“I made a few in college.” He walked around his Range Rover with the styrofoam cooler full of crabs.
“Exactly that.” Maeve laughed. “A few. And they’re both inside waiting for you.”
Cahir rolled his eyes and kissed Maeve’s cheek. “They’re here to stare at you. And drink Dad’s beer.”
“Sure and it’s only high quality beer I bring into the house, isn’t it?”
I blinked. The booming voice belonged to a black haired man that could have told me he was an Irish god. I wouldn’t have questioned him.
“Jack.” He folded me into his arms. “There can never be too many beautiful women in this house. I’m glad my son brought another.”
I grinned. “Flattery will you get you everywhere, Jack.”
He threw back his head and laughed then tossed an arm over me and Maeve’s shoulders. “But I’m already where I want to be.”
“Snake charmer.” Maeve rolled her eyes.
“Cahir, how come you aren’t as smooth as your father?” I was only a few steps behind him.
Not that it mattered. I would have felt the dirty look he threw over his shoulder from a mile away.
Inside the house was cool and bright and open. Cut flowers were everywhere. Art too. The furniture was large and comfortable. Each room moved smoothly from one to the other. It was a family home. The kind that embraced you and whispered in your ear how happy it was that you were there.
His friends were in the kitchen. A mix of men and women whose names I forgot as soon as Cahir introduced them to me. Not that I had a chance to talk to them. As soon as the food was brought in from the car, I was beside him at the counter.
We fell into the pattern, the dance, of creating a meal together. It was soothing, natural, fun. He put on my favorite playlist and sang with me, danced around and past his friends with me in an impromptu meringue. We laughed at jokes that had grown so many layers we couldn’t explain them if we wanted to.
And his friends watched. First with their faces open and welcoming. Then with surprise and incredulity. The surprise and incredulity were focused on me.
Zion, I thought. I’m not her. They want to know why I’m here.
But no. I scented and touched the vibes that were thrown at me. I teased and tasted them and thought they were familiar but could not figure out why.
I helped Cahir at the grill. I helped Maeve set the table and didn’t understand her smiles. I carried food to the table or tried to and didn’t understand why Jack was so gentle when he took the bowls and platters I carried from me. I didn’t understand where his winks and smiles that made me giggle went.
I chewed on it until I had to put it aside for the food. I moaned into the crabs. I danced over the fish.
And then I understood. When my plate was never empty, I never ran out of napkins, my glass was always full. When Cahir picked another crab for me and beat one of his friends back from the last piece of fish and gave it to me. When his hand rested on the back of my chair and then my back. When he played in my hair or with my earrings. When I realized that he didn’t notice any of what he did. He just…moved. He just adjusted his body so it was always in contact with mine.
Shit.
Fucking hell.
Nine
Cassidy
“So what the fuck is going on with you?” Junie’s gum smelled like strawberries.
I was on the third floor. We called it the “Lonely Third.” All of that wide open space and there was nothing in the space but a few couches that O’Shea and Nadia threw up there for “interesting activities.” I always sprayed the couches with sanitizer before I sat on them.
“What?”
“Don’t play dumb, Cassidy.” Junie sat down next to me and pulled her neon pink braids over her shoulder. “Cahir’s been here twice today. Why you being a pussy?”
“I’m not being a pussy,” I said.
Junie raised an eyebrow and popped her gum.
“Okay. Maybe I am. But you don’t understand.”
“No shit. Why do you think I’m up here?”
“Junie.” I rolled my eyes.
“Cassidy.” She rolled hers back and did a much better job.
“You have to teach me how to do that.”
Junie turned to face me on the couch. “Nadia taught me. The secret is to move real slow. Like this.”
I watched her iris move. “Okay. I can do that.”
Twenty minutes later I thought my eyes were about to fall out of my head. And I remembered what it felt like to laugh.
“Great. You’re all happy and bubbly again.” Junie smiled. “Why you playing hide and seek with Cahir?”
“I went home with him over the weekend.”
“Bout time you started fucking again. How’d you do?”
My mouth fell open. “How’d I do?”
“Oh, bitch, I can look at him and tell what that’s going to be like. So yeah, how’d you do?”
“I went home with him like to where his parent’s live.”
“Oh. Boring. Should’ve fucked him instead.”
I slapped her shoulder. “Will you focus?”
“I’m laser sharp, baby. And I said what I said. The dick would’ve been more fun.”
“I don’t know. We grilled crabs.”
“Oh, shit. That sounds delightful.”
I didn’t mean to laugh as loud as I did. “It was. So was the way he made sure I always had food on my plate or a napkin or a drink. So was the way he played in my hair and rubbed my back and shoulders. So was the way he cracked my crabs for me.”
“Oh, shit. He’s in love.”
“He is!” I jumped up and almost dropped my laptop on the ground. I swung it over my head before I remembered it was my work laptop and tossed it onto the couch. “Right? I didn’t pick up on it at first.”
“Because there was food.”
“Yes. So much good food to make and then eat.” God, those crabs were magnificent. Basting them in a beer and butter sauce while they cooked was pure genius. “But I noticed them all looking at me crazy. And his mom smiling and his father stopped flirting with me.”
“His dad was flirting with you? Ew. Unless he was fine. Then it gets a little more interesting.”
I choked a bit. “Not like that, June. Like the way fathers do. You know? When it doesn’t mean anything?”
“And he just stopped?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a shame. I love threesomes with relatives.”
“I don’t even know you.”
“You don’t need to,” Junie said. “So he’s in love. What’s up? Why you hiding?”
“I-” I stood in front of her with both hands in the air and my mouth open. “In love.”
“Right.”
“I don’t understand why you don’t understand.”
Junie gave me another perfect eye roll. “He’s your friend, right?”
“Yeah.” I drew out the word.
“Your best one.”
I shrugged.
Junie popped her gum.
“Fine. Yes, he is.”
“I only find it mildly offensive that he’s usurped me.”
I grinned.
“If he’s your best friend, and y’all cool like you say you are, why can’t you just talk to him about it? At least get him to confirm it either way. Sitting up here with the dust and God knows what else is on this couch ain’t going to help you either way.”
“It’s nice up here. Lots of light.”
“Girl, shut up.” Junie tossed her hair over her shoulder. “You being pussy, and I’m not going to tell you the shit’s okay. And not that it matters, but if you’re in the mood you could consider how it feels for him to have you one day and lose you the next and have no idea why it’s happening.”
Shame was a close and tight thing. Like Saran Wrap, it clung to me.
“You don’t have to feel bad if you don’t want to though.” Junie blew a bubble. “Delia and O’Shea taught me there’s
power in not giving a shit what a man thinks or how he feels.”
“No,” I whispered. “He’s my friend.”
“You’ll get better service if you call him downstairs,” Junie said.
Cassidy
I didn’t call him. I tossed my phone between my hands until I dropped it. My heart jumped into my throat until I was sure I hadn’t cracked the screen.
I went home. I burned Palo Santo and rosemary. I sat on my couch with my rose quartz in my hands. I drank tea. I listened to Meshell Ndegeocello. I thought about watching a movie. I thought about how hungry I was and what I wanted for dinner. Cahir had leftovers. Cahir had crabs.
I got in my car and drove to his house.
He opened the door after the second knock. “I ate all of the crabs.”
“Son of a bitch.” I pushed past him and laid down on his couch. “I guess I deserved that.”
“You did.” He went into the kitchen. I heard the wine glasses clink when he set them on the counter. The pull of the cork from the bottle.
He put a glass of wine on the coffee table in front of me then leaned against the back of the couch. “Gonna tell me what crawled up your ass and made you abandon me?”
“That’s why I came over and now I don’t want to do it.”
“That bad?”
I threw an arm over my eyes and nodded. “Because I think I’m right. But what if I’m wrong? Then I’ll look ridiculous and make our whole friendship weird. I don’t want to make us weird.”
“Me either. I like us the way we are. It’s pretty fucking dope.”
“It is!” I threw the arm over my eyes up in the air and let it fall over my eyes again.
“But-”
“I hate that there’s a but,” I said.
“Wouldn’t it make us weird if you keep it to yourself and now we’ve got this big awkward thing between us that we can’t talk about because you won’t tell me what it is.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.” I took a deep breath. “I think you’re falling in love with me.”
The silence grew. It swelled until it weighed down my chest. But still I kept my arm over my eyes.
“Huh.” Cahir slapped my leg. “You’re hungry. Let’s go get food.”
Ten
Cahir
I knew we weren’t broken when she took my hand in the supermarket. In that loose, free way she had that didn’t require eye contact and happened while she was doing something else like putting her phone in her pocket or pushing her hair one way or the other. I tried not to squeeze her hand too hard. I tried not to think too much, to stay with her, in the moment, to pull her into the moment with me.
She snorted when I said something asinine about lobsters, and I knew she was back. Lobster, scallops, cream, butter, pasta. I threw it in the cart and she stopped me.
“We don’t have to.” She held the pasta in her hands. “I don’t need it.”
No. She didn’t. She wouldn’t. Because she was Cassidy. She was my friend. My best one. And there was a magic in her that did things to me. Excited me, calmed me, healed me.
Loving Zion was lightning and drowning. It was bated breath in dark rooms and twist and turns designed to get you lost and nauseous. I didn’t know love before Zion. For a while, I didn’t want to know love after her. I wanted to dream of her at night and reach for her in the mornings.
I didn’t reach across the bed to pull Zion’s body closer to mine anymore though. I reached for my phone to find something to send Cash before she woke in the morning. A funny article or post on social media. A concert I bought us tickets for before she could tell me it wasn’t her thing. Craft and art fairs. Thrift stores and swap meets three cities over. Movies. Recipes. Sales on ridiculous things I knew she could make look cool.
But almost every morning there was already something from her waiting for me. A picture of a plant. Coffee. The sunrise. A line from a book she read. A myth about some god or goddess I never heard of.
It was easy with Cash. As easy as waking up in the morning. Fun. Smiles and sunshine and subconscious movements that had no purpose except to pull her closer to me.
Love songs described what I had with Zion. They talked about the torture and the pull. The fire and the way breaks didn’t heal even. The obsession to be close. The smell of her in unexpected places. The longing for her that threatened to rip itself out of my chest.
The movies and tv shows said love was misshapen and hard to pass through the reality of an every day life. Love was loud arguments and break ups to make ups and flowers to say sorry or to say nothing at all because she would think what she wanted.
Love wasn’t laughter and smiles and the reach across space and time sure that someone would wait for you, want you, on the other end. Love wasn’t luxurious. It wasn’t a soft place to rest. It didn’t make life better or fit into the spaces you made for it. It destroyed.
I couldn’t fall for Cash. It would be too much like coming home.
We cooked at my house. Easy and familiar. She picked music I liked. I didn’t know when she learned the words. I didn’t know when she learned the dances, but I turned down all of the burners on the stove to join her in the living room for a dance break.
She started to cook the pasta but I took it out of her hands and did it myself.
Was that what I wanted? Did I want to have a place in my life that was chaos and an uneven path? Did I want to spend the rest of my life drowning when I could fly? Did I want intensity and anger and fear and disgust and disappointment when there was someone that brought only the best? Only made me better?
I didn’t want Zion. The thought shot through me as I brought dinner to the table and imagined the dance Cash would do after her first bite. I almost dropped the bowl. There wasn’t supposed to be anything but Zion. There was only supposed to be the misery. There were-
There were just a lot of things I didn’t want. And maybe I didn’t love Cash yet. Maybe there were a few things to work out. A few hurdles to jump. Maybe.
I ate dinner. I watched her eat and couldn’t push the little grin, that little grin that didn’t exist before her and couldn’t be given to anyone else, off my face.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think you’re right. I am falling for you.”
Her fork clattered to her plate.
Cahir
She went silent but that was okay. There was as much to hear in her silences as there were in her words. She loaded the dishwasher and wiped down the counters. I made popcorn and poured in M&M’s. I picked a movie she liked and laid her favorite pillows on her side of the couch.
She rolled her eyes. I tried to keep the laugh back and failed. We watched the movie with her head in my lap and the popcorn cradled against her stomach. When the movie was over we watched the news and some reality show that made us both shout and groan in disgust.
I fell asleep first. Then her head was on my shoulder, and my sleep got a little better. My phone said it was three in the morning when the empty bowl fell to the ground and woke us.
“I should go.” She was almost in my lap. Almost.
“Yeah.” My arms tightened around her.
“Okay.” She was asleep again.
And so, so light. It was easy to carry her to bed. Easy to lay down beside her and feel her curl into my side and lay her head on my chest. Easy to drift into a sleep that didn’t have dreams.
My alarm went off. I turned it off and reached for my phone, ready to find something to text her, something to make her laugh, when I remembered that she was there.
She smiled up at me. “My breath smells disgusting.”
So did mine. But I laughed long and loud anyways.
I had a toothbrush for her. She made us eggs. I made toast and poured juice. She got the paper.
“This was lying under the paper,” she said.
I didn’t like her voice. I didn’t like the weight that came into it. I didn’t like that the laughter was gone. I didn’t like that I wanted to take whatever she held away from her w
ithout knowing what it was.
It was a book. A biography.
I didn’t like that either.
Cassidy
He told me to dress like it mattered, like we didn’t know each other, like it was something new. Wasn’t it, I wanted to ask him. Wasn’t it different to wake up beside someone in bed and not have time to prepare, to put on the things that made you feel safe, the armor of fresh clothes and expertly applied make up? Wasn’t it different to have only your smile and stale breath and find they were more than enough?
And there was the possibility, the eventuality, of his love. It filled my mind. What would his love look like? What would it feel like? How would it touch me? Did I want to be touched?
I wore leather. That was the armor I chose for the nights that mattered. It slid off my shoulders and draped over my breasts. It clung to my ass and hugged my legs down to my knees.
It was right. I knew it was before I left the house. I knew when I passed through my grandmother’s shop and she smiled at me. Proud of me. Proud I came from her.
I knew it was right when I walked into the restaurant and the hostess stopped speaking to the couple in front of me. I knew it was right when I walked through the dark space with its wrought iron railings, round booths and intimate tables, an open dance floor and a man on an acoustic guitar who sang like he wouldn’t be satisfied until he broke all of our hearts.
“Holy hell,” Cahir said. His fingers brushed my shoulders.
I was shy. I wanted to duck my head in the face of his unabashed admiration. In the face of what he would feel for me if he didn’t feel it already. That wasn’t how love was supposed to happen, was it? Wasn’t it supposed to be equal? What did I do when he crossed into that space? What if I didn’t want to follow?
There was pain in that, pain in the possibility of a future without him, without us. I was in leather. I wasn’t supposed to feel pain.
I raised my chin. “Yes.”
“Cash goddamned money.”
Better as Friends Page 5
