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Chapter Sixteen (Part 2)

As final term goes on I seem to have a lot less time to socialise than I used to, spending late evenings in the computer room polishing off my digital art piece, or down in the life drawing studio compiling my best drawings from the year, or in the library composing my critical cultures essay, hours spent pouring over books to cite, researching and learning all about my chosen topic, which is the fashion and textile of Asian tribes.

For most of this time I am alone, but for the times I amn’t, it’s because I’m with Dean. Whenever he has time off work he’ll join me in the lab or the studio or the library and we’ll sit there together silently working through the evening, ankles intertwined beneath the desks as we pore over books about contemporary ceramics, ancient civilisations, Iranian cinema, pop art and the frescoes of Pompeii. The clocks change in late March, and even as April comes and the sky is bright until late into the evening, we stay until the sun goes down and the light fades from the room and all that’s left is the fluorescence from the lamp on the table between us to light the pages of our books.

“Do you ever get sick of this?” He asks me quietly one evening as I organise my bibliography on my laptop. I lift my head to look at him, hand fisted on his cheek as he stabs his own keyboard with one finger. “Sometimes.” I say. “But I think my essay is finally coming together.”

He huffs. “It’s so stupid that we have to do this writing shite, this is supposed to be a fine arts degree.”

“Yeah I get that but it’s also an academic degree. There has to be some sort of essay portion, I don’t think you’ll ever get away without having to do it.”

“I’m terrible at writing.” He frowns. “And I’m so sick of reading these stupid books about fucking pottery, the words they use are such bullshit, it’s like these writers are having a contest to see who can make their book the hardest to understand.”

Dean’s education, as I’ve learned, is a touchy subject for him. He left school when he was fifteen because he had either some difficulties learning or a lack of interest. It isn’t clear to me which, but either way he struggles now because of it. I tried to ask him about it before but I only ended up irritating him and he shut down, so I’m careful before broaching it again. “If you need help with anything just let me know.” I say.

“I don’t.” He goes back to typing something aggressively onto his laptop for several minutes before he whacks the backspace key in frustration and sits there with the heels of his hands dug into his eye sockets. I clear my throat nervously. “Dean, like, I mean it if there’s anything I can do-”

“I don’t need help.” He repeats. “As in, I don’t need you to help me, do you not get it?”

“I get it.” I say quietly. I try to go back to my own citation list but I seem to have lost where I was, my focus having been thrown by him. I scroll back up to the beginning of the bibliography and start checking it again. After several more minutes, he sighs and drops his hands back to his lap, and while I don’t dare look over at him, from the corner of my eye I see him drop his head and shake it from side to side. “I’m so sick of this.” He says. “I’m so tired of spending all of my time in this building. I just go from college to work and back to college again over and over. Everything is shit.”

“I know it’s hard right now.” I attempt. “But soon it’ll be over and you’ll have so much more time to relax during the summer. At least then when you’ll only be working in Primo you’ll have every afternoon free.”

“Yeah.” He says flatly. I know that it’s more than just pure exhaustion with him, more than just college. It’s his family, his father’s death, his sister, his aunts, all of these things that I can’t even begin to relate to or even know how to comfort him about, things that feel so far out of the scope of my experience that they only serve to remind me of the worlds between he and I, a terrain between us that I can’t traverse. It makes me feel weak, small, ineffective and childish. “I don’t know how to make you feel better.” I tell him.

He sighs and beckons me towards him. “C’mere.” He says, and when I hesitate he repeats himself. “C’mere.” I get out of my seat and walk around the table to stand in front of him. He slides his hands around my waist and links them at my back, and then rests his cheek against my belly. For a moment I’m not sure what he wants me to do with him, but he hums with approval as I lift a hesitant hand and run it through his hair, the dark roots an inch long now and the bleach turning brassy yellow, beginning to grow long over the tops of his ears. It’s so silent in the empty library, nothing but the buzz of the lightbulbs and the gentle whirr of Dean’s laptop fan. He lifts his head and kisses my ribs, gazing up at me with honey coloured eyes that I am immediately knee deep in. Despite the sharp anglesthere really is something so lovely about his face. He takes me by the hips and pulls me easily down onto his lap.

“What?” I whisper. I stroke my thumbs over his dark brows and kiss him gently on his nose, and he looks back at me, eyes travelling over my body as he says “just let me kiss you.” He lifts my hands away from him, and the feeling of his fingers on my wrists makes my skin tingle with awareness. Heat flashes in his eyes and the weight of his gaze makes my breath catch in my throat, and when he kisses me he crushes his mouth against mine so suddenly that I want to gasp. He lets go of my wrists to hold my face and I’m free to touch him again, so I sink one hand into his thick hair while the other sweeps down his chest, then his hands grasp at my waist and pull me even closer to him.

“Is this helping?” I murmur as he begins kissing my throat, and I’m sure that he can feel the flutter of my pulse against his lips.

“Mhm.” He says, and guides me backwards so that the table edge presses into the base of my spine. He lifts me off him so I’m sitting on it, impatiently shoving his laptop and his books out of the way to make some room. I pull back to look at him, enjoying the way that his gaze sweeps over me before he takes me by the jaw and kisses the side of my mouth, his hands travelling to my chest, breath shuddering out of his nose as he captures my mouth again. “The things I want to do to you…” He says between hungry kisses. “If I told you about them they’d make you blush.” He moves his hands underneath me so he can hold me to him, right in the place that he wants me, his knee sliding between my legs until I can feel his thigh…

“Wait.” I whisper.

His voice sounds hoarse and strained. “Evie… please.”

“We can’t be doing this here. Not in the library.”

He sighs against my collarbone and I feel him resign then, resting his forehead in the curve of my neck. His hands return to my waist. “Okay, it’s just, I think we should keep going.”

“And I think we need to stop.”

He sighs heavily and slumps back into his chair, his mouth a little swollen from kissing me, his amber coloured eyes expectantly fixed on my face as if waiting for an explanation, and I don’t really know what to say, so I just repeat myself. “Not in the library.”

“If not in the library then where? This is where we always are lately.”

“It’s not true, we go to the park together, we’ve gone to the cinema and to the harbour that time.”

“If we did what I wanted us to do in any of those places then we’d be arrested.”

I feel my cheeks flushed with heat. “Oh, well, I know, but-”

“And I’m not allowed in your apartment either, you’ve made that clear, since you’re hiding me from your housemate, and you won’t come home to my house either.-”

“You live in Kilbarrack.” I reason. “It’s too far away.” He also lives with three very intimidating sounding men with intimidating nicknames, one in particular that they ominously call Bones who I don’t feel ready to be in the presence of.

“So what do you want from me?” He insists, struggling to keep the impatience from his tone. The impatience that’s been steadily growing over recent weeks. “What is this to you?”

I hesitate. “We’re just getting to know each other.”

“We’re not really, not in the ways I want to get to know you. I just don’t get it. You’re so open with me about everything, your art, your family, your friend Kelly from school who was mean to you, why is it so easy for you to show me all those parts of you but when it comes to sex you’re a closed book?”

“Because that’s private. I’m the kind of person who likes to wait a while.”

He leans forward with his elbows on his knees and looks right up into my face from beneath me. “It’s been a while.” He tells me. “And I don’t get it.”

I cross my arms over my chest. “Why does it have to be all about that for you? Can’t we just keep doing what we’re doing?”

“No.” He says. “Because you aren’t my girlfriend.”

“So unless I’m your girlfriend, it’s impossible for you to care about parts of me that aren’t the ones hidden by my underwear?”

“No, Evie.” He says, letting out this intense, frustrated little sound as he clenches his fist and throws his body back into the chair again. “Stop twisting everything and acting like the victim, I’m just asking you why you’re so closed. It’s not like you’re a virgin with no experience.”

I nod.

“So is it something about me? Is there something off-putting?”

“No!” I cry. “It’s not that, it’s nothing to do with you at all, I just get nervous.” Distantly, I hear my phone buzz from inside the pocket of my coat that’s draped over the chair behind me. I ignore it.

Dean continues. “So let’s have something to drink first, let’s just relax and I promise that I’ll be nice to you, I’m not trying to hurt you.”

“I know you’re not.” I say in a quiet voice, and he takes my hand, softening his expression as we interlace our fingers, his thumb gently stroking up and down the inner part of my wrist. “Look, Evie.” He says. “If you don’t want to, just say that, and it’ll be grand. I’m not here trying to force you to do anything. I was just asking the questions.”

“I want to.” I say, and the way he looks at me makes my stomach lurch with anticipation and unease all at once. “But not right now, not tonight, and not here.”

“Okay.” He says, watching me carefully.

“On Thursdays.” I swallow. “My housemate always stays over at her boyfriend’s house in Clonskeagh. I’ll be alone.”

“Thursday.”

“But if I chicken out and I don’t want to do it…”

“Obviously, Evie, then we don’t have to.”

“Okay.”

He smiles. “Look, I’m going to go home now, I’m tired of being in this building, I feel claustrophobic in it, and my neck hurts.” He stands up and I move out of his way as he snaps his laptop shut and begins gathering up all of his books to put them back onto their corresponding shelves. I stay leaning on the table and watch him as he does it. “It’s going to be fine.” I say, and he looks over his shoulder at me. “Your essay.” I clarify. “You’ll get it done.”

“Oh, that.” He says. “It’s just about the last thing on my mind.” Stuffing his laptop back into its case he says “My essay will be… whatever it ends up being, like. If I cared about it I’d probably be staying here longer. Here, are you gonna leave too? Do you want to walk to the bus together?”

“No, I think I’m going to stay another while and just finish up what I was doing.”

“Fair enough. I’ll see you tomorrow, so.” He takes me by the neck and plants a kiss on my cheek.

“Bye.” I say to him, and he waves over his shoulder as he exits through the swinging doors and is swallowed into the dark hallway.

Sighing, I resume my place in front of my laptop, jiggling my finger on the touchpad to wake it, and the screen flicks back to life and displays my bibliography in the exact disappointing state that I left it in. I start moving things around more, checking for spelling mistakes, and then I suddenly remember that I missed a message on my phone earlier, and eager for another chance to procrastinate I dive into my coat pocket for it. I feel my heart expand a little bit when I see a message from Jude.

Rate me?

Following the message is a mirror selfie of him in his Top Gun costume. He’s doing a very Tom-Cruise-accurate pose, turned to the side with his shoulder to the mirror, his arm lifted to give a thumbs up to the camera, but also to show off the big red white and blue TOMCAT patch that he ironed onto the sleeve. We’ve talked extensively about this costume over recent weeks, trying to figure out the best ways to make it as authentic as possible, not because there’s a prize for the best costume or anything, but because, as Jude explains to me, he has an insatiable need to be the best at everything he does.

“It’s a sickness.” He told me last week. “I absolutely cannot be outdone.”

I grin at the photo, feeling proud, and partly responsible for how well it turned out, seeing as I was the one who searched Ebay for three out of the six patches on that costume, getting a kick out of finding the ones most like those from the film and for the best prices.

Just to tease him, I text back:

6 out of 10. Where are the aviator shades??

He replies just a moment later with another photograph, this time of him wearing them, doing a silly duck face. It looks like he’s out already, as there’s a handful of people around him out on the city streets, random arms and legs and elbows filling up the edges of the screen.

Happy?

Yep, now that’s a 10 out of 10.

Because it covers more of my face, is it?

Yes 100%, uggo.

And when he texts back again I forget all about my essay. Thumbs zooming over my phone keyboard, mouth quirked up in a smile as I think of a hundred clever things to say to him, texting, laughing and texting until my laptop screen gives up waiting for me and fades back to black.

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#lucky girl part 2 #This was my most viewed chapter for a long time lmao #something about Dean putting his thigh there #i hate him so much from this point on though #he's a sick lil freak #tw: abuse

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