by Sienna Blake
Eleven forty-eight.
With a tired sigh, I covered back up the clock, put the tie waiting on the back of my chair back in its store packaging, and returned to work.
Darren
The couch in the little makeshift office at the back of my garage wasn’t meant to serve as a bed. The puke-green fabric, pilled and torn, a relic of the ’70s, was covered in grease and beer stains. It sagged low enough in the middle that most times it was more comfortable to just sit on the stacks of invoices and receipts littering the floor. So when I woke up on the couch the next morning to the blare of my cell phone alarm after only an hour or two of sleep, it was with a crick in my neck and an ache in my back.
Groggy and craving a cup of coffee, I stumbled back bleary-eyed to my ma’s car. I winced at my joints groaning with stiffness as I rolled back into the dark of the undercarriage and got back to work.
Three hours later I drove the now functioning car into Ma’s drive, hastily tugged on a clean shirt, and grabbed the tub of store-bought mashed potatoes from the backseat. The front door was unlocked, like always. I kicked off my boots, adding them to the mountain of shoes beneath the overburdened coat rack. Like always, the aroma of fresh herbs, butter, and a roasting bird wafted toward me through the narrow hallway, made even more narrow by a massive gallery of family photos framed with Ma’s flea market finds. Like always, in stark comparison to the tranquillity of my garage, the place was so damn noisy: the commentators of a rugby match on the television in the living room tried to outshout the radio in the dining room reporting on the weather trying to be heard over the never-ending kitchen melody of people laughing and shouting and pans clanging and clattering.
Ma’s place was warm and cosy and loving, everything my garage was not. And yet I couldn’t help that constant nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I’d rather be there than here. I took a moment around the corner from the good-natured chaos to close my eyes, suck in a steadying breath, and remind myself to smile—Ma would worry if I didn’t, like always.
My fingers grazed over the well-worn indentations in the column next to me. I could feel the marks for heights and years along five lines. I avoided touching the one that stopped just a little bit shorter than all the rest. I knew it best of all, even better than my own, and wished every day the jagged line across my heart would fade like the one there on the wall.
I rounded the corner into the cramped, busy kitchen stuffed with my family. I first found Ma by the stove, where she stirred a pot of mulled wine with cinnamon sticks, orange slices and spices. I kissed her cheek and dropped her car keys on the hooks by the stove.
“How was your date, love?” Ma smiled at me, pushing aside a strand of her long silver hair that had slipped from a bun atop her head.
“Must have been damn good since he’s so late to Sunday lunch,” Noah said, swinging his legs back and forth from the kitchen island as he munched on some roasted Brussels sprouts still steaming from the oven. With his long sandy-blond hair tousled, his scruffy jawline sharpened, and his blue eyes glinting, he grinned like he was in a toothpaste commercial. I knew plenty of women would line up to buy whatever he was selling, even if it was Brussels sprouts.
“Leave him be,” Aubrey, his American fiancée and the big sister I never had, said from across the kitchen where she stood in one of Ma’s pink aprons icing a chocolate cake not nearly as sweet or dark as her eyes.
Noah shrugged, feigning innocence even as his eyes betrayed his mischievousness. “I’m just saying Darren here is never late for Sunday lunch.”
I ignored him and gave Aubrey a wink when she sighed in exasperation. I lifted the tub of mashed potatoes, cold from the drive over. “I didn’t have time to cook, Ma. I’ll put them in a casserole dish and warm them up in the oven.”
“And he didn’t have time to cook,” Noah announced to Michael over by the sink, who also wore a pink apron over his Italian suit that cost more than my monthly rent, and to Eoin, the youngest of the O’Sullivan clan, who sat hunched over his phone at one of the barstools. “Who, I mean, what were you so busy doing that you didn’t have time to cook like the rest of us, Daz?”
Eoin looked up from the video highlights of his most recent rugby match playing on his cell phone to howl like a junkyard dog.
Michael, grabbing another dirty dish to clean, shook his head while somehow managing to not disrupt a single strand of his immaculately styled, freshly cut dark hair, ready as always for a corporate boardroom. “The maturity of this family never fails to astound me,” he grumbled.
Noah tried to send me a sneaky wink but earned an elbow in the rib from Aubrey. I whacked Ma’s knee with a cabinet door while trying to find a clean casserole dish.
“Just put it here, dear,” she said. “I’ll take care of it. You just focus on cleaning those filthy hands.”
“Very filthy, Darren,” Noah grinned from the island. “Absolutely nasty.”
This elicited another howl from Eoin, who still hadn’t bothered to look up.
“I was working on a car this morning, you ass,” I told Noah after tossing a spare cinnamon stick at his face.
Noah teased and joked, revelling in pushing a button or two on occasion, but his was the number I would dial first if I ever needed anything. It meant more than I could say to know he would answer before the second ring.
“A car,” I repeated, a finger pointed at him as I tried to hold back a small grin.
“Oh, yeah?” Noah plopped another Brussels sprout into his mouth even after Ma smacked his hand with her wooden spoon stained by the aromatic mulled wine. “Did you make that engine purr?”
Eoin, nose still buried in his phone, meowed obnoxiously before cheering at his own try.
“Boys,” Ma warned, lifting the lid of a pot on the back burner to check the stuffing. “Darren. Hands. Now.”
But as I tried to get through to the sink to wash the grease and car oil off my hands, Aubrey, now armed with kitchen mitts, blocked my path to retrieve the roast as the egg timer went off and rattled itself right off the counter. I went to snatch it up, only to bang my head against Noah’s knee.
“Feck, Darren,” he yelped. “Get down on your knees for your lady friend, not for me.”
“Noah!” Ma snapped.
“No, no,” Michael said, looking over his shoulder from the sink as it filled it up with sudsy water. “You can’t go down on the first date.”
Aubrey crossed her kitchen mitts over her chest. “What kind of nonsense advice is that?”
Eoin, zooming in on an image on his cell phone, let out a grunt. “Why hasn’t Sports Illustrated called me yet? Have you seen my glutes? I mean have you seen these babies?”
“There was no lady friend to get or not to get down on my knees for,” I insisted, making another attempt to get to the sink before Michael irritably shooed me away as he scrubbed at a large dish. “There was only a car.”
“Hey, we’re family,” Noah grinned with his hands held up. “We don’t judge.”
“I’m washing my hands upstairs,” I said, shoving away Noah’s massive bear hug as I passed by him.
“You love me, right?” Noah called after me.
“Yeah, yeah.” I waved a hand behind me before turning the corner back to the hallway.
As I climbed the narrow, creaking stairs (avoiding the broken step eight up from the bottom like every sober-ish O’Sullivan always knew to do), Aubrey pressed Michael about any other policies on when to go down on a woman, Ma lectured Noah about eating the Brussels sprouts, and Eoin continued to marvel at the beauty of his ass muscles. I loved them more than anything in the world, but the smile their fading voices brought to my lips was always accompanied by a heaviness in my heart. Because I could hear the silence loudest in moments like these: happy, cheerful, light, innocent, and bright moments. I could hear it as loud as twisting, screeching metal that one voice was missing. And it killed me. It killed me because I knew that one voice would always be missing.
At the t
op of the stairs, alone and in silence, I felt what I always felt alone and in silence at the top of the stairs: guilt. Guilt because I felt safer here. Guilt because I felt relief here. Guilt because I didn’t want to return back downstairs, back down to them, my family, my life blood, my heart and soul.
Dragging a hand over my eyes already stinging with weariness, I sighed and moved by memory down the upstairs hallway. I knew the planks of warm wood beneath my wool socks better than the veins along the back of my hands. I reached blindly for the door to the bathroom between the one with a sign saying “Michael + Eoin. Stay Out Losers” still hanging from a nail and the one with nothing on it all, the one that we now always kept shut.
Wanting a splash of cold water to the face even more than a bar of soap, I twisted the knob and pushed it open. One step inside, I dropped my hand and froze at the sound of a surprised inhale.
Normally when you accidentally walk in on a person stepping naked from the shower, you cover your eyes, hastily apologise, slam the door shut behind you, and beg for your life to end as your cheeks turn every shade of red.
Normally you don’t freeze like a stone gargoyle, lose not just the ability, but the drive to move, and stand there staring like you’ve been transfixed.
But then again, you don’t normally open the door to see a woman like her.
No, that’s wrong. You don’t ever open the door, this door, a door, any door, to see a woman like her.
Her long, wet hair, tucked to one side, cascaded past her shoulders and gave her the appearance of a nymph who would flit away if I dared to breathe. Long bangs tangled like wild vines in her long eyelashes as she blinked slowly. Her green eyes were wide and her sweet pink lips were parted just slightly in surprise, but she did not speak.
When my eyes followed the trail of her hair down her slender neck to her delicate collarbone, she did not move.
Even the beads of water from the shower seemed to freeze on her pale skin like diamonds or morning dewdrops. Even in the steam-filled bathroom, they sparkled like glass down her long bare legs, along the arch of her foot held suspended as if to run, on the tip of her big toe that grazed the floor with such gentleness that even if the tile was the surface of a quiet forest pool I wouldn’t expect even a single ripple. The beads of water clung to her narrow shoulders, her goose bumped arms, slender like the bones in a sparrow’s wing, and her graceful fingers that skimmed her sumptuous hips, her full breasts moving with her steady breath, the only movement in that silent, sacred space.
The beauty of her naked body and the curiosity of her wide green eyes focused intently on me stunned me. Excited me. Terrified me all at once. I wanted to run to her and I wanted to run from her and I wanted all of her and none of her and only her, her, her.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, averting my eyes from heaven, from hell.
And slammed the door.
Kayleigh
The door slammed. It was like a hypnotist’s fingers snapping inches from my nose.
A blush seared like wildfire across my cheeks as I lunged for the towel on the bathroom counter and draped it hastily over my naked body despite the fact that I was now alone. With trembling fingers, I wrapped it tight around my chest, heaving as if I’d just sprinted three miles, as if I’d narrowly escaped being hit by a car on an icy road.
As if I’d just made passionate, hungry, needy love.
Hurrying to the door, I fumbled with the lock, requiring more tries than my rattled brain could count to finally turn it. With a shuddering breath, I sagged to the floor with my back sliding against the door and dropped my head between my knees.
I had just stood there when he’d burst in. I didn’t reach for a towel to cover myself. I didn’t run back into the shower. I didn’t open my mouth to yelp, to scream, to curse, to breathe.
It wasn’t because I couldn’t. I knew deep in my heart that if I’d moved my hand, it wouldn’t be toward the counter where the towel sat at the edge of the sink. It would have been toward him.
If my legs moved at all, they would wobble because I’d never seen steel-blue eyes like his. If I opened my mouth, I knew for certain the only sound to fall from my lips would be a sigh, a gasp, a plea.
Something more had just happened than a man opening a door on a naked woman. That was something ordinary. That was something that probably happened every day, somewhere around the world. That was something unremarkable.
This was not that.
He was not that.
A laugh escaped my lips and filled the silent bathroom where before the only noise had been blood rushing past my ears. I was being ridiculous. Of course I was.
It was Eoin I had feelings for, not a stranger who walked in on me and barely said a word. I think I believed this by the time I dragged myself up from the floor, dried off, got dressed in an old sweater and cheap jeans from Penneys, and went downstairs to meet the family, stumbling on a broken step near the bottom.
I vaguely recalled the way to the kitchen from Eoin’s whispered tour late last night when we’d arrived, but the sound of voices easily guided my way. As I approached down the narrow hallway lined with a multitude of family photos, I quickly realised the conversation was about me.
“Soulmate?” someone hissed. “What do you mean soulmate? How long have you known this girl?”
“Love, let’s not turn this into an interrogation.” It was the voice of an older woman.
“Ma, how do we know she’s not using him for his money or his fame?”
Pressing my back against the mismatched frames, I bit my lip and tucked under the sleeve of my sweater to hide the ever-growing hole as I continued to listen. Eoin’s voice was easy to pick out.
“I’ve known her my entire life,” he said, his voice indignant. “Every night I closed my eyes, I saw her, I talked to her, I touched her. She and I have known each other since the existence of the universe, Darren.”
I heard a groan. “How long, Eoin?” the first voice repeated, sounding tired but tense. “How long?”
Eoin sighed. I knew it was Eoin because he’d sighed just like that and given me those irresistible puppy dog eyes when I’d tried to argue that maybe it was a little soon to go meet his whole family after forty-eight hours give or take. I’d obviously lost.
“Just meet her, Darren,” he said. “You’ll see. You’ll probably fall for her, too, you know. I’m telling you, you won’t believe her eyes.”
“I already saw her,” the voice said.
So it was Darren who had stumbled into the shower upstairs.
“And?” Eoin prodded.
It surprised me when I realised my fingernails were digging into my palms. My pulse was beating faster and my head was craned closer to the corner. It was an unavoidable fact that my body was eagerly waiting for Darren’s response. I leaned in so not to miss a single word. I held my breath so something as silly as an inhale of oxygen didn’t muffle the sound. My heart quickened in anticipation. I swear I didn’t tell it to.
Darren paused only for a moment before answering, “They’re just eyes. Nothing worth throwing your life away for.”
His words hurt more than I wished to admit.
I forced a smile, slid backwards a few steps, and walked loudly enough that they would all hear me coming into the kitchen.
“Um, hi,” I said with a shy wave, my hand tucked into the sleeve of my sweater.
My eyes skimmed over the family gathered in the tight but cosy and delicious-smelling kitchen, careful not to seek out Darren’s face. Eoin leapt off a barstool and barrelled toward me. His affection felt like getting blindsided by an eighteen-wheeler as he flung his massive paw over my shoulders, nearly making my knees buckle. His body, tight to mine, radiated more heat than the stove just past the island laden with food for not seven, but seventy.
“Everyone, everyone, listen up!” Eoin shouted despite the fact that his family was politely waiting in silence. “It is my greatest pleasure to introduce the incredibly stunning, magical creature that i
s Kayleigh…Fi…” Eoin paused and I felt my cheeks warm as he glanced down at me with questioning eyes.
“Scott,” I whispered with a nervous smile.
“Right, right.” Eoin snapped his fingers, the sound like a tree trunk breaking in two. “The one, the only, Kayleigh Scott!” Eoin held out his arms like he expected a round of applause; there was only the proverbial crickets.
I nearly cried in relief when Eoin’s mom untied her apron, stepped forward, and flicked Eoin’s ear.
“Jaysus Christ, Eoin,” she chastised. “She’s a beautiful woman, not a bear in a tutu at the circus.” Holding each of my shoulders, Eoin’s mom smiled radiantly at me. “Welcome to our home, love,” she said. “I don’t know any name other than Ma in this place, so you might as well call me that too if you ever want to get my attention.”
I tried to extend a hand as I told her it was nice to meet her, but she swatted it away like a pesky fly and pulled me into a tight embrace, her arms wrapped firmly around my back. I didn’t know what to do for a moment; this wasn’t even something I experienced with my own mother, let alone the mother of the man I met two days ago.
“Don’t overthink it, dear,” she whispered in my ear. “Just squeeze.”
I squeezed and it was everything I ever imagined of a normal mother-daughter relationship: apple pie with ice cream, tea parties in sunlit attics, matching pyjamas on Christmas morning. I almost didn’t want it to end as she pulled away and wrapped my hand in hers, patting it gently.
“Now here we have Noah,” she explained, pointing to a distractingly handsome man with a mischievous pinkie dipped into the icing of a chocolate cake. “He’s my oldest, though you wouldn’t always know it.”
I nodded. “Nice to meet you.”
“And his lovely fiancée, Aubrey, a gift from the States.”
