But Ciaran wasn’t in the mood for joking. His hand brushed the back of mine once more. I felt it in every nerve in my body. Every. Single. One.
“I don’t think I have ever done anything ‘casual’ in my life, Seraphina.” Those depthless eyes bored into mine, as if they were looking into my very soul. I think I could see his, too. My breath was so tight, my clothes were suddenly feeling very constrictive.
Ciaran broke the thrall between us. “Go get some sleep, Seraphina.” The way he kept saying my name: like a song. He drained the rest of the liquor in his glass in one go. “You’ve hada difficult night.” He shifted in his seat before he stood, as if he needed a moment.
I followed suit and drained my glass, standing.
“Goodnight, Ciaran,” I managed to get out, as I winced at the pleasant burn of alcohol slipping into my stomach. I was still breathless. “Thank you, again. For my ankle.” I turned and walked into the small bedroom, closing the door behind me.
TRIOMPHE
Tension mounted in the days that followed. Before Ciaran had healed my ankle, I had thought his frustrated attitude was in response to my messy nature. I was trying my best to be as tidy as possible in the small space we shared, but I was hopeless. I would return to the bedroom to find Ciaran had made the bed after I had left it rumpled. The bathroom was still clean but no longer tidy, strewn with the cosmetics that Elena had graciously lent me. I left dishes in the sink out of habit and returned to find them mysteriously washed and put away. Ithoughtthat any tension between Ciaran and I was because he couldn’t stand the mess.
But after we drank whiskey and spoke about our deepest desires—after he had reached out and brushed the back of my hand, igniting flames deep within me—I didn’t think the mess was the cause anymore. The frustration I sensed from him was of another kind altogether. I felt it too. It was getting harder to close the door to the small bedroom each night. It would have been so easy to invite him in, to close that gap, to ease the tension we were both feeling.
And instead of obsessing over the chandelier disaster, I fixated on how the brush of Ciaran’s hand had felt on mine—onhow it had sent electric sparks through my whole body. On how his hand would feel brushing against the growing ache between my thighs instead. How his full sensuous lips would taste. How the timbre of his voice would feel against the side of my neck… lower.
Ciaran was not making it any easier to remain platonic. His gaze would often linger on me longer than necessary. I was painfully aware of it now. We hadn’t had another conversation that was as vulnerable as we had that night, but the silence between us was pointed.
The unspoken thoughts we werebothhaving hung in the air, thick and heady. Sometimes I would need to go for a walk through the catacombs just to get away from it. It wouldn’t be smart to act on these feelings, I told myself over and over. Especially when we were stuck in this cramped living situation. What if something didn’t work out? That would be incredibly awkward, and I had no intention of making my life even more messy. I had just decided to end things with Seff a few weeks ago. I had thought I was in love with him. I had beenbeggingfor him to want me too. I didn’t know if I could trust my judgement in anything romantic. I had been so wrong, so recently.
And what if Ciaranwasn’tfeeling the same things? Perhaps I was imagining the tension, or just projecting it as I was feeling so much myself. I couldn’t face that kind of rejection and continue to live in the same space. Especially if the rejection came from Ciaran. I couldn’t stand that.
So, I stuffed the feelings down. Taking matters into my own hands even seemed too intimate in the small space. Like somehow, he would know what I was doing—that I was thinking of him, wishing my own hand was his hand, his tongue, his body.
It was gettingto be too much, and I didn’t think I could bear another evening in that place alone with him. My resolve was strong, but it was cracking. So it was a great relief when Ciaran informed me that he would be hosting his friends for their biweekly card night.
The card game was Triomphe. I had never heard of it, even though it sounded Lutessian in origin. The cards were different from the ones I was familiar with, hailing from Enotria originally. The four suits on this deck were cups, coins, knives and wands.
The four of them—Ciaran, Rory, Fionn and Elena—played every second Wednesday night. It was a four-person game, split into teams of two, and as they’d been playing for years, the winners tally was ongoing and hotly contested.
It was Ciaran and Rory versus Fionn and Elena, which I silently thought was a terrible idea. Ciaran and Rory were too stoic, too taciturn to make a good team. Elena and Fionn were both too extroverted, too hotheaded. Theyshouldhave evened the teams out, but I was new to the dynamic. Who was I to judge?
I suspected that the main draw for this tradition were the food and drinks; Ciaran went above and beyond providing a sumptuous spread of snacks and beverages for his guests, which were laid out on the small kitchen counter. Elena hovered around a garlicky spread, piling it onto pieces of flatbread with one hand and balancing her delicate coupe of sparkling wine in the other, while she tried to explain the game to me around mouthfuls of food.
“No, no, no, you’re explaining it wrong,” Fionn cut in. “Once you know which suit is trump, then everyone plays. Five cards each. High card takes the trick. You have to follow suit, unless you can’t, and then you can play trump and take the trick. You need three tricks to get a point. And if you get allfivetricks, you get two points. First team to five points wins. It’s fast. And you have to pay attention or you could miss something. Pick the wrong strategy? That could lose you the whole game that fast.”
Elena rolled her eyes. “That is exactly what I was saying, Fionn.” She looked at me with a pained expression. “Men.”
“I don’t understand how the teams work,” I interjected, taking a long sip from the effervescent wine in my hand.
Rory was the one to respond first. “You are trying to help your teammate, but talk between partners is prohibited. You have to learn to read your partner’s tells. How they sit when they have a stacked hand. The order they choose to play their cards in. Each decision can tell you something.” And finally Ciaran and Rory’s partnership made sense. Both of them were so observant. It seemed to me they would have every advantage over Fionn and Elena’s rashness if that were the game.
“Instincts are important too, though,” Elena added. “It’s not all about watching like a hawk. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut and hope for the best. Overthinking can kill you just as easily.” These teams were like some kind of social experiment: overthinking and calculating versus instinct and gut decisions.
“Okay, enough talk. Let’s play.” Ciaran stepped into the fray.
We sat around the breakfast table: an extra chair had been added to one side, and a bench had been squeezed in as well. Since I was going to observe Ciaran for the first game, we ended up sitting together on the bench. I had agreed to try to play the second round, if I understood it well enough.
I regretted my decision to learn from Ciaran immediately. There was no way I was going to be able to pay attention to this fast-paced game when we were so close that our thighs pushed together. I felt every point of contact like a brand, sending sparks up through the rest of my body. Every time he shifted in his seat, his shoulder brushed against mine. Heat radiated from his body. I wanted to wrap myself in it. This was going to be torture. Pure, delicious torture.
“Rory and I won the last game,” Ciaran explained as he shuffled the cards with unnerving ease, “so we deal first.”
I watched as his broad hands cut the deck and bent the cards gently but firmly, snapping them back together. They were just cards. He had no business making shuffling them look so inherently sensual. He noticed me staring at his hands, his mouth quirking into a half-smile.Stop watching him. Stop thinking about him. Just stop.My face was heating already. He dealt everyone five cards and turned the first card left on the stock face up. King of Cups.
“And now it’s my lead.” Elena picked up her cards and began arranging them in her hand. She allowed herself all of five seconds to make a decision and played the first card. The Ace of Cups.
Everyone at the table groaned as they tossed cards down and Elena took the trick handily. I understood. Sort of.
