The Souls of Drowned People

Chapter Twenty Six

Rachael patched up my cheek as much as I would let her, but I wouldn’t let her put anything on it that might speed up the healing.

            “You’ll be healed again in no time,” she said, patting my other cheek reassuringly.

            Cillian didn’t seem to understand the meaning on the gash, either. When he first saw it, when it was still bright and bloody, he threatened to kill whoever did it. I had to write it down for him before he realized.

            “Well, then, I guess I owe something to your new friends,” he said.

            Their names are Sheenagh and Aisling, I wrote on the notebook paper I had been carrying around.

            “Sheenagh and Aisling. Right. And how’s Ronan?”

            Ronan is such a dick. When I held the paper up for him to see, Cillian kissed my bandaged cheek.

            “I knew there was a reason I loved you.” He led me to the couch, putting his arm around my shoulders. “You’re okay, though? They’re treating you okay?”

            I nodded, and touched his cheek. He looked so hollow.

            “I’m okay too,” he said, reading my concern.

            “You haven’t eaten in two days!” his mother shouted from the kitchen. “Hasn’t slept a wink, either!”

            Cillian rolled his eyes. “Because apparently all I ever do is eat and sleep.”

            I curled against him. He was losing weight. I could feel it in the way his ribcage felt fragile when I wrapped my arms around him. His eyes were still as puffy and red as the cut on my face.

            “He cried all night,” Bridget whispered later whispered to me in the kitchen. “I could hear him. Absolute sobbing. It was awful.”

            I ate dinner with the Coneellys and my mother. It was an awkward, quiet dinner. Cillian ate about two bites, holding my hand underneath the table the whole time. But he probably took more bites than my mother said words. It ended up just being Rachael and John, discussing senseless things, the weather and the fishing industry, to make up for the void of silence that was swallowing us.

            The weather did get worse, since I left the water. Angry clouds filled the sky once again, and I wondered if Ronan had heard by now.

            “Are you going to stay tonight?” Cillian asked as I helped Bridget put away the dishes. “Please tell me you’ll stay.”

            I looked warily out the window.

            “It’s just rain,” he said, even as the windows shook with the wind. “It’s too rainy for you to go back out, anyway. You have to stay.”

            It was a terrible excuse. My blood was cold now, the rain didn’t bother me. But Cillian and I used it, and snuggled under the warm quilts, looking at the sailboats on his walls, I was glad for an excuse to stay.

            “I think the nights are gonna be the worst,” Cillian said. “During the daylight, I can go on with life and manage just fine, as long as I’m doing stuff. As long as I’m keeping busy, I wouldn’t get too depressed about it all. But at night . . . god, last night was awful. In the darkness everything haunts you, you know? It all comes back to haunt you. And it was just taunting me last night. It was saying, ‘you’re an idiot, Cillian Coneelly, and I hope you know it. Loving her all your life, and letting her go like that.’” He laughed weakly. “The dark’s not half as scary though, with you here.”