Page 46 of 56 Days
He laughs and kisses her again, longer and deeper.
Then he pulls her close until they are pressed together, her head turned so she can rest a cheek against his chest.
She puts her arms around him, sighing contentedly as she relaxes into his hold.
“What’s it like out there, anyway?” he asks.
“Weird. You’d really notice the difference since yesterday.”
“I suppose that’s good? Shows people are taking this seriously.”
“I don’t know if everyoneis, though.”
She pulls away and goes to her suitcase, starts to unzip its lid. He’s opened the doors of thebuilt-inwardrobes for her and even put some empty hangers on the rail. There’s no question that she’ll be sleeping in his room, but she likes that he’s offered this one for her belongings, what few of them she has.
She starts lifting items out.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“Well, I called my mother while I was at my place. Ended up spending most of the conversation having to explain to her that, yes, thetwo-kilometerrestriction applies to her too. Andwhyit does.” Ciara rolls her eyes. “She thinks everyone is overreacting.”
A beat passes before Oliver asks, “Did you tell her?”
“Tell her what?”
“About me. Aboutthis.”
“Clearly,” Ciara says, as she takes a black dress from the case and shakes it out, “you haven’t met my mother. That’d be anoand another, louder, more emphaticno. She didn’t even want me to move to Dublin. If she heard about this, she’d probably drive up here and drag me back to Cork by my hair. Actually...” Having hung the dress in the wardrobe, she turns to look at him. “I haven’t told anyone. Have you?”
“Iwasgoing to tell my brother, but I don’t have to.”
“Do, if you want. It’s not classified information, it’s just—”
“—when you think about it—”
“—it’d be easier this way, right?”
Oliver nods. “That’s what I was thinking.”
“Not just this bit, themoving-in-together-for-lockdown stuff, but—”
“Everything else, too,” he finishes.
“I just hate all this stuff, you know? As soon as you tell anyone you’re in a relationship, you have to, like,defineeverything. And then comes the bloody Spanish Inquisition.” When Oliver frowns at this, she says, “Okay, so, maybe that’s justmyfamily. But this is kind of perfect, isn’t it? We have, what, two weeks? To just be us. To see what happens without having to explain it or label it or justify anything to anyone else. I mean, we literallycan’tsee anyone else. No one can come visit—not that I even know anyone here yet. And no one knows I’m here. Who’s going to know I’m not still in my own place?”
Oliver is grinning. “So we’re in a relationship now, are we?”
“Did you hear anything after that bit or...? And technically any connection between two people is a relationship, so.”
“Good save.”
“I thought so.”
“We are, though.”
She meets his gaze. “Arewe?”
“Do you want to be?”
