He thinks DarkWatcher45 is anonymous. He thinks I have no idea that my dad's best friend has been subscribing to my private content and that the dress he bought me for my birthday ended up on a screen in a context he never planned for and he watched the whole thing anyway.
I know all of that. He knows none of it. I'm about to wear the dress in broad daylight at my dad's BBQ and I am going to watch what happens to his face and nobody can stop me.
I look at myself in the mirror one more time. The blue does something particular in the afternoon light. My dad’s best friend went and found the exact shade of a thing I mentioned once in passing, because Declan Maguire does not do casual attention. He does total attention or no attention, and the dress is evidence of which one I've been getting.
I want him to see me in it.
I drive to Dad's.
***
My dad’s BBQ is almost as good as his roasts. Almost. I see why my mother married him. The table is out with chips and little smokies and what appears to be an ambitious amount of food for a gathering he described asjust a few people, nothing formal.
My father's definition of "a few people" is the same as his definition of "a small portion," which is to say: generous to the point of delusion. I love him.
I come through the gate.
Cian spots me first. "You look nice," he says, handing me a beer.
"Thanks, Ci."
My dad comes out and hugs me and immediately launches into the marinade situation, which is apparently a saga now, involving a dispute with a recipe and a strong opinion about vinegar. People arrive in stages. Sarah and Mina, who immediately start finishing each other's sentences about a group chat I've been muting. My dad's neighbor Janet, who’s wearing something resembling a jumpsuit from a thrift store that turns out to have BUFFALO printed on it in large letters and raisesmore questions than it answers. Cian's friend Oisín, who is already arguing with the temperature on the grill. A couple of people from my dad's work, pleasant and forgettable.
The afternoon arranges itself the way these things do: food and noise and the easy chaos of people who've known each other long enough to skip the formal version.
Declan arrives at two thirty. He comes through the gate and then he sees me.
His eyes find me with the ordinary ease of a man who always finds the person he's looking for. Then he sees what I'm wearing. He freezes.
There’s a beat where his body does something his face immediately overrides, the flicker of a man catching himself before the catch is visible. If I didn't know what I was looking for I would have missed it entirely.
"Hey," he says, when he reaches us. His voice is even. His eyes have been on my face since the half-step and they stay there now, the careful choice of a man who has decided that if he's not going to look at the dress he is absolutely, categorically not going to look at the dress. I watch him make that choice in real time.
"Declan." I hold his gaze. Warm, easy, giving him absolutely nothing. "Glad you could make it."
Something crosses his face. Gone.
"Wouldn't miss it," he says, and moves to say hello to my dad, and I take a long sip of my beer and think about the fact that he is now twenty feet away from me and I have to get through the next three hours of this and I'm already running on fumes from twelve seconds of eye contact. Very sustainable. This is going great.
Overall, the afternoon is good. Genuinely, unironically good. Oisín loses three card games in a row and takes it personally in a way that suggests he will bring this up at Christmas. Janet has a very specific and detailed opinion about the political situationin a country she has never visited, delivered with complete confidence, and nobody quite knows what to do with it, which is wonderful. My dad is happy. You can tell because he makes the same joke twice and nobody has the heart to point it out.
Declan sits at the far end of the table.
He talks to my dad, listens to Cian, has what appears to be a perfectly normal conversation with my dad's work colleagues. He eats a reasonable amount. He has two beers. He is completely, utterly normal.
Except…
He has looked at me only twice in the last ninety minutes. Both times brief, both times immediately redirected. The second redirect was slightly faster than the first, which means the first one cost him something and he adjusted. I know what it means when Declan Maguire adjusts. It means whatever he's managing has gotten harder to manage and he's recalibrating.
I want to know what it costs him. Every time I get closer to knowing, the wanting gets worse, and I did not budget for that when I started this.
People leave in stages. Janet first, departing with the brisk confidence of a woman who always has somewhere she's going. Mina and Sarah together, a long hug, a promise about the group chat I'll definitely mute again by Wednesday. Oisín attempts to restart the card game. This is declined.
By five-thirty it's just family and Declan, which is usually how these things end.
Declan is stacking chairs.
I bring the last round of glasses in and come back out and it's just the two of us for a moment. The garden going dim. The security lamp on. The last of the afternoon is gone. I should be inside.
