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Erin finds it easy to forget that she’s dating someone else – told him she loved him and everything only a month ago for Christ’s sake – when she watches James. She’s very good at watching James. If there were a sport for it, she’d be professional. She could get a degree in it. Honours for never getting caught. Extra credit for the most sublime affectation of nonchalance that you could imagine, all while her eyes skim across his face, along his hair, his cheek, his neck. Top marks.
He’s pretty. Not in a pretty boy kind of way. Not just in a pleasing to the eye kind of way. In a kind of way that makes her feel totally delusional just to look at him, like really look at him. He’s just so very James – shoulders sometimes a little hunched, hands sometimes stuffed into his pockets, the edges of his mouth sometimes (always) on a downward trend until they are curving up and up and he smiles and it feels like the fucking sun. Like basking in a late summer golden hour, wishing always to live forever in that moment, liking it all the better because she can’t.
She thinks sometimes she’s the only one who notices. No one else thinks he’s pretty. Well – maybe his girlfriend does. But she can’t really imagine Faye thinking it quite like that. Not like Erin thinks it. Not like Erin feels it – overwhelmed sometimes, basking in him in only the kind of way she thinks she can do.
She watches him and wonders – how would his cheek feel under her hand and how would he kiss her again and what words would he say now, after all this time. She sometimes forgets that she ever got to do any of that. Maybe if she remembered she wouldn’t long for it so much. Maybe if she remembered, she wouldn’t watch him.
Or maybe she does remember. Maybe that’s why she can’t stop.
Sometimes she wonders if he watches too – is he thinking about her when he stands across the room, when he looks her way? Does he take the seat across from her, always now, all the better to see her face?
It’s to create distance, that’s all, is what she tells herself. He never sits just next to her. Not anymore. But sometimes she looks up, eyes skimming over him as if it means nothing, as if she’s not thinking about how long since she last did it, as if she’s hoping no one is noticing that she’s looking at him quite so much, and she’ll find that his eyes are skimming too. No, more than skimming; concentrated right on her face.
And when their eyes meet, it’s always look away, look away as fast as you possibly can, all while a zip of embarrassment and something more – adrenaline – finds its way just as fast through her limbs.
Sometimes she thinks she’s gonna lose it, just totally lose it, thinking about him like this. Like he’s hers. Like he is exactly who is meant for her. Like the next time he even comes close to her, she’s going to totally lose it and kiss him. Like she’s going to confuse this absolutely bonkers fantasy, like she’s going to totally fucking embarrass herself thinking that he wants this too. He doesn’t. She would know. She would know for sure, if he did.
If he cared about her at all, she wouldn’t be wondering. Wouldn’t be thinking about it like this, fixated and distracted and biding time until she can next bloom again under his gaze.
Sometimes she wonders what it’s all for – all of this desire. What does she hope for? What does she want? Does she want him to know? The thought sounds humiliating. Does she want him to want her too? Yes. But she doesn’t know where to put it, all this wanting. Because, laid bare, at the end of it all, she’s not quite sure what’s left. Sometimes she thinks she can see the smoke figures of their future, hers and James's, if there ever was going to be one; one slight breeze blows it all away.
And Liam. Liam. He’s not smoke. He’s real. And, with him, she’s never left wondering. She’d be so foolish not to choose that.
It always happens this way – when James visits Derry – Erin gets so tired, feels so run ragged from all of the waiting. Waiting until she can see him again, waiting until she catches his eye again, waiting until she gets a wee, tiny shred of evidence that maybe she’s right for reading so much into it. Waiting for the next hit of a glance like her fucking life depends on it. It’s really feeling like her life depends on it. And when Liam, her sweet fella, asks her how her trip home was – was it good? – she will only say that it was “Fine. You know how it is,” and then slip ever more shoddily, ever less surely back into her usual life, counting down the days until the next time.