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It took him a few moments to realize he was still gripping Aisling’s arm like a vice. Sheepishly he released his grasp, but she did not say anything. She just stood there, frozen still, intoxicatingly close to him. So close he could smell her shampoo (fresh and clean) and her perfume (warm and almost masculine) as though they were his own. Blood was rushing in his ears and he couldn’t tell if it was because of her proximity, or the fact that he’d very nearly watched her get plowed down by a taxicab.

He was suddenly extremely glad he’d gotten up from the table to follow her. And perhaps even more so, he was glad that she’d somehow given in, that she’d let him follow her.

Sitting at the breakfast table, watching her walk away, he’d begun to feel the fatigue set in. He’d been chasing Aisling for as long as he’d known her. Longer than he’d chased anyone in his life. He was tired. He didn’t know if he could go on. The determination he’d always felt before—the surge of adrenaline and desire he always felt just as she tried to leave him behind—it was fading fast. And yet, the sight of her leaving still tore at his heart strings.

And so he decided to try again, despite the fatigue. Promising himself only once more and he would let her go. Once more.

And there she was. Still not moving, a strange smile tugging at the corner of her mouth as she stared at her toes.

“Are you all right?” he asked, tilting his chin down to try and catch her eye, in flats she was shorter than him. “Ash?”

“Wha? Oh, yeah, fine.”

She shook her head, her hair waving around her, errant strands picked up by the breeze. The action seemed to bring her back. He exhaled as she stepped away, immediately longing for her to be near him again.

“I really should get going,” she pointed her thumb across the street to an adjacent park entrance. “I-uh, I need to get back to the office.”

“Your apartment,” he smiled, he’d never once heard Aisling stutter over a sentence.

“Yeah. So, yeah, thanks for…that,” she began to turn away, her mouth still open, “and I guess—“

“Mind if I walk with you?” he asked, cutting her off. “I don’t really feel like being around my brothers right now.”

She raised an eyebrow quizzically but did not question him, only gestured that he should follow. And follow he did, remaining a few steps behind and watching her paisley printed mini-dress billow madly behind her. He’d noticed that every time he saw Aisling she looked wildly different, and yet somehow, still essentially the same. It was kind of crazy. In their four encounters she’d gone from edgy-modern to Audrey Hepburn to seventies co-ed to late sixties flower child.

He realized, while absentmindedly counting the bracelets on her left wrist, that she was the common thread throughout the looks. It suddenly seemed clear to him that each outfit had a piece of her in it, every item carefully edited together to tell a story. He wasn’t sure he’d met anyone like that before. She dressed like it was an art form. He could barely manage the correct combination of half-dirty skinny jeans, sneakers and a tee-shirt most mornings. And he had a stylist who did most of the work for him. Somehow he didn’t think Aisling would allow a stylist anywhere near her.

“Are you just going to stare at my ass the whole way, or—“ she didn’t even glance back at him as she spoke. Her sarcasm was one of his favorite things. So few people had the courage to speak to him that way anymore.

“Stuff it,” he said jogging forward to fall into step with her.

“Thanks, that was getting a little creepy.” She turned her head toward him, offering a genuine smile, her shoulders shrugging slightly and her eyes wrinkling at the corners.

“Oh please, you loved every moment of it.” He bumped her shoulder with his.

“You flatter yourself.”

A beat.

“We could probably do this all day, couldn’t we?” he asked, giving voice to a thought without filtering it. He found their back and forth banter to be both amazing, and often, completely exhausting.

“Probably,” she agreed. An amiable silence fell as they wove down a path through Central Park that he’d never used before.

“So…” he began after a few minutes of quietly enjoying her company, “Can you tell me about your name?” Her smile grew, and for the first time since he’d met her, he was pretty sure he’d said the right thing.

“Sure. What do you want to know?”

“Well, for starters. Your name does not look like it sounds,” he said lightly, eyes widening for emphasis, sharing a toothy smile.

“It’s Irish, so I use the proper Irish pronunciation,” she started, he nodded, urging her to continue, “So, uhm, part of that is just accent. But, another part is that the Irish Gaelic Alphabet only has eighteen letters, so pronunciation is really different than you’d expect when you see a word…there are a lot of completely bonkers looking words in Irish. Some of them sound a lot like the words we use. Like the word trouser, for instance, is pronounced essentially the same, but it’s spelled t-r-e-a-b-h-s-a-r.”

“You speak Gaelic?” he asked, dropping his head to the side as he glanced at her.

“I used to. I only speak a little now. I studied it in college.” She settled her hands into the pockets of her dress.

“Wow. I didn’t even know you could do that.”

“Neither did I,” she chuckled, “That is, until I got to NYU. I remember when I called my parents to tell them about the class my mother thought I said I was taking ‘Gay Lit,’ I think she was a little worried for a second there…”

“Cool. So, anyway…your name. What does it mean? How did your parents pick it?”

Her chuckle grew to a full blown laugh, mouth falling open and head tipping back. The sound was musical. She did not hold back when she laughed. He wondered, then, if that was true of the rest of her life as well.

Watching her shoulders bob with laughter, he realized he probably seemed a bit ridiculous, being so eager, asking so many questions about her name. But she responded to them. Whether or not he understood it, the question had opened her up to him. He was reluctant to let it go.

“The Aisling is an Irish poetic genre. In Gaelic Aisling literally means dream. So, Aisling poems are a type of vision or dream poem in which the country of Ireland is personified as a woman, sometimes young and sometimes old. Usually the woman laments the tragic state of Ireland, but somehow predicts its return to fortune and favor; it began as a really politically charged form of poetry.” She paused to look at him, but he said nothing. “God, I’m giving you a fucking Irish literature lesson, I’m sorry, I’ll shut up now.”

“No, don’t! Don’t be! It’s interesting. How did your parents pick it?” He just wanted to keep her talking.

“You know, this might seem weird, but we’ve never really talked about that. Maybe when they saw I was a redhead they thought I should have a REALLY Irish name. Who knows? I’m pretty sure they didn’t plan it. Or maybe they just knew their daughter would be a poet…” she smiled again, and even though it was faint and mostly directed at herself, he liked seeing her smile.

“You’re a poet?”

“In a way. I mean, write poetry and all…I just haven’t published yet, at least not for real.”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“My ninth grade literary journal doesn’t count,” she offered, shrugging, before turning back to the path before them.

They continued through the park, past the Shakespeare garden, and the Romeo & Juliet statue, rounding the bottom of the Great Lawn and passing under the south end of the Met. He was amazed at how easily the conversation flowed between them. He’d spent the past month trying to crack her code, trying to figure out how to get her to respond to him. And now, after all that, he had no idea what he’d done. Out of the blue, everything was just…different. Everything was easy, natural, right. It was baffling. He’d always thought he understood girls. Aisling Monroe was another story entirely. Or perhaps, he thought to himself, she was another poem entirely.

***

“Can I ask you a question?” he asked tentatively, spread out in the far corner of her couch, watching her work.

“Sure.” Aisling did not take her eyes off the computer screen, clicking through a long list of emails and deleting what she could. “Shoot.”

For a few moments he remained silent, listening to her mouse click repeatedly, gazing around her apartment. It was tiny, with shiny red wood floors and rust colored trim. There were paint chips in varying shades of ocean blue taped to the wall above the television, between the two bedroom doors. Everything was new and barely lived in, and yet she permeated the room. He felt at ease there, surrounded by her.

“Why did you,” he paused, considering the best way to finish his thought, “why did you stop and wait for me this morning?”

She twisted in her charcoal gray desk chair to face him.

“I don’t know,” her eyes laid him bare, he was pretty sure she had no idea what she did to him. “Something just…stopped me.”

“You’ve never even given me the time of day, and now…” he glanced around her apartment again. She seemed to follow his train of thought.

“You asked the right question, I guess.”

“About your name?”

“Yeah. No one ever asks that and means it…I just, I dunno. It was a good question.” She shrugged. For a moment he wondered if she really didn’t have anything more to say, or if she just didn’t want to say it.

“Well, I’m glad you finally gave me a shot.”

“Finally?” She raised a perfectly groomed red eyebrow at him.

“Yes. Finally. I’ve been trying to get your attention since we met.”

“Joe, you’re my client, you always have my attention.” Her look of confusion did not change.

“No, I mean your attention,” he felt silly saying it, but it was all he had. He watched recognition flood across her face.

“What?”

“Come on, you didn’t know?” He smiled somewhat sadly.

“Joe, you’re my client.”

“I’m aware of that.” There was that rush of blood again, almost deafening in his ears.

“You’re my client.”

“You’re repeating yourself.”

“Joe, you’re eighteen and you’re—“

“I’m your client. I’ve got it.” His voice sounded empty as it filled the room around him. Suddenly he felt like they were starting all over again.

There was a long silence. He focused on his breathing, measuring the passage of time in deep, even breaths. She was not looking at him. She was not looking at anything. He longed to know what to say. Once again he began to feel as though he never knew what to say when he was around her. As though his words were forever messing things up, forever throwing walls between them. Walls like this one, built of the insurmountable feelings he had placed between them with one word. Attention. Thirty-seven breaths.

“So that’s what all of that cutesy, obnoxious bullshit was all about…” she trailed off, still facing him, her eyes now fixed on his shoes.

“Aisling, I think I…”

“God, you were such a pain in the ass… You know that, right?” she attempted to divert the conversation with as much grace as an offensive lineman. And still, she did not meet his eyes.

He stared at the top of her head, watching light move across the highlights in her richly colored tapestry of hair. It seemed that not one strand of red was the same shade as the next.

Another twenty-five breaths and still, neither one had spoken. Was she just going to pretend he hadn’t said anything? And now that he had said something, could he live with that?