Come See About Me (40 page)

Christmas Day is spent at my Aunt
Ruth’s house, as usual, and everyone except my cousin Evan and his girlfriend
Daisy studiously avoids asking what I’ve been doing with myself out east, like
they don’t want to have to deal with any tricky topics over the holiday. This
both surprises me and works to my advantage, but I’m happy enough to discuss my
job and summer school plans with Evan and Daisy, who I know won’t judge or
worry about me the way any of my older relatives might. Watching their twins
alternately sob at imagined injustices and dart energetically around the living
room throughout the day keeps us all occupied and distracted. My grandfather
(the one from Victoria) isn’t accustomed to being around young children anymore
and it’s amusing to watch him struggle to contain his grumpiness at their
antics.

A couple of days
after Christmas I have lunch with Joyce, Abigail and my mother, who I made the
mistake of insulting by not asking her along initially. I also take the
opportunity to phone Iliana Lazaroy while I’m home, knowing that she, too, will
be back in Burnaby for Christmas. We meet for coffee one afternoon and she says
she tried to call me a couple of times after she heard about Bastien’s death. I
tell her that there were many messages that I didn’t reply to at the time and
briefly explain what the past year of my life has been like, Liam excepted.
Iliana has been busy with student government, which comes as no surprise, and
has been thinking of going into law, like Yunhee. We exchange email addresses
and cell phone numbers and when I hear a text message come in later that
evening I presume it’s either from her or Yunhee.

When I pick up
my phone to look I don’t recognize the long string of numbers the text’s been
sent from, but the content instantly reveals who it’s from:

Leah, thanks for your
letter. I’m glad to hear that there are no hard feelings. I think most of what
when wrong was down to timing and both of us not being in the best headspace. I
want to wish you the best too. I hope you’re still planning to go back to uni
soon and I hope you’ve had a very happy Christmas. I want you to know there
wasn’t anyone else while I was in Canada. I was angry with you when I left but
I’m not anymore. I only wish we’d had more time but I would happily still
consider you a friend. Maybe someday our paths will cross again.

I immediately
type back:

It’s
really good to hear from you. Thanks for being truthful with me. It means a lot
to me to know that and I’m relieved that you’re not angry anymore. Uni is
definitely still on the cards and Christmas was happy, although different than
I expected. I wish we’d had more time together too and I hope you’re right
about our paths crossing again someday.

I send the
message off and stare at the screen, hoping he’ll reply a second time, but it’s
not until the early hours of the morning of the thirtieth, when I’m zipping my
suitcase and preparing to leave for the airport to catch my return flight to
Toronto that I notice a text message has come in while I was sleeping.

Leah,
I just need to know—is it still there for you?

A shiver slides
down my spine and tickles the small of my back. Why would Liam write that? Is
he trying to torture me by keeping himself on my mind?

The truth is
that I haven’t thought about him as often since I’ve been home, but that’s only
because I’ve been distracted by my efforts to catch up with people and the
place itself. I know that I’ll think of Liam every time I walk by the square in
Oakville and every time I pass The Rose and Crown. I’ll crave him when I get
into bed alone at night and think about his warm hands and mouth on me, melting
me inside, and his cock pushing into me, turning me hotter still. I feel warm
and ready for him, remembering how wild I felt seeing the lust in his eyes when
he watched us in the mirror.

I don’t know why
he’s asking now but I type back:

Yes, it’s all still there.

I hit send
before I can chicken out and at least delete the ‘all.’ After the message has
been transmitted across the Atlantic I realize that in my haste I forgot to
pose the same question to him. I text a second message hot on the heels of the
first:

Is it there for you?

Shortly
afterwards my mother and father drive me to the airport together (my
grandfather took the ferry home to Victoria yesterday) and along the way I ogle
my phone with such frequency that my mother comments on it. I laugh off her
words and say that Yunhee and have I turned into texting addicts.

There’s an
eight-hour time difference between Dublin and Vancouver, which means it’s the
middle of the night in Ireland and I could be waiting awhile for a reply. With
Liam so many thousands of miles away what he has to say won’t make any
practical difference, but the answer still matters. I want him to have me on
his mind for a while yet, like he’ll be on mine. I want to believe it hurts a
little to think he’ll probably never see me again. I can’t see that in his
first text message, but I know he would’ve seen it in my letter, and when I
think about how I’ve been the first one to reveal my feelings to him, so many times
now, I feel like a fourteen-year-old with a persistent crush on a guy she’s not
sure really knows that she’s alive.

It’s only when
my parents hug me goodbye just outside the security gate that I stop actively
anticipating Liam’s return message and focus on them. My mother skims a hand
over my hair and says, “It was so nice to have you home for a few days over
Christmas, but what makes me even happier is knowing that you’re going back to
school this summer.”

I’m well aware
that my parents feared that I may never get it together again. At my worst I
couldn’t think far ahead enough to consider what would happen to me. Making
myself eat in the mornings was all the challenge I could handle.

Now there are
several larger challenges ahead of me. Summer school. Finding an illustrator
and then publisher for
Johnny Yang
. Searching out a new place to live
for when I head back to school full-time in the fall, and then a new part-time
job to accompany my new location. My brain isn’t as sharp as it used to be—my
critical thinking muscles have grown flabby—and grades could be a challenge
too. Once I get off academic probation I want to remain in good standing.

But for the
moment I smile freely at my mother and say, “I knew that would make you both
happy.”

“But it’s what
you want too, isn’t it?” my father asks, with a hint of worry in his voice.

“Yeah, it’s what
I want too.” Very much so. I want to stretch myself intellectually again.
Learn. Grow. My body isn’t the only part of me capable of feeling greedy. My
brain feels it too.

I fold my arms
around my father and hug him goodbye. “I love you guys.”

“We love you,”
my father says. “Send me a text later so that I know you got home, okay?”

I tell him I
will and after I’ve landed in Toronto, reclaimed my baggage, picked up Armstrong
and am cruising towards Abigail’s house in the back of a cab, the first thing I
do is text my father. There’s just enough time for me to hit the shower before
heading out to O’Keefe’s for my shift at four o’clock (an hour later than my
usual start time because of the flight); the unpacking will have to be done
when I get back.

Because of the
time difference between British Columbia and Ontario, I feel a little strange
when I’ve freshened up and am walking to work, like the position of the sun in
the sky doesn’t match the hour in my head. Once I’ve been back in the shop for
a couple of hours, though, Marta and I filling each other in on our respective
holidays, my mind slots neatly back into Eastern Standard Time. There aren’t
many customers and after Marta’s left for the day I spend a lot of time sitting
down, reading through the paperback copy of
Oryx and Crake
that I picked
up at the mall in Burnaby; if I want to go back to school this summer it’s time
I stop rereading the same book and experience something new—and periodically
checking cell phone messages.

So far there’s
one from my father and another from Yunhee, but not a single word from Liam. I
don’t think he’d ask me an intimate question like that and leave me hanging
forever, but I’m impatient and worried that his answer will be different than
mine and that it will make what hasn’t ever really stopped hurting—in one way
or another—since the day I met Natalie ache worse.

Every once in a
while I hear someone come through the front door and raise my head up from
Oryx
and Crake
to acknowledge them. On one occasion it’s a lady desperate for a
copy of the
Downton Abbey
Christmas special and on another it’s a trio
of teenage girls huddled around a cell phone, giggling, who ultimately buy
nothing. As the time creeps near to eight o’clock I begin tidying the shop in
preparation for closing, and with only five minutes to go I hear a customer,
likely the final one of the night, saunter through the door.

I whirl around
to smile at the late arrival and he’s standing there in a gray wool coat,
stunning and larger than life because he’s the last person I expected to find
there. His cheeks and chin are flecked with stubble like they would be when
we’d meet in the afternoons before he’d shaved, his hands are buried in his
pockets, and he has a tentative, almost lost, look in his eyes, like he’s not
sure how I’ll react. I walk slowly towards him, my feet silent on the floor
underneath me, as though I’m gliding.

“
Hey
,” he
says, and even that one word sounds Irish in its intonation. Irish and
uncertain.

I can’t believe
he’s here. My heart’s skipping savagely in my chest, like it means to kill me.
My body aches through and through and my face has been frozen in an expression
of unsmiling shock.

“Hi,” I say, my
voice hushed because I can’t wrap my head around his presence. “I thought…you
were in Ireland.”

“I was.” Liam’s
vivid blue eyes hold on mine. “And I will be. I have to be on set on the third.
But…” He slides his hands out of his pockets and holds his arms stiffly at his
sides. “It’s…only the thirtieth.”

I don’t know why
I’m afraid to touch him. Maybe it seems too good to be true, like if I step
forward he’ll dissolve. “So, Leah, you’re starting to make me nervous,” he
continues. “I thought—”

I nod decisively
as I interrupt him. “You thought right.” This turn of events is harder to think
my way through than a text message reply would’ve been, but so much better that
it never would’ve occurred to me to even wish for it. My emotions are tearing
ahead of my mind, leaving it in the dust.

“Yeah?” he asks,
his head tilting like he’s beginning to relax into the moment.

There’s still an
unbridged gap of several feet between our bodies. I stare at him from my side
of the divide, exhaling carefully, like I’m made of porcelain.

“Yeah,” I say.
“The third is…”

“The third is
Tuesday,” Liam says sensibly. “I have a flight back to Dublin via London on the
evening of the second. So, Leah”—Liam steps forward into the gap he’s just
eliminated and runs his fingers through my hair, his hand softly stroking my
neck—“is it closing time yet?”

I pull his mouth
down to mine and kiss him in a way that leaves no doubt how much I’ve missed
him. I kiss him until I’m forced, by the need to fill my lungs with oxygen, to
stop.

“Where are you
staying?” I whisper.

“The Holiday Inn
down the road from the train station,” Liam says, one of his hands resting
lightly on my ass as he tries to catch his breath too.

I smile with a
glow that feels as though it could rival the sun. “So you did miss me.”

Liam breaks into
a grin every bit as brilliant as mine. “Of course I missed you. How could you
not know that?”

I shake my head
casually, signifying that I don’t have a good explanation for my ignorance.
Obviously I was
confused
.

“Okay, so let me
lock up,” I tell him, and it’s literally become impossible for me to stop
grinning.

“All right
then,” Liam says happily. “Hurry it up. We have
weeks
to make up for.”

Yeah, we do. And
I have so many things to work through, a life to rebuild, but what I’ve been
doing with Liam is part of the process, and the rest of it can certainly wait
another three days.

“I know,” I say,
curling my hand around his waist because I’m not afraid to touch him anymore.
“Thanks for coming back.”

Liam’s eyes
gleam like he was glad to do it. Then he fixes me with that special voracious
look of his that always makes me feel like a wild thing.

My heart begins
to race again as I reach around the front door and flip the ‘open’ sign over to
read ‘closed.’ I have no idea what will become of us after the next few days,
but suddenly I absolutely believe that when it comes to Liam and me, things
will turn out exactly as they should, whatever that’s supposed to be.

Can you thank a town in your
acknowledgments? If so I’d like to thank Oakville for its many charms, which
have often made me want to write about it…and now I finally have. Enormous
thanks to fellow Canuck writer Courtney Summers for reading
Come See About
Me
, offering her sage opinion and inspiring me to move forward with it.

Special thanks to Nicholas J.
Ambrose (
everything-indie.com
)
for casting his eagle eye on my words, Jack Blaine for answering my many e-book
questions and Victoria Marini for her enthusiasm and doing everything within
her power to bring
Come See About Me
to bookshelves.