The priest announced something about canned foods.
Blessings, blessings, blessings. Their palms met up again. Aldo’s fingers stretched out below her sleeve, running over her wrist. She grew increasingly conscious of her breath. She breathed in through her nose, swallowing, and breathed out. Her ribs expanded, stretching out to make room. She felt intensely aware of her breasts.
Around them, the congregation rose, and Aldo released her.
Her hand floated back to her side.
Shuffling out once the priest had gone was the most mundanely halted process. Regan felt mortal again; sapped of reverence, drained of any magnitude. She felt heavy, corporeal and dull, the sky outside no brighter than it had been when they arrived. She turned to face Aldo, opening her mouth to say something, and stopped when his eyes fell on hers.
He wasn’t just unconventionally handsome, she realized.
He was uncommonly beautiful.
“What did you learn?” he asked neutrally.
That I could study you for a lifetime, carrying all of your peculiarities and discretions in the webs of my spidery palms, and still feel empty-handed.
“You do … martial arts,” she said, clearing her throat, “or something. I thought maybe weight-lifting at first,” she explained, struggling with her grudging return to normalcy, “because of the calluses on your hands, but I don’t think so.” Not after knowing you. “Your knuckles are bruised.”
If he was disappointed by her answer, he didn’t show it. “They are,” he confirmed, nodding.
“And you?” she asked, a little breathless. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this kind of apprehension, or possibly anticipation. “What did you learn about me?”
He reached forward wordlessly, taking her right hand and twisting her Claddagh ring to the side.
She looked down, noting the paler skin revealed beneath it.
“You don’t take this off,” he said, not looking up.
“No,” she agreed.
“Who gave it to you?”
It was a traditional piece of jewelry, usually passed down through generations.
Usually.
“Me,” she said, and he nodded, releasing her hand and returning it to her.
“An unusual form of conversation,” he remarked. “Does it count?”
If it wasn’t a conversation then it was something else entirely, which Regan didn’t want to think about yet.
“Yes,” she said. “Only one more, then.”
He nodded. “One more.”
Someone nudged past them. Aldo glanced unhappily over his shoulder, then turned back to her.
“Should we have the last one now?” he asked.
Regan was briefly overcome with a siege of panic.
“No,” she said. “No, and … I have to go, actually. I should go.”
He seemed to understand, sparing a nod, and she turned to leave, then stopped.
“Aldo,” she said.
“Regan,” he replied.
“I—” Don’t hold hands with anyone ever again.
“I’ll see you,” she said, and he nodded.
“Sure,” he said, and she walked briskly away, relieved he hadn’t tried to stop her.
* * *
“OH, SORRY—”
“It’s fine,” Aldo muttered, prepared to ignore the collision until he caught a flicker of blood-red from his periphery. “Regan,” he said before he could stop himself, registering the familiar sight of her earrings, and the woman beside the man he’d just bumped into froze in place.
“Aldo,” she said, her voice high and shiny and false as she drew the three of them away from the crowded sidewalk. “What are you doing here?”
“Aldo?” echoed the man, who progressed from an amorphous obstacle to a face paired with shoulders, hair and limbs. He was taller than Aldo, a little older, deeply Caucasian. “Don’t tell me this is the math guy!”
“Yes, this is my friend Aldo,” Regan confirmed. “This is my boyfriend Marc,” she added with an apologetic glance, and Marc thrust out a hand for Aldo’s, which he returned with some degree of reticence and shook.
“Nice to meet you,” Aldo said.
“I thought you lived down in Hyde Park,” Marc said, glancing at Regan for confirmation.
“No, no, Aldo works in Hyde Park,” she corrected quickly. “He’s a professor at U Chicago.”
“Doctoral student,” Aldo said.
“Right, that,” Regan confirmed, and Marc nodded.
“I’m just getting something,” Aldo said, gesturing vaguely around. “For my dad’s birthday.”