I’m tripping over myself. “I was completely fucking in love with you, too. It was twenty-three years ago. But I can remember it exactly. It’s—That first time, at the café—” I want to say that I can still feel it, this thing, like some kind of exotic animal. I can feel it hovering between us, levitating on invisible wings.
“Shite.” He grins.
“Yeah, shite.” I grin back. “Was that what you were going to tell me, that night when you came to the house?”
“I guess so. I was ready to tell Bláithín we were through and I went for pints with some friends from college and I guess I’d had a few and I just wanted to tell you. I wanted to say it.”
“And then you came in and Roly and I were in bed.” I hide my head in my hands. “I did something really stupid that night. I got really drunk. He brought me home and he was tired. There was absolutely nothing there. Just the friendship. A really good friendship. I replayed that moment over and over in my head. I wrote you letters, a few of them, to the café, to explain, and I thought after I wrote you and I didn’t hear back that you’d come for some other reason, that it had to do with Erin or something. And then…” I tell him about my dad, about everything. In the sliver of light coming from a streetlight, I see something flash across his face. A quick grimace of pain.
“I never went back to the café,” he says. “I … We moved to Paris for a year.”
We stop walking. We’re holding each other’s hands suddenly, our fingers rubbing circles on each other’s skin, and then we’re kissing. Time folds in on itself. We’re on the beach at Sandymount. The wind is blowing. He’s holding my face. We’re in Erin’s bedroom. He’s looking at me. He’s stroking my face. We’re kissing again. Harder. Hungrier. The air smells of apple blossoms.
When we break apart, we laugh and start walking again, hand in hand now. “We’d better get to the restaurant,” he says. “I know you’re a cop and all, but a charge for public indecency isn’t going to help my career any.”
* * *
It’s dark, cozy, a second-story place off Dawson Street decorated with black-and-white photographs of 1950s and ’60s Dublin. We order gin and tonics and salmon for dinner. He tells me he had to take Adrien to Bláithín’s parents’ house in Brittas Bay and it took longer than he thought.
“I’m not going to complain about my soon-to-be-ex-wife on a date,” he says. “But it’s not an easy situation.”
“I don’t think it ever is,” I tell him. “I know a woman who was so angry at her ex that she hid opened cans of tuna all over his house. She was a completely normal woman, but she broke into his house and hid them in, like, really impossible places so that he would never find them.”
“Tuna?”
“It started to rot and his house smelled terrible. He couldn’t figure out what it was and he tried everything but it just kept getting worse and worse.”
“That’s awful. Did he deserve it?”
“I don’t even know. He always seemed like a perfectly nice guy to me. According to her, he did.”
“Do you and your ex get on, then?”
“Now we do. But it took a while. He was really angry for a long time. I didn’t feel much of anything. I kept hoping he’d find someone else so I wouldn’t have to feel sorry for him. I was so guilty for so long. We didn’t really have much in common, but after Erin, and my dad, Brian was very kind to us, to me and Uncle Danny, and I guess I mistook that for … well, for the real thing.” I can’t help flashing back to the night Brian came into the bar, how I surprised myself by being happy to see him, by laughing, by having fun for the first time in a very, very long time. “We got pregnant and got married and … a few years in, he still loved me and I didn’t love him and there was nothing I could do. It would have been better if I’d cheated on him. But now things are pretty good. He’s staying at my house with Lilly right now.”
“Did he ever find anyone?”
“He’s had a few girlfriends. Nothing serious.”
“And you?”
“Nothing very serious. There was this man in Ireland, you see, who I kept thinking about.”
“Is that right? Tell me about him.”
“Mmmmm. Well, I actually don’t know him all that well. That’s the thing.”
“That is the thing, isn’t it?”
We stare at each other for a long moment. Then our food comes and without talking about it, we sort of start again, talking about work, about our kids. I tell him about Lilly. He tells me about Adrien.
“He’s been to so many therapists and doctors and I think what it comes down to is that he’s got anxiety. Things at home were bad until Bláithín moved down to Wicklow and then he hit puberty and it’s just been … fucking rough, actually … But he’s better now. He seems to have evened out a bit. He likes his school.”
We have another drink each when we’re done with dinner and then we walk down Dawson Street and through Trinity. He takes my hand in Parliament Square and we stop to kiss underneath the statue of Lecky.
“Do you think we’re horrifying the young ones?” he murmurs. “Old people kissing in public?”
“Probably.” Kissing him feels both familiar and strange. Cold air. Apples. Conor’s sweater.
“Maybe you’d better come up to the hotel, so we don’t horrify these poor young people.”
He smiles and tucks my hand under his arm. “It really is the least we can do.”
I wake up at three, the feel of another body in my bed unfamiliar. Streetlights shine through the open curtains and I get up to close them, then snuggle up against Conor’s back under the covers, finding the curve of his back again, the weight of his arms, the dip of his stomach.
“You’re not going anywhere, are you?” he murmurs.
“Uh-uh,” I whisper. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Okay,” he whispers. “Okay.”
My junior year of high school, I can’t stop thinking about Brian Lombardi. When I see him at school, I feel anxious, unsettled, exhilarated. He always says hi, giving me a shy smile that I replay over and over and over again throughout the day.
One day in early spring, Brian and I walk to the corner store to get a snack before taking the late bus home. Erin and another senior named Alex Tsakos are smoking outside and when she sees us, something crosses her face. I can’t read it. But later, I’m doing homework on our deck and she comes out and sits next to me.
“I had to give your mom money from my dad,” she says. “So, what’s up with you and Brian Lombardi? Do you like him?”
I can’t lie to Erin. “I guess,” I say.
“I think he likes you, too. He was asking me if you like anyone.”
“Really?” I can’t help the soaring hope that rips through me. Erin gets up and goes to the edge of the deck, looking out across the Sound. She’s wearing shorts and I can see the strong lines of her legs, the delicate curve of her feet in flip-flops. I wish she’d look at me, tell me she misses me, come over and put a hand on my shoulder. Anything.