“Always tryin’ to make shit romantic,” I muttered, staring down that one-eyed cat as he swished his bushy tail and glared at me from the coffee table. “Nothin’ romantic in tragedy.”
“I’m surprised you would even say that. Tragedy denotes an injustice to their lives. I thought you were more a ‘whatever happens, happens’ kinda man,” she said, lightly teasing, but also obviously keen to uncover more of my personality.
Warning bells clanged in my ears, but I couldn’t resist her pull, gravitational as it was. It took enough effort to remain in the living room while she did whatever the fuck she was doing in the kitchen.
I wanted my hands on her.
I wanted us close enough, always, to breathe the very same breath.
My hands fisted with need. I forced them to unfurl, staring at the mottled scars and tattoos on my flesh. Ugly hands for ugly deeds.
But the way Bea had anointed them with her lips, kissing them like a vassal at the hand of his liege, as if they were worthy and somehow beautiful…
I shook my head so hard my neck cramped.
“You okay?” she called softly.
No, no, no.
I felt like I was coming apart at the fucking seams. I needed to get out, get out, get out!
“Here,” she said as she moved into my line of sight, rounding the atrocious pink velvet couch with a mug of steaming liquid in her hand. “Drink this, it’ll warm you up.”
She placed the mug shaped like a snowman on the coffee table before me.
It was hot chocolate.
With little multicoloured marshmallows.
When I didn’t answer, she shifted on her bare feet and made a little noise of contemplation in the back of her throat that reminded me of the whimpers she made in the graveyard.
Blood surged to my cock so quickly, I had to adjust myself discreetly in the denim.
“Okay…I’m going to take a shower. You sit here and warm up. Sampson will keep you company. He’s a doll.” Contrary to her point, the fat cat swished his tail haughtily and turned his back on me to face the fireplace. “I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
A jiffy.
Hot chocolate with little coloured marshmallows.
Pink couches, one-eyed rescue cats, a fucking dove.
A rosy mouth that tasted like sugared peaches and a pretty, tight, little cunt that’d only ever been touched by me.
My head reeled, thoughts battling like two boxers in a ring.
Absently, I was aware of Bea padding off down the hall to her bathroom, but I couldn’t take my eyes of that damn ridiculous snowman mug filled with hot chocolate.
I was fucking paralyzed.
The scene was too domestic. A warm house, a cup of steaming fucking cocoa, a woman taking care of me, and a cat with a serious attitude.
I’d never had that.
Not. Ever.
Life with Mam and Pa had never been like a fucking postcard. We’d had a small clapboard house on a few acres of poorly nourished land in southern Ireland. My sisters were kind, good little kids, but they were a lot of work. I had to help my mam as much as I could when I wasn’t in school because Pa was always working the fields.
We didn’t have family outside of our home, and we weren’t liked in town.
At all.
Ireland was such a Catholic stronghold, especially back then, that the pope didn’t even bother to visit. The Irish bled divine blood. They worshipped God zealously, especially in small country towns like ours.
Everyone loved Father O’Neal.
And Father O’Neal hated my parents.
Unmarried, living in sin with three bastard kids.
We were flagrant aberrations in his parish, and he made sure we were viewed as pariahs. We had none of the help the church reserved for the poor, none of the community enjoyed by his flock.
Once, when I was just a lad walking into town with my mam, a group of teen boys had thrown tomatoes at us.
I still didn’t eat them to this day, and the acidic scent of the ripe fruit induced near-instantaneous rage.
And then, of course, they died, and everything changed.
I didn’t even have the small comfort of Mam singing in the kitchen, the laughter of Danae and Keely as they played in the garden out back, of Pa coming home and sweeping Mam off her feet.
Maybe I’d imagined even those instances of peace. Maybe I’d created them to anchor myself to some semblance of joy when they’d gone and left me alone in the clutches of Father O’Neal and his parishioners.
I could barely recall those moments now. It was more like watching some grainy film on television than any kind of emotional remembrance.
I didn’t know happiness anymore, if I ever had at all.
And this…this scene reeked of it.
My body felt wrong, wrong, wrong in this space that smelled of sugar and peaches, of a girl so sweet I felt the ache of it in my molars.