‘Yeah,’ I say, straining at the stars. ‘I had the place right. The someone else not so much, though.’
Why am I telling him this?!
‘Well, I hope you ran him out of town,’ Michael smiles.
‘First thing I’ll do when I get home,’ I say with false bravado.
Michael’s smile goes flat. ‘Jesus, I’m sorry. I thought this was a past thing.’
‘It is. Not a big deal.’
Thought I was starting the rest of my life with him, but hey…
The air goes dead between us. I can hear the gears clicking over inside Michael’s head.
Please don’t ask me about Brad.
‘So, em…what happened earlier. With the jeep?’
‘Oh that,’ I breathe. ‘Just felt like walking. You know.’
‘You went white as my legs,’ Michael smiles.
‘I don’t really do cars. Since the accident,’ I say under my breath.
He nods at me, eyes back-lit with quiet understanding. After a very long five seconds, he takes a deep, somber sounding breath. ‘They’re awful things, cars,’ he says. ‘Want me to get you the lend of a horse?’
‘NO!’ I swat at him.
‘You look good on a horse!’
I flush crimson. ‘Thanks. I think.’ He nods at me, the smile breaking wide again.
We reach the gate fronting Clare’s cottage, and I put a hand to the latch hesitantly.
‘I had a good time tonight,’ I say. ‘I needed it.’ I had no idea how much I’d needed it.
‘I’m glad you enjoyed yourself,’ he says in a low, secret tone, and locks his eyes into mine.
My God, I want to kiss him. I hope he’s not too much of a gentleman to kiss me, a full on, freshman year sort of kiss. Is he waiting for me to make a move?
Michael leans into me, and I become agonizingly aware of the slow, static heat building now between my mouth and his.
‘Heya, lads.’ Cormac moons at us over the wall. ‘Howya now?’
Oh for the love!
‘Not interrupting, am I?’ he winks at me.
The little bollix!
‘Not at all,’ Michael laughs.
‘You coming in? I’ll put the kettle on,’ Cormac says.
Enough with the flipping tea!
‘No, he was just going,’ I blurt.
‘Was I?’ Michael smiles.
‘Uh huh.’ I stand up and point my feet toward the door, every move wooden and beery. I take a step forward, but Michael holds fast to my hand. Brad never held my hand. That was bourgeois, too.
I blink up at him, and he opens his hand carefully as if he were setting free some wild and delicate thing. It is a small gesture, hidden away here in the dark, and I wonder at the way it moves inside me, hotly, with sure intention; how it says things no one, not Brad, nor any of the boys before him, ever did with their whole selves. It’s a gorgeous, sprawl of a feeling, and it scares me half to death.
What am I doing?! I can’t get caught up with someone half a world away! And what do I know about this guy? Nothing! I yank my arm free and shuffle up the yard, Cormac smirking behind me.
I slink into Mum’s room, head spinning one way with booze, the other with the after scent of Dr. Mike. I don’t know five things about this guy, yet here I am, carousing in bars and spilling my guts to him! I have got to get this little infatuation under control. If I let Michael into my heart, like I did Brad, there’d be nothing left to break.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Chavez Bros. are shaking my hands, both pumping away with mad Cheshire grins, creasing the arms of their suit jackets.
‘Fine work, Ms. Quinn.’
‘The best!’
‘Oh yes, yes.’
‘Can’t thank you enough!’
‘Sales are up thirty per cent.’
‘Thirty!’
Omar presses a glimmering golden card into my hand. ‘A token of our appreciation,’ he says.
‘A lifetime supply of coffee?!’ I swoon.
Omar fans at me with his stubby little hands.
‘Julie. Julie.’
My eyes flutter open and, staring down at me from the foot of the bed, is Clare.
‘Jesus, Clare!’
‘Did I startle you? Very sorry,’ she says.
She doesn’t sound sorry.
‘No,’ I grumble, hefting myself upright. Like, I always wake up to leering creepster aunts!
She shifts her weight from her right foot to her left and then back again. ‘I made scones. If you wanted any.’ There’s a small grunting noise behind her. Was that Dermot? Clare blinks and refocuses on a spot just shy of my head. ‘And I wanted to say sorry about the way I reacted. So. Sorry.’
Wow. Don’t put yourself out there.
‘Okay,’ I say flatly. I’ll accept your apology when you mean it.
There’s a clatter from the kitchen--plates being shifted, tea cups divvied out.
‘Scones are smashing, love,’ Dermot calls.
Clare makes a vaguely affirmative noise and then glances at the bedside clock. ‘You’ll want to be getting up if you plan on making Mass,’ she says.
Mass? I haven’t been to Mass in over ten years.
‘You do go to Mass, don’t you?’ she asks and folds her arms over her chest.
‘Oh, every week.’
She narrows her eyes at me. ‘You won’t mind, then. I put you down for one of the readings.’
Book of Revelations, is it?
‘Can’t wait.’ I force a smile, and Clare slips down the stairs to her bedroom.
I drag myself to the kitchen, head heavy, eyes sticky at the corners. Dermot was right--the scones are gorgeous.
‘See if you can’t wind her up again, and we might get a cake,’ he winks across the table.
Cormac smashes in from the sitting room and palms three scones. He’s replaced his usual canvas jacket with a poofy tracksuit top, collar way up.
‘Will you sit down and eat that properly?!’ Dermot nags at him.
‘Can’t. Meeting the ferry,’ he says and hoofs it to the front door.
‘You better be going to the eleven o’clock Mass!’ Clare yells from her bedroom.
‘Balls,’ Cormas huffs, one foot already out the door.
‘I heard that,’ Clare gripes as she bangs the bathroom door shut.
I help myself to tea and scooch beside Dermot.
‘Listen, I’m sorry about last night,’ I say, cupping my hands around the mug. ‘I was in shock. I can’t remember what I said exactly, but I didn’t mean…’
Dermot shakes his head at me. ‘Never mind that.’ He leans back in his chair and folds his hands across his stomach. ‘No one’s ever gone for Clare like that--straight for the jugular,’ he smirks. ‘The look on her face like!’
‘I shouldn’t have yelled at her.’
‘Ah, well. It’s like the man says, “Great hate follows great love”.’
‘Meaning what, exactly?’
Dermot reaches across the table and pats my hand. ‘It’s been hard on her, your being here.’
You think?
‘So much has changed for her, you see. She’s afraid of being left behind,’ he says and takes a big gulp of tea. ‘Again.’
I frown. Again?
‘There aren’t many things more terrifying than getting a second chance,’ Dermot says, eyeing something at the bottom of his mug.
‘You lost me,’ I sigh.
‘She thought she’d never have to face you.’
‘Face me?’
‘Maeve through you.’ He leans close. ‘See, it’s not Maeve she can’t forgive. It’s herself.’
‘Forgive for what, exactly?’ Will somebody please tell me what went down thirty years ago!
Dermot grins at me and then goes very grave when he cops that I’m not kidding. ‘Well, before you were born--’
Clare clicks into the kitchen on a pair of surprisingly chic kitten heels. ‘Nearly ready?’ She eyes me reproachfully.
/>
‘Nearly.’ I’m still in my sweats!
‘We’ll meet you there so,’ she says, gesturing for Dermot to come on. ‘You know where the church is?’
‘Oh yeah.’ Big thing with the steeple.
‘Grand,’ Clare says and strides out through the sitting room.
Dermot pushes back from the table. ‘See now, she’s asked you to Mass,’ he says, his voice sweeping and benevolent.
‘Is that a big deal?’
He nods gravely, taps at his temple.
‘Dermot!’ Clare bellows from the sitting room. ‘We’re going.’
He winces and plods outside.
I slip on last night’s crumpled jeans and a somber button down, then hustle into the bathroom to splash water on my face and frown at my bed head. Could I get away with a hat, I wonder? The mantel clock chimes quarter to, and I bolt out the door unhatted.
The church bells are tolling when I turn the bend into the village, filling the air with a hopeful, deep-reaching hum. This might actually be nice. Mass in a real Irish church. Let’s hope I remember when to sit and stand and kneel! I turn the corner up the main street and waltz up to the sanctuary doors. The church is wedged with people, all of them chattering and carrying on, not the stony Sunday Mass I remember as a child.
Good, I’m not late!
I dip a finger into the holy water font and, as I cross myself, a trio of whispers catches in my ear.
‘I tell ya, she has some nerve showing up here,’ a woman rasps from the back pew.
‘That’s right,’ a second chimes in.
‘After what Meave did--it’s shameful!’ the third gripes.
Maeve?! Were they talking about Mum? I back into a shadowy corner of the anteroom and listen as hard as I can.
‘She got just what she deserved, that woman.’
My stomach knots.
‘And have you seen the girl at all?’ another woman asks. ‘Like seeing the dead, she’s that like her mother!’
‘Just as full of herself, I’d say.’
What?!
‘Coming here to take the only thing Clare has left.’
Okay, that’s going too far! I step out of the shadow, jaw set and eyes narrowed, just as the priest launches into his opening prayer. Hands fly, tapping to chests. Clare cranes around from the pew at the head of the aisle and waves me over. I can see her mouthing to me over the rows of hatted heads--‘Come ON!’--but I can’t. There’s no way I could face her now.
I turn my back on her and dart out into the street, my blood seizing cold. Can it be true? Has Mum done something unforgivable to Clare? I kick at the grass on the road verge. ‘She got just what she deserved’. How can you say such a thing?! What is it that Mum did that makes some people think she deserved…to die? No, it can’t be true. Mum was a good person! Clare’s life didn’t turn out the way she’d have liked, so the hell with the rest of us? I’m the one who’s lost everything! I’m the one who deserves an apology! I kick a rock into the ditch as hard as I can. To hell with them all.
It hits me then, a big walloping revelation, that stops me dead in the road. Clare and I are just the same. Our worlds have been rent apart by death and distance, but we’ve gritted our way through. We’d made plans, elaborate, foolproof plans, and those too had been quashed, both by choices neither of us had seen coming. Stuart chose Roger, and Josephine chose me. If it had gone any other way, Clare and I would still be strangers.
I stop at a fork in the road and steady myself against a low stone wall. None of this made any sense! Five minutes, I just need five minutes to get my bearings. I take a shuddering breath and stare across the boggy field. Okay, maybe twenty. I hug my shoulders. All these years I thought I was the one who deserved the apology. The old woman’s words explode at the base of my skull. Am I taking the only thing Clare had left?
I round the bend to the cottage to find Michael riding loops in the drive on an old fashioned high nelly bicycle.
‘Heya,’ he calls out and skids to a stop beside me.
‘What is that?’ I ask him.
‘Your new ride. It was my mum’s.’
A bike? Wonderful.
‘Yeah, I’d rather not. Just back from a crucifixion,’ I say.
He laughs and hands the bike to me. ‘C’mon. It’s easy out.’
I waver over the handlebars and swing a leg over. ‘Now what?’
‘You’re not serious,’ Michael laughs.
I frown at him.
‘You are.’
‘It’s not like you can just learn to ride a bike in New York,’ I snipe at him.
‘No, I wouldn’t think,’ he says, trying very hard not to smile.
I climb back off the bike. Thanks, but I’ve been mortified plenty today.
‘Ah, come on,’ Michael says, dead serious now. I huff and swing my leg back over. He takes hold of the frame and walks me slowly up the road. I peddle warily, knuckles white across the handlebars. ‘That’s mighty. You got it, sure,’ Michael says.
The front wheel wobbles sharp to the left.
‘Do NOT let me go.’
He gives me a little push, and the bike hops jerkily down the bend. ‘You’re flying it!
I am? I AM! ‘How do I stop?!’
‘The lever’s there! On the handles,’ Michael hollers.
‘LEE-vers?’ I crane round, and there’s Michael hoofing toward me, eyes white and wild. I turn back in a panic to see the hedge looming prickly at me. There’s nothing to do but brace for it.
I crash broadside into briars and ivy. Michael gets an arm in under me before I’m well and over, but the momentum of the two of us is too much. We topple, one over the other, into the ditch. He draws me into his eyes and, for a glorious ten seconds, we stay, arms and legs and breath entangled, in the mud.
‘Nearly had it there,’ Michael grins, his beautiful face splattered with dirt.
I reach up and swipe a big glob from his eyelid, sides keening with laughter.
‘Did I?’
‘Hedge jumped out in front of you,’ he says.
‘It did!’
‘I saw it.’ He shifts beside me, cradling my neck and the mud slick small of my back. ‘There should be a sign, in fairness,’ he says.
‘Yeah, bad bend back there.’
‘That’s the one.’ He moves to pick me up and out of the swale, but something gives beneath him, and we pitch back down with a wet smack, noses almost touching. I spurt out laughing, but Michael doesn’t. He’s gone very serious, almost brooding. I can feel the low thrum of his heartbeat through his shirt, can see myself, burning small and entire, in his eyes. He pulls me to him, just lifting my chin with a careful hand. I shouldn’t let him. If he kisses me now, the whole sense of the world will change. But I want him to. I think I want him to.
I close my eyes and hold my breath.
‘Jayzus, the state of ye!’ Clare stands sneering at the edge of the road.
I jolt up and out of Michael’s arms.
‘Whatever are you doing?’ she says, looking me up and down.
‘Cycling,’ Michael says.
‘In the ditch?’
I bite at the inside of my lip, but a snort of laughter comes out anyway.
Clare keeps right on scowling at my mud trussed hair. ‘And here I thought you were ill, the way you ran out of Mass.’
‘I was--’
Clare bats my words aside.
Michael helps me out of the muck and pulls the bike free from the snarl of briars. ‘Will ya have another go?’ he asks me.
‘Uh NO.’
‘Go on!’ Cormac bounds over, a dark pixie looking girl beside him. ‘Ava, get it there on your phone.’
‘Cormac O’Mahony!’ Clare hollers. ‘You better be on your way to Mass!’
‘We’re going,’ he huffs, and turns to the girl. ‘That’s my cousin. Told ya she was mental!
‘Hey!’ I fling a clod of dirt at him, which he dodges expertly.
‘Only messing,’ Cormac laughs.
>
‘Hi, Julie,’ Ava says and shakes my hand, mud and all. She swivels round, taking in the scene on her smartphone. Dear God, is she filming this?!
Clare heaves a tremendous sigh and stalks off toward the cottage. Cormac puts a hand up and high fives me.
‘That was savage,’ he says and trotts off with Ava, who’s still panning away with her iPhone.
Dermot’s stalled out a few meters down the road, his face drawn over the paper.
‘What’s it saying, Dermot?’ Michael calls to him.
‘Bollix is what!’ He stomps over to us. ‘Fecking Minister for Agriculture released a statement this morning--‘by no means is the government willing to lobby for trade reform.’ What the hell kind of government is it that won’t fight for the rights of its own industry?’ he bellows.
‘And what do the lads at the co-op say?’
‘It’s a free for all down there, sure. Half ’em want to sell out, the other half to hold out for a better deal. Kieran’s holding the vote tomorrow.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Michael says.
‘Do.’ Dermot crumples the paper under his arm and looks over to me. ‘Bit of cycling, is it?’ he asks. ‘Lovely day for it.’ He turns to the cottage. ‘See you, Michael.’
Made With Love: I Love You Forever Page 18
