by Sienna Blake
I felt like she’d slapped me. I felt like my whole world was tilting on an axis, previous beliefs crumbling and falling apart like rotten wood. Pieces that I somehow didn’t want to let go of. I shook my head, my hair falling around my face.
Candace leaned in. “Do you want to know what I think?”
No. I couldn’t survive another truth bomb like that.
She kept talking anyway. “I think you’re scared. Terrified. Because what you and Noah could have is so real, so fucking…epic, amiga, that it has the power to end you. So you make excuses—he’s too hot, he’s a player, wahhh—to avoid confronting what you feel in there.” She pointed at my chest.
I pressed at my heart, shielding it with my hands, as if I could hide it from her. She already saw too much, this tiny firecracker of a woman.
Her words were like bullets punching through my armor. So real. So…epic. It has the power to end you.
Even after one night of passion, after one lie, I had been ended by him.
Oh, shit. I… I glanced up at Candace, the realization stuck in my throat. I…
Candace nodded. “You love him, amiga.”
I love Noah.
I’d always loved Noah.
I fell in love with him from the first laughter he’d so easily drawn from me the night that Sean stood me up. But I’d shied away from those feelings because I questioned my worth. I wasn’t airbrushed or tall and rail-thin like those supermodels in magazines. I wasn’t beautiful enough for a man like Noah. So instead of giving my heart what it wanted, I chose the safe option. Sean. The man I liked but whose feelings I could keep controlled, corralled into a safe, regulated box. So when it ended—like it had ended—I walked away, heart intact.
Oh, fuck.
I was in love with my best friend.
I was so fucked.
There was no way in hell I could ever go back to being friends with Noah, not with this realization beaming from my soul like a beacon, shining a new light over everything I did or said in front of him. Even if we could move on from this…
I shrugged, trying to emulate the apathy I wished I felt. Apathy didn’t hurt like this did. “So I—” I choked on the word love, “have feelings for Noah. So what?”
Candace stared at me. She reached out between the forgotten Thai food containers and grabbed my hand, squeezing it. “You want to know the reason why he hasn’t gone home with a woman in four years? Why he’s a reformed player?”
I nodded.
“You.”
“Me?”
She gave a rueful smile. “He’s been in love with you since day one.”
Noah. In love with me. No…
No?
Yes, Aubrey.
My heart began to slam in my chest.
All the nights Noah drove me home even though I was out of his way, refusing to drive away until I was safely inside.
The nights we stayed up until dawn, talking, laughing.
The way he kept me right into his side when we went to the crowded Electric Picnic festival. Rubbing my foot that time I’d cramped up on a hike in Glendalough.
The fact that he never liked Sean.
That he risked a massive fine by paying me cash under the table when my student visa ran out.
Every step of the way he’d been an amazing friend to me. More than a friend.
He’d almost kissed me in the car that night. I ran. I’d kept him at arm’s length like I’d been doing this whole time.
That night we spent together, he hadn’t used me, he’d worshiped me. He didn’t fuck me, he made love to me.
Maybe the lottery prize night wasn’t the betrayal I thought it was.
I hadn’t heard him out. I hadn’t given him—my best friend in the whole wide world—a chance to explain himself. I could hear the echo of his voice I my head, those desperate words, Aubrey, please, let me explain.
I’d accused him of orchestrating the whole thing. Told him to get out rather than give him a chance to tell me his side. I’d been so wrapped up in how I felt and what was going on in my head. So determined to believe the worst in him. So determined to feel betrayed.
He got too close. He got under my skin. Showed me what we could be like. And I freaked. I used it as another reason to push him away.
Oh, fuck.
Now it was too late. He hadn’t called since. He hadn’t tried to come and see me to explain.
I stared at my silent phone now sitting on the edge of the table. You haven’t called him either.
“Oh, shit,” I said, letting out a long breath, thinking of the mess we’d both made of this.
“Oh, shit,” Candace agreed with a firm nod.
Noah
It was done. The surgery was booked and paid for. With the money from the lottery, plus the money we’d raised during Aubrey’s fundraiser, we just about covered it.
The money had come so easily, yet now it was spent. Truth be told, I didn’t miss a penny of it. I was actually glad it was gone. It felt like this ugly thing that tied me to a painful moment in my life had suddenly lost its power.
After I’d gotten off the phone to schedule the surgery, I’d had that moment of elation, an absolute thrill that everything was going to be okay. I felt like I could breathe again. I’d hit the instant dial on my phone before I knew what I was doing.
Calling Aubrey.
Except Aubrey wasn’t talking to me anymore.
I hit cancel on the call before it connected, feeling like a knife had sliced through my heart. The one person I wanted to share this good news with, I had lost. Due to my own stupidity. I heard my phone creak as my hand curled around it in a fist, releasing it before I broke the damn thing.
Aubrey had been the inspiration behind the lottery idea, the whole reason that my ma was going to survive past next Christmas, and the whole reason I’d fucked things up so badly with her that I hadn’t heard from her in days. The irony wasn’t lost on me.
I missed her desperately. Every time the door opened at The Jar, my head snapped up, expecting her to waltz right in.
She hadn’t.
Every time my phone beeped, I leapt to unlock the message, praying it’d be her, telling me she was ready to hear me out.
She hadn’t.
Every second that went by was agony, like I was walking around with my chest torn open, bleeding out with every painful heartbeat. Because every second felt like she was moving further and further away. It was becoming clearer and clearer that I had lost her.
Really lost her.
Every time I’d gone to call her, I’d talked myself out of it. What would I say? What fecking excuse did I have that she would accept? If she was ready to hear me, she’d reach out to me, right?
Every night I closed down the bar without her; the space I loved, the place that’d felt like a second home, felt vacant. Like a stranger. I realized that it’d been Aubrey who had given The Jar its heart. Without it, the bar was just an empty shell of wood and glass.
Every night like a fucking eejit, I drove to her apartment. The silence of my car echoing in my ears. As I pulled up outside her building, I prayed that this time, this night, she would have left a light on. A sign that there was still hope.
She didn’t.
I pushed open the front door of my childhood home—Ma never locked her damn front door, she was too used to growing up in the countryside—and caught sight of my ma in her chair, resting as she read a book.
She glanced up at me and her eyes twinkled. “Oh, would you look at that. It’s my third favorite son.”
I let out a laugh, my heartache temporarily relieved by her smile, lifted the paper carry bag I’d brought with me and shook it. “You might want to reconsider my ranking, Ma.”
Her eyes widened and she sniffed the air. “Oh, is that…a cheese toastie I smell?”
“From Grogan’s. Picked it up on my way so it’s still warm.” I covered the distance between us and offered her the bag, the contents giving off the most delectable scent
of melted cheddar.
My ma let out a squeal as she snatched the bag off me, managing to look like a child in that moment.
My heart squeezed.
“I take it back,” she said, ripping open the bag in her lap and shooting me a loving look that made me feel like I was seven again. “You’re at least my second favorite.”
“Jaysus, Ma, wait a sec. You’ll get it all over ye.” I hurried to the kitchen and grabbed one of the mismatched plates from the cupboard and paper towels. You can’t eat a cheese toastie from Grogan’s without a roll of them. I returned to find she’d already disemboweled the paper and had taken a giant bite out of half of the cut sandwich, bacon grease running down her fingers, cheese oozing from the crust onto her lap.
“Ma!” I eyed the cheese pooling dangerously on the shredded paper wrapping, threatening to flood her skirt with oil. In one swift movement, I’d lifted the entire paper plus other half sandwich and slid the plate under it.
She gave me a closed-mouth grin as she chewed.
I rolled my eyes. “What would ye do without me?” I fell into the chair next to hers.
She let out a very unladylike snort. “I’d have fewer grey hairs, that’s for sure.” But the look she shot me was filled with affection.
“Ah, come on,” I said. “Most of those grey hairs come from Eoin.”
She popped the last of her toastie half into her mouth, the crunch of fried bread between her teeth.
“Damn, that does look good.” I reached out to grab the other half.
“Mine.” She slapped the back of my hand, leaving cheesy fingerprints on me.
“Aw, come on. Just a bite.”
“I know your bites, Noah Michael O’Sullivan. Half my sandwich will be gone.”
“A tiny bite?”
My ma lifted her eyebrow at me. “I raised you, boy. You don’t do anything tiny.”
I grunted and sank back into my chair, a small smile at my lips.
“So,” my ma said, eyeing me out of the corner of her eye, “why are you here?”
I shifted in my chair under the weight of her stare. “Can’t a son just come over to see his ma and bring her a toastie?”
“A son can. But that’s not what’s happening here.” She circled a greasy finger around.
“Oh, ye of little faith.”
“I’m your ma, boy. I know when you’ve got something weighing on ye.” She took another bite of her toastie and waited for me to speak.
“Alright then,” I said, feeling a grin overtaking my face. “Don’t plan anything for August fifth.”
Her eyebrow popped up. “Am I gonna need a dress?”
“What?”
“Mother of the groom dresses are all so ugly. So unflattering.”
“What?”
“And those stupid strappy shoes that are all in fashion pinch tighter than a nun’s assh—”
“Ma! What are you talking about?”
“No summer wedding?”
I blinked at her.
She shot me a look. “You didn’t finally get that girl of yours to dump her fiancé and marry you instead?”
Bitterness flooded my mouth. I’d have to tell Ma that I’d fucked things up irreparably with Aubrey, but the good news came first. I would not spoil this moment for her. “No,” I said through gritted teeth.
My ma chuckled her tongue. “I didn’t think I raised an eejit, but sure three out of four ain’t bad.”
I forced a smile, trying to get the conversation back on track. The conversation about Aubrey had to wait. Or happen…never. “That surgery you need, I scheduled it.”
“In me hoop, you did. We can’t afford it,” she said.
“It’s already paid for. I paid for it. We paid for it,” I corrected, not wanting to take all the glory. “Eoin, Darren, Michael, we all covered it.”
I’d asked my brothers if they wanted to be here to tell Ma, but they’d all told me that it was my idea so I should tell her myself. It’d be a more civilized conversation, Michael had said whilst side-eyeing Eoin. He’d earned a slap on the back of the head for that.
I think they also didn’t know what to do around me or what to say. They were all worried about me, all of them taking turns to drop by the bar because they were “just passing through.” Liars. They were never “just passing by.” I was on their bloody roster. They knew something went wrong between Aubrey and me that night, but I hadn’t given them any details. I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it. Or that night.
I’m sure they thought I needed some time alone with Ma.
My ma was now staring at me, remnants of her toastie all but forgotten on the plate.
In all my life, I don’t think I’d ever rendered her speechless. “Surprise,” I said weakly.
“You selling guns?” she demanded, brows furrowing.
“What? No!”
“Running drugs for the Irish Kings?” she said, referencing one of the most notorious gangs in Ireland.
“Jaysus, Ma!”
“Then how the feck do four lads raise almost a feckin’ quarter of a feckin’ million euros?”
I don’t think I’d ever heard my ma say so many fecks in a row in my whole life. I froze. “It doesn’t matter how. It’s paid for.”
“Me bollocks, it doesn’t. I didn’t raise my boys to steal, lie or cheat.”
I let out a sigh. Time for a little white lie. Or four. “We didn’t steal, lie or cheat. We all just pitched in, got loans. I refinanced my bar, Darren took a mortgage out on his shop, we all know Michael’s been hoarding away money since the day he could count cents, Eoin signed a big sponsorship deal. Relax, Ma. We got this.”
She eyed me for a moment as if to determine whether I was trying to pull the wool over her eyes.
I prayed that she wouldn’t sniff out the lies. I hated keeping the truth from her. But it was for her benefit, I reasoned to myself.
Finally, my ma blinked. “You…raised all that money.”
I nodded, still too scared to speak in case I blurted out the truth of how we did it.
“For me?”
“It’s the least we could do for our second favorite ma.”
For a moment, she just stared at me.
It started with a chin wobble.
Then her eyes misted over. A choking noise came from her throat, and I realized she was trying to say my name. And failing.
That’s when my solid as a rock ma, the centerpiece of our family, the woman who stepped up without shedding a tear and became both parents when our deadbeat father left us, broke down.
My heart squeezed so hard I felt the sting in my own eyes. I fell to my knees in front of my sobbing ma, pulled the plate off her lap and wrapped her in a hug, not caring if she got cheese grease all over me.
“How did I ever—I—you…” she kept muttering between huge gulps of air.
“You’re welcome,” I whispered. In that moment, I stopped cursing the lottery and the fallout between Aubrey and me. And just enjoyed being with the only other woman in my life that I loved. Getting to keep one out of two ain’t bad, I supposed dryly to myself.
My ma let out a cough, a sniff and pulled herself back, dabbing at her damp cheeks. “Well then,” she said with a nod. But her eyes were still glittering with emotion.
“Well then,” I said with an awkward smile, still kneeling before her, trying to pretend like this was just normal Ma and son bonding behavior.
“I raised you boys well.” She patted my cheek. “One day, you’re going to make that Aubrey the happiest woman in the world.”
And from the heavens to the depth of hell, my heart crashed and burned.
There was no force in the universe that could have prevented the surge of emotions from rising up and crashing out all over my face.
“Oh no,” my ma said in a quiet voice.
I shoved myself up from the floor, slumping back into the chair I’d occupied before.
“What happened?”
“Don’t want to talk a
bout it,” I said through gritted teeth.
There was a silence. My ma picked up the plate and carefully ate the rest of her toastie, one nibble at a time, all the while staring at me with narrowed eyes. This was my ma’s carefully honed strategy to get information out of us boys. Silence. Silence that squeezed you till you popped. Catholic priests could learn a thing or two from her about how to get you to confess.
And it was working. I could feel that pressure building up in me like a soda someone had shaken.
“Stop lookin’ at me like that,” I muttered, crossing my arms over my chest, feeling my bottom lip stick out in a pout. I didn’t want to say it out loud. If I said it out loud, it’d make it real.
Her brows shot up into her hair. “That bad, huh?”
I let out a long groan, shoving my hands over my face. Maybe I did want to talk about it. Maybe I wanted to share my hurt. For Ma to make it better with soft hands that smelled like lavender laundry soap and kisses that had magical boo-boo fixing powers.
“I hurt her,” I blurted out. “We were…intimate and I messed up.” My heart sank into my toes at finally admitting to myself what I’d done. “I’ve lost her.”
“Aubrey could never be lost to you.”
I nodded, feeling a wail rising up through my lungs. “She is. She won’t talk to me. She won’t forgive me. Ever.”
I withered with shame under Ma’s cool stare. I knew she loved Aubrey, maybe as much as I did. I knew she’d pinned her hopes on us getting together. Even when I’d told her that Aubrey had gotten engaged to Sean, she’d shrugged and said in a knowing tone, “What’s for ye, won’t pass ye,” that old Irish saying.
“How many sunflowers have you sent her?” she asked. Sunflowers were Aubrey’s favorite.
I blinked. “None.”
“Boxes of those Butlers champagne truffles she loves?”
“No.”
“Marching a band up and down her street playing her favorite songs and holding up a large sign saying ‘I’m sorry I’m such a feckin’ eejit’???”
I winced.
