Belinda McKeon - Tender

His lips twitched towards a laugh, but did not go there. “What, should I bring someone with me?”

“I mean, come back with me to Baggot Street. It’s only ten minutes away. Thomas Street is miles.”

“It’s not miles.”

“It’s far,” she said, which she knew was stupid — it was only up Grafton Street, around Dame Street; he would be home — she glanced at her watch — by seven. Then she saw her opening. “Your landlady will be up,” she said, shaking her head. “Are you seriously going to walk through the door like this while your landlady’s eating her breakfast?”

He said nothing; he looked to the ground as though it might have a solution for him, as though it might offer a way out.

“James,” she said, and she grabbed his wrist. “Just come on. You can go home later. When she’s at work.” She walked ahead of him, her heart racing, and she turned right onto Harcourt Street, and after she had done so, she glanced behind, and she saw him, coming after her, his head down, and he had not turned left, in the direction of Grafton Street. He was coming home.

“Come on, slowcoach,” she said now, and she beckoned to him. “I’m freezing. I want to get home to bed.”

And when he caught up with her, she took his hand, and he let her; he did not shake her away. And on Baggot Street, the newsstand was open for business already, and the headlines were trying to be hopeful. And when they got home to the flat, it was empty, and there were plenty of empty beds, but these beds were not even mentioned. They went into Catherine’s bedroom, and they got into Catherine’s bed — James still in his jeans and his T-shirt, just as he had been when they had shared a bed before, only his feet bare; Catherine in her thin woolen dress, reaching quickly through the armholes, while James’s back was turned, to unfasten her strapless bra and pull it free — and James faced the wall, and Catherine put her arms around him, and in the half-light, as they went to sleep, she tried to tell him, with her arms so tight around him, and with her lips pressed to the nape of his neck, that there was no need to worry.

Her lips to his neck: a kiss, and another, the language that was theirs by now, the language of affection and closeness and reassurance.

“It’s getting bright,” she said, though she knew she should not be speaking; knew she should be letting him drift off, and should be drifting off herself. But she spoke, and she let her lips touch him in that spot again, where his hair trailed off, where the soft skin of his neck began.

“I know,” he said, and probably she was imagining it, the tremor in his voice, but in case she had not, she held him tighter; she gripped him to her, one hand on his ribcage, the other on the sharp jut of his hip.

“It makes me think of being little in the summertime,” she said, and this time when her lips met his skin, she left them there a moment, as he had done to her so often, and then she moved them, so lightly, just a whisper, just the lightest circle on the downy skin.

“Having to go to bed before it was dark,” she said, and she thought of it: long evenings leaking in through the curtains, the window and sill behind them seeming such a high, glorious box of light. Ellen asleep in her cot, and the sound, from outside, of tractors, or a lawn mower, or a visiting neighbor, allowed to stay up as long as they pleased.

“Yeah,” James said, with a breath of a laugh, and it almost startled her, to be brought back to him again, back to here. She had been drifting. But her hands were on him, her lips were on him, and when she moved her left hand, she felt his ribcage under her fingers, and more than that, she felt him go entirely still.

“I can count your ribs,” she said, and she counted them: two, four, eight of them. He laughed again, the same hesitant wheeze, and this time, when she put her lips to his neck, she let her tongue touch on his skin as well, and he gasped. He said her name. It was a question, she knew; maybe, she knew in some part of herself, it was a warning.

“Catherine,” he said, and she let her hand go lower.

“Catherine,” James said again, but now his hands were moving too, and he was not asking her anything anymore.

And just the touch of him made her come.

And she knew why it was working for him. She knew why it was that he was able to do this. He did not stay hard the whole time, and she knew why this was, but it did not take him long to recover, and she did not mind — it did not occur to her to mind — that he did so looking not at her, but elsewhere: at the ceiling, at the wall, it did not matter. Nothing mattered. She knew what this was. It was touch; he was desperate for it. With Nate — she pushed him instantly back out of her mind — it had been more than he could deal with, more than he could bear, but with Catherine, it was different. With Catherine, it was a deal.

And everything was such a relief; that was what struck her. Everything, as they kissed, as they touched, as they fucked. Everything was a relief, and everything was like the end of something, the end of a problem or a misunderstanding that had gone on, now, for far too long. And she did not think, lying there afterwards, that she would long for this with James again. She did not think it would be necessary. She thought, the fever had been broken now; the madness had been purged. And she thought that later that morning, or early in the afternoon, she would wake and she would be able to get on with her life now, now that this business was out of the way. She would catch her train home, and tomorrow night she would go to her grandfather’s party, and she would come back to Dublin on Monday, or on Tuesday, and everything would be fresh, and everything would be clear. She lay there — laughing about it, really, the way that James, in the moments after they had finished, had been laughing about it too. Because what fun. What a lark. What devilment they had proven themselves capable of; what new knowledge they had of one another now.

And then Catherine woke up early in the afternoon, and nothing had gone away after all.

Her mother, smiling from the car. It was almost dark, but it was possible to make that much out: her mother’s smile. Her mother leaning over the wheel a little, as though she needed to come closer to the windscreen to get a proper look at Catherine. And, Catherine could see now, in the space between the front seats, Anna, the blond mop, the happy wave, and now she was scrambling, as she always did when they met Catherine at the train station, to get out of the car. She tumbled through the door, and she was out, and she was coming, running, and— oooof —Catherine picked her up and told her how heavy she was.

“I have six Easter eggs,” Anna said solemnly, and Catherine said that this could not possibly be true.

“Eight, because I’m sharing two.”

“ Eight. That’s unbelievable.”

“And you have two for you just on your own.”

“Hello, pet,” their mother said, coming around from her door to open the boot of the car; she leaned in to give Catherine a kiss.

It could not be shown. Under no circumstances could it, or anything close to it, anything that was even a shadow of it, be shown. So the thing to do was to talk yourself, to ask questions, rather than to be asked them.

“All set for Granddad’s party?”

“He doesn’t want a bloody bit of it,” said Anna from the backseat, and both women erupted into laughter at the child’s pitch-perfect imitation of what she had so clearly been hearing all week at home.

“Stop that, you,” their mother said, as firmly as she could, and Anna gave a self-satisfied snort.

“So is there much left to do?” Catherine said, as Anna sank back in her seat, singing to herself.