“Hey, cutie,” Shannon kissed Keira on the cheek.
Keira blushed. She sat across from her at the table. Shaughnessy’s wasn’t too busy and Shannon told her it was her night off. She was wearing a pair of tight jeans and a t-shirt. She looked fairly normal considering what Keira had witnessed her in before.
“Oh, you’re adorable,” she said. Shannon was almost thirty. She had no kids and she wasn’t planning on settling down until she had to. “You know Ryan proposed to me,” she said. She tapped the ash off her cigarette. “Says he’s in love with me.”
Keira had a hard time believing Ryan being in love with anything, but money.
“If the offer is still on the table in a few years, I might take him up on it. Anyways,” she sighed. “How’s Charlie?”
Keira shrugged. Charlie had dropped her off with the promise of returning in an hour. He had business to take care of while she met with Shannon.
“Still afraid?” she asked.
Keira blushed.
“It only hurts a little and then it will start to feel good,” she said in a matter of fact tone.
Keira’s blush deepened.
“Have you done anything with him?” she asked. “Besides kissing.”
Keira shook her head.
Shannon burst out laughing. “You’re telling me Charlie’s actually letting you get away with that? So what are you so afraid of anyways?”
“I’m not afraid,” Keira said defensively. “I just want it to be right.”
Shannon looked at her as if she wasn’t sure how to respond. Then she sighed. “It’s hard to argue with something like that.”
Keira felt like she had won her over and wasn’t exactly sure why she was so glad to have done so.
“I wish he would understand that,” she lamented.
Shannon smiled in sympathy. “Maybe you could give him some concessions?” She stopped when she saw the look on Keira’s face. Keira wanted to wait, no exceptions.
“You know, I wish I had been more like you,” Shannon confessed.
~
Keira met Aidan outside the diner. She was happy to find that she was not the only one who had taken more care in what she wore for the evening. She wore a pair of dark jeans and a fitted top. She fixed her hair so it wasn’t frizzy and there were no fly-aways. She had done her makeup so that her eyes would stand out a little more, using minimal mascara to help. Aidan was wearing a collared shirt and a pair of black jeans. He smiled brightly when he spotted her.
Keira wasn’t sure what had possessed her to dress this way. Part of her knew it was because of her attraction to Aidan, but the other part knew that nothing would happen between them and she shouldn’t even be bothering. But still she was compelled to look her best, even though they were meeting in a smoky old dive, most frequented by grumpy old men.
They sat in a booth in the far corner of the place and ordered fries. Keira took out her anthology of Dickens so they could flip through it.
“Have you ever noticed the majority of his stories have the same plot line?” Aidan asked, examining the index of the book.
Keira laughed appreciatively. “But the people still fell for it. They ate his stuff up.”
They talked briefly of Dickens and their class. Keira admitted that his work more often than not gave her a headache and it took her weeks to read a simple story. Their discussion soon turned to other things.
“I prefer the movies, most time,” Aidan said. “But I’m not a great lover of books anyways.”
“That’s an awful thing to say to an English major,” Keira admonished mockingly.
“Well, I’m sorry, but it’s true. Maybe you could write a story that would actually capture my attention,” he grinned.
“What, may I ask, should I write it about?”
He laughed now. “An astoundingly beautiful girl and a rakishly handsome boy meet in a boring lecture and decide to become study partners. Then, they fall in love,” he said. “And the boy gets to ravish her whenever he wants.”
Keira blushed and he laughed. He put his hand over top of hers and stroked her knuckles with his thumb.
“I think it would top the bestseller’s list,” he said. “It would probably make a good movie too.”
Keira rolled her eyes. She removed her hand from underneath his and reached for a fry so that it would not appear as if she were retreating from his touch, but rather just hungry.
“Does that line work on other girls?” she asked.
He laughed again. “You tell me, it’s the first time I’ve used it. If it works I’ll have to add it to my list.”
They continued to joke with each other. But Keira kept her hands and any other body parts away from him. She liked how his warm, rough hands felt against her skin. It created a strange sensation in her stomach she couldn’t remember ever having and although it scared her she wanted to recreate it.
Once away from Aidan she knew that she wasn’t supposed to be having that feeling. Something was inappropriate about it and she felt guilty that she had not shared the feeling with Charlie instead. But she looked forward to when they would meet again, this time to talk about George Orwell.
~
Charlie kissed Keira good morning as he came back inside. He had gone out for a meeting and Keira had slept in. She sat at the island in the kitchen in her pyjama shorts and tank top.
“Breakfast?” he asked her.
“Yeah,” she mumbled. She was still tired. She had stayed up all night to finish working on an assignment that was due in the afternoon. “Remind me never to procrastinate until the last minute again.”
Charlie laughed. He pulled out the ingredients for an omelette and started the bacon in the frying pan.
“We should get an espresso machine,” she said.
He laughed again. “You don’t know the first thing about being a barista.”
She moaned. Her head hurt and her nose was stuffed. Charlie put something in front of her.
“You probably don’t want to see this right now, but your mother is going to call later to make sure you got it.”
Keira looked at the card he had put in front of her. It was a silver and white piece of cardboard, with curlicues and other scribbles etched into it. In the middle was written:
You are cordially invited by the
Murphy and O’Connell families
to celebrate the engagement of
Keira O’Connell to Charles Murphy.
The date and time were written underneath. Keira tossed the invitation onto the counter.
“Do we have to go?” she complained.
Charlie placed a plate in front of her with her breakfast on it. He ignored her question, knowing that it didn’t need to be answered. He sat down beside her at the island with a glass of water.
“Did she send a guest list too?” Keira asked.
“It’s on the dresser in the bedroom,” he said.
“Ugh. Now we have to pretend to like all of these people.”
He put an arm around her waist and moved his seat closer to her. He kissed her on the temple. “We’re in this together,” he said. “As long as we can stand each other, I think everything will be okay.”
She rested her head on his shoulder. “I hope so.”
Keira got home just in time to hear the phone ring and Ryan’s terrible ability to be polite.
“Just a sec, Mrs. O’Connell,” he said. “Keira! Phone!” he yelled.
Keira found him in the living room. She snatched the phone out of his hand and quickly darted out of earshot.
“Keira?” her mom asked.
“Yeah, hi.”
“Where were you? I call twice already today and you weren’t –”
“I was at school. I had an assignment due.”
Her mother didn’t skip a beat. “Did you get it?”
“What?” Keira played dumb and wished she hadn’t.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t get the invitation!” she yelled. Keira held the receiver far from her ear as her mother continued to yell at one of her friends. “She didn’t get it? Can you believe the postal system? What are our taxes paying for anyways? I mailed it yesterday!”
Keira’s headache returned at full force. “Mom?” she asked when the yelling had subsided and she could hear whoever was over talking to her mother.
“What?” she sounded angry.
“I got it.”
“Oh, good.” All of her anger had disappeared in a second. “What do you think?”
“It’s alright,” Keira said.
“It’s silver and white because we decided those should be your colours,” her mother said not really listening to her response.
“What about the pink flowers?”
Her mother clucked her tongue. “Well, honey, I don’t know. Pink just… it’s kind of girly.”
“I am a girl,” Keira pointed out.
“But Charlie is not. We thought we would go with more universal colours.”
Keira understood. I was only fair. “I still want pink flowers,” she said. It was her wedding, after all.
“We’ll talk about that later. I’m glad you like the invitations because I sent them out today,” she said. “I’ve got a pie in the oven and I have to go, sweetheart. I love you.” Keira hung up as her mother made kissing noises into the phone.
“Pink flowers?” Ryan was standing behind her.
“What do you want?” she snapped.
“Watch your tongue,” he warned.
Keira shoved the phone into his hand and stamped upstairs to be alone in her room until Charlie’s two idiot friends left.
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