Secrets of a (Somewhat) Sunny Girl

by Karen Booth

  “A year after I left Ireland. I just…” Words were whizzing through my head. Some felt they were the most important and others were scrambling to hide. Loneliness and desperation were the strongest, drowning out everything else. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you, too. But I never got it. The letter.” He cleared his throat and dropped his elbows down onto his knees, combing his fingers through his hair. “Damn. I never got it. That was right around when things started to get crazy for me.”

  “Your first big hit.”

  “Yeah. I wasn't even home that much. I, uh, I had someone dealing with my mail at that point. There was a lot of it. Bags and bags some days.”

  So that was what happened to it. My profound longing for him had landed in a pile of what were probably similarly worded sentiments—I love you, Eamon. You’re so amazing. “I’m sure it was overwhelming. It must've got stuck in with the rest of your fan mail. Or maybe it got lost.” I was feeling more pathetic about this with every word. Whoever had read that letter had probably seen it and thought I was some lovesick teenage girl.

  “It's really hard to know what happened. But damn, I wish I’d gotten that. What did it say?”

  I scrunched up my lips, wondering exactly how truthful I should be right now. So much time had passed. It didn't matter now, did it? However much it had hurt me at the time to write that letter and get zero response. Here he was, saying to me that he wanted to try to recapture what we'd had, but what did that even mean? Fate had always seemed more hell-bent on keeping us apart. “Just that I missed you and hoped you were doing well and were happy. That's all I really wanted for you. For you to be happy.” Tears stung my eyes, emotion jamming up my throat.

  He shook his head in disbelief. “That could've changed a lot of things. It could've changed my whole life, really. I got married eighteen months after you left.”

  “Yeah. I know. It was all over the newsstands here.”

  “And my daughter was born soon after.”

  “Fiona, right?”

  His face lit up in a way I'd never seen before. “She's brilliant. Absolutely the best thing that ever happened to me.” Eamon gathered his napkin in his hand and set it down on the table. “I’m sorry about the letter, Katherine. I don't know what else to say about it.”

  I waved it off. “Don't beat yourself up over it. It can't be undone now. Let's just focus on the future.” Had I really said that? Me?

  He smiled wide. “Yes. I want that more than anything.” He gathered his napkin in his hand and placed it on the table. “But here's where it gets tricky. I thought about this for a long time last night. About what I was going to say today. I can only do this if you want it, too. If this isn't something you're really, truly willing to explore, I can't do it. I mean really try. Heart, eyes, and mind open.”

  I sucked in a deep breath, feeling my own shoulders fold up around my ears. You know those moments when you have to ask yourself what you truly want? And the answer always seems just out of reach? This was one of those moments.

  “Of course, my thought process was different last night,” he continued. “I didn't know about the letter then. I'd always thought you'd just left and forgotten about me.”

  “I thought the same thing.” The sense of loss was profound right now. It felt like a weight on my heart that might never go away.

  He rose from his seat, leaned down and planted his palm flat against the side of my neck. His thumb rested in the indentation before my ear, fingers curled at my nape. “I never stopped wanting you, Katherine. I never stopped wanting this.” His eyelids were heavy, and I knew exactly what that meant. A single glance at his lips and I could feel how soft they were before they landed on mine.

  I wasn't prepared, however, for the way we both so fully surrendered to the kiss. His lips were like heaven, and I'd been away from them for far too long. I craned my neck and dropped my napkin to have more of him, clutching his shoulders and pulling him down. He dropped to his knees and we drove our shoulders into each other—the opposite of a tug of war, like we were trying to see if one of us could possibly get closer. He angled his head and took the kiss deeper. We weren't just hungry for each other. We were starving. Like neither of us had eaten. Ever. For a moment I was back in Ireland, young and feeling free. For a moment, I felt like me.

  We wrenched our lips apart as if we'd been glued together. Our foreheads rested against each other, both of us breathless and restless. Dazed. I would've kept my eyes closed forever and just relived that feeling if I didn't want to see the things his face could tell me.

  “After that kiss, I'd be an idiot if I said I didn't want to explore this.” I had to lighten the mood. It was my defense mechanism. My impulse when I was overwhelmed.

  Eamon laughed quietly and dropped back, sitting on his heels. “I’d do anything to take you in that bed right now.”

  So do it. “I’d be lying if I said I didn't want you to.” I bit down on my lower lip, hard, just to tell myself that this was really happening. My breath picked up again. My pulse throbbed in my throat.

  He shook his head, his hands gathered in his lap almost as if he was praying. “I can't do it. This second chance means too much to me. I feel like it'll ruin everything if we sleep together.”

  I supposed somebody had to be the responsible adult in the room, but it was still a total letdown. “So now what?”

  “Finish breakfast and I send you on your way. You have my number. If you want this, you call me. And if you don't, then don’t.”

  “Well, why wouldn't I want it?” Was there something he wasn't telling me?

  “I don't know the circumstances of your life, Katherine. I want this, but I can't barge in and tell you I think we should pick up where we were a decade ago. Call me if you're serious. We’ll spend a few weeks talking on the phone, getting reacquainted, and I'll see you when I come back to New York. By that point, we should have a pretty good idea of whether or not this will work. And if not, at least we had the chance to reconnect.”

  “That's it?”

  He nodded emphatically. “That's it. I don't want to mess with fate.”

  Chapter Five

  Believe it or not, I actually managed to go to work after I left Eamon at the Four Seasons. I wasn't much use though, which was not good since Miles Ashby, the UK’s golden boy, had arrived. Unfortunately, Miles was just as arrogant as his reputation and name suggested. I hadn't had any direct contact with him yet: I just stood in the conference room while he, his starched shirt, and his head of non-moving hair talked about us coming together as a team and hitting home runs and every other bad sports analogy you could imagine. It was all a bit ridiculous. Mr. Ashby didn't look as though he'd played a sport in all his life.

  Afterward, I returned to my office and tried to get lost in some of my projects, but I was too stuck on everything Eamon had said about trying and being serious. Had that really happened to me? Had he really said those things? Even more important, had he meant them? Right now, there were far more questions than answers.

  I got home around six, and Amy came barging through our door a half hour later. She kicked it shut behind her, tossed her bag and keys on the chair, and bugged her baby blues at me. “So? Eamon? What happened?”

  I'd had a good eight hours to process the breakfast date, and I still wasn't totally sure. I swallowed a sip of my wine and set my glass on the coffee table, deciding it was best to start small. “It was great.”

  “That text you sent me was the worst, by the way. Had a good time? What does that even mean?”

  “What was I supposed to say? And you were at work. I didn't want to bother you. You're always giving me shit when I send you long, rambling texts.”

  “For this, I would've cut you some slack.” She planted herself on the couch next to me and flipped her pumps from her feet. They tumbled under the coffee table. “So, again. Tell me. What happened? How was it?” She nearly went full-on chin-hands with me. I had to admit I loved the chance to gossip with
her, but this was so personal, it felt too raw to gush and squeal. A lot had happened. Heavy stuff of consequence.

  “It was great. But strange. But also awesome. What do you want to know? The highlights?”

  “The sex lights.”

  “There was no sex. But there was a kiss.” Was there ever. Hours later and my lips were still asking me what the hell happened. “And he answered the door wearing a towel.”

  “Get out.” She crossed her legs and started bobbing her foot. “You are such a lucky bitch.”

  “I know. I don't even know what I did to deserve it.” How did it feel to suddenly talk about a secret as if it had always been public knowledge? Whatever it was, that was what talking to Amy felt like. Eamon had gone from hiding in the recesses of my mind to being fully out in the open.

  “A kiss? On the lips? How was it?”

  “Yes, on the lips. I wouldn't call it a kiss if it was on the forehead. I'd call it a peck or I wouldn't even mention it.”

  “If he kissed me on the forehead, I'd call it a kiss. I'd tell all of my friends that Eamon MacWard kissed me on the face.”

  “Nobody says that. The cheek, yes. The forehead, the nose. Nobody says ‘the face’.”

  “You're stalling. Just tell me.”

  I sucked in a deep breath. Of course I was stalling. So I told her everything…the towel…the room…and although I didn't tell her every last word he'd said, I did tell her some things.

  “Why didn't he ever look for you?” she asked.

  “He said he was waiting for fate to bring me back.”

  Amy closed her eyes and flopped back on the couch. “Oh, my God. I'm going to die of romanticism. He said that? I would literally pass out.”

  The detail of the letter was still bothering me. It was impossible not to wonder how things would've been different if he'd seen it. And that left me with one indisputable fact: I'd reached out to him and he had not done the same for me. “He did. He said that. So, anyway, he, um…” I took a gulp of my wine, not the way you're supposed to drink it. It not only didn't have time to wash over my palate, I'm pretty sure I skipped the tasting part altogether. “Do you want some?”

  “Yes. I can’t believe you waited this long to offer it to me.” She hopped up from the couch, plucked a glass from the rack above the kitchen peninsula, and was back in three seconds flat. She finished off the bottle with a generous pour. “He what? He went down on you? You said there were no sex lights.”

  “You need to get your brain out of the gutter.”

  “Hey. I've been practicing law all day. Just tell me.” She rounded the coffee table and sat again, tucking one leg under the other.

  “He said that he wanted to try again.”

  “Katherine…” Amy's face was frozen in this bizarre state of poetic wonderment, like we were in a Hallmark commercial. She was completely silent, she didn't move at all, as if she'd decided we should mark this moment with entirely too much stillness. “That's so amazing.”

  “Is it though? Is it really? Maybe it's better if we let sleeping dogs lie. What if it's a big disaster? There was something nice about the way we parted the first time. Nobody was mad. Nobody was throwing things or slamming doors. We were just sad.”

  “Just profoundly sad?”

  I nodded as if I thought that was a good thing, even knowing I’d ended up with an emotional hangover for years. Eamon had left his mark on me. There was no undoing that. “Yeah. It was.”

  “I don't know how you could be happier with sad than with angry.”

  “I wasn't. I'm not.” Was I? Was I happier with unhappiness? Or had it become my default setting, so that was the comfortable place?

  “Where did you two leave it today?”

  “He said the ball is in my court. He's going to wait for me to call him. He doesn't want to do it if I'm not serious about it.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know. It's such a guy thing to say.”

  She shook her head and blew a disgruntled exhale from her lips. “I swear, sometimes you are so dumb I want to have you tested.”

  “What? It feels like he's putting it off on me and I don't know how I feel about that. Like how serious can I commit to being? All that time apart from each other and now we've spent a grand total of an hour together. Does that mean anything?”

  “So you want to let what might end up being the love of your life walk away without trying?”

  “You make it sound so idiotic.”

  “Because it is.” She took my hand, and directed her gaze at my fingers. She washed her thumb back and forth across my knuckles. It was hard not to notice what was different about this scenario—her big, fat honking ring. “Look. I get it. If anybody gets it, I do. What you and I went through was not normal. What Mom and Dad went through was not normal. All of it has messed with our heads, especially when it comes to relationships. But at some point, you have to look past it.”

  “I thought you were going to say I have to let it go. Everything with Mom.”

  Amy released my hand and reached over to the coffee table for her glass. “I’ve decided that letting it go is unrealistic. It's always going to be there. And acting like the cheating and the accident didn't happen is a mistake. All we can do is try to see what's on the other side of that. It will never go away.”

  Maybe that was my problem—I was still clinging to this irrational hope that someday, it would all suddenly become okay and acceptance would sink in. Or maybe I was hoping that someone would tell me I'd imagined the whole thing. There were parts of that day, things that were said that still hadn't come to light, one thing in particular that I hadn't shared with anyone. It was still locked away inside my head, the things Mom had said. I suspected that continuing to hold on to them might be part of the reason I had such a hard time moving forward, but the secrets from that day were not easily shared. People would get hurt. And all these years later, I was still wrestling with whether it was all true, or just angry words from a mom who felt betrayed by her oldest daughter. Her baby. “I guess I see what you're saying.”

  “At some point, I had to realize that Luke wasn't trying to trick me or hurt me or torture me. He was just trying to love me. He wanted to be with me. And that it's okay for me to say yes to that. It was okay to let it be as simple as that.”

  “And you think I should do that with Eamon.”

  “I think you'll regret it forever if you don’t.”

  I slumped back on the couch and rested my hands on my belly. “I guess I have a lot to think about, huh?”

  “I still can't believe you never told me about him. I always thought that we would tell each other everything.”

  The weight of her words was impossible to ignore. If anything, it felt as if they were designed to chip a chunk out of my heart. “Have you ever had a secret that was so bizarre that it didn't feel real? Like it didn't feel possible, so you just didn't tell anyone at all?”

  Amy sat back, deep in thought. “I don't think so. But I don't feel like bizarre things happen to me. Most things seem pretty self-explanatory. And Eamon is not a bizarre secret. He's an amazing one.”

  That hadn't been what I was getting at, at all, but it wasn't fair for me to veil what I was saying. I had to just forget it like I had for twenty-two years. What good would it do now, anyway? I could live with the burden a few more decades and let it die deep inside me. It wouldn't have to hurt anyone that way. It could just quietly go away.

  “So? Are you going to call him?”

  “I think so, but I'm not entirely sure. I think I'll wait a day or two. He's busy, anyway. I'm sure he'll hardly notice.”

  “Don't act like a lame guy. Don't play hard to get.”

  “I’m not doing that. At all.”

  “It sounds like you are. Just call him, Katherine. Just call him.”

  I waited three days to call Eamon. That seemed reasonable, despite Amy's assertion that I was acting like a lame guy. I didn't want there to be anything rash or desperate about me makin
g this phone call. Still, the pressure was on. This was my agreement with the notion of trying. This was a commitment, and it was weighty given our history. There were expectations, tacit and not. I never wanted to hurt Eamon. Ever.

  The call rang five times and then I got his voicemail. It’s Eamon. Leave a message, will ya?

  “Eamon. Hi. It's me. I'm sorry it took me so long to call.” Why, exactly, had it taken me so long? Was Amy's persuasion that slow acting? “I’ve been crazy busy at work—”

  The other line beeped. I looked at the screen on my phone. It took a few seconds for it all to compute—hang up and accept new call.

  “Katherine. So sorry.” Eamon had that breathless thing going on again. Just like that morning at the Four Seasons, he was always rushing about, a bit disorganized, like a very sexy absentminded professor. “Couldn't find my bloody phone.”

  “Slow down. It's fine. I'm here.”

  “I didn't want to miss you.”

  I sighed so heavily you'd have thought he was reciting lines from Wuthering Heights. “You're so sweet when you're like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Concerned about me.”

  “I’m always concerned about you. Even when I was an ocean away, I was concerned about you, Katherine. We talked about this the other day.”

  “I know. I know. It's just so damn sweet. You always know the perfect thing to say.”

  “You give me too much credit, but I'll take it.”

  I lay back in my bed, staring up at the ceiling. Amy was in the other room packing, an activity I tried not to think about too much. She was going to be gone in fewer than ten days, but I didn't want to dwell on it. Nor did I want to abet it, although if she were to ask for my help, I would've absolutely done it. She merely hadn't asked yet, so I'd let it be. "So. What are you doing?"

  “I’m at the hotel, staring at four walls. I spend entirely too much time doing that. We head to the venue in thirty minutes.”

  “That doesn't sound very exciting. I guess I thought that being a rock star was exciting.”