Aurnia
I wiped a little circle clean on the fogged-up bathroom mirror and caught sight of Conor in the small kitchen through the cracked door.
A twenty-minute stream of hot water had made my skin bright red, but bright red meant clean, so it was worth the pain. I had a towel against my chest as I twisted the water from my hair and I watched him for a moment, moving about to make tea. He was too big for the kitchenette. The old kettle looked like a toy in his big hand. I was surprised he was able to even manoeuvre the little tea bags and their tiny strings.
He moved with a quiet devotion much like he did when I caught him sketching at Dublin Ink. His permanent scowl softened. His lips relaxed from the tight line he held them in otherwise. His eyes weren’t constantly looking away, weren’t constantly finding the floor.
Conor glanced up. Through the crack in the door, in the little circle on the foggy mirror that was quickly being reclaimed, his eyes met mine. I blushed and shifted to the side, out of sight. I’d never know if he looked away too. Embarrassed, ashamed. Or whether he’d kept his eyes on me. On the silhouette my naked body made. On the subtle curve of my hip. On the side of breast half hidden behind the fluffy towel. On the line of my spine trailing down, down, down…
Perhaps I was afraid to know. To know that he looked away. Because I was seventeen. Because I was too young. Because I was a child.
I tugged on a torn but buttery soft old sweatshirt he’d lent me. It smelled like pencil shavings and whiskey. It fell in a cascade of too much fabric all the way to my knees.
He’d offered me a pair of joggers, his eyes averted as he stretched his arm toward me. When I’d told him that I didn’t think they would fit, he said that was all he had. I’d told him that was alright.
I slipped on a pair of his old socks and even though they flopped over my toes they were warm.
The living area was a small space with nothing more than a sink and stove along one wall, a small table with only one chair where usually there would be a couch. Conor had turned up the radiator which popped and buzzed in the corner.
“Um, I made some tea,” Conor said, which crushed me a little.
It meant that he had looked away when he saw me through the crack in the door. He wanted to pretend he hadn’t. Because we both knew I had been looking at him. We both knew that I already knew he’d made tea.
“Thanks,” I said softly as I balled my hands in the too long sleeves.
“Take the chair,” he told me, putting the two cups on the flimsy table.
“What about—”
Conor disappeared into the bedroom before I could even finish my sentence. He returned with a crate, the kind you use for milk cartons or bottles of beer. He plopped it down opposite me without comment. I wrapped my fingers around the cup as the steam drifted up toward my face.
Conor’s toe, still in his thick boots, was tapping uncomfortably on the linoleum. He hadn’t even taken off his jacket. I could almost still smell the fog on him. The engine fuel. The night itself.
Was he still out there? Did he ever get off that bike? Did he ever stop running in his mind?
The crate scraped nosily on the floor as Conor scooted back from the table, pushed himself up, and threw open a cabinet above the tiny sink. He returned with a bottle of Bushmills that he poured first into his cup, and then into mine.
“I’m not eighteen,” I said, though it was hardly to be my first drink.
“I’m not the police,” Conor grumbled, adding a second shot to his teacup.
The humming radiator and Conor’s tapping toe were the only sounds as we sipped at our tea.
Conor kept his gaze down. The wind had messed his hair and strands from his bun hung over his shadowed face. How long he would let me just stare across the table at him? I kept waiting for him to down his cup, burning hot or not, and storm away. Or for him to lift his angry eyes up to me and growl, “What are you looking at, girl?” Or for him to upturn the table and stalk to the door and hold it open, saying not a word, but shaking as he pointed to the dingy back staircase.
The minutes ticked by. The tea cooled in the cup even as the whiskey warmed in my belly and I was allowed to just simply look.
How would I draw him?
I wouldn’t draw him like that. I would want him to look at me. To see me. That’s what I would want to capture most of all: Conor seeing me.
Conor was the first to speak, surprisingly. “Are you hungry?”
I almost laughed. There I was, at a kitchen table. The kitchen table in my house was either covered with lines of drugs or illegal weapons or bottles of beer from a party the night before. I couldn’t recall a time I’d ever sat at it.
There I was, at a kitchen table with a cup of tea. Did we even have tea in my house? There I was, at a kitchen table with a cup of tea with someone asking me if I was hungry. It was the most familial moment of my life. Touching, in the strangest of ways. A stupid little dream come true in others.
Of all the people in the world it was Conor Mac Haol sitting across from me, Conor Mac Haol asking me if I was hungry.