When I used to fantasise about kissing Orla Mahon, I’d imagine her being taller than me. I knew she wasn’t, even in heels, but I used to picture myself standing on tiptoe to reach her mouth. Maybe it was because I felt so intimidated. Fortunately it wasn’t like that in real life; I was a good few centimetres taller than she was.
Vertically, anyway. Horizontally speaking, we fitted together perfectly.
It didn’t go like my fantasies. Nothing wild or crazy about it. She moved with me like an extension of my own body, warm and intense and electrifying. I felt it everywhere: in my bones and up my spine and into my fingertips. It jolted and tore me like I’d never be in one piece again, and I know she felt the same thing, because there was a moment there when we were the exact same person.
Afterwards I propped myself above her on my fists and stared into her tarnished-pewter, North-Sea-in-winter eyes. I was afraid of opening my mouth in case I came over all James Blunt, so I pressed my lips together and tried not to say anything.
I didn’t want to look at the clock in case the hands had moved too fast. I didn’t want to leave her rumpled single bed, didn’t want to move my rigid arms from either side of her because I wanted to keep her there for ever. Not that she tried to escape. She placed both her palms against my face and gazed up at me, calm and intent. I inclined my head one way, then the other, aching after her touch like a loyal dog, loving the light scratch of her black-red fingernails against my ears. I felt pathetically grateful, like a stray who’d found a home, but she didn’t look superior. She looked as if she’d found a missing piece too. Another ripple went through her body, and I shuddered in echo. I wished I didn’t have to leave. I thought about the parallel world I had to go back to, and I shivered again, and Orla’s hands tightened on my face. She smiled, her hands sliding down my face and to the back of my neck. Gently she pulled me down beside her.
I lay on my side, my arm possessively across her torso, my fingers curled round her upper arm, testing the texture of muscle where her soft skin slid across it. She gazed at the ceiling, a tiny smile tugging the corner of her mouth.
‘So,’ I said, ‘will you still respect me in the morning?’
She gave a small inelegant snort.
‘You do bring out the lame git in me,’ I added.
‘I know.’ The dent of her smile deepened, then turned to a thoughtful frown. ‘Maybe I should call the baby Aidan. Mum would be mad to start with, but in the end she’d be happy. What d’you think?’
God Almighty. That turned my spine cold, for more than one reason. ‘Er,’ I said.
The frown vanished as she laughed and rolled over to face me. It was a lovely sound. ‘Oh, breathe, you daft git. It’d be stupid, that’s what.’
I laughed too, like a gasp of relief.
‘So, careful with the condoms,’ she added. ‘Don’t open the next one with your teeth.’
The next one. I touched her nose ring and kissed her. ‘Sorry. Bit of a hurry. Stupid as well as ugly.’
‘You talkin’ a me?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘you daft git.’
God, could she get any more perfect? She could quote Taxi Driver.
Her wicked grin faded as she examined my face. She touched a fingertip to the side of my broken nose. ‘You’re not ugly,’ she said casually.
There was nothing casual in the way her finger traced my brow, and the dip of my temple, and the hard line of my jaw, then came to rest in the hollow of my throat. She must have felt me swallow hard; I felt her fingertip rise and fall. I thought about the other bedroom, the one next to this one, the one she hadn’t glanced at as she gripped my hand tighter and pulled me past. The door had been slightly ajar but Don’t look, she’d said. It’s like he’s still there.
I thought about Mrs Mahon going in and lying on his bed and holding his clothes and crying. I thought about Orla lying here listening to that, and then having to put up with my sister, pretending. It’s like he’s still there.
It was, sort of. I didn’t feel threatened, though, or angry. If Aidan was around, he didn’t scare me. It wasn’t about him. Not this.
Later in the afternoon Orla fell asleep, but I didn’t. Through the thin curtains a low afternoon sunlight filtered. Divided by the window frame, it split in one rhombus in the centre of the carpet and one on the duvet cover. I lay and watched the dancing light, wondering what was making it move, and then I focused on the dust motes that swirled and circled, rose and sank, never falling: plane after plane of them. Galaxies, nebulas, constellations of them. Staring into them, I searched for suns and planets. I wondered if I was an atom of a dust mote in a bar of light in someone else’s dimension, some other lucky bastard’s bedroom.
Then I watched the dusty light fall across Orla’s skin and hair, glint off the silver ring in her nostril, and I didn’t care any more. My arm tingled, numb where she lay on it, but I didn’t want to move. I let her breath touch the skin inside my elbow and didn’t care if my arm fell off, or if my planet, my whole universe, was grit on someone’s cosmic shoe. I loved Orla Mahon, and there was a reasonable chance that she loved me back. Which was fine. That was all it took.
I thought, it’ll be all right now.
Oh, right.