Mr. Salary by Sally Rooney
Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me. I want to feel dirty.
Nathan was waiting with his hands in his pockets beside the silver Christmas tree in the arrivals lounge at Dublin airport. The new terminal was bright and polished, with a lot of escalators. I had just brushed my teeth in the airport bathroom. My suitcase was ugly and I was trying to carry it with a degree of irony. When Nathan saw me he asked: What is that, a joke suitcase?
You look good, I said.
Rooney, Sally. “Mr Salary – a Short Story by Sally Rooney.” The Irish Times, 19 Mar. 2017, www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/mr-salary-a-short-story-by-sally-rooney-1.3016223.
Why we loved it
Sally Rooney, Girl, Please—We Can’t Take It Anymore
This story didn’t just wreck us—it performed a full archaeological dig on our emotional ruins, excavating feelings we didn’t know we’d buried. That’s Rooney’s dark magic: her sentences arrive like late-night texts you shouldn’t answer, all quiet devastation and surgical precision. One moment you’re fine; the next, you’re bleeding out from a metaphor you didn’t see coming.
Now let’s address Sukie and Nathan, because whew. Do we adore Sukie’s unapologetic hunger? Obviously. Her confidence lives in our dreams. But Nathan? Honey. The boy folded faster than a supermarket lawn chair during a thunderstorm. We saw it coming from three chapters away—highlighted passages to prove it—and still screamed “NATHAN, SWEETHEART, NO” into our pages like he could hear us. (He couldn’t. He never can.)
Yet here’s Rooney’s brilliance: even when her characters make choices that leave us fetal-positioned on the floor, we’re ravenous for more. No one else writes intimacy this brutally human—how a shared cigarette can feel like a vow, or how silence between lovers grows teeth. Her relationships don’t burn; they simmer, leaving you tender in places you forgot could ache.
Let us know if you ship Sukie and Nathan in the comments below!