I put it back on.

  Then took it back off.

  I arranged my curls into a twist with bobby pins.

  Then ripped them out and messed up my hair.

  I arranged them again.

  I ripped them back out.

  I applied lipstick Joan lent me from her purse that afternoon after I shyly, sheepishly asked.

  I wiped it off.

  I carefully put the pretty red back on.

  I hastily smeared it away.

  I was out the door on my way downstairs in my paint-dotted jeans and a t-shirt with my hair down and not a trace of makeup when I stopped at the top of the staircase. Rolling my eyes at myself, I ran back to my room and quickly threw on the lavender dress, pulled up my hair, and ran the lipstick over my puckered mouth, blotting on a piece of toilet paper the way Joan motherly showed me to.

  Although I would never admit it aloud, I was standing as Declan entered the dining room mostly so that he would see me.

  He entered with his normal brisk stride, laser-focused on his plate already set at the table. It wasn’t until he pulled out his chair, sat, and spread his napkin across his lap that he spoke. “Why are those on the table?”

  Certain he wouldn’t hurl the vase out the window, I adjusted it a smidge and walked toward my end of the table. I swallowed back my disappointment that he hadn’t noticed me. It was silly to expect that, after all. “I thought the place could use some brightening up,” I said as I pulled my chair in, forcing a smile.

  “I don’t like it,” he grumbled. “It’s too bright.” Declan chewed on a piece of meat, not bothering to look over at me.

  I pushed a couple peas around my plate and wished I had kept on my jeans. I was promising myself not to make the same mistake again.

  Declan spoke again. “You look nice.”

  It was said so softly and so quickly that I almost missed it. Almost. But I heard it. Declan was already slicing into his meat, his attention fixed on his plate, but I smiled at him nonetheless. Because he said it. And I heard it.

  Unable to stop myself from grinning, I spooned up a heaping pile of peas glistening with butter and closed my eyes as their fresh flavour popped in my mouth. It wasn’t like I could stop the giddy, delighted purr that escaped my lips even if I wanted to. And I definitely didn’t want to.

  I opened my eyes to survey the plate and consider the agonising choice of what to eat next. Everything looked so divine, how could I pick? As my fork hesitated over the peas versus the carrots, I noticed Declan giving me that look again from across the table.

  “What?”

  He quickly shook his head. “Nothing.”

  But as I was chewing on a tender, flavourful, oh so juicy piece of chicken breast and making little sounds of pleasure, I heard Declan clear his throat loudly. Upset that I was forced to rush through my bite, I opened my eyes and levelled at look at Declan. “What?”

  His eyes flickered up at me from his plate before he continued to eat.

  “What?” I insisted. “What is it?”

  “Nothing.” He shrugged. “It just seems like you’re enjoying your dinner.”

  I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms over my chest. “I am.”

  Declan twirled his fork in the pasta and I was about to return to my own plate when he spoke again. “Perhaps a little too much.”

  I frowned across the table at him. “What does that mean?”

  He carefully set down his fork and knife, then bridged his fingers, elbows resting on the table. “Those little noises you make…” He paused. “They sound like noises a woman makes during…”

  I saw what looked like a blush on his cheeks. I narrowed my eyes. “Sex?”

  If Declan wasn’t blushing before, he was definitely blushing now.

  I tried to hide the little hint of a grin on my lips at his obvious discomfort. “Well, it makes sense, you know,” I said, grabbing my glass of wine and giving it a swirl. “Eating a good meal is just as enjoyable as sex. So why shouldn’t I make those noises?”

  Declan scoffed, crossing his own arms. “I’ve never had a meal anywhere near as good as sex,” he argued.

  I nodded. “Well, yeah. Why would you when you’re over there just dry humping your chicken breast with the only goal being to finish.”

  Declan stared at me in shock. “Excuse me,” he finally said slowly and calmly, “but I am not ‘drying humping’ my chicken breast.”

  “With all due respect, you are.”

  Before Declan could protest, I pushed back my chair, threw my napkin on the table, and walked around to his side of the table. “Here, let me show you.”

  Declan’s eyes widened as I approached him. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  I sat on the table and crossed my legs.

  My knee brushed his arm and he looked at it like he wasn’t sure what human touch felt like. “This isn’t your chair.” He looked up at me. “This wasn’t part of our agreement,” he said. “Go back to your chair.”

  I ignored him and grabbed a chicken leg from his plate. “Close your eyes,” I said.

  Declan immediately leaned away from me. “Abso-fucking-lutely not. Are you out of your goddamn mind?”

  “Close your eyes.”

  “Not happening.”

  I reached for his face and he quickly caught my wrist in his strong grip. I did not flinch. I was not going to relent. I stared at him and he stared at me. “Close your eyes,” I said softly.

  I was almost surprised when Declan stared at me for a moment longer, as if checking to see if I could be trusted, and then closed his eyes as I asked. I momentarily got distracted looking at him with his eyes closed: he looked younger, gentler, sweeter, even. “Keep your eyes closed,” I said as I pulled a tender piece of chicken from the bone. My fingers brushed his lips as I fed him and I quickly sat on my hands to keep myself from touching them again. They were so soft, so full. “Let it sit on your tongue at first,” I instructed, checking to make sure Declan kept his eyes shut. “Inhale the smell, just like you would a woman’s perfume at the base of her neck.”

  I could see Declan moving to peek open an eye and quickly chastised, “Keep them closed!”

  I heard him grumble, but he obeyed.

  “Move slowly,” I said. “Don’t rip off her clothes. Unhook a single button, slide a single strap from her shoulder, start with her bracelet, your fingers ghosting along her wrist bone.” I shifted on my hands as I stared at Declan’s hands and imagined them undressing me. “Breathe in deeply.” My eyes moved to his lips again. “The kind of sigh you let out before you kiss a wom—”

  “This is ridiculous.” Declan’s eyes popped open and I saw him swallow before quickly grabbing his fork back up like a starving caveman. He stabbed his chicken leg and brought the whole thing up to his mouth.

  I rolled my eyes, slid off the table, and took my place back in my chair. But as I continued my meal, I heard a little noise from Declan’s side of the table. I glanced up at him and found his cheeks red.

  “That wasn’t me.”

  I smiled. “Okay.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “I said, ‘Okay.’”

  It was totally him.

  Declan

  I thought I heard it over the steady drone of the treadmill, but when I paused to measure my heart rate the gym was again silent.

  Later, I swore I heard it when I pulled out my headphones between sets of squats. But if it was actually there and not in my mind, it was quickly drowned out by the clang of metal on metal as I began again.

  It wasn’t until the whirl of the jump rope in my ear stopped as I gasped for breath that I was dead certain I heard it. Won over by curiosity, I dropped the jump rope and moved toward the small office at the back of the gym where the girl was working.

  Or supposed to be working.

  As I got closer and closer, the noise got louder and louder…humming.

  Again.

  Always with the fucking racket.

  Couldn’t I get just one moment of silence? I hurried my steps toward the office door and raised my fist to pound on it, ready to shout at the girl to get back to work. I wasn’t paying her to sing, goddammit. But with my fist raised, ready to strike the wood grain of the door, I paused.

  I suddenly couldn’t do it.

  I suddenly didn’t want to do it.

  To my horror, instead of asserting my rules in my house like I should have done, I leaned forward and placed my ear against the wood grain so I could listen to the girl humming.

  Thirty seconds went by. Twelve squats, eight burpees, thirty-six doubles on the jump rope went by. Gone forever.

  A minute passed with my ear against the door, listening. Just listening. A quarter-mile sprint, a round in the cage with Seamus, a circuit on the leg press passed away with my body doing nothing but just listening.

  Two minutes disappeared and I would never get them back as I stood at the door and listened to the girl. Two minutes closer to getting back into fighting shape wasted, two minutes closer to winning back my title wasted, two minutes closer to getting the only thing in life I wanted wasted as I stood at the door and listened to the girl.

  And smiled.

  I left the girl to her humming and went back to my training without saying a word. I didn’t use my headphones or the gym speakers for the rest of the afternoon.

  Later that night, after dinner, I went to the kitchen for a frozen bag of peas for my arm. It wasn’t uncommon for me to do so, with the pain in my arm often reaching unbearable levels after a hard day of pushing myself during training.

  I normally walked downstairs, my bare feet against the marble floor the only sound. The kitchen was normally dark, so dark that I would blink against the glare of the freezer as I opened it. Without a soul in sight in the quiet, empty manor, I normally returned alone to my room…alone to my thoughts, alone to my pain and nightmares.

  But that evening, as I tiptoed down the hall on the first floor, the echo of my footsteps was impossible to hear over the loud, unfettered, merry laughter practically booming from the kitchen. It wasn’t dark either. Quite the opposite, it appeared that every light was still on despite the time of night.

  Careful not to make a sound, I snuck toward the door and slowly peeked my head inside the kitchen. At the large marble island in the centre was Chef, an older woman who I was fairly certain was the maid, and the girl.

  In a light-pink tank top and matching shorts, she sat on the island, swinging her bare feet back and forth with a massive metal bowl of cookie dough in her lap. She giggled as she dug in a wooden spoon and licked dough directly off of it.

  At the sight of this, I had three immediate thoughts:

  First, I hoped that she didn’t use that wooden spoon while making my breakfasts.

  Second, it was a waste of resources, my resources, to keep the lights on when not necessary for the normal functioning of the kitchen staff.

  And third, I wanted to join.

  I wasn’t sure where the desire came from, but it hit my chest like the fist of a heavyweight champion. I couldn’t remember wanting anything other than to train and to get stronger and to win for so long that it was almost strange to me to want something as simple and silly as to go eat chocolate chip cookie dough with my employees late on a weeknight.

  I wanted it and that was undeniable.

  I hesitated at the doorway, certain they hadn’t noticed me, and simply watched. The girl said something and Chef grabbed his stomach, throwing his head back in laughter I hadn’t seen in months. Even the maid couldn’t stop chuckling as she reached for the almost empty bottle of wine.

  It was all so simple: happy people, eating and drinking and laughing. It felt so out of reach to me. It seemed like a life I might have had for myself, once. A life of laughter, joy, and simple pleasures.

  But that life was gone.

  He stole it from me.

  She stole it from me.

  And there was no way to get it back.

  Without my frozen pack of peas, I turned around and silently left the kitchen, returning down the hallway, back up the stairs, and into my room. I closed the door and I was again alone, in my darkness, in my silence.

  I held my pillow over my mouth to hide my screams of pain and did not sleep.

  River

  I wasn’t used to silence.

  In NYC, there was always the blare of some emergency vehicle, the honk of some cabbie, the screech of some bicycle to avoid crashing with said cabbie. There was the drone of TVs through the paper-thin walls, the 3 a.m. arguments of the couple upstairs, the incoherent shouting of the drunk on the corner. It was always noise, noise, noise.

  When I was with my ex, Ricardo, he never wanted silence. There was always some kind of pretentious experimental “music” screeching from his music player, and if it wasn’t that, some snippy art critic podcast, and if it wasn’t that, he was gushing or verbally disembowelling something to someone on the phone.

  Even while alone, I always reached for the nearest auxiliary cord to blast music ‒ let’s be honest, by music I mostly meant ’80s diva pop—I thought something was missing without it.

  So the silence of the dining room in the manor as Declan and I ate dinner was foreign to me. We again sat across the long table from one another, the only sound between us was the occasional clatter of fork against knife.

  I assumed a lack of noise meant a lack of joy, a lack of happiness, a lack of life. But I was surprised to find that the silence between Declan and me seemed to lack nothing.

  It felt comfortable. It felt easy. It felt natural.

  With the crack of the fire and his presence across the table, nothing at all was missing. I was completely satisfied with our silences. And I fully expected them to continue.

  So it was quite the surprise when Declan blurted out this rushed question, “What were you laughing at?”

  I looked up at him with wide eyes.

  He had set down his fork and knife on either side of his plate, as if the question was so pressing that he simply couldn’t eat a bite more without receiving an answer.

  The only problem was that I had no idea what he was talking about. “What?”

  Declan bristled a little with obvious irritation. He was clearly uncomfortable and my confusion was only dragging it out. “The other night,” he clarified with an annoyed sigh. “When you were in the kitchen with Chef and that older lady. What was so funny?”

  My mind scrambled to figure out what he was talking about. Older lady? “You mean Joan?”

  “I don’t know her name.”

  I stared across the table at him. “She’s been working here for you for six years.”

  Declan’s cheeks brightened with embarrassment, and he quickly grabbed up his fork and knife again. “Never mind,” he grumbled, sawing into Chef’s rosemary pork chops. “It was stupid to ask in the first place. I don’t give a fuck either way.”

  “No, no, no,” I quickly said as I reached my hand toward him, afraid to let the baby step of progress go to waste. We were almost having a real, adult, mature conversation. Almost. “Joan was telling us a story about her seven-year-old son, Liam.”

  Declan’s eyes were focused again on his plate, but I knew he was listening so I continued, “He was trying to steal parts of his neighbour’s chain link fence and accidentally let their dog loose. Joan spent the whole night driving around to look for it and couldn’t find it. She got home and the dog was right back in the yard, sleeping next to his bone.”

  After my laughter—and my laughter alone, at recalling the story—died, the dining room again fell into silence. I thought our “conversation” was therefore over, so I returned to my meal.

  Then Declan asked barely loud enough for it to be audible, “Why was the kid stealing a chain link fence?”

  I rushed to swallow my bite of pork chop. “Oh! Right, right.” I explained hurriedly while I still had Declan’s attention, “He wanted to make his own cage so he could be an MMA fighter. He’s a huge fan of yours, apparently.”

  I glanced over at Declan but he wasn’t looking at me and he didn’t respond. I sighed softly and mindlessly twirled some pasta around my fork. I was considering a way to engage Declan in more conversation. Perhaps I just had to put out a tiny bit of bait... “It’s kind of violent for a child, in my opinion,” I said nonchalantly as I tried to keep my eyes from checking Declan.

  After another few moments of silence, he bit. “MMA is far more than violence, you know.”

  I reached for my wine glass to hide my grin. “What do you mean?”

  “Brute strength and unfettered aggression will only get you so far,” he explained. “To really master the sport, you need the mind. That’s where you need to be toughest. It’s all about strategy, like chess. You have to outwit your opponent. Your mental endurance has to last longer than his. It’s far more than just ‘violence’.”

  I nodded, remaining silent as I contemplated his words. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was missing something. Maybe there was more to the sport than I thought.

  Maybe there was more to the fighter than I thought.

  Declan then surprised me by adding under his breath, “Sounds like a smart kid to me.”

  I grinned as I scooped a heap of buttery pasta into my mouth. That was a conversation. It had all the necessary requirements: I said something. He said something in response. Progress! “Um, since you asked me something,” I started slowly, knowing I was pushing my luck at this point, “maybe I can ask you something?”

  Declan’s eyes darted over to me. “I was just asking for clarification on an employee as an employer,” he said. “That wasn’t ‘get to know each other time’.”

  I dropped my eyes in defeat and my shoulders slumped.

  An exaggerated sigh came from across the table. “One question.”

  I smiled at my plate as I considered what I would ask. I knew I should ask something simple, something impersonal, something like ‘Where do you like to go on vacation?’

  Not, “What happened with your accident?”

  Of course, that’s exactly what I asked.

 

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