by L.J. Shen
If possible, her blush darkens even further. Mortified and trembling, she snatches it from his hand.
“Thanks.”
“Oh, and you dropped the napkin you were so insistent on taking from the pub.” He crouches down, picking up a Boar’s Head napkin and holding it out to her.
Look, I have a reaction. Of course, I do—a hot-blooded, red, break-up-with-your-boyfriend-now-because-I’m-bored reaction.
I’m human, after all, even though I haven’t been feeling like one lately.
But I keep my face schooled, even as she takes the napkin, balls it in her fist, and throws it into the bin under the nightstand.
“That’s an odd thing to take from a pub.” I tap my lower lip, oh-so-interested in this unusual turn of events. “Did you catch the flu on the plane? I have tissues and Advil in the bathroom cabinet.”
“No, no.” Shiny Boyfriend chuckles, obviously delighted with my abrupt shift, playing right into my hands. “Rory is somewhat of a napkin connoisseur. She collects napkins everywhere she goes. It’s rather silly, really.”
“Rather,” I mimic his posh accent.
I still can’t believe she fecks this guy, who thinks collecting sentimental stuff is silly. That she hasn’t told him about our deal. Actually, that I can believe. She’s always been a lying mess.
“Care to elaborate about her fixation with napkins?”
She grabs my wrist, pulling me out the door. “Stop messing around. Let’s get it over with.”
“Oof, I don’t remember her that feisty. What’re ya feeding her?” I shake off her touch, smiling at Callum.
He laughs. He thinks we’re friends. Jesus Christ, the man doesn’t possess one functioning brain cell.
In the corridor, my resolve to be a cunt blunders. I slip and plaster her against the wall. She shoves me back, but her impact is non-existent. Our bodies are pressed together, close, rolling heat and hormones and history Princess Aurora cannot erase, no matter how many frogs she kisses.
I pin my chest to her shoulder and whisper in her ear, “Busted.”
Outside, I perch on the grass, my notebook open in front of me, pretending to write. The chance of me writing songs tonight is lower than my chance of becoming a blind, Italian nun. But if Rory is going to have sex under this roof, she is going to have it with me. Or not at all.
No gray area, I’m afraid.
“It’s dark.” She rubs her leather jacket-clad arms, her eyes roaming my backyard.
“You really are on top of your investigative game. Have you considered joining the CIA? A sharp mind like yours shouldn’t go to waste.” I place the pen behind my ear and frown at the blank page, not looking at her.
Doesn’t matter if I draw a dick with a bowtie on the notebook. It’s pitch black and neither she nor I will be able to see it.
“Suí síos le do thoil.” Sit down in Gaelic.
She ignores my party-pooper comment. “Sorry, I don’t speak dead languages. Wait here, please.”
Aurora dashes into the house and comes back with a plastic bag. She takes out two flashlights, loads of little candles, and a box of matches. I scan her coolly as candles drop from her delicate hands. She is flustered and struggles to keep it all together.
“Are you trying to summon your long-lost, non-existent soul through séance?” I wonder aloud.
She lets out a breathless chuckle. “I just remember how dark the night was in your backyard from when…” She turns the two flashlights on, placing one behind me and one in front of me, then shakes her head.
From when I unknowingly took your virginity because your ex-boyfriend couldn’t finish the job and in exchange gave you multiple orgasms. Yeah.
“Anyway, I’m going to drag some of your furniture out here so I’ll have somewhere to light these candles. I can’t take a decent picture with no light.”
“Cheers, Captain Obvious.” I watch her face, looking for crumbs of emotion.
Aurora doesn’t respond. When she enters the house again, I follow her. No matter how much I’m trying to be a dick—and, in my humble opinion, my efforts don’t go unnoticed—I’m slightly above watching her drag heavy furniture outside in the middle of the night by herself.
I carry the coffee table she pointed at and put it outside. She lines it with candles and lights them. I go back to my spot between the flashlights, plucking the pen from behind my ear. I scowl at the notebook again. In my periphery, Aurora is plugging the tube adapter into her camera.
She squats down on one leg and takes a picture of me. I clench my jaw, remembering what she did with the original pictures she took of me. Her cruel confessions. Her pretty, glacier heart.
But then she collects napkins and asks me if I want something from the store and asks about Mam and Father Doherty. Something doesn’t add up.
“Napkins.” I look up, musing. One word. Five tons of history crammed into it.
“Weren’t you the one who enacted the no-mingling rule?” She bats her eyelashes, feigning innocence and taking another picture of me.
She stands up and changes the position of the flashlights, now aiming them at my face. I don’t squint. Sitting around in a garden with a notebook is emasculating enough.
“It’s a statement, not an olive branch.”
“In that case, I choose not to address the statement and tramp all over the un-extended olive branch,” she snaps.
I get sick pleasure from knowing I hit a nerve. Hate is the closest thing to love you can squeeze out of the unattainable.
I hurt her back!
I look up, and our eyes meet, just like they did all those years ago on Drury Street. Even then I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that this girl was put in my life to change it. I didn’t know at the time she’d choose to derail it and lead it on a collision course with everyone I cared about.
“Sooner or later, we’ll both have to play nice. Shiny Boyfriend is leaving tomorrow,” I hiss.
“He has a name.” She lowers her camera, her eyes narrowing.
Ken. I bet it’s Ken.
“I don’t care for it.” I press the pen against the page in my notebook until it bleeds, my eyes still trained on her.
“Callum.” She lowers her camera. “His name is Callum Brooks.”
I hitch one shoulder up. “All I heard is Shiny Boyfriend.”
I scribble something in the notebook.
Can you please stop being so beautiful and real and alive all over my house like you own it or something?
Can she?
Can she kindly enlighten me as to what went through my mind when I came up with this plan? What I was hoping to achieve, other than dragging her down the miserable road I have walked one too many miles on?
Rory takes a few more pictures. I chew the tip of the pen. I don’t know how authors do it, how they bleed words onto the clinical, plastic keyboard. Seems cold and impersonal. I can barely write on a page. I bet Rory could be an author. I bet she could write on a MacBook, the mother of all fancy-schmancy technological diseases. I’m making myself sick just thinking about it.
Also, since when did I stop calling her Aurora in my mind and go back to Rory?
“Do you have a MacBook?” I blurt.
She shakes her head, but doesn’t look at me like I’m a weirdo. I’ve always loved that about her. “Why?”
“Never mind. So, napkins,” I repeat the word.
She sighs. “It means nothing.”
“Nothing means nothing; otherwise it wouldn’t exist.”
“Some people collect coasters, postcards, stamps. I collect napkins. It’s not a big deal.”
Silence.
I look down at the notepad. Back up. “I just find it quite peculiar, since I was under the impression you hated me.”
She looks up from the pictures she’s scanning in her camera. Her eyebrows pull together. “Why would I hate you?”
Why indeed.
Why?
I’ve asked myself the very same question a million times, wond
ering if I should buy a ticket to America, if I should send her one to Ireland, if I should rip out my heart and dump it at her door.
“I didn’t hate you then,” she whispers. “But I’m starting to now.”
Her eyes are on my face, reminding me why I couldn’t let go, even when my entire world crumbled. Some people raise you up, and some people pull you down. And Rory? She pulls me in every possible direction and angle, leaving me tattered.
I remind myself of Kathleen.
Of our families.
Of my top commitment right now, which shouldn’t be Rory.
I rip the paper and ball it in my fist.
“Wait, let me take a picture…” She advances toward me, but it’s too late. I throw it into my mouth and swallow. She stops, her eyes flaring, the orange glow of the many candles making her look like a medieval witch.
“You’re insane,” she whispers.
I know.
I write down another sentence.
There’s life everywhere you look. Even in objects. But there is death, too.
“Come take a picture of this.”
“Your Photoshopped thoughts?” She shakes her head. “No, thank you.”
Aurora Belle Jenkins hates me.
But hate is a verb.
And I’m about to prove I hate her more.
Present
Rory
The sun paints the sky lilac, its light dripping on Mal, highlighting the perfect arcs and planes of his face.
I take another picture. He hasn’t been writing a whole lot, but I’m not here to monitor his progress, or lack thereof.
I don’t know how many of them Ryner is going to use for the website, or album cover, or documentary, or whatever he has in mind for this project, but I can’t wait to upload these to my laptop and start working on them. I want to study Mal’s face alone, without him witnessing what the sight of it does to me.
I stand up and walk around his backyard, looking for my next perfect shot. Mal has been talking about the song “Ironic” by Alanis Morissette for ten minutes now, in a true Old Mal fashion.
“…literally none of her examples were truly ironic. Especially the one with Mr. Play it Safe, who was afraid to fly and ended up dying in a plane crash. It is not ironic. It would have been ironic had he died in a car accident. That’s the definition of irony. The expression of one’s meaning by using language that signifies the opposite. It’s like a bunch of people sat and worked on this song, and nobody—not one soul—bothered to tell her nothing about this song was ironic. Other, of course, than the fact that she wrote a song about irony that wasn’t ironic. Which is a big irony in itself, I suppose.”
I smile to myself, but don’t answer him. There’s something so deliciously sweet about seeing him in his element. It reminds me that under the bitter jerk he’s become is still a boyish, adventurous, wildly creative and witty man.
Who happens to be really good in bed.
“You love what you do,” he states, out of nowhere.
We’ve been talking on and off all night. It’s curt—barely civilized—but it’s progress. It’s still early to be optimistic, and the dynamics might change as soon as Kathleen gets back from Dublin, but I think the realization that I collect napkins defrosted him. I’m not even sure why Mal is trying to be an asshole. He’s terrible at it. He is one of the best, most exciting people I know.
“I do. Do you?” I spin the zoom ring, frowning at my camera.
“Do you love him?” He ignores my question.
My breath catches, my thumb halting on the camera ring. I take a deep breath, then walk over to him, ready to take a close-up. We are close enough I can feel his breath on my skin. It’s slow. Warm. Wild.
“Do you love her?” I whisper back.
“What I love,” he says slowly, “is basking in the knowledge that you will soon be on your knees for me, Aurora Jenkins.”
At first, I think he’s joking, but then I see the intensity behind his stare and freeze. He means it. He is unhappy with Kathleen. A shiver slithers down my spine.
“You don’t love her,” I breathe out, closing my eyes.
He is in a loveless marriage.
He opens his mouth to say something when I hear a knock on the doorframe.
My head snaps, and I turn around, finding Callum on the threshold. He is showered, suited, hair slicked back, and ready to go. A camel-hued, leathered duffel bag is draped over his shoulder. He looks like an Armani ad.
Callum’s eyes shift between us with confusion. When I realize my proximity to Mal and withdraw from him like he’s fire, my boyfriend’s expression softens.
“I’m off.” He hooks his finger and motions for me to come to him and say goodbye. I place my camera on the coffee table and move toward him. Something tells me I need to reassure him that whatever he saw meant nothing.
Not that he saw anything. The hand-on-the-shoulder move was a classic are-you-okay? gesture. Nothing about it screamed “I want to rip your clothes off.”
I back Cal into the house, knowing damn well Mal is not a fan of our PDA. After his confession, I can understand why. He is unhappy in his marriage, and living under the same roof with a loved-up couple in that state is anyone’s idea of a nightmare.
I close the screen door behind me, look over my shoulder to make sure Mal isn’t watching, then fling my arms around Callum’s neck, covering his face with wet kisses.
“Come to the New Year’s party,” I say. “Please.”
He brushes his nose along mine and frowns. “Have a productive night?” There’s an edge to his voice.
I nod. Not a lie. I did. Mal, on the other hand…
“Seems like you two patched things up.” He rubs his thumb across my cheek.
“Hardly.” I kiss his chin. “But we no longer want to kill each other, I think.”
“Good. I want you well and alive for the next seven decades,” he says.
“Are you still okay with me doing this?” Am I?
“’Course. Not only is he married, but he is also an utter weirdo. Why would anyone be attracted to such bizarre behavior?”
He snorts, and I catch myself, biting my lower lip so I don’t say anything.
He looks around, shrugging. “Crib could use a bit of a facelift, too. Yeah, you know better than to go with someone like that, love.”
Callum tugs me toward the front door, holding my hand. Outside, his cab is already waiting, engine revved up. The driver gets out and flings Callum’s bag into his trunk. I rise on my tiptoes to kiss him again. I expect our usual peck goodbye, but to my surprise, Callum grabs the back of my neck, dips his head, and crashes his lips against mine. I open my mouth for his tongue and groan into the kiss, which deepens with each second and feels nothing like our usual kisses.
I don’t know how much time passes before his lips desert mine, but the driver is honking his horn and throws an impatient arm out the window.
When Callum finally breaks away, it’s not me he’s looking at. He’s staring behind my shoulder, an easy smile on his chiseled face. I turn, already dreading what I’m about to see.
Mal.
Standing at his front door, like Kathleen did all those years ago when we’d kissed, only he doesn’t look shattered beyond repair.
He looks nonchalant and smug and delicious and…smiling? Why is he smiling back at Callum?
Like the confession never happened.
Like we didn’t share a moment.
Like he knows something I don’t.
My stomach clenches and twists. The knots grow like a rubber ball rolled in thorns.
Mal fishes something from his pocket and motions for me to take it.
“Here, wipe your mouth.”
I don’t move. This could be a trick. He’s been hateful before.
“Rory,” he coaxes. “Truce?”
Rory.
Are we back on good terms? I’m still not a fan of him bossing me around. I take a few steps toward him and grab whatever it is h
e holds out for me, my eyes narrowing into slits. His mouth quirks up in one corner, and it reminds me that before he was a jerk, he was the guy who captured an entire street with his guitar and charm.
“Oh, ye of no faith. Is it illegal to be nice where you live?”
“No, but it might as well be. I live in New York.”
I take the damn thing, wipe my glistening mouth, and hand it back to him.
He shakes his head. “Keep it. It’s yours.”
I peer behind my shoulder and realize Callum’s cab left. I didn’t even get to say goodbye. It makes me want to slap myself across the face, because I know he witnessed at least some of this exchange.
I look down, realizing that what I’m holding is mine. Or rather it was, before I threw it into the trash.
I wiped my boyfriend’s kiss off with The Boar’s Head napkin.
A NOTE FROM CALLUM BROOKS
At this point, you are wondering why.
Why did I leave these two alone, considering their history? Ninety-eight percent of logical people in the world wouldn’t. This is a made-up statistic, so don’t try to look for it on the internet, but still.
Allow me to enlighten you as to why I left.
There’s a story my father told me once when the roads to London were blocked due to a snowstorm and I missed a date with the duchess of a-place-I-can’t-disclose-in-England. She went on and met someone else while she was waiting for me. They got married. I missed my chance of becoming royalty.
Because of snow.
I thought it was the worst day of my life.
The story goes like this: A boy begs his father to get him a dog. Not a particular dog, any rat-looking one would do. The boy dreams of owning a dog, breathes the idea, and obsesses over it. Time passes. The father hangs the condition of having a dog over the boy’s head. The boy does everything his father tells him to. Makes the best grades, excels at sports, stays out of trouble. He is on the straight and narrow, and does everything he possibly can to get a dog.
One Christmas, his father finally gets him a bloody dog.
The boy is devoted to the dog, aptly named Dog. The dog is his entire life. The boy feeds it the best food, takes it on long walks in green, lush fields. Tends to its fur and takes it to the vet for checkups. One day, during their walk, a storm brews. The boy realizes he and Dog can’t get home, so he looks for shelter. He finds a cave in the middle of a forest and slips in. It rains hard. Dog is scared, cold, and shivering. The boy cannot bear the idea of losing his beloved pet, the one he’d done everything in his power to win and keep. He hugs the dog tight the entire time, until the storm passes. When the sun reappears, the boy looks down and realizes to his horror that he suffocated the dog in his quest to save him.