Chapter 7: Javier's girlfriend
The lamb had been braising since mid-afternoon, its scent curling through the kitchen and up the stairs until it wrapped around every corner of the house. Seamus had insisted on doing the cooking that evening, shooing Roisin out of the kitchen with a tea towel flicked at her hip and a grin that creased his weathered face.
"Go on with you now," he had said. "Let a man do something for his family."
Roisin had laughed and left him to it, and now she sat in the sitting room with a glass of red wine, watching the evening light fade across the garden. She heard Javier's key in the front door, the familiar sound of his boots being toed off in the hall, the soft thud of his rucksack hitting the floor.
"Mum? I'm home."
The word still did something to her chest. Every time. She did not think it would ever stop doing that.
"In here, love," she called.
Javier appeared in the doorway, slightly flushed from his walk back from the university, a paperback tucked under his arm. His black eye had faded to a sickly yellow-green at the edges, the bruise now more memory than injury. He crossed the room and bent to kiss her cheek, and she caught the clean soap smell of him, the faint trace of rain on his jacket.
"Seamus is in the kitchen," she said. "He's making lamb. I've been banished."
Javier's eyebrows rose. "He cooks?"
"He does, when the mood takes him. His mother was from Kerry. She taught him well."
Javier dropped into the armchair opposite her, the one that had become his by unspoken agreement. "I should go help."
"You'll do no such thing. He's having a lovely time. He's been humming all afternoon." She tilted her head, studying the healing bruise on his face. "How are you feeling?"
"Better. Killian says I dropped my right hand after the first exchange. He's been making me drill it for two hours."
"Killian sounds like a hard taskmaster."
"He's a good man." Javier stretched his legs out, crossing his ankles. "He told me something today. He said the best fighters are the ones who never have to prove anything."
Roisin considered this. "And what do you think he meant by that?"
Javier shrugged. "I think he meant I should pick my battles. That I don't have to fight just because someone wants me to." He met her eyes. "But I couldn't just stand there while he was grabbing at Molly. I couldn't."
"No," Roisin said softly. "I don't suppose you could. It's not in you."
The kitchen door swung open and Seamus appeared, a tea towel draped over his broad shoulder, his face flushed with heat and satisfaction. "There he is. The returned hero. Come here and give me your opinion on the gravy."
Javier grinned and rose, crossing to the kitchen, and Roisin watched them go, the two of them disappearing through the doorway side by side, Seamus's large hand landing briefly on Javier's shoulder. She heard their voices low and easy, Seamus explaining something about reductions and timing, Javier asking questions like a student hungry for knowledge.
She finished her wine and followed them.
The kitchen was warm and steamy. Seamus had the lamb resting on the counter, a deep mahogany crust on it, the meat falling away from the bone. He was showing Javier the pan juices, tilting the pan so the light caught the glossy surface.
"What do you see?"
Javier leaned in. "The fat has separated. You want to skim it off before you make the gravy."
"Exactly right. Most people rush this step. They want to get to the eating. But if you rush the resting, you get tough meat. If you rush the gravy, you get greasy mess." Seamus looked up and saw Roisin in the doorway. "Ah, there's my girl. You've been banished long enough. Come and taste."
She came and stood between them, and Seamus held out a spoon of dark gravy for her to blow on and taste. She did, and closed her eyes.
"That's the best thing you've ever made."
"It's the company," Seamus said, and he winked at Javier.
They ate in the dining room, the heavy table set with the good linen and the candles that Roisin only brought out for special occasions. She had not asked why they were special tonight. She had simply lit them.
The conversation drifted from the lamb to Javier's studies to Seamus's latest building project, a renovation in Dalkey that was causing him grief with the planning office. Seamus told a long, winding story about a neighbour who had complained about the noise at seven in the morning, and the way he had resolved it by inviting the man over for tea and showing him the plans, and how they had ended up friends.
"You've a gift for that," Javier said. "For making people feel at ease."
Seamus considered this, chewing slowly. "I've learned that most people aren't difficult. They're just worried. Worried about disruption, worried about their property, worried about being taken advantage of. If you can show them you're not a threat, the worry goes away."
"Is that what you did with me?" Javier asked. "When I came to look at the room?"
Seamus and Roisin exchanged a glance, a long one, full of something Javier could not quite read.
"We did have a talk about you," Roisin said. "After you left. I told Seamus about the interview, and I said I had a feeling about you. And he said he trusted my feelings."
"I told her," Seamus said, "that any boy who could make her laugh like that was welcome in my house."
Javier looked down at his plate, something warm and unfamiliar spreading through his chest. "I'm glad you took a chance on me."
"We didn't take a chance," Seamus said simply. "We just recognised something."
After dinner, they cleared the table together, moving around each other with the ease of people who had done this many times, though they had only been doing it for weeks. Roisin washed, Javier dried, and Seamus sat at the table nursing a cup of tea, watching them with a quiet contentment.
"Your father taught you to box, then?" Seamus asked.
Javier shook his head. "There was a gym near our house in Valencia. I started when I was fourteen. My father was a mechanic. He worked long hours. The gym kept me out of trouble."
"And it stuck. You've got good instincts. The way you handled yourself with that lad in Temple Bar, that wasn't just training. That was experience."
Javier hung the tea towel over the rail. "I never wanted to be a fighter. I just wanted to be able to protect myself. And other people, if it came to it."
Seamus nodded slowly. "I boxed for about eight years, when I was a young man. Amateur. Never made much of it, but I learned things that stayed with me. Things I've been meaning to show you, if you're interested."
"I'm very interested."
Seamus pushed himself up from his chair. "Come on then. We'll go out to the patio. I'll show you a few things that might save your life someday, that don't involve standing in a ring with a referee."
Roisin watched them go, the kitchen door swinging shut behind them. She stood at the sink for a long moment, her hands in the warm soapy water, listening to the murmur of their voices through the glass. She had wanted children once. She had pictured this, a husband and a son in the back garden, the weight of the day falling away in the easy exchange of knowledge.
She had given up on that picture a long time ago. She had made her peace with it. And now here it was, delivered to her kitchen door by a boy with a Spanish accent and a black eye and a hopeful look in his eyes.
She dried her hands and went to the window.
The patio lights were on, casting a soft yellow glow over the flagstones. Seamus had taken off his jumper and stood in his shirtsleeves, his big hands raised in demonstration. Javier stood opposite him, mirroring the posture.
"The thing about street fights," Seamus was saying, his voice carrying through the glass, "is that they don't follow rules. A man who wants to hurt you will use anything: a bottle, a key, his head. You learned that the other night. That lad headbutted you before you even knew what was happening."
Javier touched the fading bruise under his eye. "He did."
"A headbutt is a short-range weapon. If someone gets that close, you have to decide in a second whether you're going to let them take the initiative or whether you're going to take it back." Seamus stepped in, demonstrating. "He grabbed you here, you said. The lapels. So you do this. You bring your hands up between his arms, break the grip, and then you've got his elbows trapped against your body. Now he can't move his arms, and you've got him."
Javier practised the motion, Seamus adjusting his hands with a patient touch.
"That's it. Now, if he's holding you and he's already committed to the headbutt, you don't try to block it. You move. You slip your head to the side, and you bring your shoulder up into the path of his face. He hits your shoulder, not your nose. And while he's stunned, you've got options."
They went through the movements again and again, Seamus patient, Javier absorbing the instruction with the same focused intensity he brought to his diving. Roisin watched until the chill of the evening began to seep through the glass, and then she turned away and began to make a pot of tea.
They came in twenty minutes later, both of them flushed, Seamus's shirtsleeves damp at the armpits, Javier's hair sticking up where he had run his hands through it.
"You're a quick learner," Seamus said. "Give me a week and you'll know everything I know."
"I doubt that," Javier said, but he was grinning.
Roisin poured them both tea and they sat in the sitting room, the fire crackling in the hearth. Seamus was in his armchair, Javier on the sofa, Roisin in the chair by the window with her feet tucked under her, her cup cradled in her hands.
"You know," Seamus said, "I never thought I'd have a son. But then you turn up at my door with your fancy accent and your motorcycle, and suddenly I'm teaching you street fighting in my own back garden."
Javier's smile softened. "I never thought I'd have a father. But then I moved to Dublin, and here we are."
Seamus cleared his throat, and Roisin saw the shine in his eyes before he looked down at his cup. He did not say anything for a moment, and then he said, "Well. That's that, then."
They sat in comfortable silence, the fire settling, the wind picking up outside the windows.
The next morning, Javier was up early, as always, his running trainers already laced when Roisin came downstairs in her dressing gown. She found him in the kitchen, filling a water bottle, the morning light still grey and soft.
"Off for your run?"
"Yes. Then I've got a lecture at ten."
"You're very dedicated."
"There's a girl in my class," he said, and Roisin's heart gave a small, unexpected lurch. "Molly. The one from the pub. She's been asking me to study together. I think I might take her up on it."
Roisin busied herself with the kettle to hide her expression. "That sounds nice. She's the American girl, isn't she?"
"Yes. She's good fun. Sharp, too. She picks things up faster than anyone else in the cohort."
"She sounds lovely."
Javier capped his water bottle and straightened. "She asked me out for coffee this afternoon. After the lecture." He hesitated. "Is that all right?"
Roisin turned to face him, her kettle in her hand, steam rising. "Why wouldn't it be all right, love?"
"I don't know. I just wanted to check. I don't want to be gone too long. I know you worry."
A soft warmth spread through her. "I do worry. I worry about you crossing the road and I worry about you on that motorcycle and I worry about you diving into the cold, dark sea. But I don't worry about you having coffee with a girl." She set the kettle down and came to him, reaching up to straighten the collar of his running jacket. "You're young. You should be going out. Meeting people. Having fun."
Javier looked down at her, and something passed between them, brief and complicated. "You're the best mum a lad could ask for."
"And you're the best son," she said, and her voice was only a little unsteady. "Now go on, before I get maudlin."
He laughed and kissed her cheek and was gone, the front door closing behind him with a soft click.
The lecture hall was half full, the last of the spring term winding down, students yawning into their laptops. Javier sat in his usual spot near the back, his notes open, his attention on the lecturer's diagrams of tidal flow patterns along the Irish coast. The science was familiar ground, but the professor had a way of framing it that made even the most well-worn material feel new.
A chair scraped beside him, and Molly dropped into it, her messenger bag thumping against the floor. She was out of breath, her cheeks pink.
"Made it," she whispered. "Barely. My alarm didn't go off."
Javier smiled. "Glad you did. You'd have missed the bit about sediment transport."
"I've seen that before. I'm here for the coffee after." She grinned at him, and he felt the warmth of it. She had a wide, open face, and when she smiled, it was like the sun coming out. "You're still on, right?"
"I'm still on."
"Good. I know a place. It's not far. They do the best pastries in Dublin."
The lecture proceeded, and Javier found himself distracted, his attention drifting to the girl beside him. Molly was the kind of woman he had usually been drawn to, soft, rounded, quick to laugh, generous with her attention. When someone in the class asked a question, she listened with her whole body, leaning forward, nodding, asking follow-up questions that showed she had been paying attention.
At the end of the lecture, she packed her bag and stood, and Javier did the same. They walked out together into the pale spring sunshine, and she led him through a maze of streets until they reached a small café squeezed between a bookshop and a pharmacy. The sign above the door read The Honey Pot, and the windows were steamed up from the warmth inside.
Inside, it was busy and loud, the air thick with the smell of fresh bread and roasting coffee. Molly ordered for them both, a flat white for herself and, after asking, a cortado for Javier, and a plate of almond pastries that she insisted were the best in the city.
"This is a nice place," Javier said, settling into a window seat. "How did you find it?"
"I did a semester abroad in Galway a couple of years ago. I got to know the city a bit, and Dublin a bit, from people who grew up here. This place came recommended."
"So you've been in Ireland before?"
"Yeah, but only for a few months. I always wanted to come back. There's something about it, isn't there? The light. The way people talk to each other."
Javier nodded. "I feel it too. I thought I'd miss Valencia. The sun, the sea, my family. But Dublin has a way of getting under your skin."
Molly took a bite of her pastry and closed her eyes. "God, this is good. I'm going to gain about thirty pounds this year."
"There's nothing wrong with that," Javier said.
She opened her eyes and looked at him, a question in them. "Is that a compliment?"
"It is what it is," he said, and he felt his ears go slightly warm.
Molly laughed, a sound that carried across the café and made a woman at the next table turn and smile. "I knew I liked you. You've got a gift for the ambiguous answer, like a proper diplomat."
"I try."
They talked for an hour, the conversation flowing easily from their studies to their families to their plans after the master's. Molly told him about growing up in Ohio, about her parents who ran a hardware store, about her older brother who had married a woman from Cork and was now raising two bilingual children.
"Your brother speaks Irish?"
"He speaks a bit. He's trying. The kids are bilingual in the way that kids are, mixing everything up. My niece called me last week and told me she was 'going to the jacks', and I was so proud I cried."
Javier laughed. "That's brilliant."
"What about you? You speak, what, four languages?"
"Five, if you count diving signals."
"That's cheating."
"It's still a language. I've had entire conversations underwater. There's a whole grammar to it. Hand positions, finger movements, combinations. You can say a lot with two hands and a dive mask."
Molly leaned forward, propping her chin on her hand. "Tell me about the diving. I've read your research proposals. You've done some serious work."
"I've been lucky. I got to work with some good people early on, and they gave me chances to do real things, not just lab time. I did a survey in the North Sea a couple of years ago, mapping cold-water coral reefs. It was freezing and dangerous and the best job I've ever had."
"Why dangerous?"
Javier shrugged. "North Sea diving is rough. The conditions can turn fast. You're on a boat, you go down, and the weather can change while you're under. There were days when we went down in sunshine and came up in a storm."
"Did you ever have a close call?"
He considered the question. "Once. We were on a wreck and my buddy's line got tangled. He was through the dive nearly a hundred feet down, and his line was caught on some rigging. It took us the better part of an hour to get him free. He was calm the whole time, which scared me more than if he'd panicked, because I knew he was using all his energy to stay calm, and that meant it was serious."
"What happened?"
"We got him free. We did a long decompression stop and came up slow. He never dived again. Sold all his gear and took up golf."
"That's awful."
"It was hard to watch. But it taught me something. The sea is honest. It doesn't care how much you want it, it only cares about what you're prepared to give it. And it will always ask for more."
Molly was very quiet for a moment. "That's a beautiful way to say something terrifying."
"It's the same in my field. We study the sea, but we also respect it. You can't love something you don't respect, not deeply."
She looked at him for a long moment, and he saw something shift in her expression, a softening she did not try to hide. "I think I'd like to hear more about the sea. Maybe sometime. Over dinner?"
Javier felt his pulse quicken. "I'd like that."
"Good." She pulled out her phone and started checking her schedule. "I'm free Thursday evening. There's a place near the river, they do great seafood. I've been wanting to try it."
"Thursday works."
They exchanged numbers, and she walked him back toward campus, their shoulders brushing as they walked. She was not tall, but she moved with a confidence that made her seem larger than she was, and she talked with her hands, her laughter punctuating the conversation like percussion.
When they parted at the campus gates, she squeezed his arm once, briefly. "I'm glad you asked me for coffee," she said.
"I'm glad you said yes."
She grinned, wide and warm, and then she was gone, walking away through the crowd, her messenger bag bouncing against her hip.
Javier stood there for a moment, watching her go, and then he turned toward home. He found himself smiling, and he did not try to stop it.
The house was quiet when he let himself in. The kitchen was spotless, the evidence of Seamus's cooking wiped clean. On the counter was a note, written in Roisin's careful hand.
Gone to the shop. Lamb in the fridge if you're hungry. There's a letter from your mother on the hall table.
Love, Mum.
Javier picked up the letter and carried it to the sitting room. He sat in his armchair, the one that had become his, and he read his mother's words, her handwriting looping and unhurried, full of questions about his studies and his health and whether he was eating enough. She wrote about his father, about the business, about the weather. She signed off the way she always did: Be careful with that heart of yours, my boy. It gives too easily.
He folded the letter and tucked it into his jacket pocket. From the kitchen window, he could see the garden, the evening light falling across the patio where Seamus had taught him to break a grip and deflect a headbutt. Somewhere out there, the sea was rising and falling against the coast, indifferent and eternal.
His phone buzzed. A message from Molly.
Thursday at seven. Wear something nice.
He smiled, and wrote back: I will.
He sat in the quiet house, the light fading around him, and thought about the strange and wonderful way his life had bent in these past few months. A room in a stranger's house. A family he had not expected to find. A girl who made him laugh and made him think. And beneath it all, the constant hum of the sea, calling him forward.