Sweeney stared at the ceiling. There’d been stick-on stars that glowed in the dark back in the day. And a plastic model of the Mir space station Fin had patiently constructed and his father had hung from the light in the centre using fishing line. The walls had been blue, the curtains blue, and a wooden desk sporting a lamp with a blue shade had occupied one corner. Above it, a shelf stuffed full of books about space and science and computers had resided.
Now everything was cream and white and neutral, only the multiple pillows and throws providing splashes of colour. It had been made into a guest room when Fin had gone off to uni, and last night—after their mothers had insisted that she and Fin must stay under the same roof to continue the ruse—Fin had told her to take it and he’d sleep on the futon in what was now his mother’s craft room.
Sweeney had been too tired and, frankly, too wigged out to argue. The less she had to speak or think about the newarrangementthe better. Especially as she hadn’t yet wrapped her head around that kiss. Her fingers pressed against her mouth to quell the strange little lip tingle that sparked at the memory. She only wished it was as easy to quell another strange tingle in parts much lower that had absolutely no business tingling over a guy who’d been a forever friend.
It was… discombobulating.
He’d asked her if she’d remembered their spin-the-bottle kiss and maybe, ordinarily, she might not have remembered a clumsy twelve-year-old peck on the mouth all these years later. But her father had died the next day, and everything about those days just preceding and just after were anchored in her memory banks with thorn-encrusted chains.
That kiss had been etched into the sorrow and calamity of the time, entwined into the fabric of her grief. And last night’s kiss? Well… she doubted it was going to be easily forgotten either. He’d tasted like airport coffee and smelled like coconut rum, and the way she’d found herself lost in it for a beat or two had been most disconcerting.
Through a crack in the curtains, Sweeney could see the first faint steaks of dawn. The sleek digital clock on the bedside table told her it was quarter to six. Neither it nor the table had existed back then. Fin’s trusty wristwatch with the luminous dials, given to him by his grandparents on his tenth birthday, had been the room’s only timepiece.
Sweeney wasn’t much of a morning person, but she was still on South American time and, given she hadn’t eaten last night, also starving. Who knew being emotionally blackmailed by your mother into a fake engagement to a guy who was practically a brother—a first cousin at the very least—could be so appetite suppressing?
Rising, she padded silently through the house, pausing at the bowl on the dining room table, full of red apples. A crazy moment of nostalgia gripped her before her stomach rumbled and she quickly grabbed one, biting into the firm flesh. Sugary sweetness instantly replaced the sourness of morning breath, the crunch seeming preternaturally loud in the silence of thehouse.
She noticed the wall clock immediately as she entered the kitchen. It was the same one that had always been there, in the same place—above the window that framed the sink—but was now joined by a second hanging beside it, displaying an entirely different time. Beneath each clock was a small plaque. The original clock said Ballyshannon, the one to the right saidDublin.
Sweeney smiled.Awww. It was probably just practical yet she was touched by the sweetness of it. Her mother would never be able to do that—not enough clocks in the world to keep up with Sweeney’s globetrotting.
She crossed to the electric kettle sitting beside the sink. It was still hot. A wrung-out tea bag, some granules of sugar and a drip of milk on the aged Formica told her someone had been here before her. Glancing out the window, she spied Fin sitting in one of the squatter’s chairs his father had loved so much, cradling a steaming mug of what she presumed was tea as he stared out over the back yard coming into full splendour beneath the gentle dawn light.
If he heard her, he didn’t indicate it as she re-boiled the kettle and fixed a cup of tea—something she’d developed a taste for in this very kitchen and only ever drank when she was in Ballyshannon. She wondered what it was Fin was contemplating so deeply out there. Was he thinking about his father? Was he reliving old memories? Maybe he was trying to figure out how in the hell he’d been talked into a harebrained scheme to help their mothers save face?
Or… was he thinking about the kiss?
The morning was a little cool but not remarkably so as she stepped onto the back patio, apple in one hand, tea in the other. Ordinarily overnight temperatures would be dipping into single figures by this time of year, but the entire south-eastern corner of the country was experiencing an unseasonal heat wave at the moment, which made for very pleasant weather.
‘Hey,’ she said.
Fin glanced at her and gave her a small smile. ‘Hey.’
He was wearing stripy boxers and a plain dark grey t-shirt that stretched rather nicely across his shoulders and snug across his flat stomach. His hair was somewhat less put together than last night, but then so was hers. She’d twisted it up into a scraggly knot on top of her head while she was fixing her tea.
Sweeney was also in her pyjamas—lightweight stretchy pants in a bamboo fabric that came to just above her knees, and a no-frills cotton tank top with a shelf bra that was made more for containment than seduction. Still, it felt weirdly intimate, sitting on the chair next to Fin on the patio, despite the countless times she’d done so over the years.
Maybe it was the quiet, cosy hush of early morning making her acutely aware they weren’t kids anymore. Or the encroaching day striping her legs in warm fingers of light as she placed them on the extended arms of the chair and settled into the canvas seat.
Or the trifling manner of theirengagement.
‘You’re up early,’ she said, blowing on her tea. ‘Jet lag?’
‘Futon.’
Sweeney laughed. She supposed fitting his six-foot-four frame on any bed was a challenge. ‘Bad, huh?’
‘If I’d known how uncomfortable it was, there’s no way I’d have offered up my old bed to my fake fiancée.’
Clutching her chest, Sweeney gave a faux dramatic sigh. ‘So much for gallantry.’
He grinned. ‘You know,’ he mused, staring out over the yard, ‘when I was a kid, that room seemed huge. I used to go in there every morning and climb into my grandparents’ big bed they’d brought with them from the old country, and Pop would read to me in his lilting Irish tone and Granny would sign, and it felt as vast as the ocean. Like I was in the bed fromBedknobs and Broomsticksand I could be anywhere in the world.’
Fin’s grandparents had lived with them for as long as Sweeney could remember. They’d passed within a few months of each other during Fin’s first year at uni.
‘But with Mum’s plastic crates full of wool and assorted other craft projects and materials stacked high and looming over me, it felt like I was sleeping in a Lincraft.’
‘Outrageous,’ Sweeney commiserated, tongue-in-cheek. ‘How dare she have her own interests now.’
