Bitterhall, Helen McClory [red queen free ebook TXT] 📗

really seeing him clearly, letting myself see him. He was awkward in his formal clothes. His overgrown dark hair on his ears, and his eyes were long and glowed in the light – not amber, I’d want to say, something livelier, like silty water in the sun – and his lashes dark. He was drunk too. He fussed with his jacket, taking it off. He had a soft-looking, stumbling-looking mouth that my fingers somehow remembered being inside.

‘Daniel,’ I said.

‘Here.’

He handed me a glass of water as he sat down on the bed. We were alone, then.

Kiss

A wind blew from a distant inland place and I found myself shaking. Between us, the air crackled like a pelting of ice about to hit us both, already too late and smacking into us. So suddenly this comes on I thought, because I didn’t have the perspective yet. All I felt was: make the storm break, make it stop. I felt a pain in my fingers – a kind of shock – a kind of shock that is the moment before touching. No, it was never like this. Believe me? I reached over for him and pulled him near. His hot breath and my hot breath. I kissed him. Just like that as if our mouths and tongues together had been a form the universe was waiting to shape all this time. If you unsettle yourself anything is possible. That’s what the night had proved. There was no accidental slip of the lips that led us somewhere I didn’t want to go. I wanted – to go – I did.

As I kissed him I saw that other place, only briefly; I smelled bread cooking in an oven and heard a creaking of wood and leather, the sound of a brush on a wet floor – smell of fresh hay falling loosely, horses, sawdust, pipe smoke, mud being washed away. Two selves crashing together overlapping two selves imaginary or from long past histories, I didn’t care, I pushed my tongue in. Daniel filled the world in then with himself and it was cologne and sweet-salty booze and a hit of chocolate. His face gritty – not gritty. Stubbled. I opened my eyes and pulled back a little; it was Daniel, wasn’t it. Yes. I chose this, I thought.

Even as I thought that I felt myself as two people: one making the choice, the other judging it, loathing it. A small part of me was pointing at something moving under – I moved back from that part. It stretched its shadow out along towards me across the floor of my being, touched me with shame – Órla it said. I moved back to Daniel. But perhaps it was not shame but tact. Because Órla was in the room again, watching, silent. There was nothing I could say that would make things any easier, right then – no excuse or comfort – and my lips felt stung and good – that would invalidate what I had just done. So I just looked at her. My mouth tired and red. Daniel’s too. We had chosen to. Our handmarks were all over each other. A redness on his arm from my hand. My God, I thought, is this what it’s like?

Daniel put his hands up and held my face.

‘Tom. You’re fucking gorgeous,’ he whispered. I took his hands and held them against my face.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry,’ apologising for my whole life – and to the shadow, and to Órla, and to my own self for not letting this happen sooner – but this was the only time it could have.

‘Shh,’ Daniel said. ‘God, I have you,’ he said. Or did he say it later? Órla was beside us, and warmed us and we made a figure together of our arms and legs. And we didn’t stop kissing any more after that, exhausted, fired, drunk, fell back down together, holding on dearly tight. I think I spoke, I think I whispered, ‘Don’t leave me yet.’ Daniel’s back against my stomach. Órla’s neck against my mouth.

Waking

It was still dark. Sounds of the party breaking up came from outside: cars leaving the drive, goodbye, drive safe. Little car honks. I fumbled around but couldn’t find my phone to check the time. I wasn’t hungover though my mouth was clothy and I desperately needed a drink. Daniel was lying beside me, a thin slice of his neck lit up red in the white light from the toilet. And arm with no owner poked out from the lower sheets. I swallowed A white cold line moved down me, sank into me. I got up and put on the rest of my clothes. I went to the toilet to fill the glass, but I saw the diary on the floor in the light – falling across it, an arrow – pointing to Daniel, then moving to point to the door.

I wanted to say goodbye to him. I was pulling him up to do it. ‘Get up, Daniel,’ I thought, ‘get up.’ He was awake and a horrible smile came on his face, and I realised he was not dead and I might be. A scream came up the back of me. My hands were hot with blood. There was music playing again, wasn’t there? In a moment I was free.

The hall was dark and full of ways to go. I passed each one on careful steps not wanting to meet Mr MacAshfall and his forced cheeriness that would force me to be cheery right as I had come to a piece of my real self. Not wanting to meet Mark’s mother – had I briefly seen her? Impressions of hair and a pinched neck, some judgements, my sloppiness. Not wanting to encounter anyone at that tilted hour but Mark himself. There was a chance he had gone to bed, but I thought it was a small one. I went downstairs into occasional light and a kind of dry comfortable atmosphere. The MacAshfalls