I try again.
“Yes,” I reach for her and her cat swipes at me. I pull my hand back. I just need her to spell it out. We don’t have to keep missing each other like this, but I’m not skilled at reading Tarot cards or reading minds.
“Evi, what are you really asking me?”
“Can you leave? I’m sorry, Seamus, but I’m really tired. Can we talk about this later? I don’t want to be another family obligation to you.”
Taken aback, I get to my feet. “Yeah. Sure, Evi.” I walk to her door and turn the deadbolt. “Lock this behind me?”
She nods, and I leave. My chest feels tight, like I’m having a goddamn heart attack. What the fuck does she want from me? I’d give her anything if she’d just tell me what she needs. Not all obligations are burdens. I call a cab and head home, eager to revisit that expensive bottle of whiskey.
13
Seamus
It’s Sunday brunch at the Kildare, my family’s bar. My brothers and I started calling these beer-soaked breakfasts brunch as a joke years ago, and it stuck. We’re all crammed into a back booth, my brothers shoving each other jovially, insulting each other as they do so.
It’s the Boston Irish way. We can make fun of each other as much as we want, but if anyone else tries to, they’re dead.
“Seamus, you’re quiet,” Kieran says, tapping a pool of ketchup out over his eggs. “You okay?”
I don’t want to admit what’s bothering me. Sighing, I say, “the injunction got overturned already.” I push my food around my plate. Evi would make fun of me for my spinach and egg white omelet. We haven’t talked since she asked me to leave her loft a week ago. Has she been spending time with Finn Carney? Just the thought sends a shockwave of jealousy through my body. I wouldn’t need Kieran to kill him. I’d do it myself.
“We knew that would happen,” Kieran said, taking a swig of Guinness. “Stacy’s stacked the courts with hordes of his lackeys. So what’s next?”
I gesture at his face. “You have a beer mustache.”
He grins and swipes it off with a meaty fist. Kieran is a big fucking dude.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “They’re going to do the paperwork to legalize Stacy’s fucking land grab probably by the end of next week. I let Evi down. I let the whole neighborhood down.”
I feel the weight of it all sink down on my shoulders. I’ve lost before, and I didn’t like it, but this is different. The Stacys were going to take a chunk of our neighborhood. My father would live to see me lose that for him. Heat floods my cheeks as the shame passes through me. The rambunctious energy of the table quiets, and everyone is looking at me.
It makes me want to run away, up north, to a nice quiet spot where I could take a break from the weight of this responsibility. Away from my father’s illness. Away from the confusion that’s Evi.
The silence hangs like a shroud.
Kieran isn’t good with feelings, hell, most of us aren’t. The best he can manage is to slap my back and push his beer at me. I take a swig.
“Seamus,” my father says. Even as frail as he is now, he’s a force to be reckoned with. I drag my eyes up from the table and meet his gaze.
“Yeah, Dad?”
“Come with me. Let’s get some air.”
I obediently follow him out the front door. To my utter surprise, he pulls out a pack of cigarettes and lights one up.
“You’re smoking?” I gasp, horrified. I remember what he did to my brother Ronan when he found out he’d been smoking with one of the O’Brien boys.
“I’m dying, Seamus. What’s the difference?” He takes a long puff of the cigarette and then coughs, his frame wracked by it. I go to grab his shoulder to support him and he waves me off. “Never mind.”
We stand there quietly for a few minutes until it’s too much for me.
“Dad, I’m sorry.”
He takes another drag of the cigarette.
“Seamus, you’re a good boy,” he says finally. “You’ve always been a good boy. Never caused any trouble like your brothers. Only ever got into mischief when you were helping people. Like Evi.”
He looks at me, his eyes more tired than I’d like to admit. “She’s a good girl. She’s had a rough go of it, Seamus, and you were good to look out for her. Your Ma liked her a lot. She’d be proud.”
That hits me right in the gut. “I don’t know what she wants from me,” I say, hating how my voice sounds petulant, like I’m a snotty teenager again.
He laughs. “Wish your Ma were here for this one.” He takes another drag, blows out the smoke and tosses the butt on the curb where it joins dozens of others. “Seamus. You’re a smart boy. Maybe the smartest of your brothers, though I’ll end ya if you ever tell them that.”
I laugh. My brothers were all smart but in very different ways. I was definitely the most book smart.
“But you’re being a bit of a dummy here. What do you think the girl wants?” He lights up another cigarette. I go to say something about that but think better of it.
“Her shop saved from the Stacys,” I reply automatically. My father does a little coughing laugh, and I feel like I’m failing a test.
“Why does she love that shop so much, hey?”
I think about it. It’s the first thing she’s had that was all her own. She worked hard to build it, and to earn her reputation as one of the nation’s best tattoo artists. It was an artifact of her success.
My father seems tired of waiting and blows out a puff of smoke. “It proves her prick of a father and all the fuckers who treated her like she wasn’t worth shit wrong, Seamus. She never had any security in her life. Imagine never knowing where you stand, son? Of course she feels she has to make her own way.”
I blink several times, trying to clear my thoughts. I’ve faced pretty big challenges in my life, difficult ones. Painful ones. And even though my family has been the source of many of those challenges, I know they always have my back. That’s never been a question for a moment.
“I care about her,” I say.
“I know you do, Seamus. I think she knows too. But do you know in what way you care for her? The girl just wants to know where she stands. You two have been dancing around each other longer than Owen and Molly have.”
My brother Owen had been in love with his best friend’s little sister for a very long time, though he hadn’t admitted it. It was complicated, but they worked it out, much to my family’s delight.
“I thought I made that clear,” I murmur. I’m not going to tell my father I slept with her. Weak as he is, he could still trash me for being disrespectful.
“Did you now?” he asks, stabbing out the second cigarette.
I thought I had.
But maybe I should’ve been more explicit.
Better to not think about being explicit with Evi while talking to my father.
“Well.” My father puts his hand on my shoulder. “Seamus. I’m proud of you. You’ve done everything I’ve ever asked of you without complaint. Sometimes I think I’ve asked too much of you. You never had time to have fun, to be a kid.”
Shocked, I look over at his weathered face. “No, Dad,” I say. “It’s fine. I’m glad I could help.”
“Don’t argue with me.” Both of his hands are on my shoulders now. “Sometimes things are more simple than you think.” I notice his fingers are stained with tobacco as he pats my face. “Tell her what you want. Maybe you both want the same thing.”
I go to reply, and he stops me. “Ah! No. Stop thinking. Take a break, Seamus. You know what it is that you want. You just have to be brave enough to let yourself get it.”
With that he walks back into the bar, leaving me to process. I think about Evi’s Tarot cards. The Lovers. The world. Is that what I want? I’m pretty sure it is.
Evi had wanted the truth from me. The truth is that I know our relationship would be difficult as hell. The truth is that we’re opposite in ways that could doom us from the start. The truth is that I don’t fucking care and I want her anyway.
I want us to happen. Not because I feel bad for her, or see her as a burden, but because she makes me feel alive.
I pull out my phone, thinking of texting her, when I see a message from Julia.
“I found the records. Interesting stuff. Give me a call.”
14
Evi
It’s past the deadline Finn Carney gave me to accept his help. I took the coward’s way out and just never responded. I couldn’t bear to say no, but I couldn’t bear to say yes, either. It’s not like me to back away from a fight, and now I was going to lose everything. Even with the settlement I’d get from the city, it wouldn’t be enough to afford both rent on a new tattoo shop and a place to live. Not in Boston, where the sky-high rents forced little businesses like mine out on the regular.
I’d have to move out of the city. I roll over on my side and look at Hank.
“How do you feel about the suburbs, Hank?”
God, I can’t imagine. My artists are talented, and could easily find new places to work in, but the thought of losing my chosen family makes me sick to my stomach.
Chosen family. Like the Doyles. I’d been the one to ask Seamus to leave this time. I did it to protect him from my messes, from adding to his sleepless nights, but I’ll never forget the hurt in his eyes.
Sighing, I scratch Hank under the chin and he leans into my hand, purring. I am such a goddamn wreck right now. Maybe it would be okay to have a fresh start, away from all the painful memories of this place. Though I had to admit there were some good ones, too. That night with Seamus, in his apartment, was probably one of the best of my life, other than when I signed the deed on this little building.
I wonder if Seamus would be sad to see me go. He’d never leave the neighborhood. In some ways, I had a lot more freedom than Seamus did, but as Janis Joplin’s song goes, “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” And I have very little left to lose at this point.
Well, if I have limited time left in this neighborhood, I might as well make the best of it. Giving Hank one last scratch, I decide to go to the No Name Pub.
Embarrassingly, I hope Seamus will be there, and I’m disappointed when he’s not. I could call him, but I won’t.
It’s Sunday night, and he probably has dozens of clients to meet tomorrow. He’s probably in his bed, between those Egyptian cotton sheets. I remember the silky feel of them pressed against my body as he thrust into me. I remember the heat in his eyes, and for that moment I was absolutely sure that we were in it together.
I need a drink.
The pub is pretty empty. No live music tonight, so it’s just a few sad sack locals and me. One grizzled old man pats the stool next to him. No thanks. I sit at the other end of the bar.
The No Name isn’t in the area going to be razed, but everyone knows what’s happening to my block, and I nod at the bartender as he puts a whiskey in front of me saying, “Fuck them Stacys, Evi. Crooked as a Viking’s dick.”
I have absolutely no idea what that means, but it makes me wonder about the bartender’s love life as I throw the liquor back. It burns down my throat, and with it I feel the bile of my anger rising.
It’s so goddamn unfair.
I don’t know how long I’m at the pub, but when I try to pay, the bartender waves me off. I leave money for a tip and make my way back home. When I get back to my building, I don’t go inside, but instead, stare at the outer brick walls. I imagine a wrecker taking my shop down, probably owned by some filthy fucking company that gives kickbacks to the Stacys for the premier contracts. I touch the walls, and I decide not to wait. It’s my goddamn building still. I won’t let the Stacys profit from knocking it down, at least.
Maybe it’d take the whole time I had left here to take the place apart brick by brick, but they’re my fucking bricks. How this physical manifestation of my life’s work gets demolished should be up to me at the very least.
I stumble into the basement. It’s dim and dirty, and I’ve had too much liquor to be climbing down the narrow steps. Seamus was too tall to clear them without hitting his head on the ceiling. He helped me during the building inspection even though he’d been swamped with law school. One of those few occasions we’d spent time together since that day at the beach. I’d been positive that Murphy had put him up to it back then, but now I’m not so sure.
I don’t turn on the lights, not wanting to see what gross creatures hang out down here—I don’t mind spiders, but house centipedes are like Satan’s pubes and I’m not interested in seeing any of those hairy fuckers.
I grab the handle of my sledgehammer. I haven’t used it since we took down some cheap walls to open up the lobby area of my shop. Seamus wanted to hire someone to do the work for me, but I said no. This was mine.
I climb back up, weighed down by the heavy hammer and definitely by the whiskey. The night air is still cool, though supposedly we were getting our first 80-degree day tomorrow. Hot for May. I press my hand to my building.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur. “I love you. But I can’t let someone else do this to you. I owe you that much.”
It was exactly what I’d done with Seamus. I’d destroyed our relationship to protect him from my dysfunction. And now I’d destroy my building, something I held just as precious, to keep it from the Stacys’ dirty hands.
It’s like what Seamus had said about Murphy. You always do the important jobs yourself. If my life falls apart, it’ll be at my own hands, and not at the hands of cruel men like my father or the Stacys. Or even at the hands of kind, generous men like Seamus, who care deeply but who cannot understand why I won’t be someone’s project to fix, good intentions be damned.
I pull back with all my might and swing the hammer into the wall. The pop and crack of the bricks as they crumble goes straight through me. I’m crying as I go for the second swing, the force of metal on brick pushing me back a step. I go for the third swing, but something stops me.
Or rather, someone stops me, grabbing the hammer.
“What the hell are you doing?”
It’s Seamus. Of course it is.
“Leave me alone, Seamus. I have to do this on my own. I’m not going to let some fucking Stacy wrecking crew profit from destroying my fucking building.” I’ve only managed to make a six-inch hole in the side of the wall, and suddenly realize how fucking crazy I must look attacking my building.
But I’m just trying to save my own sanity, my own life, one brick at a time. I don’t care how long it takes. It took that hiker who got pinned by a boulder out west five fucking days to carve his own arm off with a pocketknife, but crazy as that may have seemed when he started with that first cut, it’s what kept him alive. If he’d waited for help, he’d have died.
The urgency of the situations are vastly different, but the need for survival, to do something bold to escape the trap of one’s circumstances, feels the same.
Seamus pulls the hammer out of my hands and drops it on the sidewalk before taking me by the shoulders. His worried gaze searches my face.
“You can’t do this yourself,” he says. “And you don’t need to.”
He won’t even let me cut my own fucking arm off. I go cold, realizing how fucking ridiculous that sounds. What’s wrong with me?
My anger vanishes, and I’m suddenly sober, filled with despair I’ve spent my whole life fighting to avoid. My body sags against the dark, heavy weight of it, but Seamus keeps me from falling.
“Can you help me take her apart, Seamus?” I don’t bother hiding the sobs wracking my body. “I can’t watch the Stacys do it. It’ll kill me, and I can’t give them that satisfaction.”
“No.”
And why should he? I pushed him aside for his worst enemy. I try to straighten up but he holds me tighter, one arm wrapped around my waist, the other cradling the back of my neck.
“We can save the block, Evi. All of it.”
What?
How?
Seamus never lies, though. I’m lightheaded from the stress, and Se
amus senses this, slipping his arms under my legs like he’s going to scoop me up. He thinks better of it, though, and moves back to just holding me steady.
“Come on, Evi. Let’s go upstairs and I’ll tell you everything.”
He walks next to me as we slowly head up to my loft, his arm firm but gentle around my shoulders. He doesn’t rush, and just waits quietly next to me when my knees threaten to buckle.
When we get to the couch, I force myself to look at him. I don’t want him to see me like this, but it can’t be helped.
“I didn’t want you to have to save me again.” My voice wavers, but I don’t want to make this harder. “You felt guilty all those years because of my shitty father, and if this,” I gesture at my loft, “if I lost this, I didn’t want it to be another thing you blamed yourself for.”
He furrows his brow and presses his lips together. “I wish you’d told me instead of carrying it all yourself, but it’s not like I’ve been a bastion of clear communication either.”
He fixes those bright blue eyes on me. “Do I see you as an obligation? I sure as hell do, but not in the way you think. Not like you’re a charity case I’ve taken on.”
I fold my arms over my chest, and Hank hops over, sitting at my feet and growling quietly.
“You’re an obligation because I love you, and when I love someone, I make a commitment to support them no matter what, no matter how hard things get.”
It’s like I’ve been hit by the sledgehammer. My eyes widen, and I drop my arms to my side.
“You wanted the truth.” He sighs. “The truth is that I’ve been holding you at arm’s length because I thought it was the logical decision. The one that would keep everyone safe and would create some kind of, I don’t know, sanitized life I never lost control of.”
There’s a long moment of silence and then he adds, very quietly, “That way it’d be impossible for me to let anyone down.”
As if I haven’t had enough shocks today, Hank jumps next to Seamus, not purring, but not growling either. He drapes his big, fluffy black tail over Seamus’ lap.
Hustle: The Doyles: A Boston Irish Mafia Romance Page 10
