Ashthorne

By the time I  locked up, the sky over May Town had gone a particular burnt orange of early evening in late summer, and my bag sat heavier on my shoulder than a single book should have accounted for.

I  was three houses from my front door when I  saw him.

Cillian stood on his porch, seemingly doing nothing more than watering a row of potted herbs that, as far as I  had ever seen, he never once used. For a moment, I  considered walking past without a word the way I  usually did.

 It would have been easy. That would have been smart, given the strange hum still humming low in my blood. The sense that something in me had shifted sideways and hadn't yet settled back into place.

Before I had even reached his gate, he looked up like he'd felt me coming and our eyes met. The same jolt from that morning ran through me again, except this time it was stronger, sharper, like a struck match instead of a lit candle.

"You look terrible," he said. Not unkindly. If anything, there was something almost urgent underneath it.

"Thank you," I said. "That’s very sweet of you to notice." I said shyly, hoping he wouldn’t notice the redness of my cheeks from interacting with him.

"I’m serious." He set the watering can down on the porch rail, and he was moving toward the gate before I  quite registered it. He closed the distance between us in a handful of long strides and he was close enough now that I  could see the muscle working in his jaw. The strange focus in his eyes that were not quite green nor gold. Something caught between the two, shifting like the color couldn’t make up its mind.

 "You’re pale. Are you sick?" He was so close now, I could smell his cologne and that made me weak in the knee.

Grab a hold of yourself, Aurora. I screamed internally.

"Long day”, I managed to find my voice and replied to him. “Mrs. Higgins had opinions about the new romance shipment and my mother made me sort four boxes of a dead woman’s belongings. I’m tired, not dying, if that’s the diagnosis you’re working toward." I voiced out as nonchalantly as I could manage.

It wasn't a lie, exactly. It just wasn't the whole of it, and she felt the omission sit strangely in her mouth, a held breath disguised as a sentence.

"And wow. You said two whole sentences  and it seemed like you were concerned for me. Careful, Mr. Ashthorne, someone might think you don’t hate me." I tried to joke to defuse the electricity and awkwardness in the air.

"I don’t hate you." It came out fast, like it had escaped before he’d meant to let it. Something flickered across his face that might have been embarrassment, if I had ever seen him embarrassed before, which I hadn’t, not once in two years.

He recovered quickly, jaw tightening again, the shutters coming back down behind his eyes. "You just make it difficult to be neighborly."

"I make it difficult?." I let out a short laugh in total disbelief. "You’ve said maybe forty words to me since you moved in, and about thirty of them were about my delivery truck blocking your driveway." And like that, we were back to bickering.

"It was blocking my driveway."

"For eleven minutes."

"Eleven minutes I needed."

"For what? You don’t even have a car." I retorted smartly.

That seemed to catch him off guard for a moment. It was like I had stepped somewhere I  wasn't supposed to. Despite the strange simmering unease still sitting low in my stomach from the afternoon, found myself almost enjoying it. It wasn't often I caught Cillian Ashthorne without a ready answer, in fact, I’ve never caught him speechless.

"That’s not the point," he said, which wasn’t an answer at all.

"No, I don’t imagine it is." I taunted him, basking in my moment of glory.

We stood there a moment, the space between us charged with something I didn't have a name for. It was not hostility neither was it familiarity, but close enough to both that it made my skin feel too tight.

 The evening had gone quiet around us, the kind of small-town quiet where you could hear a screen door two streets over, and Cillian was still looking at me like he was trying to solve a problem I hadn't told him I had.

"You really do look pale," he said again, softer now, and there was something in his voice I had never heard directed at me before. It wasn’t his usual clipped politeness nor the barely restrained irritation. It almost sounded like worry.

For one unguarded second, the words sat right at the back of my teeth. “I found a book today, and it did something to me, and I don't know what, and I don't know why the first person I want to tell is you” and I almost let them out before some part of me closed back over the impulse like a fist.

I didn't know him. Two years of clipped hellos and one bad afternoon over a parking dispute didn't add up to the kind of trust that let you hand someone the strangest thing that had ever happened to you and ask them to catch it gently. Yet, I thought about telling him first before telling anybody.

"I’m fine," I  said instead and smiled to make it convincing. "Tired. That’s all."

Something in his face didn't quite believe me, I could see it. The faint crease between his brows, the way his eyes tracked over me like he was cataloging something he couldn't name but he didn't push. I was grateful for that even as some small, unreasonable part of me wished that he would probe further.

"Get some rest, then," he said finally. "You look like you need it."

"Careful. Two nice things in one conversation. People will talk, rumors travel fast around here" I said with a tired smile.

Something almost like a smile touched the corner of his mouth and it was gone as fast as iit came. It was the first one i could ever remember seeing on him, and it did something unfair and complicated to my pulse.

"Goodnight, Aurora." He breathed and it felt like music to my ears. My pulse thrummed wildly and I involuntarily took a step back.

Before I could do something I would never recover from, I turned on my heels and sped walk the rest of the distance to my house, feeling his eyes burning holes in my back every step of the way.

It wasn’t until I clicked the lock behind me when I ebtered my house that I allowed myself to breathe. I  didn't understand him, never had. I replayed our encounter in my head as I made dinner and kept wondering why I had the urge to tell him about everything that happened that afternoon. About the book.

              My parents were still out by the time I was done eating. Mom had some late errands to run out of time and would be back late while dad said he would be working later than usual so the house was mine. It was quiet and dim, every lamp throwing soft yellow light over furniture that had been the same for as long as I  could remember.

 I showered, dressed in one of my nice sleep wears and brought out the source of my constant attention since I first set my eyes on it that morning. I sat on the edge of my bed for a long time with the book unopened in my lap, the cover cool again now, ordinary-seeming and easy to mistake for nothing at all.

I  thought about knocking on Cillian's door and finally saying it out loud but I decided against it, again. Get it together and focus on the matter at hand, I told myself. I  thought about the shape across the street outside the shuttered theater, and told myself, one more time, that it had been nothing.

Downstairs, the old grandfather clock in the front hall struck eight, and I set the book on my nightstand and did not open it. I told myself that tomorrow, once the new light of day shines on everything, all of this would feel smaller.

I was wrong, though I wouldn't know it for another hour yet.