Page 2 of Pansies

Aidan O’Donaghue. His eyes wet and bright like summer rain. In his hand was a piece of the thin green wire she used for her bouquets. “I’ve had enough of Tuesdays. I want to stay. Will you let me?” And as she watched, he went to one knee on the stone floor. “Will you marry me?”

She thought about it a moment. Her friends and family would like this. It would somehow make them approve of her. But what they wanted was not what Nora needed, and she already had everything she needed: her lover, her child, her shop, the wild seas, and the rough air. “No, Aidan. I won’t marry you.”2

The colour fled his face. “Nora, I—”

“But you can stay with me…with us.”Us. “As long as you want.”

What difference did it make, really, promises given in buildings and written in books? These things that let the world believe in what you had. Why did that matter, if she believed in it? If she believed in the way he looked at her and the way he touched her. The words he’d already given her. Their child. The life they could make together.

“I do.” He coloured a little, perhaps startled by his own certainty. “I want every day.”

She nodded, breathless and giddy suddenly on the realisation that he believed too, just like she did.

He laughed up at her, but he was shaking as he gently wound the piece of wire about her fourth finger. “Then this is today.”

She stretched her hand into the dusty sunlight.

“Tomorrow there will be another, and another, until your hands are full of all my days.”

And she looked at him, kneeling there, and smiled. Brighter than all the flowers in her shop.

1

“An’ wharraboot ye, pet?”1

“Huh?” Alfie made a valiant attempt to look like he’d been paying attention. “What about me what?”

Great Aunt Sheila jabbed him in the ribs. “When’s it ganna be your turn?”

Oh God. Was that going to be the question now?

“Well, you know…it’s just…how it is,” he mumbled.

The DJ, who was probably somebody’s uncle or somebody’s neighbour or somebody’s neighbour’s uncle, was playing Erasure’s early nineties classic “Always.” Which at that moment swept into a passionate crescendo.

Sheila cupped her hand to her ear. “Eh?” This was local speak forI’m sorry, could you say that again?

“I’m not really…”

“Eh?”

Always, da-da-da-dah-di-do… “I don’t think I’m the marrying…”Harmony, harmony, oh fuck it. “The thing is, I’m sort of gay.”

“Eh?”

“I’m gay.”

“Ye wha’, pet?”

“Gay. I’m gay. I like cock.”

Whoa, that was way too loud. It seemed to echo in the silence and—Wait,silence? Of course silence. The song had ended a couple of seconds ago.

Which meant Alfie was standing there. In the middle of his best friend’s wedding. Yelling about cock. While everybody stared at him.

He wasn’t an expert, but he was pretty sure there were better ways to come out.

Great Aunt Sheila rolled her eyes. “Well, we all knaa that, pet. But it’s nae reason not te be settled doon in this day an’ age.”2

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