“All these old people were around you when I first came in, so I thought I’d just wait. I never thought I’d see you so popular! And then I thought it’d be fun to see how long it took for you to find me.”
“. . .”
“Far too long, if you ask me. Although to be fair, even ten minutes would have been too long. Still. Thirty minutes! I had to give you a clue!”
“What?”
“Our old teacher, with the mythology book.” O’Hara cocked his head and gestured to the ancient history section close by. “I thought you might recognise it? Move over here as you reminisced?”
“. . . Why are you back here?”
“Well that’s getting to dessert before we’ve even had supper.” O’Hara held Plato in one hand and waved his other. “Help me up . . .” He laughed as the beanbag kept trying to swallow him back into its depths, and Christ—
Jonathan reached for his hand and with a firm grasp, pulled him up.
On the tail end of another laugh that fluttered over Jonathan’s jaw, O’Hara said, “Thanks.” He glanced down at their joined hands and Jonathan let him go.
And waited.
“Oh, right. I came to ask an important question. But first” —he waved Symposium— “can you get this out for me? I don’t have a library card anymore.”
Jonathan looked up sharply. “How long are you staying?”
“Till Sunday evening.”
“It’s Saturday.”
“So that’s twenty-four hours to read through this. If you’ll be kind enough . . .”
“You’re scheming something.”
“Always.”
He borrowed Symposium under his card but kept his grip on it until they were breathing in ocean air, breaths fogging the sunset, library doors locked securely behind them.
O’Hara hugged the book, his head turned to take in the sheets of purple and pink above.
“What is your very important question?”
Jonathan wasn’t so clueless that he didn’t have some idea, but though it squirrelled up his insides, he couldn’t avoid confronting the matter.
O’Hara gestured toward the sky. “Can I stay at your place?”
Jonathan lurched to a stop.
Unexpected.
“Only, I’m sort of here on a hopeful whim. Just me, my passport and my wallet. . . . Dad’s still not . . . Anyway I checked for a room, but the old inn’s booked solid.”
“Your dad still—”
“Never mind, I’ll find a tree somewhere.”
Jonathan paused at O’Hara’s side. Without a word, he clutched his arm and steered him along the streets to where his small but warm cottage nestled between two grander ones.
Only once he’d keyed open his place and made sure O’Hara was all the way inside, did he let go.
“Shoes.”
O’Hara toed his off and forged ahead into the cottage, right at home. Like seven years hadn’t passed. Of course.
Jonathan settled their shoes under the bench and followed.
“This seems . . . neater,” O’Hara said, turning to take in the living room and kitchen. His eyes danced over the white walls, the white shelves, the exposed wood trimmings. The floorboards protested under his bouncing step. He peeked into the bathroom with its clawfoot tub, and then into the bedrooms.
Jonathan stopped him. “That’s Savvy’s room now.”
“Where’s yours?”
“The only other room you need to know about is the study. It has a nice couch you can sleep on.”
O’Hara followed and halted abruptly at the poster stretching down the far wall. “So that’s what you did with me.”
Jonathan opened a small closet and extracted spare sheets and bedding. “Don’t jump to conclusions. Savvy uses this room for school. I had nothing to do with putting that here.”
O’Hara slung himself onto the couch before Jonathan could cast a sheet over it. Hands threaded behind his head and he smirked. “Those books in the shelves aren’t all Savvy’s. I think you secretly love working in here.”
“Not everyone bows at your altar.”
“No, not everyone. Not the people I want to.”
Something fragile spun into the air and gently, Jonathan pulled O’Hara to his feet, a touch to his elbow, his shoulder, his waist. Their gazes met, but there was still too much distance between them to ask about his dad.
Jonathan cleared his throat. “Wait in the living room while I get this sorted.”
“I can’t watch you be all domestic?”
“Go.”
O’Hara left, laughing again, and Jonathan got to work laying down fresh sheets, blankets, pillow; by the time he returned to the living room, O’Hara was suspiciously quiet on the couch, bent over something—
Jonathan blinked.
O’Hara had unlatched his wristband and was dangling it over the swiping paws of a furry ginger kitten. Jonathan looked around and noted the open window. Gingernut didn’t usually visit so late, but perhaps she’d seen O’Hara and been drawn to him, like everyone else.
O’Hara’s expression was soft and playful, the joy he got from teasing the kitten easy, authentic.
“That’s the neighbour’s kitten,” Jonathan said, moving into the kitchen for water to quench his sudden . . . thirst.
“And a regular guest of yours,” O’Hara said, like he knew this for a fact.