by A. S. Kelly
Oh no. I really shouldn’t do it.
Don’t even think about it, Rain. He’s not the guy for you. Or more accurately, you’re not the one for him.
8
Liam
“Thanks for coming,” Aaron says.
“Sure.”
“Would you like to come in for a beer?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, come on, it’s just a beer. Come in, let’s drink something, you tell us what the hell happened in London and we’ll tell Patrick you’re here, before he finds out by himself and goes nuts.”
“I don’t know—”
“Let’s go,” he insists, opening the pub door. “Don’t make a scene.”
Before he can go in, I grab his arm.
“Why?” I ask him.
“Why what?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Liam. It’s just a beer.”
“Why are you allowing me to get next to her?”
“Isn’t that what you’ve already done?”
I let his arm go and lean my back up against the wall with my head leaning backwards.
“I’ve never been upset with you about the accident,” Aaron explains. “I know that there was nothing you could do to avoid it, I know what you did after—”
“Please don’t say it, I’m begging you.”
“Listen to me!” Aaron snaps. “There are a few simple rules. Never talk about the accident. Don’t ask questions, don’t ask about her past and don’t dig up too much of her life. Don’t bring to light things that are better left unremembered. And, more than anything Liam, don’t let her fall in love with you.”
The last words hit me like a train in the stomach.
I could never do a thing like that.
“Aaron, I don’t think you—”
“This is a one-way conversation. I speak, you nod and accept my conditions. And in case you do not agree, I’ll kick your ass from here to Cork.”
I shake my head incredulously. I can’t believe he’s opening the door to his house after everything that has happened.
“You’re my friend, Liam. Our friend. And Neil was—we’ve known each other our whole lives for Chrissake! We’ve been through the worst of it together, we’ve been a source of strength for each other; we’ve faced solitude, the fear of not making it, we’ve overcome the pain of loss because we were in it together, only because we were a family. I was mad, it’s true. When you left—it was difficult for all of us.
“But now you’re here and I know there’s something you don’t want to tell us, something that happened, and for now that’s okay. But look at you. You’re hurt, destroyed, completely in pieces. I know how that feels, believe me. Everyone deserves a second chance, and if you need to verify that she’s okay in order to free your soul of the weight it is burdened with, I certainly won’t stand in your way. But I am warning you not to make her suffer. She’s fragile, Liam. She’s confused and—don’t hurt her feelings, I beg you.”
“I would never do that.”
“Good, I’m glad to hear it.”
“Thanks, Aaron.”
“Don’t thank me. Just don’t make me regret it.”
I follow him inside with Jay, who preferred to wait outside the whole time, staying a few paces behind him. I’m nervous about stepping in here and seeing her again.
I see her right away but I stay at Aaron’s side. Aaron goes over and I see that she’s sitting with another girl. While he exchanges a few lines with Rain, I take a moment to observe her silently. Her big brilliant eyes betray their fear and her face flushes with embarrassment. Her hair lies over her shoulders, soft and wavy, and I think I’d like to run my fingers through those luminous copper waves.
I shake my head immediately, trying to drive out those thoughts that crept in without my permission, and I sit beside her.
“We already know each other,” I say to Aaron, who scrutinizes me for a few seconds before sitting next to me.
Something happens at the back of the pub, a big noise followed by a bunch of swearing that calls Aaron and Jay away, leaving me alone with her.
My God, I can’t do it.
I’ve already seen her this close twice, but each time those damned eyes dug a hole bigger than my heart—a hole that gets larger and larger and that I won’t be able to cover. And it’s only my fault because I permitted it to. I let her in and she takes more little steps to steal what was left of me.
It’s too late to turn back, because every gesture, every syllable she pronounces with embarrassment, every look, every uncertain damned movement she makes is already mine.
All of her is already mine.
All of her has always been mine.
Rain
“And so, you know my brother.”
We’ve been at the table for ten minutes. He got something from the counter for both of us. Liam is silent and visibly upset. He wiggles in his chair and looks around with suspicion. I suppose he has fallen into this situation by chance and is looking for an escape.
“If you don’t feel like talking, it’s not important. Actually, if you need to go somewhere—”
“No,” he quickly interrupts me, raising his eyes to mine. “It’s just—I’m not crazy about places that are so crowded.”
“You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to. You came in with Aaron and Jay and they’re gone, so if you want—” I say, less uncertain that I imagined.
“I don’t have anything to do, really, it’s not a problem. I just feel like I’m suffocating here,” he responds, taking off his sweatshirt and revealing a tight black T-shirt.
I look away from him and think of something to say.
“Erin and I have been friends since she started working here about six months ago. We hit it off right away,” I improvise. I don’t know what else to talk about. “She’s one of the few people that’s been in my life since—” I let the phrase die out mid-thought. I’m getting too detailed.
He raises his eyebrows a second and takes a few sips of his drink, he’s still antsy—it’s like he’d rather be anywhere but here with me.
“Since?” he surprises me by asking, but I’m not ready to slam my condition in his face just yet. I need some time to dream about him before that door opens. Once I tell him I can’t take it back.
“It’s not important,” I lie, shaking my head.
It’s important, and how.
“I understand.” He looks at his watch and sighs impatiently.
“We can go out if you want,” I suggest hopefully.
He jumps up. “Of course I want to,” he says, putting his sweatshirt back on. “Let’s go,” he invites me to follow him.
I move slowly, trying not to bump into anything or anyone. I walk outside with shaking legs and a mind that flies, thinking of something unknown and impossible, that my heart silently dreams of, all the time afraid of being discovered and made fun of.
9
Liam
We walk by the semi-deserted bay. Rain is silent, her nose in the air, enchanted by the sky that’s invaded by clouds that threaten to throw down one of our usual storms.
I try to keep my eyes in front of me but I can’t help observing her. Quick little glances so I’m not obvious, so she doesn’t think I’m staring at her. I keep up a slow pace, even if that’s not how I usually walk, because I see she’s struggling a bit to keep up with me, and I don’t want her to be uncomfortable.
She walks slowly and after a couple of hundred meters she seems winded; so I look around for a place to sit, and a little café catches my eye on the other side of the street. I know she likes it there, I’ve seen her there practically every day.
“You want a coffee or something?”
She stops suddenly and isn’t looking at the sky any more. She stares directly ahead of herself for just a few seconds. Then turns towards me and flashes me that smile, so childlike and real that I almost feel like dying of embarrassme
nt because of just how inadequate I am right now in her company.
She is a fragile creature but at the same time so strong. She’s so wonderful in her simplicity, so spontaneous and sweet, while I’m a piece of shit, a man with such a weight on his shoulders that I don’t deserve to walk at her side.
“There.” She points with her finger.
So, we keep walking and stop at a stop light waiting for the green. We look at each other while we wait to cross and we go to Café Caira, the same place where we had already met.
“It’s 8.30 p.m., I’d say we’ve got at least an hour-and-a-half before they throw us out,” I say, looking at my watch.
“Is it okay if we sit outside?”
“But it’s about to rain.”
She shrugs her shoulders as if to say who cares, and sits down at the first available table, under a canopy. At least if it does rain we won’t get soaked.
“What can I get you?” I ask before heading over to the counter to order.
“Uhm—a Frappuccino with lots of whipped cream and a sprinkle of vanilla, please.”
I order what she asked for and a black coffee with a little milk for me, and go back to the table. Her eyes glow when her drink arrives and I smile to myself, knowing it’s her favorite drink.
I stir my coffee for longer than necessary while she dives into her straw and lets out a sound of appreciation that makes me laugh out loud.
“What?” she asks, wiping her mouth with a napkin.
“Nothing.” I shake my head and drink a few sips of my coffee which is decidedly too hot.
“Do I have something on my face?” she asks me, intent on cleaning some invisible marks there.
I hold my breath because these simple gestures, free of any hidden significance, spark in me something I thought I could never feel again, and that I have denied myself for years and that I don’t think I truly deserve.
And yet, here she is, her fingers touch her nose. She’s trying to hide her face, afraid of showing something embarrassing, while I should be the one hiding ten meters under the ground and not coming out again in the light of day.
“I think it’s missing a bit of vanilla,” she says, getting up. “I’m going to go ask them to add some.” She gets up to go, but bumps into the table next to us and spills half her drink on the floor.
I see her a few centimeters away from me, immobile, staring at the spilled coffee on the ground.
I cannot allow her to feel like this.
So I stand up violently so that my chair screeches and I purposely knock our table, so that my drink flies over. She starts shaking and turns her gaze to the mess I’ve made, which makes her forget for a second her little accident.
“I’ve made a mess,” I say, grabbing some tablecloths and dry off the table. “I’m always a disaster.”
Rain comes back to me, stopping just one step away.
“I’ll help you,” she says, putting her hand on mine.
And in that moment I feel it again.
I feel her presence, I feel her heat, I feel her sweetness that wraps around me, spreading honey over my injuries. While the music from inside plays: She would change everything/everything, just ask her/ Caught in the in-between. A beautiful disaster/ She just needs someone to take her home2
I hear it, I hear the rain as it starts falling. Small, light drops crashing down on us ignoring the canopy, relaxing us and purifying us, making us think we’re in another time and place where I haven’t killed anyone and she had a full happy life in front of her.
She looks at me and smiles, and I can’t contain myself, I’m not able to and I don’t want to, because she deserves it and I want to give her everything in my power.
And I smile at her too, holding back nothing, without turning the other way, without hiding, without guilt.
For a few minutes we remain like that, looking and smiling at each other like two idiots. Moments that my anguish lets me breathe, and I feel like myself again. It’s all thanks to the rain, the drops of rain that are falling.
Rain
“Thanks.”
“For what?” he asks, pretending not to understand.
“You know…” I lower my gaze, sighing.
We walk along the port after our pit stop in which I once again demonstrated how pathetic I am. The rain has let up a bit, but I am confident it will start up again because I can smell it in the air all around us.
Liam walks slowly, but he still has to practically stop every four or five steps to let me catch up. He must have understood by this point that there’s something not right about me. It’s useless for me to try and hide the situation and fool myself. It’s better to lay my cards on the table right away.
“You know, I haven’t always been like this,” I start, taking a big breath and sitting on the first available bench along the pier, a few meters from the lighthouse.
Liam doesn’t sit down, he stands in front of me with his hands in his pockets.
“I used to be … Different.”
“Different?”
“I had an accident.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything, it’s not necessary.”
He turns and walks towards the wall that borders the lighthouse, where he rests his elbows, losing himself in the darkness of the night countryside that swallows every hope I have.
Here it is, the moment the umpteenth person understands that it’s not worth it.
That I’m not worth it.
I puff and stand up to join him. I go to his side and lean my back against the wall, so that I can look at his profile. He seems absent, miles away from this place. I understand I shouldn’t continue and gathering the little bit of pride that I have, I say: “I’d better go,” and I leave without looking back. I get to the end of the pier, cut through the park and I’m going to cross the street to get back to the pub with a disappointment that burns my face, my body.
And this damned heart.
Before I’m able to cross, someone grabs my shoulder, forcing me to turn around abruptly. Afraid and paralyzed, I let myself be squeezed, tightly, so tightly that I feel some cracking of my bones in his arms, but I don’t care. I could break in two, falling to the ground like a sack of broken bones, and I wouldn’t care at all, because now I feel his heat, through his sweatshirt, through my jacket, through my skin, my bones and my organs. His heat arrives everywhere, it brushes against every part of me, even the most hidden part. It wraps me up in it, it relaxes me and reassures me. I rest my head on his shoulder and feel his heart beating like crazy just like mine. I can hardly believe it.
“I’m sorry,” he says. He caresses my hair before taking my face in his hands and drawing it near to his. “I’m sorry, forgive me. I didn’t mean to.”
And I understand for the first time that something’s not right here. Maybe I’m not the one who has problems, that maybe he’s the one who needs help. He needs someone.
He needs me.
He needs me.
I don’t know what he has, I don’t know what his affliction is, but I feel it, his pain, his anguish. I can feel it around him: it’s in his head, and in his heart that is pushing and squeezing everything good that there is in the world.
I don’t know who you are, Liam O’Reilly, but I know that someone put you in my path and there has to be a reason for it, and I intend to find out what it is.
Then I slowly slide my hands down to his and leave them there, waiting for him to acknowledge it. He opens his eyes that he had shut tight until that moment, and he looks at me.
And I can’t see anything else.
I can’t see that big three-door closet with blue eyes. I can’t see the street musician. I don’t see my occasional savior.
I only see myself, reflected in his eyes.
And it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life, I’m sure of that. Even if I don’t remember who I was and what I’ve done until now, I know, with certainty that if I had ever felt something like this in the past, I would not
have forgotten it.
Because the way I feel right now, it’s everything I’d like to feel from now on.
I don’t know what to do with myself, with my life, I don’t know what to do with my future, but I do know what to do with you, Liam O’Reilly, you can be sure of that.
10
Liam
“Please don’t go, I beg you.”
Rain is pressed tightly against my body, while I hold her face in my hands, imploring her with my eyes and my words to not leave me, don’t leave me alone.
And it’s not the first time I’ve done it.
“Stay with me.”
Those words come out of my mouth again, desperately, almost with the same desperation.
When I think I have scared her enough with my gesture and she’s about to turn running, Rain places her hands on mine, lightly caresses my face resting them on my long beard.