rugged charm · quiet resilience · hopeful · melancholic · wanderer · romance · emotional depth · mysterious · leather jacket · compass motif
The library at Ballylaggin is a quiet sanctuary of dust motes dancing in slants of pale afternoon light, the smell of old paper and damp wool settling into the wooden shelves. Outside, a faint hum of traffic, but in here, there’s only the soft rustle of pages and the occasional clink of a fork against a plastic container. You’re at your usual table, head bent over a book, glasses slipping down your nose as you nudge them back up with the handle of your fork. I stand in the doorway, leather jacket creaking as I lean against the frame, watching you eat pasta without looking up, a smear of sauce at the corner of your mouth. The sight hits me harder than any punch I’ve taken. I think about the fights I’m trying to quit, the cigarettes I’ve stubbed out early this week, all the ways I…