And I am back in five minutes, armed with a vanity kit and the shadow of a smile. I knock on her door.
“It’s me, Maeve.”
“Loncey?”
It’s the first time I’m hearing my name in her voice and it takes me by surprise. The way her tongue curls around the L and her Irish accent lifts the second syllable.
“Yeah,” I say after an unintentional pause.
I hear the click of the door opening and it moves back. An inch. It moves back only an inch.
“Promise me you won’t judge me for not wearing make-up.”
I sigh softly. “If it makes you feel better, I’m not wearing any make-up either.”
I hear the smallest laugh, but it’s like she swallows it down because it’s gone just as quickly.
And then she opens the door.
I see her more clearly now. The cap is gone and her hair is down around her face, but it’s more tossed around than styled and I smile at the thought that she tried to make it look better for our meeting. But she stayed true to her word and her faceremains make-up-free. Although I can’t imagine why anyone would want to cover up any of what I’m seeing. Her skin is pale but has a natural glow, a pinch of pink in her cheeks. On the crest of her left cheek is a small round dark mole than I didn’t notice before. Her nose is longer than I realized, and her jawline is stronger too. And those eyes, those dark green eyes are a color I’ve never seen before. I want to study it, study them, for fear I’ll never see that color again.
I take her in, pull in a deep breath, as if to punctuate the moment. And then I lift my hands and cover my eyes.
“Argh, my eyes! My eyes!” I say. “They can’t cope with the atrocity before them!”
I feel a light strike on my elbow.
“Shut your mouth. And give me my toothbrush!”
I lower my hands and hand over the vanity kit. Maeve has a hand over her mouth as she takes it and then immediately turns around.
Her room looks to have a similar layout to mine, and I watch her disappear into the bathroom.
I stay where I am, clueless whether that’s it for our interaction and debating if I should go or if she expects me to stay.
“You can come in, you know,” she finally calls. “I may look like I’ve been dragged backwards through a bush, but I did make my bed.”
I walk in and see Maeve’s right. Both of the beds in the room are made, although one doesn’t have quite as tight corners as the other, so it’s clear which one she’s slept in. Glancing around, I can see that Maeve’s unpacked and what items she has out are neatly organized. I smile, thinking about that birth chart video and her second house being in Virgo.
I’m about to comment on how tidy she is, but then I spot something on her nightstand. It’s a little puddle of soft salmon pink with a number of holes and ragged edges. It’s a blanket, orrather, it was once a blanket but now it’s just a scrap of a blanket. A baby blanket.
Maeve has a comfort blanket and I don’t know why but seeing it takes my breath away. I close my mouth, not saying anything.
Instead, I sit on the end of the neatest made bed, with my back to her bed and the blanket, and I wait.
She comes out a few minutes later, her tongue running across her teeth.
“That is so much better,” she says. “Thank you, again.”
I stand up and realize that she’s taller than I expect, falling only a few inches shorter than me. “Don’t mention it.”
“Where were you going? In the lift earlier?”
“After you bolted faster than a gazelle?”
We both laugh, her with shy embarrassment and me with some relief that the joke landed.
“Yeah, then. Were you on your way to your room?”
