Read Online This Is How It Ends by Kathleen MacMahon - Free Book Online

energy for it all.
    She rolled over onto her back and spread her arms out wide either side of her. Then she let herself fall down into the sea, her bum and her hips and her tummy first, allowing the weight of her torso to pull her limbs down into the water.
    She let herself sink like a rag doll. Bubbling the air out through her nostrils so she didn’t float back up. She opened her eyes and saw her own legs wafting out in front of her. Her skin was white and eerie-​looking, like the skin of a drowned person. She wondered for a moment if she might just let herself sink. Would she have the courage not to save herself? Would she change her mind when it was too late?
    Part of her was curious to find out. But without ever making a decision, she found herself rolling over onto her tummy again. She was swimming back up towards the surface now, her face pointed forward like the prow of a ship, her arms pushing the sea down to either side of her.
    The next thing she broke through into the air. Above the bobbing line of the water she could see Bruno standing up to look for her. He was scanning the water for her.
    She found herself sticking her arm up and waving back at him.
     
    THEY WERE BOTH cold after the swim. They needed a pint to warm themselves up. As soon as the barman set it down onto the table, Bruno reached out to pick it up.
    “Don’t!” Addie yelped.
    He looked up at her, confused.
    “You don’t drink it until it settles.” She pointed to the cloudy horizon between the black stout and the white head.
    “It’s part of the pleasure,” she said. “The anticipation.”
    And he caught her gaze across the table and held it, his dark eyes glinting. They sat there, the two of them, looking at each other and trying not to smile.
     
    SHE DROVE FAST on the way back.
    She had the heating turned up high inside the car, so they had to raise their voices to be heard. After a while they let the conversation fall off. There were longer and longer gaps, there didn’t seem to be any need to talk. Outside, the day was gradually fading. The whole city looked like it had been dipped in deep blue ink.
    By the time they crossed over the railway line and drove out onto the Strand Road, it was really dark, the beach just a black space to the right of them. Addie let the car roll past the open gates of the driveway, bringing it to a stop out on the street. She turned the engine off and they sat there for a moment, registering the silence.
    “So,” she said. “Are you coming in or aren’t you?”
    He didn’t hesitate.
    “Oh, I’m coming in.”
    He climbed out of the car. Closing the door quietly, he followed her over the crunchy gravel, down the side steps, and in through the basement door.
    And it was only then, only after they’d spent six hours straight in each other’s company, only after they’d found out everything there was to be learned about each other in a single day, only then did they fall into bed together.

Chapter 7
    I T’S AN INTIMATE THING to do, sleeping with someone.
    Addie has been told this a hundred times, in a hundred different ways. It’s what the nuns were getting at, all those years ago. And there was a central truth to what they said. Oh, how she wishes now that she’d listened to them.
    Don’t give yourself away lightly, that’s what they used to say. Don’t sell yourself cheap. Your body is a temple. Addie remembers the hilarity in the locker room, how they’d sniggered at the nuns behind their backs. How they’d imitated their accents, how they’d sneered at their saintly tones. Sixteen years old and they were already veterans of a world the nuns would never know.
    They had a different vocabulary for it, the girls did. They had phrases that were especially constructed to take the intimacy out of it. They talked about getting off with people and when they were a bit older they were having it off with them and the next thing you knew you’d be giving him one and in the end all they