He’d tried not to come and yet here he sat, River by his side.
Her eyes looked brown today, darkened by the baby pink of her gingham apron. They swam with concern as she took in his flushed cheeks, the shattered phone and the bloodied shards of glass in his hands.
Cohen let out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding.
She held a hand up.Stay there,she was silently telling him.
She went to the door and turned the sign to read ‘closed for lunch’.She then went to the counter and pulled out the first aid box, the same one from the first time he was here. She opened it with a sigh, digging out a pair of tweezers and motioning for him to put his injured hand into hers. He did so willingly and the simple act of trust, clean and pure and honest and good, was enough to almost make him weep.
It had been a long time since Cohen had been able to share a burden, no matter how small, with anyone else.
She carefully pulled the shard from his hand before rubbing an antiseptic cream into the wound. As she tended to his fractured skin, he felt himself relax, lulled into submission by her gentle ministrations. He watched her face as she applied a bandage, enthralled by how a small, delicious sliver of her tongue poked out from between her lips as she worked.
When she finished, she looked into his eyes. Her gaze was searching, her expression sad. Cohen briefly glanced at the shattered remnants of his phone and could have died of shame.
‘I wish.’ His voice was slow, drawn deep from a personal well of regret, ‘I wish you could see me at my best, rather than at my worst.’ He paused, examining the bandage on his hand. ‘I wish I could make you understand. And I don’t mean hear, because I wouldn’t change a thing about you. Not even that. But I wish I could talk to you. I wish I could make you see that there is more to me than this.’ He scowled at his broken phone and battered hand. ‘That there is more to me than the stories your mother will have heard.’
She was watching his lips carefully, but her frown let him know that she hadn’t understood. That she’d tended to his pain without knowing where it came from. That she’d seen his anger without knowing that it was drawn from internal pain.
She hadn’t understood, and Cohen took a deep breath that was part disappointment, part resignation.
‘That’s okay.’ He nodded, bringing a hand to River’s face, holding her cheek while brushing his thumb over her brow. ‘Don’t worry. This is enough. You will always be enough.’
For a time, River rested the weight of her head in Cohen’s palm, looking up at him curiously. Their eyes locked, and they spent several long moments staring at one another, not quite belonging to themselves, but also not belonging to each other.
Abruptly, River’s eyes flashed, and with a small grin she stood, pressing a kiss against Cohen’s hand before disentangling their fingers. She pointed to the counter, bringing her right hand to her chin and making a gesture that Cohen would recognise in any language.
Ice cream.
When River returned, she was precariously balancing a large tub in one hand and two glass bowls in the other, on top of which she had stacked two spoons, a scoop and a ream of paper and pens.
She dumped them in a heap on the table, immediately pulling back the lid on the tub to reveal an ice cream so dark brown it was nearly black. With her scoop she dispensed two neat balls of ice cream into the bowls, passing one to Cohen.
She made a ‘C’ shape with her fingers again, this time under her chin, but moving her hand twice, almost as if to emphasise the motion.
Chocolate.
Cohen attempted to copy the gesture, growling when he made an error. But River was quick and kind, bringing her hand to his, shaping his fingers with her own and showing him how to make the sign.
Chocolate,Cohen said with his hands.
They celebrated by each taking a mouthful of ice cream, and Cohen sat back, half in pleasure, half in thought, as the cold mixture melted on his tongue.
For chocolate, it was almost unbearably rich, nearly coffee-like in flavour. But beneath the strong, initial note of bitterness there was an underlying sweetness. All at once the ice cream was too much while also not being enough, and Cohen stared into his bowl, confused.
It was then that he noticed River scribbling on a piece of paper beside him.
Thoughts? she’d written, in a messy scrawl that would normally make the precise Cohen wince.
But he wasn’t wincing now. In fact, he felt damn near like celebrating. For in the stack of paper before him, he suddenly spied a window into River’s mind. In the brush of a pen on paper, he could pull back the curtains on his own.
He smiled, taking the pen, writing a stream of letters.
I think, if you’d let me, I could love you.
He passed the note back to River, watching with delight as a blush crept over her cheeks when she saw what he had written.
She bit her lip as she scribbled a reply.
