by A. S. Kelly
I look up. His eyes are tired, immense and swollen.
“Both of you.”
I touch his beard and another tear falls.
“I love you Riley. I love you so much I’d break apart the entire world just to put it back together for you, brick by brick, with my own hands.”
“Ian…”
“You…you…” he whispers, grasping onto me desperately. “I can’t believe it…a family…”
“Our family.”
“No one will touch you again, I swear to you. No one will ever hurt you. You don’t need to hide. You won’t be alone. I’m here now. I’ll always be here. No one is leaving. I’m your family, Riley. You and…you both are.”
And that’s all it takes for me to break down.
Completely.
And I cry, all night.
I cry without saying a word. I cry without strength or voice.
I cry all the tears I’ve been holding back my whole life.
I cry for all the years I spent in fear.
I cry for the pain that I still feel and always will. I cry for what I lost and what I’ll never get back.
And he kisses me, taking away my breath and everything else, and giving me himself in its place.
It’s the only thing I want.
Ian O’Connor.
Everywhere.
80
Ian
“What are you doing?”
Riley shows up in the kitchen. Her eyes are still swollen and her face tells me that she’s barely slept. I didn’t close my eyes all night, worrying about her, about me, about this child and what I almost lost.
I spent the night holding her, hoping she’d calm down, and she only fell asleep from exhaustion around dawn.
“I’m making breakfast.”
“Oh,” she says, embarrassed.
“Someone has to cook to stop this family going hungry.”
“This family,” she repeats quietly.
“My family,” I say with pride. “Go back to bed, I’ll be there soon.”
“We can eat here.”
“Nah, I like seeing you lying down.”
“Ian O’Connor,” she chides, crossing her arms as I laugh at her tone.
“Not necessarily in that sense.”
Riley goes back to the room smiling, and I finish making breakfast. I take two plates of eggs on toast and bring them to her.
“Are you hungry?” I ask, showing her the plate.
I sit in front of her and watch her eat. Okay, eat is a big word – I watch her try.
“Don’t you feel well?”
“It’s just nausea.”
“I’m sorry.”
She smiles. “It’s okay.”
“Can I do anything to make you feel better?”
“You could be less perfect.”
I laugh, dropping my plate.
“I’m not perfect.”
“You seem pretty perfect to me.”
“Okay then, let’s see…I’m grumpy, even when I speak, and sometimes when I’m eating.”
She laughs, shaking her head.
“I’m unreasonable and a bit of an arsehole. I’m a hothead and I have two hopeless brothers.”
“Okay, you’ve given me a clear picture,” she stops me.
My laughter cuts short the moment the words rise up in me and leave my lips.
“Stay with me, Riley. Every day and every night. Let me love you and show you that I am capable of giving a lot…giving you everything. And I will. For you. For you both. Because I’ve never given anyone what I’m willing to give you now. I’ve always been yours, even when I didn’t know you. Let me take care of my family from the start, because you’re my whole life now. All I want is to have you with me and make sure that no one touches you or makes you suffer, that no one tries to take you away from me in any way.”
“What are you trying to tell me?”
“I want you to move in with me. Today.”
“Is that an order, by any chance?”
“We can find another place, somewhere you like.”
“Don’t you think we’re rushing things a bit?”
I take her hands and bring them to my heart.
“Can you feel that?”
She nods just slightly as my heart beats wildly against her palm.
“That’s what you’ve done to me. You’ve given me everything I needed and now I want to do the same. I want to give you a house, a place where you’ll feel loved every fucking day. A place where you don’t have to hide, where you can be whatever you want to be. A place where I can see you as you really are and you can see me, always. Because I swear, I’ll never hold back again. I want to give you my life and my heart…Well, to be honest, you’ve already got it. It’s yours. Your name is written on it and I’ve used permanent ink.”
I smile before biting my lip.
“It’ll be fine. I’m not going anywhere and I won’t lie to you again. I’ll breathe in all of your tears and your smiles and I’ll always find you when you try to hide, because my heart will know where you are. You just have to trust me, Riley. Will you do it?”
She takes my hands and brings them to her heart.
Yes, she will.
Hell yes, she will.
Epilogue
Ian
I always struggle in the morning.
When I open my eyes, the first thing I do is reach out my right arm to make sure that she’s there, she’s real and she’s sleeping next to me.
Sometimes I wake up really early, before dawn. I turn onto my side and rest my head on her arm.
And I look at her.
I look at her sleeping peacefully. Sometimes she makes faces and other times she smiles and when she does, I don’t know why, but I imagine that she’s dreaming of me.
Sometimes she snores, but I’ve never told her. I’m sure she’d deny it and be get angry over it – although, I have to confess, I like pissing her off just to make it up to her, possibly horizontally. But I don’t enjoy playing with fire too much, at least not at this point.
She’s tiny, it’s true. But she knows how to defend herself.
I usually wake up much earlier than she does. I make breakfast which I leave warmed up in the kitchen before going to training. I kiss her lightly on the lips and she smiles – I’ve never understood if she’s still sleeping at that point or if she’s semi-conscious. I do know that one time I forgot to do it because I was in a hurry to get to the gym and she wouldn’t talk to me for two days.
I say hello to him…or her. We still don’t know.
I kiss her stomach and wish them both a good day, with a heart swollen with love and a commitment to do my very best by both of them so that they can both be proud of me.
We’ve been in the new house for about a month. We live in Santry, my parents’ neighborhood. When I suggested finding a house instead of raising a child in a garage, she was shocked. To be honest, she didn’t want a house like this one. She’d have preferred something small and anonymous – something simple and basic – but it was time for a change. Time to look forward and forget about my stupid preconceptions, to give them both what they deserve.
I mean, I have to spend the money I earn somehow.
What better way than on them?
My family deserves a real house, with a back garden and a front garden, with two floors and a big, bright kitchen where I can cook for them. A dining room where we can eat with the family and a bedroom where – well, I don’t have to explain that.
We live here because I want to stay close to my parents, to make sure they’re alright. Riley has a big heart and loves them almost as much as I do, so she agreed to the idea right away.
I can’t abandon them, they’ve given me everything and I will continue to be there for them.
Unfortunately, my brothers live in the same area – obviously in opposite ends of town.
Ryan got a small but nice place to rent in Parklands, while Nick is staying in a loft in Northwood. It’s to
o big and too quiet for one person, but it’s Nick, and he always has to show off what he’s got.
It’s convenient living in Santry. It’s just fifteen minutes by bus for Riley to get to work. Her stop in the city is just a hundred metres from the theatre. Living so close to my family, Riley will never be alone, even when I’m away for matches.
For now, she comes with me wherever I go, but in a few months the pregnancy will become harder and she’ll have to give up some of these trips. I’ll definitely miss her being there, but I know that when I get home I’ll find her waiting, because Riley’s not about to abandon me.
It took me a while to truly believe that.
Yes, I’m a grown man, but past wounds are always there, ready to remind me who I am, where I come from and what I’ve been through.
For years I denied everything to everyone. For years, I’ve kept my distance from everything that scared me and managed to keep going, but it nearly destroyed me – and almost brought her down with me.
I’ll never be able to forgive myself for rejecting her, for denying her all I will never be able to give back to her, the things she’s lost.
I can’t erase the shadow of her past, but I’m here now to help her face it step by step, and help her to come out of her shell every once in a while. To help her feel everything, to enjoy the little victories, to get over the sad times and to believe.
This is my place, next to her, and no one could ever take it.
And Riley…well, she’s beautiful, sweet, tormented but strong. She is who she is and I love every little part of her, even the painful parts.
She is the woman who tied me to her with a stupid debt that I could never pay back. She is the one who woke up one morning screaming like a madman at my house. She always saw me for what I was. She unknowingly saves my life, every day, because she saved me from losing myself and denying myself to the world.
At times, I wonder where my mother is, how she found the courage to leave me and not look back. I’m still not a father, but I feel an unconditional love for this child that will never go away. How can a person not feel something so strong, how could you forget that it’s a part of you? How could you leave it, alone, with no safety, no future?
I’ll never find the answer and I won’t know how things really went – a part of me will always suffer for that. But the time has come to put it behind me and think about the future.
I take a sip of my coffee as I look out the window overlooking the garden, that’s just starting to flower. Dad helped Riley plant some rose bushes, and comes round to cut the grass when he can. Even though I’m perfectly capable of doing it myself, he insists on coming and I let him because he has good intentions. He loves giving back, and making himself useful to the family.
He adores Riley as if she had always been his daughter. She’s the only one he talks to when he’s having one of his moments, other than my mother.
Maybe sensitive people just recognise that trait in one another. Maybe it binds them somehow with strangers. Perhaps Dad feels the need to reassure her and make her feel special, even though half the time he has no idea who she is. And maybe Riley feels the need to be there for him, because she knows what it means to be alone, to feel left out and not know where to go.
I’m happy about their relationship. And the one she’s got with my mother too. I’m a little less thrilled about how well she gets on with my brothers and how they all gang up on me together. I just want her to be happy, see her laugh, because when I see her laughing I know that I’m doing the right thing, that I’m the right person.
The only one who will love her more than anything else in the world, someone who’s hers forever.
All hers.
Epilogue
Riley
A horn beeps incessantly outside my house. I open the door in just enough time to flip him off then go back inside to put my things in my bag, ready to go.
I look around a moment and smile at our little hiding place, my refuge, ours, where the only thing we hide from are Ian’s brothers who are always in our space.
But I know he doesn’t really mind, even though he makes a big fuss about it. And I care even less than he does.
After all these years, I finally have a family. A family that listens to me, that loves me and always stands by me. A family I don’t hide from.
I’m no longer alone thanks to the O’Connors, and I never will be. And in a few months, our family will grow.
I still can’t believe it. It’s something I wasn’t expecting. I had the flu, and the antibiotics I was taking cancelled out the effect of my birth control pill: so we have this little miracle now.
The pregnancy is going well, the child is healthy.
After the fear of the initial cramps that sent Nick out of his mind, I started to really believe it and thanks to Ian and his love I’m confident that we can finally have it all: all the things we’ve dreamt of and never thought possible.
I’ll never forget the past. What Jamie and I went through, the years that were stolen from us and the fear of not making it.
It’s part of me, like a brand – even though I tried to hide it in the deepest of places. But when I look in the mirror at night before going to bed, I still feel like the same person, a young girl who was shivering in the cold one winter night, swearing to her brother that they’d have a better life. A life he now has, which I will always be grateful for.
And now I’ve got my chance too. After all these years, I can finally breathe. I can be and feel anything I want.
I can just be the disaster that I am. Because I know that someone loves me for what I have been and what I am now. Someone who feels exactly like I do.
The only thing that worries me now is Ian’s fear. I still feel it in his gestures, his looks, as if I could vanish before his eyes in an instant.
I reassure him every morning when he watches me sleeping, because I know he needs that. So, I pretend to sleep. It’s the only thing I’m still faking.
I pretend I don’t notice his eyes on me, that I don’t hear his sighs and sometimes a few tears as well.
Ian O’Connor is a tough man who’s impenetrable for many, but not for me.
For me, he’s just Ian: the man who faced his fears and changed his life for love. And for that love, he changed mine too.
Ian is the man who has always loved me, even when I was in pieces, even when there was nothing in me to love. He’s the only person who’s always seen me, despite the fact that I tried to hide myself as best I could.
He searched for me, he uncovered me and made me step into the light. If I tried to hide again, he’d find me, because he knows where to look.
I open the door, set the alarm and head to the car, where I find Nick waiting.
“You took long enough.”
“Hi to you too, Nick.”
He makes a face that is completely meaningless because I know he’s not really upset.
“Where’s Ryan?”
He shrugs and turns on the radio.
We cross the neighborhood and head towards the city, passing into south Dublin in the direction of Aviva Stadium.
I’m as excited as a little girl and a bit nervous, too - so much so that Ian voiced his concern at my coming to the game, but it’s his first match on the national team and I want to be there. Jamie will be at his side, he’ll start from the bench but I know he is as emotional as Ian is, and is happy to have him once again by his side on this new adventure.
We sit in our places and find Ryan there waiting for us. I take off my jacket to show off my brand-new jersey. My national team shirt with his name on back.
O’Connor.
I also have the scarf and hat, and my face is painted Ireland’s colors.
I’m here. Cheering on my player.
I’m sure that Jamie will turn up his nose a bit when he finds out, and he’ll pretend to be offended and jealous, but I know he’s happy for me. For us.
I get up nervously to search the field, trying t
o calm the restlessness that I have in watching him play, run, win. Because Ian O’Connor is a winner and no one can say otherwise.
And he’s my winner.
“What’s up, Riley? Can you sit down? You’re making me nervous.”
I turn towards Ryan and give him the finger.
“My brother is a terrible influence on you,” he comments sarcastically.
“Maybe the problem is how much time I spend with you,” I reply in the same tone of voice, crossing my arms.
“You won’t even fit into that jersey pretty soon,” he says pointing at my stomach.
“Oh, fu—”
“Hey, children,” Nick calls us to order. “The team is taking the field.”
I sit back, immediately forgetting about Ryan and Nick and everyone else in the stadium.
Because now, the only thing that exists is Ian and his most important game yet.
The big screen shows us images of the team as the announcer introduces them one by one.
When they say his name, I jump to my feet like a lunatic, waving my arms.
Ian lifts his gaze and smiles.
Jesus, is he smiling.
And I know full well that he hasn’t heard me, or seen me – but he feels me.
Just as I know it’s impossible for me to see that sexy smile from here – but I know it’s there.
Because Ian and I feel each other.
He knows I’m here and I know he feels my presence, as if we were one person.
Because we live for one another.
I live for Ian O’Connor.
And he lives for me.
Playlist
The Kill, Thirty Seconds To Mars, A Beautiful Lie
Bad Romance, Thirty Seconds To Mars, This Is War
Chasing Cars, Snow Patrol, up To Now
End Of All Days, Thirty Seconds To Mars, Love, Lust, Faith+Dreams
Broken, Seether-Amy Lee, Disclaimer II
What I’ve Done, Linkin Park, Minutes To Midnight
My Favourite Faded Fantasy, Damien Rice, My Favourite Faded Fantasy
