on a starter of marinated olives, the two of us flying through topic after topic—his brothers, my parents’ reunion cruise, our respective favourite Beatles songs, and me being a vegetarian.
“Does it bother you seeing other people eat meat?” he asked. “Are you hating me for this?”
“It’s fine. My parents aren’t vegetarians and neither are most of my friends. I’m just sitting here feeling ethically superior.”
“I’m sure you are.” Darragh’s smile was just as wide as my own.
We play-argued about paying for my part of the bill, me shoving a five euro note and some coins at Darragh and him pushing the money repeatedly back across the table until the waitress sidled up to our table and, smiling tiredly as if she’d had a rough shift, called us “cute.” Out on the cobblestones afterwards I felt jacked up with a combination of confusion and a natural high from being in Darragh’s presence for so long. Truthfully, I was barely able to stand still. I knew that I was about to do something I shouldn’t and that he wouldn’t stop me. We were bigger than any lines. I could barely remember why we’d bothered with them to begin with.
“I’m really wired,” I said, stretching my arms out into the cool Dublin air and bouncing on my heels. “What’d they put in the coffee in that place?”
“Coffee beans,” Darragh volunteered with a laugh. “I’d love to see you after a couple of espressos.” He stood motionless in front of me, those astonishingly bright blue eyes drinking me in.
“You’re being incredibly well behaved,” I told him, smiling so hard that my jaw twinged.
“Exactly how you wanted.” He tilted his head in a way I was sure he knew was adorable. I glanced down at his jeans, closed the distance between us and tucked my hand partway into one of his front pockets. “Look who’s getting bold,” he said, but of course he was smiling, and I inched closer still, until my capris rubbed against his jeans.
Darragh was relishing his relative innocence, not touching me but not backing away, and I was going to kiss him any second now. I slid my fingers out of his pocket, angled my head up and… No. I couldn’t. Not with Ursula still in the background. It wasn’t right.
“Sorry,” I said under my breath, pulling back. I heard the sharp mixture of regret and longing in my voice and knew Darragh had heard it too.
Even now that we were standing apart, we felt solidly together. It was the rest of the world that seemed distant.
“It’s my fault.” Darragh took another step away from me. “I shouldn’t have asked you to come play pool. Trying to stick to being friends is messing with our heads.” He watched my eyes like he was hoping I’d hatch a master plan that would save us. “Marieve won’t be sick forever. I know it’s a lot to ask, but can you wait a bit longer?”
Wait until when? He didn’t know the answer to that any more than I did and suddenly I felt queasy. I could demand he tell Ursula about us right now. Ask him to stop hanging out with her and allowing himself to be one of the people she was leaning on. He might do it, but then neither of us would feel good about it.
The trouble was, I didn’t feel good now either.
“I don’t think I can,” I said, my reply pounding in my ears. “You’re right about this messing with my head. It’s too complicated. It feels like we’re in the wrong.”
Not long ago I’d have been fine without him. If I’d never believed we could be friends, if we’d never argued in the rain, never once kissed, I still would be. But I didn’t know how to roll my point of view back to the time before those things had happened. They call them crushes for a reason, if nothing comes of them and you insist on holding on to them anyway, they begin to do damage.
I watched Darragh’s face drop, the silence between us starting to hurt my ears. “People can have attractions and not act on them,” I continued. “We don’t have to pretend to be friends—we could actually be friends instead.” I liked him far too much to want to stay away. Being only friends had to be possible. I was beginning to believe it was as good as things were going to get with us.
“We’ve tried that. Look where it’s gotten us.” Darragh rubbed his eyes.
“If we genuinely like each other enough, it should be possible. Otherwise this thing’s only physical.” That felt like an inarguable emotional truth to me.
“It’s not as cut and dry as that. If it was, we wouldn’t be having these problems.” Darragh stared into the unending stream of Temple Bar foot traffic that jostled by us, forcing us to constantly adjust our position on the cobblestones.
“We’re having these problems because now we’re playing a waiting game with no end in sight,” I said. “Maybe that’s what needs to stop. Then you can be there for Ursula without feeling like you’re letting either of us down and I can stop waiting for something that might never happen.” Darragh opened his mouth to protest but I didn’t let him. “Be my friend for real,” I insisted. “Without any waiting for something else. And I don’t mean that in the two of us making small talk when we happen to see each other with Zoey way either. Real friends, but only friends.” It burned me to have to ask him for that, but I needed it more than I needed the pride it would’ve taken to hold the request back. “We’d have a big part of what we want, everything except the physical part.”
“That’s what you really want?” Darragh asked incredulously, as though it was one of the most revolutionary ideas he’d ever heard. “To chuck out the possibility of anything else between us? Listen, Marieve will be out of the woods soon and then Ursula won’t be in such a state and—”
“But we don’t know when,” I cut in. “And with me leaving at the end of summer anyway this is what makes the most sense. I want to know you. And I don’t want to wait.” The honesty burned my lips. It was an enormous thing to say. Let me know you. Show me who you are.
“I want to know you too,” Darragh said and his voice had an ache to it that I wanted to be the cure for. “But we don’t know that we can’t still have everything. There’s still plenty of summer left.”
Six and a half weeks before I’d fly home. But I didn’t want to spend them counting on something that might never be, the clock continually spinning down. My cheeks smarted from refusing to let my face sag in exhaustion like it wanted to. I felt like a ping pong ball from all the back and forth between us. I couldn’t ask Darragh to be my friend a second time. It was up to him now.
“Walk with me,” Darragh said. “It’s too hard to talk in this crowd.”
Silently we wound through Dublin streets together, my ears burning and my emotions churning. Darragh led us to the spot on the Trinity College grounds where everyone ignores the ‘please keep off the lawns’ sign. It was dotted with summer students and Book of Kells tourists, but at least it was quieter than Temple Bar.
As we sat next down to each other on the grass, Darragh grabbed the tip of my running shoe. “Our timing’s been shite,” he said, his blue eyes drilling into mine. “But there’s nothing wrong about us together. This isn’t only physical; you have to know that. But my feelings for you are a lot more than what you’d call friendly. Aside from Zoey I haven’t had many close friends who were girls. There was one—Aisling—when I was fifteen, who started out that way…”
“Then you hooked up?” I ventured.
Darragh scratched at his sleeve, not really looking at me. “Neither of us had slept with anyone before. We were like best mates back then, and we wanted to know what it would be like. But it only happened a few times before we fell out.” I’d never had a guy talk to me about his first time in anything except a bragging or joking way but Darragh was just being real about it. “How about you?” He pointed his eyes back at me.
“I haven’t really had close guy friends. Just friends’ boyfriends or guys my friends and I hang out with in a group. And I haven’t slept with any of them. I haven’t slept with anybody.” I’d never said it straight out like that to a guy before either, but I wanted things to be different with Darragh. I wanted to feel like I could say anything.
Darragh blinked quickly and stretched his legs out in front of him. “I didn’t know that about you.”
“Surprised?”
He took a moment to ponder my question. “Not now that you’ve said it, no.”
“Well, now that you know for definite you can see that being friends might not be so different than if we were seeing each other,” I said. “No sex either way.”
“If we were together there are a lot of things we could do that wouldn’t technically qualify as sex, but that wouldn’t be platonic either.” Darragh’s eyes were shining and his voice was warm. “I’d follow your lead. I’m open to suggestions.”
“I’m sure you are.” This wasn’t the smartest conversation to have while we were trying to be just friends. I was greedy for Darragh on multiple levels. I wanted to know everything about him there was to know; at the same time I wanted to crawl on top of him like a blanket, our bodies pressed so tightly together that it would take a crowbar to pry them apart. “But we’re not there,” I added pointedly, the reminder directed at myself as much as at him.
“Okay.” His cheeks hollowed out as he exhaled. “But if we’re going to try to be the sort of friends you say you want to be you should know what you said weeks back about me always being on game is dead wrong. Sometimes things are complicated without it being anyone’s fault.” Darragh drove his fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his face and venturing another look at me. “After Aisling I had a bit of a mad time with a few different girls at parties and things. But that was years ago. It stopped when things got serious with my ex-girlfriend, Lily. We were together for nearly a year before breaking up. Since then there’s only been Sophie and Ursula.”
“You were in love with her,” I said. “Lily.” There was a wrinkle in his voice when he’d said her name that marked her as special.
It wasn’t a question, but Darragh replied, “As close as I have been.” His lips formed a rigid line. “What about you? There must have been someone at home, even if you didn’t sleep together.”
“A guy named Matias.” The three guys I’d kissed before him didn’t count; they were only moments, not relationships. “For a couple of months this winter. But it wasn’t…” My incomplete thought hovered in the air over our heads. I’d already run out of words; there wasn’t much worth saying about Matias.
Darragh’s eyes were silently asking me to continue and I added, “He wasn’t a bad person or anything like that. It was just that it didn’t really mean anything.”
I stretched my legs out in front of me, next to Darragh’s, balancing my weight on my elbows.
“No impact,” he commented.
“Right.”
Darragh reached out and touched my hip, his hand lingering there. “If we were together I wouldn’t want you to say that about me. I’d want to have an impact.” Our eyes locked. His were intensely restless, the rest of his face taut and flushed, and I knew we were picturing a variation of the same thing, something that shouldn’t happen on the Trinity grounds, surrounded by students and tourists.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I said breathlessly. “We’re not kissing again.”
“I know.” Darragh’s voice was low and husky. “I’m trying not to think about it.”
For several seconds we were both quiet, my mind fighting itself to purge the pictures in my head. I didn’t have a pen and this was no time for notes, but my thoughts reached out to my sister. Rana, this is crazy. What am I doing?
And then, because I couldn’t seem to keep my thoughts to myself around Darragh, I was opening my mouth and saying, “Do you remember what you said about me being an only child? It’s not exactly true. I had a sister. She died.”
Darragh’s face fell. “I had no idea. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I never really knew her so I didn’t lose her in quite the same way my parents did.” I sat up straight on the grass, Rana’s mantelpiece picture from home flashing behind my eyes. My parents had two photo albums overflowing with photographs of her, but it was the mantelpiece image I’d laid eyes on the most. In it Rana’s sitting at the bottom of a staircase with a plush monkey in her lap and a crooked purple bow fixed into her hair. She’s grinning at the monkey instead of the camera, looking positively enchanted by the fuzzy object whose face she’s peering into.
“She was two and I was only a baby. Just four months old. I can’t remember her but”—Jocelyn was the only person aside from my parents who I’d shared the rest of what I was about to say with—“when I was four or so I started dreaming about her. One morning my dad came into my room and I was looking for her, like she was hiding, because in my dream minutes earlier we’d been playing together. Hearing about the dreams freaked my parents out. They thought I was subconsciously traumatized, I guess. Or that there was something else wrong with me. They took me to see a child psychologist and after a while it was just easier to let my mom and dad think the dreams had stopped, so they wouldn’t worry.”
The heat had gone from Darragh’s eyes, replaced with something less easy to decipher. “But they didn’t stop?” he guessed. “You still dream about her?”
“Sometimes. Not for a long time and then the dreams started again a few weeks ago.” Because I’d needed her. And I’d missed her too. I didn’t realize how much until she’d come back. My parents’ anxiety from all those years ago had weighed on me. Made my dreams and notes feel wrong. Once my family had put Mom’s breast cancer scare behind us I’d weaned myself off writing Rana. For months afterwards I’d composed messages to her in my head but resisted putting words on paper. In the end I stopped altogether, thinking that’s what my parents would want if they knew. Eventually my dreams of Rana became rarer too.
But neither the dreams nor the notes felt wrong to me anymore. I was old enough to have my own ideas. “She ages over the years, as strange as that might sound. She’s not a little girl. She doesn’t say anything and nothing much happens in the dreams. She’s just there with me.”
Darragh’s lips parted in slow motion. “What’s her name?”
“Rana.”
“What happened to her?” His voice was gentle and hesitant, as though he wasn’t sure he should be asking.
“She had meningitis. That morning she was fine, by evening my parents had taken her to the E.R. The doctors tried to stabilize her, but she didn’t make it through the night.”
“Jesus,” Darragh said, shaking his head sadly. “I’m so sorry. That must’ve broken your parents’ hearts.”
“I’m glad I don’t remember that part.” Not when it was fresh. Sometimes I wondered how different we all might’ve been if my sister had lived. Would my mom and dad have been the same overprotective, prone to perfectionism people with Rana still in our lives? And would I have been the child my parents never needed to worry about for so long? Had my sister’s absence somehow made me feel that was who I should be?
I watched Darragh take a breath. “When I was thirteen my best friend Conor died,” he began. His family was on vacation in the Canary Islands and he was killed in a head-on collision. I used to dream about him too. Sometimes I dreamt”—Darragh gazed over at the gaggle of noisy young students teasing each other by the Book of Kells entrance—“that he wasn’t really dead, that it was a mix-up. When he spoke to me in the dreams he sounded the same as he always did.”
“I’m not religious,” Darragh continued. “The things most people say about God don’t make a lot of sense to me. And they could’ve just been dreams. But they never felt that way.”
We locked eyes again, the connection between us tightening in my throat. I did know this was beyond physical; Darragh was right about that.
“There’s something else, I think. Something beyond what we can see.” I couldn’t name it or describe it, but the dreams were real on some level that couldn’t be measured. I absolutely believed that, no matter what anyone else would’ve said if I’d told them about Rana. “I’m really sorry about your friend.”
“Thanks.” Darragh cleared his throat. “What you said before—that if we genuinely like each other enough it should be possible to be friends—I want to try. But I need you to do something for me as well.”
“What?”
“Don’t write the rest off yet. Don’t box us in.”
I jutted my chin out. “That’s just like being back at square one, with the waiting and—”
“It’s not,” Darragh protested. “We’re friends. Just friends. But don’t cut off the possibilities.”
I didn’t say yes or no; I stared at him on the Trinity lawn, feeling famished for what we were denying each other—the same possibility that he wanted to keep alive. Did he think this was easy for me? I’d wanted more at least as much as he did; he was the one with his foot still stuck in his friends-with-benefits past with Ursula. Didn’t he see what I was suggesting was our last chance for something real?
“If you’re serious, do me a favour,” I declared. “No more if we were together talk. It’s not fair.”
“You’re right.” Darragh bowed his head apologetically. “I won’t say that again, I promise.”
“Thank you. I’m glad we talked about it, and everything else.”
“Me too,” he said solemnly.
“I should get going. I have to be home for dinner any minute now.” My fingers brushed grass and earth from my capris as I got to my feet.
Darragh slipped his cell out of his back pocket to check the time. “What happened to seven o’clock?”
“They’ll be expecting me for dinner, since I didn’t call to say I wouldn’t be home for it. I don’t want to piss them off when I only have a few days of curfew left.”
“I can give you a lift so you won’t be late,” Darragh offered.
At first it was every bit as overwhelming sitting on the back of Darragh’s scooter as it had been weeks ago. But my brain won out, lowering my body’s sensations to a steady buzz. Outside Aunt Kate and Uncle Frank’s house Darragh climbed off his bike along with me. “I’ll see you soon,” he said as I tugged off his spare helmet and handed it to him.
I didn’t ask him when. I didn’t touch him at all; even somewhere it should’ve been safe.
“See you soon,” I said back, turning to head up the driveway. If we were only friends I might not look over my shoulder to watch him go, and so I didn’t do that either. Not until he was far enough away that he couldn’t have seen me do it.