Authors: C. K. Kelly Martin
There may
be some truth to the cliché “Timing is everything” but Liam and I certainly
aren’t proof of it. If I’d met him during the summer I might have sat down at
his table, had it contained the last empty seat in The Cunning Café, but I
would have promptly shut down any attempt to engage me in conversation. And had
Liam happened to ask me if I wanted to get something to eat back in July or
August, I would have said no thank you and then walked home to the television.
But that’s far
from the whole story. If some other guy asked me, like Liam did after work one
day in mid-October, to go to The Rose and Crown with him for dinner, I most
likely would have turned him down flat. And in the unlikely event that I agreed
to dinner, dinner would have remained just dinner. I wouldn’t have asked him to
walk down to the pier with me. Wouldn’t have seduced him by the lighthouse,
written a note of apology for leaving his apartment so quickly, asked him to
stay the night with me while Yunhee was in ICU, called him later the very same
day and asked if we could get together again, slept with him two more times and
still want to sleep with him now.
The truth is, I
adjusted my timing for Liam. I wouldn’t be ready for most other guys now. I’m
not ready for Liam either but I can’t stop wanting him. By eleven o’clock on
Wednesday night my anticipation’s soared to a fevered pitch and when Liam rings
the doorbell at eleven twenty-five I have to stop myself from answering too
quickly.
He kisses
me on the doorstep and I cast a paranoid glance at Marta and Deirdre’s house.
If they saw us, would they say something to Abigail?
Inside Liam’s
car, he puts his hand on my knee and asks, “Still nervous?”
“No. I’m fine.”
I smile. “How about you? How are you doing?”
Liam returns my
grin but twists his left hand around to his lower back. “Distinctly not nervous
but my back’s been aching on and off. There was a moment, not far into the
play, when I was talking to my alter-ego that it really twinged, and I think
for a couple of seconds you could probably see it in my face and posture.”
“Have you had
trouble with your back before?” I ask.
“Not a bother
until today,” he says. “It’s probably just the way I slept last night.”
“Or you’re
hinting for a back rub.”
“Would that
work?” he asks, smile growing.
Back at his
apartment he stretches out shirtless, face down on the couch and I massage his
back, all the way from his shoulder blades down to halfway inside his black
boxer shorts; then I get him to roll over and massage his chest and finally his
cock. At its full size I slip a condom over it and ride him until we’re sweaty
and spent and my voice is hoarse from gasping.
Stretched out
together afterwards, we talk, ever more mellow and quietly, about things that
have happened since we saw last each other, and I confide that I’m thinking of
taking some courses in May, to prepare to go back to school next fall.
“That sounds
like a good idea,” Liam says, his hand on my naked hip.
“I haven’t been
able to concentrate at all until recently so I don’t know…it could be a big
step. When I dropped out in the spring I’d failed more courses than I’d passed.
All that information to process from lectures—all the reading and essays—it’ll
be a major adjustment.”
“But May’s still
six months away,” Liam points out. “And you have to give it a chance at some
point. The shop’s all right for now, but in the long run you’ll need more of an
intellectual challenge.” Liam says he wishes that he’d never dropped out, that
he loves acting but he’d like to have the degree to his name too and that he
shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to get out of school.
“I hear if you
get famous enough they just hand you a degree anyway,” I joke.
And soon we’re
so still, silent and peaceful that we’re dropping off to sleep, just like that
night on my couch when we drifted off in front of the television. I feel guilty
when I wake up in his arms later, but it’s just like all the guilt that came
before it, not enough to alter my actions. When I roll over to face Liam, who I
thought was still sleeping, he surprises me by laying one of his hands against
the small of my back.
I wonder if he’s
about to suggest that he should drive me home or whether he’s expecting me to
say it, and when neither of us do—and instead only lie there blinking slowly at
each other—he finally breaks the spell by saying, “I’m going to jump in the
shower. You’re welcome to join me.”
Being with Liam
feels like a constant state of semi-arousal in the first place, and in the
shower, with his soapy hands tracing my curves, my fever’s back full force.
Because the shower stall is so small and we need to stop for condoms anyway, we
end up against the bathroom counter, soaking wet, staring at our reflections as
he thrusts inside me. Seeing how much Liam enjoys watching us turns me on even
more and I spread my legs wide for him and tell him he can go harder. Then he’s
grabbing a handful of my hair, his other hand kneading my ass as he pushes
inside me with the same ferocity that he used the night on the pier. It hurt
then and doesn’t now. My body’s greedy for him, ravenous.
I can’t imagine
how I’ll ever wean myself away from wanting this. And when Liam asks if I’m all
right, and whether I’m getting close, the answer to both questions is yes.
On Thursday morning I finally
remember to book my dental appointment to get a crown made. It will actually be
two appointments, the secretary informs me, because once a mold of my mouth is
taken, the dentist will forward it to the lab to have a crown constructed.
After I get off the phone I walk to the fruit market in downtown Oakville and
buy fresh fruit and vegetables, bread, pasta and a variety of sauces, including
the creamy mushroom one that Deirdre put on the capellini the night she and
Marta had me over for dinner.
In the early
afternoon I return to the hospital to visit Yunhee. She had a slight fever on
Tuesday night and her mother wanted to give her a chance to rest, uninterrupted
by visitors, on Wednesday, but now her temperature is back to normal. Because
Yunhee’s mother is present for the duration of my visit, we can’t talk about
Liam or Chas and mainly discuss Yunhee’s recovery process. She’s been walking
more and eating small amounts of solid food, but in a few days will likely be
healthy enough to be released. However, Mrs. Kang says the surgeon doesn’t want
Yunhee returning to Ottawa right away so Vishaya will have two roommates for a
while, until the surgeon clears Yunhee to travel.
I make it back
to the hospital to visit her one more time before she’s released on Sunday, and
during the following week and a half I slip into a pattern of dropping by
Yunhee’s apartment every few days and meeting with Liam with similar
regularity. In between visits I put in my regular shifts at O’Keefe’s and dedicate
myself to working on
Johnny Yang
. I’ve decided that no matter what
happens I’m going to finish it in a way that Bastien would have wanted. First
that means getting the story down in writing, and once that’s as succinct and
eloquent as I can possibly ever make it I’ll need to find an artist—most likely
an art student—to draw ten sample pages, in a style compatible with Bastien’s
Johnny
Yang
sketches, to send out to graphic novel publishers.
Bastien’s often on
my mind. I haven’t give him up, but I’ve had to make room for Liam—not as much
room as if we were having a real relationship, but between the two of them it’s
enough to make my head feel crowded when I allow myself to think about it.
When we see each
other on a weekday, Liam stands on my doorstep shortly before midnight and then
drives me directly back to his apartment, but if we meet after I finish at
O’Keefe’s on Sundays we drop into The Rose and Crown together for dinner and
drinks first. One time Liam fries me a cheddar and chive omelet at one-thirty
in the morning as we discuss the latest disastrous oil spill and, more
generally, the havoc being wreaked by environmental change—extreme weather and
disappearing species. I find out Liam’s first serious girlfriend, at seventeen,
was a dyed-in-the-wool environmentalist who now runs an Irish environmental
association, and I tell him about my old friend Iliana, who I believe will one
day accomplish important things.
Liam bought a
Wii when he came over at the end of August for
Philadelphia, Here I Come
rehearsals and sometimes we play FIFA together. I don’t know much about soccer
and when he’s easily beaten me a few times I convince him to switch to
Wakeboarding and later Baseball, so I can win a few games myself. He doesn’t
mind losing but he learns fast.
There’s one
night, when we’re lying in his bed after sex, listening to a thunderstorm rage
outside, that I ask him why he changed his mind about us seeing each other and
he says, “I’d made up my mind that it was a bad idea, all things considered—my
recent track record, the state you were in after losing your boyfriend and the
limited time I had left here—and then I heard for definite that they were
extending the run of the play and I couldn’t resist.” He props his head up with
one elbow and stares down at me. “You’re incredibly sexy but you were so sad
the first few times I saw you too. I don’t know…” His other hand reaches for
mine. “Was I wrong to ask you to ring me? Sometimes I think I should’ve left
you alone. I don’t want this to throw either of us off.”
“You weren’t
wrong,” I say. “No one’s being thrown off.” I haven’t forgotten what he said
two weeks earlier, that he didn’t want another source of confusion. “This is
like a vacation from real life.”
“It feels like
that,” he agrees.
“And that’s what
you wanted your time over here to be, isn’t it?” I let go of his hand and rest
my head on his chest.
“My sister
refers to it as a self-imposed banishment,” he says lightly. “She tried to
convince me to stay in Ireland and wait for the shit to blow over, but if I had
stayed I don’t think it would’ve gone anywhere. I was too angry to let it go.”
The levity’s disappeared from his voice but he keeps going. “And with the
people who were part of the problem so close by it seemed almost impossible to
break free of that mindset.”
“Do you think
you’re freer now?” I ask. I want us to be able to talk honestly, but I don’t
want to get too close to the bone for his comfort.
Liam winds his
fingers into my hair. “From here I feel that way but I think the toxic frame of
mind could easily rocket back if I have to return to Ireland too soon. And it’s
still too soon. No matter what happens with the contract—which my agent seems
to be having some luck with—I need to be in Dublin for Christmas, to spend it
with my family. I can cope with that for a fortnight or so, but the thought of
being back on the set of
Six West
with the bloke who was having an
affair with my fiancée…I’ll lose the head again. It’s still too fresh.”
I suppose Liam’s
entanglements with the other women I read about online are meaningless in
comparison to his fiancée’s betrayal. She—and what she did to him—is obviously
what he doesn’t want to be reminded of when he’s back home and I say, “I hope
your agent works through the red tape soon so you can put that behind you, and
relocate to London and concentrate on your career like you want.” I can hear
Liam’s heartbeat under my ear, a steady thump. “I’m nervous about going home
too, even though it’s just for Christmas.” I explain what the weight of my
parents’ worries will feel like at close range and how hard it will be to see
Bastien’s family again. I don’t add that my current involvement with Liam will
only make the latter more difficult.
“Was your
boyfriend close with his family?” Liam asks.
“Medium-close, I
guess. Same as I am with mine. I used to think his mother didn’t like me, but
she just takes awhile to warm up to people. I’m closest to his aunt Abigail.
She…” I pause, fitting the tip of my tongue against the back of my top teeth; I
don’t want to talk about Bastien or his family anymore. It feels private, like
something Liam shouldn’t know. “She’s the one I’m staying with, the one I
pointed out in the family photo.”
“Will she be
there at Christmas?” Liam asks. “Maybe that will help.”
It might, if I
weren’t doing this behind her back too. I begin to change topics but with
Abigail’s arrival only days away (a fact I’ve brought up before but didn’t
highlight the significance of previously) I’m forced to level with Liam and warn
that we’ll have to make other arrangements to see each other while she’s in
town.
He’s unhappy to
hear it and says the thought of sneaking around makes our involvement seem
wrong. “Maybe we should put things on hold until she leaves,” he suggests.
My heart sinks.
“She’s not going until the twenty-seventh. That would only leave us a week
afterwards.” I know this thing with Liam has a set end date, but I can’t stand
the thought of subtracting twelve days from what’s already an extremely short
amount of remaining time.
I pull away from
him on the bed so that I can see into his eyes. “Are you okay with that?”
Liam sits up
next to me, scratching the back of his neck and then folding his arms across
his knees, over the blankets. “I don’t have to be back in Dublin until closer
to Christmas. I could stay another couple of weeks. It would help keep me out
of trouble back home too.”
“So is that what
you want to do?” I ask. I still don’t particularly like the idea of skipping
twelve days in a row, but having him around for an extra two weeks in December
makes it sound less objectionable.
“Not exactly,”
he admits. “I like the idea of staying later into December, and ideally I’d
still like to continue seeing you until then, but if that’s going to be–”