Читать книгу Falling out of Heaven - John Lynch - Страница 11

I see you as I first saw you, your eyes shining, your face offered to me as I bent to kiss it. We were in a bar in County Clare, behind us people were celebrating New Year’s Eve, and we had slipped away and left them to put the old year to bed. We stood on the small wooden pier that fronted the pub and watched the night sky turn in glitter and ice high above us.

How long ago that New Year’s Eve seems and yet sometimes in a moment when my weary spirit is caught off-guard, I taste your sweetness once more as if it was all about to happen again. I’ll be ready this time and meet you on the long pier, which divided the sea and held us and our dreams that night long ago.

‘I love you.’

‘I know,’ you said.

‘Do you?’

‘Do I what? Know that you love me?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Oh you mean…?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do I love you? What do you think?’

‘I think yes.’

‘Then you think right,’ you said.

Just after, you smiled and quickly closed your lips over your teeth, and a slight embarrassment flickered across your eyes. It was because one of your incisors was crooked, I’d seen you do it many times, most especially in company. It gave you a vulnerability that made me want you more. I remember I put my fingers to your lips and ran my thumb across them, holding your eyes.

‘But…’

‘Love isn’t just saying. It’s doing too,’ you said.

‘I love your mouth.’

‘Gabriel, I’m serious.’

‘The wow of your mouth.’

‘Gabriel?’

‘Yes?’

‘Are you listening?

‘Yes.’

‘Then show me, Gabriel. Show me.’

‘Your lips…so beautiful.’

‘Gabriel.’

‘Yes?’

‘Words are easy. I don’t want that, do you hear, I don’t want that.’