Chapter 6: The Morning After
Roisin had not slept. She had lain beside Seamus in the dark, listening to the steady rhythm of his breathing, and every time she closed her eyes she saw the bruise blooming beneath Javier's eye, the cut along his cheekbone, the way he had smiled at her through the blood as if it were nothing at all.
She had got up twice. Once to check the door of his room, not to open it, just to stand there in the hallway with her hand flat against the wood, feeling the silence on the other side. The second time she had gone downstairs and made tea she did not drink, standing at the kitchen window in her dressing gown while the streetlamps burned orange against the wet Dublin dark.
By half past seven the house was beginning to wake. She heard the soft groan of the pipes in the walls, the familiar settling of the old Victorian bones. She had already laid out the medical kit on the kitchen counter, the antiseptic and the cotton wool and the little tube of arnica cream she kept for bruises. She had done this the night before, when he came in with his face a mess and his jacket spotted with rain. But the night had been a blur of towels and warm water and Seamus's big hands steady on Javier's shoulders, and now the morning felt like a second chance to do it properly.
She heard his door open upstairs, then his footsteps on the landing, the particular weight of them. He moved differently in the mornings, she noticed, less measured, more loose-limbed. She pressed her hands flat on the counter and waited.
Javier came down the stairs and stopped in the doorway of the kitchen. He was wearing a soft grey t-shirt and jogging bottoms, his hair still damp from the shower. The bruise had ripened overnight, spreading from the corner of his eye into his cheekbone in shades of purple and yellow, and the cut had crusted into a dark line. He smiled when he saw her, and the smile made the bruise seem worse somehow, more violent against the easy warmth of his face.
"Morning," he said.
"Don't you dare tell me you're going for a run."
His smile widened. "I was thinking about it."
"Javier Barreiro."
"Okay, okay." He held up both hands, palms out, and crossed to the kitchen table. "I was thinking about it. I wasn't going to do it."
She watched him sit, the careful way he lowered himself into the chair, and she felt something twist in her chest. He was always so capable, so self-contained. He had handled the whole thing with a calmness that had made her want to shake him. A man had tried to smash his face in and he had simply dealt with it, the way he dealt with everything, as if it were just another problem to solve.
"It looks worse this morning," she said, coming around the table with the cotton wool and the bottle of antiseptic.
"It's always worse the next day. Killian says it's the swelling coming up."
"Killian. The boxing man."
"The boxing man." He tilted his head back, offering her his face, and the gesture was so trusting, so unguarded, that she had to take a breath before she could touch him.
Her hands were trembling. She could see it, the fine tremor in her fingers as she soaked the cotton wool. She pressed it against the cut on his cheekbone, gentle as she could manage, and he did not flinch.
"I didn't sleep," she said.
"I figured. The light was on in the kitchen."
She did not look at him. She swabbed the wound with small, careful circles, working the dried blood loose. He smelled of soap and something underneath, clean and warm and young.
"I kept seeing it," she said. "Your face. The blood. I kept thinking about what could have happened. What if he'd had a knife? What if there had been two of them?"
"There wasn't."
"But what if there had been?"
He reached up and caught her wrist, very gently, and brought her hand down. His fingers were warm around her arm, and she felt the tremor in her own hand quiet against his grip.
"Mum," he said.
The word stopped her. He had called her that a handful of times now, always in that easy, natural way, and every time it did something to her chest that she could not name.
"I can't promise nothing will ever happen," he said. "That would be a lie, and I don't want to lie to you. But I can promise I'll always come home." He squeezed her wrist. "I'll always come home to you."
She stood very still, her hand caught in his, and she felt the tears prick behind her eyes. She blinked them away, hard, and gave a small, watery laugh.
"You're a ridiculous boy," she said.
"Ridiculous, maybe. But I'm a marine biologist. I'm very good at coming home. It's part of the training."
"You'll have to show me the paperwork."
She pulled her hand free, but she did not move away. She picked up the arnica cream and squeezed a little onto her fingertip, and he tilted his head back again without being asked. She smoothed the cream over the bruise, her touch feather-light, and he watched her with those dark, steady eyes.
"Thank you," he said.
"Don't thank me. Just stop getting punched in the face."
"I'll put it in my diary."
She smacked his shoulder lightly, and he laughed, and the tension in the room loosened, just slightly. She was still smiling when Seamus came down the stairs, his footsteps heavy on the treads.
"Well now," Seamus said, filling the kitchen doorway. "Look at the pair of you. Like a nurse and her patient."
"Someone has to look after him," Roisin said. "He's hopeless."
"Hopeless, is it?" Seamus crossed to the kettle and filled it, his big back to them. "I heard you were thinking about a run this morning, son."
Javier shot Roisin a look. "Who told you that?"
"Nobody had to tell me. I can see it in your face. You're a man who likes to be moving." The kettle clicked on and Seamus turned, leaning against the counter, his arms crossed. "And that's exactly why we're going to do something different today. No running. No boxing. I'm going to show you a few things they don't teach in the ring."
Javier raised an eyebrow. "Things they don't teach in the ring."
"Things you'd only learn in a pub car park at closing time, if you were unlucky enough to need them. Or lucky enough to have someone teach you before that happens."
Roisin looked between them, and she felt a small, warm glow settle in her chest. She had seen the way Seamus had looked at Javier the night before, the way he had kept his hand on the boy's shoulder the whole time they were cleaning him up. A quiet pride in his eyes, the kind she had never seen him wear before.
"After breakfast," Seamus said. "The garden's still wet but the back patio's dry. We'll do it out there."
They had breakfast together at the heavy wooden table. Roisin made porridge and toast, and Seamus fried eggs the way he always did on Saturday mornings, crispy at the edges, the yolks just barely set. Javier ate everything she put in front of him and asked for more, and she felt a ridiculous surge of pleasure every time he scraped his plate clean.
"You'll eat us out of house and home," Seamus said, but he was smiling.
"It's all the training. Killian says I need the fuel."
"Killian says a lot of things."
"He also says I'm a natural. He says I think too much in the ring, but I'm a natural."
"Thinking too much will get you hit," Seamus said. "That's the first thing you need to unlearn. Your head's a weapon, not a calculator."
Javier grinned, and the grin pulled at his bruised cheek, making him wince. "You sound like him."
"I've known Killian thirty years. We grew up on the same street." Seamus pushed his chair back and stood, gathering his plate. "Right. Give yourself twenty minutes to digest, then meet me on the patio. Wear something you don't mind getting dirty."
Javier stood too, reaching for his plate, but Roisin took it from him before he could. "Go on with you," she said. "I'll do the washing up. The two of you go play your games."
Seamus planted a kiss on the top of her head as he passed, and she felt the familiar weight of his hand on her shoulder, the easy affection of thirty years of marriage. Javier lingered a moment, hovering by the table, and she saw him watching them with an expression she could not read.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Nothing." He shook his head. "Just. I like this."
"Like what?"
"This." He gestured vaguely at the kitchen, at the sunlight coming through the window, at the steam still rising from the kettle. "The whole thing. Saturday morning breakfast. Someone telling me off for eating too much. It's nice."
She felt her heart turn over in her chest. "We like it too, love."
He smiled at her, a soft, unguarded smile that made him look even younger, and then he went upstairs to change.
She stood alone in the kitchen for a long moment, the plates in her hands, and she felt something fragile and precious resting in her chest. She was careful not to examine it too closely. She was careful not to press on it. Some feelings were like bruises, she had learned. If you kept touching them, they only got worse.
The patio was a wide, sheltered flagstone terrace at the back of the house, half-wrapped by the garden wall and the overhanging branches of the old apple tree. Seamus had swept it clean of leaves and debris, and he stood in the middle of it in an old tracksuit, his big hands resting on his hips.
Javier came out through the back door, barefoot, in a pair of old jogging bottoms and a t-shirt that had seen better days. Seamus looked him up and down and nodded.
"Right," he said. "First thing. You got a black eye because you boxed him. Do you want to tell me what happened?"
Javier shrugged. "He grabbed my friend. I told him to leave her alone. He came at me."
"Did you see the headbutt coming?"
"No."
"That's the problem." Seamus stepped closer, and despite himself, Javier took a half-step back. Seamus grinned, delighted. "Good. That's the instinct. It doesn't matter what it is, a headbutt, a punch, a bottle. Your body knows before your eyes do. The trick is learning to listen to it."
He spent the next hour teaching Javier things that had nothing to do with footwork or jabs. How to turn a headbutt into a shoulder to the jaw. How to break a grab by rotating the wrist against the thumb. How to use the heel of the palm, the point of the elbow, the knee when the distance closed. How to fall without hurting yourself, and how to get up already moving.
They worked slowly at first, Seamus demonstrating the movements with his own body, big and deliberate, and then faster, until Javier was sweating and laughing, his breath coming in sharp bursts.
"You're using your eyes too much," Seamus said, stepping in and catching Javier's wrist. "Feel the weight. The moment he touches you, you know where he is. You don't need to look."
"How do you know where he is without looking?"
"Because you can feel him. The air changes. The weight shifts. You're a diver, right? When you're down in the dark, you don't see the fish before you feel them. Same thing."
Javier blinked. "That's actually the same thing."
"Course it is. It's all instinct. Your brain's just a passenger."
Seamus stepped back and raised his fists, a clumsy version of a boxing guard, deliberately wrong. "Come on then. Take me down."
Javier circled him, cautious, and Seamus grinned, egging him on with small gestures. Javier moved in quickly, reaching for Seamus's wrist, and Seamus moved faster than a man his size had any right to, catching Javier's arm and twisting, sending him stumbling forward with his back against the wall.
"There," Seamus said, holding him there, not painfully, just firmly. "You feel that? That's what it feels like when someone who knows what they're doing gets hold of you. You don't fight it. You go with it, use the momentum."
He released Javier and stepped back. Javier turned, grinning, his eyes bright.
"Again," Javier said.
They went again. And again. Each time Seamus found a new way to put him on the ground, a new trick to show him, and each time Javier got up and asked for more. By the end of the hour, Javier had learned to fall properly, to roll with a throw, to bring his weight low and heavy. The garden was littered with the evidence of their practice, the disturbed flagstones, the displaced leaves, the water from his earlier run shining on the stone.
"You're a quick learner," Seamus said, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand.
"Good teacher."
"Your mum would have loved this."
Javier's expression flickered, just briefly, and then he smiled. "She'd have worried I was getting into trouble."
"Watching you getting thrown around a garden is a lot less trouble than watching you stumble home with your eye swollen shut." Seamus clapped him on the shoulder, heavy and warm. "Speaking of which. We should get you cleaned up before Roisin sees you. She'll have a fit."
Javier looked down at himself. His t-shirt was damp with sweat and streaked with dirt, his knees were grazed, and his bruised eye had darkened further with the exertion. "She's going to kill me."
"She's going to fuss over you. Different thing entirely." Seamus walked with him back toward the house, and his hand stayed on Javier's shoulder. "You did good today, son. I mean it. You've got good instincts. You just need to trust them more."
Javier felt the warmth of the words settle into him. Son. Seamus said it so easily now, so naturally. There was no weight to it, no discomfort. It was just a fact. He was their boy, and they were his parents, and it was the strangest and loveliest thing he had ever known.
Roisin met them at the back door, her arms crossed, a dish towel over her shoulder. She looked at both of them, muddy and flushed, and sighed.
"I'm not even going to ask," she said.
"Good woman," Seamus said, pressing past her into the house.
Javier paused at the door, and she reached up to touch the bruise on his face, her fingers gentle on the purple skin.
"Sore?" she asked.
"A little."
"Come on, then. I'll get you some ice."
She led him inside, through the warm kitchen and into the utility room where she kept the freezer. She wrapped ice in a clean tea towel and pressed it gently against his cheek, and he held it there himself, his eyes closing with a soft sigh of relief.
"Sit down," she said. "I'll bring you some water."
"I'm fine, I promise."
"Sit."
He sat, on the little stool by the washing machine, and she filled a glass of water from the tap and handed it to him. He drank it all, and she took the glass and refilled it, and when she gave it back he drank it again.
"You two looked happy out there," she said.
"We were. He's a good teacher."
"He is." She leaned against the counter, watching him. "He's been talking about doing this for years. When he was younger he was a boxer, did you know that?"
"No."
"Amateur. Light heavyweight. He was good, too. Went to the nationals when he was nineteen, lost in the quarterfinals. He still talks about it like it happened yesterday."
Javier smiled, the ice pack still pressed to his cheek. "He never mentioned it."
"He wouldn't. He's not one to talk about himself. But he loves this, teaching. He loves having someone to teach." She paused, and her voice softened. "He's never had that before. Not really. We never had children, you know. It's just been the two of us, all these years."
Javier lowered the ice pack, looking at her. "Do you regret it?"
The question hung in the air between them, fragile and honest. Roisin considered it, her hands wrapped around the edge of the counter.
"I regret parts of it," she said slowly. "I used to think about it more than I should. What it would have been like. Little voices in the house. School runs and homework and someone to worry about." She smiled, a little sadly. "But you can't regret the life you got. You can only live it."
Javier was very still, the ice pack forgotten in his lap. "I'm glad you did it. The way you did. The room. Taking in students."
"And I'm glad you answered the ad." She came across the little room and stood over him, and she reached down to touch his hair, gently, almost reverently. "We didn't know what we were looking for. We just knew we were missing something. And then you walked into that coffee shop, and you were just so . She shook her head. "I don't know how to explain it."
"You don't have to explain it."
She let her hand rest on his shoulder, and he leaned into the touch, just slightly, just enough. They stayed like that for a long moment, the world reduced to the small warm space between them.
Then Seamus's voice boomed from the kitchen. "Are you two going to hide in there all day or is anyone going to make lunch?"
Roisin laughed, the tension breaking, and she squeezed Javier's shoulder before stepping back. "Come on," she said. "He'll eat a horse if we don't feed him."
They had lunch in the dining room, the three of them around the heavy wooden table. Seamus talked about his week on the construction site, the headaches and the triumphs, and Javier listened, asking questions that made Seamus light up with enthusiasm. Roisin watched them both, her eyes moving from one to the other, and she felt something deep and peaceful settle in her chest. The house was full of life. It was what she had always wanted.
After lunch, Seamus went out to the garage to do something with his tools, and Javier offered to help Roisin with the dishes. They stood side by side at the sink, her washing and him drying, and the afternoon sunlight streamed through the window, warm and gold on the old tile floor.
"You know," she said, handing him a plate, "he's never called anyone 'son' before. Not once. In all the years I've known him."
Javier took the plate, ran his cloth over it. "What do you mean?"
"I mean it. We've had lodgers before. Students, a few over the years. He was always kind to them, always generous. But he never called them that. Not once."
Javier was quiet for a moment, turning the plate over in his hands. "I like it," he said finally. "When he says it. I like the way it feels."
"Good," she said. "Because I don't think he's going to stop now."
Later, when the dishes were done and the kitchen was clean, Javier went upstairs to shower off the sweat and the dirt. He stood under the hot water for a long time, letting it run over his shoulders, and he looked at himself in the mirror when he came out. The bruise was starting to fade at the edges, going yellow-green beneath the purple. His body ached pleasantly, the muscles in his shoulders and back singing from the morning's work.
He touched the bruise gently, his fingers tracing the line of his cheekbone, and he thought about Roisin's hands on his face, the tremble in them, the way she had said his name. He thought about Seamus in the garden, his big hands gentle when they taught, firm when they corrected. He thought about the word son, and the way it settled into his chest like a key turning in a lock.
He was theirs. He did not know when it had become so real, so absolute, but it was. He was their boy, and they were his parents, and he would spend the rest of his life trying to deserve it.
Downstairs, he found them in the sitting room, Seamus in his armchair with the paper and Roisin on the sofa with a book. The afternoon light had deepened into early evening, gold and soft through the tall windows. They both looked up when he came in.
"Better?" Roisin asked.
"Much." He crossed the room and dropped onto the sofa beside her, close enough that their shoulders almost touched. "Thank you. For today. Both of you."
Seamus looked up from his paper, his eyes warm above the rim. "No need to thank us, son. That's what family's for."
Javier swallowed against the sudden tightness in his throat. "I know," he said. "I just wanted you to know I know."
Roisin reached over and took his hand, her fingers warm around his, and they sat together in the yellowing light of the evening, three people who had found something they had not known they were looking for. The silence was comfortable, full of ease, and the only sound was the turning of a page and the distant ticking of the old clock on the mantelpiece.