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Her delicate fingers slotted his key card into a little cardboard holder with the B&B’s name inscribed.
“For what it’s worth, I think I’m saving us both,” she said, using the longest of those fingers to slide the card over scratched wood.
Still, at least she looked at him as she spoke this time. Let him see her world-embodied eyes to seal the image.
“I know.” His voice cracked in the breaking of his silence.
“Besides, I’m not that good of a kisser anyway.”
Fionn knew she was lying in saying that.
“Did you forget the last time I saw you, Áine?” The words, too suave, finally tumbled out. It was the first question he’d wanted to ask her tonight. The question he’d held in not to remind her. He supposed it didn’t matter either way now.
Her expression remained unwaveringly still. “If you mean, did I forget we shared a kiss, a real one, the answer was yes, before tonight. And I don’t say that to embarrass you. But what does it matter now? If we’re being honest, which we’ve spent most of the night doing, if I did give in to you in the little library room just there, wouldn’t it only make it harder to forget this night? And I suppose I speak from experience . . . from the last time.”
“You want to forget this?” he asked incredulously. Fionn wished he’d never forget this night. He hoped he might die of something quick as opposed to dementia, so he wouldn’t undergo the fade of her how his grandad did with Fionn when he was small. “Will everyone forget me soon too?” Fionn asked his mother when walking behind the hearse.
“Not want. Need. And—” All the answers revving on Áine’s tongue distilled to ones chosen not to say. “Goodbye, Fionn.”
He forced a tight-lipped smile as he tapped the card on the counter and offered a single-word pleasantry for fear anything else would be the end of him.
“Áine.”
Fionn turned then, hands back in his pockets as he made for the stairs in an amble state. Not in the hope she’d call him back, like earlier, but because the defeat in his legs could barely take the weight of him.
All the same, he managed, each step bringing him closer to the future he longed for, yet one step away from one that might have been if his teenage self wasn’t so stupid.
An even worse weight came over Fionn when reaching his door; in his head, on his shoulders, shackling his feet. Feet where his old gear bag still lay. He picked it up by its long-tethered strap, wondering how he’d forgotten it. Left it to the potential hands of fellow cheap guests when it was all he had to his name.
To his fright, he didn’t care.
When sliding the key card down into the door’s black lock, he prayed it wouldn’t work a second time. Considered lying that it didn’t. But as the light turned green and beeped, he took it as the go-ahead to accept fate.
He was a gambler, but never greedy. It was never about wanting exceptional fortune. In some way, it was about having enough, for liberality. The opportunity to see Áine one last time in life had to be enough because it was probably all he deserved.
A dry heat pressed on him as he stepped into the small room decorated entirely in brown: a brown single bed with no headboard, a counter with a browning kettle, and a bedside table with a white discoloured lamp.
In the company of a radiator that quietly sloshed, he raised his hands like he welcomed a merciful death, dropping back onto the bed’s edge not six feet from the door. Soft linen crowded around his skin and clothes with such inviting comfort he lay there longer than planned, his legs planted firm on the wooden floor.
After the exhaustion of all that had happened, he hoped insomnia might not haunt him tonight. A night when he needed his mam to visit him.
Fionn’s phone chimed in his back pocket. It stirred a sigh in him. He slid it out to dangle above his face, baby finger hooking the end. A notification had appeared on the screen:check-in for Dublin Airport to DubaiInternational.
Seeing the layover was enough to confirm how close he was to his life-changing decision. Which was why the hesitancy of his wavering thumb above the confirm button had him recline deeper into the sheets.
This isn’t because of Áine. Is it?
Fionn knew nothing could come of them.
A message was also on his phone. He opened the welcomed distraction:
– Declan
T-minus 24 hours, bro. Hope that treacherous journey up to the ‘Big Shmoke’ didn’t take too much out of you. I’ll be there to see you off the plane. The girls can’t wait to meet you. You should be proud.
The word proud lodged something cork-like into Fionn’s throat he had to swallow twice to be rid of. Declan had never said anything of the sort before, and he was sure because of the sheer awkwardness their fumbled relationship personified, he’d never say it to him in person. But Fionn didn’t care. Not about that or if Declan was purely asking him to think it of himself. To beproudof himself. Because he was sure Declan was inadvertently telling himhewas proud too.
Fionn worried he’d become somewhat of a burden to his brother this year; financially and mentally. So he thought hearing this would elate him. But it simply eased his worry about both those aspects.
