Page 70 of If Not for My Baby
“Does that bother you?”
“It doesn’t. I’m honored by their enthusiasm,” he admits, guiding me into an empty meadow. “But I think they’d be disheartened to learn I’m a person just as they are.”
I rack my brain—comb through twenty-four years of summertime memories—and can’t come up with a single scene as stunning as this one. The field is a sprawl of green unhampered by shade or tourists or patches of dirt. It’s got to be ten acres. Tom sits down in the grass, pulling me onto his lap and sparing my jeans a splatter of morning dew. His chest is sturdy and warm beneath my back. I lean into him with a sigh and toe my boots off.
“This is like a screen saver.” My fingers find a tiny dandelion beside his splayed palm in the grass. I pluck it, spinning the itty-bitty stem between my thumb and forefinger as the seeds drift off. “How is it so empty?”
“Sheep Meadow doesn’t open until eleven.”
“But it’s not even seven.”
“Dreamland is over at SummerStage, just down that way.” He dips his head behind me. “I asked a favor of our security team.”
I twist and find our faces closer than expected. My chest flushes with the memory of last night. How his fingers felt against the slick of my skin. How he groaned my name. His eyes heat on mine, liquefying me.
“This is our first date.” I’m amazed when my voice isn’t just the sound of steam out of a kettle.
“It is.” His gaze settles on my lips. “That all right?”
I press my mouth softly against his in answer. He tasteslike sunlight and coffee beans. When I twine my hands in his hair, he releases a tight breath. His hands are still supporting us on the ground, and I feel like I’ve got him trapped in a way that makes my skin hot. Every swipe of my tongue across his draws another weak inhale from him. These kisses are drugging—slow and decadent. The shift of my body in his lap elicits a groan I know he didn’t intend to make. My tongue searches his mouth for more—more noises like that one, more shallow breaths—
“Clem,” he husks, tipping us forward to bring his hands around to my middle. I assume he’s going to say more, but his eyes are heavy on my mouth. I lick my lower lip, drawing it between my teeth, and he hisses out something that sounds like he’s been kicked in the ribs.
“I swear you’re going to break me.” His grasp tightens. “We should…we—” He cuts himself off, running a hand over his mouth in exasperation. “Tell me something about you.”
My lips twist. I want to be kissing so,somuch more. “Is this some puritanical issue with my age?”
“It’s not. I—” He runs his fingertips over the skin under my shirt as he thinks about his answer. We’re still folded into each other like factory-error pretzels. “Last night shouldn’t have happened the way it did.”
Clearly he notices all the blood drain from my face, because he presses a rushed kiss to my forehead and mutters, “Ah, no—Jesus, I can’t articulate for shite this morning. Right, it was brain-altering, Clem. I’ll be thinkin’ of that night when I’m ninety. And every single day until then. I just mean…I’m hoping to grow something here.”
This conversation is a horror movie and I am the final girl, sprinting off into the woods. I joke, “Something thwarted by kissing?”
“Somethin’ kissing is a part of, but serves not the sole purpose.”
“Oh, God,” I groan. Kissing is so much less frightening than getting to know each other. I don’twantto like him more than I already do.
His mouth turns up at the corners. “Conversin’ with me is so terrible you’re calling on your God?”
“Fine,” I grumble. “But you first.” Climbing out of his lap, I lie flat on the grass beside him. The gently swaying leaves of a maple tree shade the sun from my eyes but not my ankles, which warm under pale yellow light. “What’s it like back home?”
“Where to begin?” he asks, lying down beside me. Our hair mingles in the grass. Rich auburn and pearly ash blond. “The whole country’s wonderful, but there’s something different that hums where I live, in County Kerry. Something very powerful—it’s a beautiful thrumming you can feel in the legs of ye. Very green, too.”
I turn on my side to face him. “Would you ever live anywhere else?”
“At one time, actually, I thought I might live here, in New York.”
“I can’t imagine that.” Tom moves like flowing water. His voice is like wind sailing through oaks. I can’t imagine him pushing past pedestrians on garbage-lined sidewalks.
“After school when I was busking in Dublin, I was doingopen mic nights, gigs where I could find ’em.” He turns his face from the sky toward me and those eyes snatch the air from my lungs. “Car shows where you sing the jingles a cappella. The bard in heritage festivals…a real dignifying time in my life.”
“But you loved it?”
His face brightens. “If you can believe it, I did. One of the many cruelties of time. I’d thought the small gigs back then were grand, but I just wanted to have my work celebrated. Now I’ve gone and done it, and I wish I could go back. Wish I could walk into a pub and watch folks talk of their days and share their stories.”
“You can’t do that anymore?”
His eyes tip back to the sky in thought. “Everyone I’m tryin’ to watch is already watching me. It’s not the same. Likely never will be again. I haunt every establishment I’m in.”
