“That’s great.” I took a quick swig and regarded him fondly as he went into detail. After a while, he trailed into a comfortable silence and I took a deep breath. “Hey, I’m sorry if I was ever...too much.”
His eyes softened. “Natalie—you are the best student I have ever had. I want you to know that. You are intelligent, and dedicated, and easy to work with. And we’ll find Ivernis. Don’t worry. We’ll find it.”
My chest filled with so much—with bittersweet pleasure and pride, with sorrow. “Thanks,” I told him, from the bottom of my heart. “And you’re right. I’m
I was sure of it.
The O’Connors didn’t come back until the next Tuesday. After Mike flew to the States, the women spent the long weekend on the Aran Islands. Lauren invited me, but I figured they needed some legitimate family time. Besides, it gave me a weekend of kicking a ball around and drinking my feelings in the pub with Paul. I kind of liked doing that. Paul was refreshingly ticked off at the world, and good at grumbling about O’Connors.
But when I came back from the field Tuesday evening, I found the O’Connors in the dining room. I hovered in the hall, watching as they laughed and scarfed down a platter of scones. Anna noticed me first. “Hey!”
I stepped into the room. “How was your trip?”
Anna was off, but I couldn’t look away from Mike. He smiled, but it didn’t go much further than the surface, and I couldn’t tell if he was still angry or if we were okay. I wanted to get him alone, to talk to him, to hold him, but Anna was still talking.
“—and then we went to the Cliffs of Moher, which are the Cliffs of Insanity from
The abrupt switch—Anna had decided it was time for her to eat, and me to talk—made me start, as did the sudden weight of all the O’Connors’ eyes. I pulled my shoulders back and tried to smile. “There’s always some things to find. We’ve come across some pottery sherds. And cattle bones. But, uh—nothing to support a harbor.”
Kate’s sympathy nearly killed me. “That’s too bad.”
“It’s still the early stages. I mean, it’s a huge amount of land to cover. And while I thought my calculations were spot on—well. I guess I shouldn’t have been trusting maps based off Roman reconstructions of Greek sources, now, should I?” I laughed. The O’Connors didn’t.
I shoved my hands in my back pockets and my eyes found Mike’s. “I was going to go for a run. I don’t know if...?”
He was already standing. Anna started to speak up, and both her sister and mother kicked her.
This time my laugh came out a little more genuine. That was my kind of subtlety.
Mike was changed and downstairs in a moment. “You’re disappointed.”
“Dumb, right? I didn’t have any guarantees.” I broke into a jog, taking the northern path. A veil of fog covered the land, so every movement was oddly fascinating and disruptive. My gut knotted up with anxiety, and I tried to handle it by increasing my pace until we cleared the top of the fog and the cliff. Below us, blankets of white rolled in from across the sea like some actual, sentient creature. Above, the waxing moon hung low and pale in the gray sky, drifting in and out of ghosting clouds. I slowed and faced him. “I missed you.”
He looked back at me. “I missed you too.”
All I wanted was to kiss him, to cling to him, but my stomach still hurt. “Are you still mad at me?”
He closed the space between us. “No.”
“
He stroked his fingers along my temple and behind my ear. “I didn’t want to get hurt.”
“I don’t understand.” But even so, the knots in my stomach were slowing coming undone.
He smiled wryly. “Maybe I’ll explain someday.”
And then our mouths met, and it was like we were erasing all the time and distance apart. He was warm and strong and
We sat near the edge of the bluff, our legs pressed together, his arm around me. His voice had the cadence of music. “Tell me about Kilkarten.”
I sighed. “What if I was wrong? How can I have been so wrong?”
“You can’t know yet. It’s only been two weeks.”
“But what if there’s nothing?”
“Then you try again. You start over somewhere else.”
A strangled laugh came out. “How can I do that?”
He stretched his legs out before him. “I do it every year.”
It took me a moment to process what he meant. “But that’s different.”
“No, it’s not. I know exactly how it feels to want something so badly, and to fail and have to start over again. And again. To keep going even when you’re losing.”
I turned, slightly worried for him. “But it’s not your fault if you lose.”
“Sometimes it is. And it’s my career on the line. My reputation. And I have thousands of people watching. Counting on me. Hoping I’ll fail.”
“You shouldn’t carry that whole weight on your shoulders. It should be the whole team.”
“Natalie.” He shifted to face me. The moon brightened his hair to cold fire. “You shouldn’t be taking this completely on yourself, either.”
“I don’t know what I’ll do if there’s nothing.” To my embarrassment, my voice cracked and I started to sniff. “I’m sorry.” I pressed my hand to my nose and mouth, and then when that wasn’t enough, I pulled up my knees as though that would pull in my emotions. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“You’re stressed out.” He placed an arm around my shoulders and pulled me against him. His warmth seeped into me and edged out the damp air. “It’s okay.”
Was it? It didn’t get things done. Oh, it was useful enough as a way to release stress, but indulging in long crying jags always seemed pointless, when I could instead be working on how to solve the problem. “I don’t cry.”
He sounded wry. “So you’re not human?”
I laughed, and then pressed my hand to my head. “I have such a headache.”
“That’s what happens when you spend so much time trying not to cry.”
I flicked my eyes toward him. “And what would you know about that? Spend a lot of time bottling down tears?”
He leaned his head back, offering me a clear, strong profile.
I breathed out a long sigh. “No, but it’s the same when you’re bottling any emotion, isn’t it? And you keep your anger wrapped up in a charming smile.”
“No more than your anxieties are bow-tied with laughter.”
He had me. I shrugged. “Why cry when you can laugh?”
“Why yell when you can grin?”
We both stared up. “You think we’re kind of fucked up?”
“Utterly
I started laughing, and he started laughing, and then we were kissing in the cold night air. He twisted his upper body over mine, and I fell down into the grass, pricks of moisture chilling my arms until Mike’s hands swept over them.
We lay there, me curled into him. We watched the stars brighten. “I’ve spent my entire life thinking I knew what I wanted to do. I’m beginning to think I was wrong, and that scares me. It scares me to think that I might have to go to the conference and admit that there is no Ivernis, and Dr. Ceile was right and I’m just a dreamer.”
“Natalie. None of us are perfect. And you shouldn’t be scared at the conference. If there’s no site here, and
