I’d seen her in passing a time or two. Not often. She lived in Butte and went to Tech, but she still came to Ophir sometimes with friends. She’d even been to a couple parties at my house.
Parties I had always left.
I couldn’t seem to eradicate her from my mind, though. I couldn’t ease the hollow ache that permeated my soul.
Maybe I could finally move on if there was an ocean between us.
As luck would have it, though, there were only a few people between us. Five, actually. Five people between her and me as I waited in the line to board the plane for the first leg of my trip.
I had barely seen her face, but it was her. I knew it.
And her hair was still that scarlet red.
“Final call for United flight 2384 to Denver, boarding group three.”
I watched, all the while trying not to, as all the passengers filtered into the plane. I swore I could catch a faint sweet freshness in her wake, a scent I had always associated with her since that very first day. She reached her row and sat by the window, shoving her carry-on beneath the seat in front of her. I turned my head as I passed her row, heading towards my own seat towards the back of the plane. Last minute booking meant shite seats.
As I sat there, eight rows behind her, knowing it was eight because I’d counted them again and again (and again), I tried to forget she was there. It was a lost cause. I’d not been able to push her from my mind a single day in the last four years. She was too firmly planted in my thoughts, in my memories.
Even the bad ones.
Like at the hospital when Trent had overdosed. The shock of his passing left her white and shaking, sitting in the room across from his cold body. I noted the bruise on her cheek as I looked at her sidelong, trying to focus on Trent. My friend. Had he done that to her? Justin had said something about a horrific fight between them when they were leaving the party. I’d never known Trent to be violent, but I wasn’t sure I knew him at all anymore with some of the substances he’d started experimenting with. He had gotten kind of edgy. Unhinged.
Thinking about him brought all that guilt back. I’d abandoned him. Not wanting to see Fliss and him together, I’d grown cold and vitriolic whenever she showed up, and she always seemed to. Because I couldn’t take the way she smiled up at him. The way he would tuck her sweet little body up against him, and she would give a little contented sigh that nobody seemed to hear but me. So I would leave… every single time.
And now here she was, eight rows ahead of me, stuck like that for a good couple hours until we reached Denver.
Bollocks.
I hoped I’d gone unnoticed. It would only hurt her to see me, even after all this time, and I never wanted to cause her pain. I’d done it, time and time again, but I hadn’t wanted to.
The knowledge she was there festered the entire flight. The clouds were thick, so I couldn’t even see the landscape below us. I remember flying into Butte when I came for school, though. Witnessing the flat farmlands of the Midwest that suddenly giving way to the peaks of the Rockies. Then the dry and desolate terrain of Wyoming that made the mountains of Montana seem all the more grand. I kept trying to picture where we might be. We had to be nearing Denver. I didn’t know how much more I could take sitting here so close to her, yet a world away because of the wall that I had built to keep her out.
I held back for a while when we landed, sitting in my seat, fiddling with my bag, buying time to allow her to get to her gate and away from my conscience. The plane was nearly empty when I departed, and I didn’t have a huge layover, so I quickly made the trek through the terminal to find my gate to Newark. Then I’d leave the continent. Leave Fliss behind, maybe never to return. I wanted to come back to Montana. My life was there – my friends and my band. There was just that whole green card issue. I still hadn’t figured out how to get that worked out.
As I dragged my carry-on along the speedwalk, I found myself again wondering where Fliss was headed. I’d heard through some friends that she was working on her Master’s thesis. She was amazingly brilliant, in spite of her vicarious lifestyle, so my guess was some Ivy League school. Someplace that would allow her to shine.
My stomach lurched as I caught sight of her again, sitting in the chairs at the gate for my bleedin’ flight to Newark.
Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph. Another flight with her.
Feckin’ hell.
She looked out the windows, out towards the plane, as she waited for the boarding call. I couldn’t see her face. Her back was to me, and, once again, I sat just out of sight, hoping I could keep off her radar.
Yet, I kept finding myself peeking over at her. At one point, she had her head in her hands, a posture that had me wanting to sit beside her and hold her, even though I had no clue what was wrong. It could have been a headache. It could have been heartache. But, as always, I wanted to protect her and soothe her pain.
Fuck me. I was such a sorry sod.
The call came out to board again, and I stepped behind a pillar, waiting for her to get in line. Hiding like a sneaky ninja, pure secret-agent shite, but feeling more like a creeper.
Once again, I found myself boarding a plane behind her. A few people back. Watching her find her seat and stowing her bag down by her feet. For a second I panicked a little, thinking that my seat was next to her. I’d had to book a center seat for this leg of the trip. At the last minute, there had been nothing else left. Relief made me weak in the knees as I realized her seat was F and mine was B, across the aisle and one row back. Trying to act casual, I gave a sidelong glance in her direction as I passed her row.
She had settled back. Her skin seemed abnormally pale, especially for her. The gray, overcast light from outside filtered in and mixed with the overhead lights of the plane. Her eyes were closed and earbuds were in, shutting out the world around her.
I shoved my bag into the overhead once I reached my row and quietly offered a greeting to the sweet old bird sitting by the window. I spoke in an almost intelligible murmur to cover my accent since I didn’t really feel like being heard.
Instead, I leaned back, closed my eyes, and thought back to the first moment I’d seen Fliss.
April, five years ago
There had been something about her. Something that triggered this deep-set feeling in me from the first moment we met all those years ago.
She was at Tech with a group of high school seniors, touring the institution. She’d gotten distracted, falling behind the rest of the group, and had wandered into the chem lab where I’d been half-heartedly doing a make-up assignment. Truth be told, I was a hair away from dropping the class. None of my studies really appealed to me. School itself was quickly losing its luster. And as soon as I saw her long dark chestnut hair and wide blue eyes, my focus went from slight to nonexistent.
“Shit,” she muttered as she peeked into the room, then stepped back out into the hall.
She was perfection.
“Can I help ya find something?” I called after her, and she froze, turned around and looked me over with surprise.
“You sound exactly like my grandfather,” she said with a gasp. Her beautiful lips had rounded into a tempting little ‘o’ and my mind immediately started whirling in all kinds of deviant ways.
“He was Irish, was he?” I asked. She looked young. Jailbait young.
But feckin’ hell… She was breathtaking. And I was feeling way too pleased with myself that she had come back into the room.
“He was. Worked the mines. He was one of the last wave that went underground before they all went to the Pit.”
Berkeley Pit in Butte, America. Most miners hated it. They had taken such a great pride in mining underground, and then strip mining came along with the giant trucks and the massive machinery. It was never the same for so many of them, and Butte was never the same. It likely never would be.
“He came to Butte as a kid,” she continued as she stepped closer. Her face still seemed a little awed by the lilt to my voice, my thi
ck, common Dublin accent. I loved the way she looked at me. It had me feeling all kinds of crazy shite.
“You look a little young to be a college bird,” I mused, and that warmth I was already experiencing spread throughout my entire body when she smiled wide.
“Bird…” she grinned, shaking her head a little as though to clear a fog. “Oh my God.” Her voice was breathless, not really speaking out loud, but more a thought that she hadn’t been able to contain.
I think it was safe to say she liked my accent.
“I, uh,” she began again, “I’m starting here in the fall, so I’m not quite a college student yet. A senior in high school.”
Bollocks. Too young.
But she was close… If she was a senior, she had to be almost, if not already, eighteen.
“Ya don’t look old enough,” I prodded, unsure why this information was so imperative to me, but I just really had to know.
“I’m a little young for my class… just turned seventeen.”
Feckin’ Jaysus. Jailbait. I was right.
I subconsciously stepped back, and she laughed, her deep blue eyes sparkling.
“I don’t bite,” she giggled.
And I suddenly had that image back in my head, her full lips on my skin, nipping at my flesh. Wrapped around my cock.
Stop. I had to stop that line of thought.
“So what are ya doing here? Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“We’re here checking out the campus. I kind of, um… lost the rest of the group.” Her slender shoulders gave a little derisive shrug. She was too bleedin’ cute, and I couldn’t really help the chuckle that escaped my lips.
“I don’t think they’ve even been in this building,” I grinned. Don’t, my subconscious warned. Don’t do it. Don’t offer. “I could maybe help you find them, though.” Bastard mouth.
“I’d like that,” she said, sealing my fate.
It took much longer than it should have to find the group, probably because we weren’t really trying very hard. At all, really. We mostly just walked around the campus and talked. She was easy to be with, making me feel like we were old friends as opposed to two people who’d only just met.
“You’re obviously not from Butte, so where are you from then,” she said as more a statement than a question.
“Born and raised in Ireland,” I replied. “I came over to go to Tech. Wanted to see what Irish in America was like.”
“So why not someplace like Boston? Why Montana?”
“I suppose the rural population with the mountains and the wide-open spaces. This area intrigued me.”
“Hmm…” she nodded. “Butte is intriguing, I’ll give you that. I grew up here. My dad grew up here. My grampa, for the most part even… like I mentioned.” Her expression grew thoughtful as she looked over the landscape. “It’s weird because I love it, yet it drives me crazy. Everything is just so… Butte.”
“That’s quite funny, actually,” I laughed. “I’ve only been here a couple years, but I know exactly what ya mean.” Because there really isn’t a way to describe it. Like she said, Butte was just… Butte.
“You’re in good company, too,” she added. “Butte has the highest Irish population in Montana, I think. Not many of them quite as Irish as you, but around here, anyway, it’s considered Ireland’s fifth province. Everywhere you look, there’s Sheas and Shannons, O’Neills and O’Briens, Duggans and Dolans.”
“You said your grandfather was Irish,” I said as we walked along the path by the football field where the Orediggers were out doing their spring training.
“He was,” she grinned up at me. “His dad had grown up in the Pennsylvania coalfields, but came to Butte to work for the Anaconda Company. My gramps followed in his footsteps. There’s even pictures of the two of them in the Mining Museum.”
I stopped and pointed off to the distance to our left with my thumb. “That Mining Museum? Over there?”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “They’ve got tons of cool old photos, but I could show you the one of them, if you’ve got time.”
“I’m not so sure you have time,” I said, eyeing her curiously. “Aren’t we supposed to be finding your class?”
She pursed her lips, looking a little bit guilty as her eyes slanted off to the side. “To be honest, I just came today to get out of school. I grew up in Butte, and probably know more about Tech than half the faculty.”
“Well, you’re a rebellious little thing, aren’t ya? Skippin’ out on school and all.”
“Oh, please,” she snorted, yet somehow made it seem ladylike and adorable, if that was possible for a snort. “I have straight As. I’ve been taking dual credit courses since I was a freshmen to the point where I’ve practically finished a year of college already.”
“Jaysus,” I said, eliciting another adorable giggle from her. A giggle that totally made me smile and started a warm squeeze in my chest. “You’re a smart little thing, too.”
We found ourselves veering away from the main part of campus towards the arched gate that proudly declared this area the World Museum of Mining. Each side of the arch was perched on a sculpture, shaped similar to the massive headframes that still stood out along the hills and valleys of Butte. Ahead of us, towards the end of the lot was an odd assortment of buildings behind a fenced in area.
“That’s the Orphan Girl Mine,” she said as she pointed to a massive headframe at one end of the museum grounds. “They’ve started giving tours where you actually get to go underground. It’s kind of cool.”
“Yeeesh,” I shuddered. “Sounds right creepy.”
“It was a way of life,” she shrugged. “And the underground miners were very proud to be just that.”
We went through the main entrance of the museum, a small, unobtrusive building that held a gift shop. Through the shop and out back was the ‘ghost town’ of Hell Roaring Gulch with its boardwalks, brick roads, and 1800s mining-camp-style buildings. We walked up the hill towards the Orphan Girl’s monstrous frame.
“Here,” she said, motioning off towards the left, “this is the crankhouse. Below it is sort of a simulated mine shaft, and that’s where the pic of my grampa and his dad is.”
As we stepped into the building, she grabbed my arm and pulled me towards some old black and white photos that hung on the walls. She pointed to one of a few men standing around an ore cart with some drilling equipment, hardhats on and looking serious as can be.
“Here,” she murmured, pointing towards an older man in the photo. “That’s my great-grandfather.” She moved her fingertip to a younger man, maybe early twenties, at his side. “And this is my grandfather.”
“Eoghan Williams, huh?” I read aloud from the informational label, then looked down to see her eyes sparkling up at me. “What are ya lookin’ at me like that for?”
“You pronounced it right,” she smiled, a bit dreamily. “Like Owen, but most people around here don’t get that.”
“Well,” I grinned back, “I’m a Dub. I think I can figure out how to say an Irish name here and there.”
We slowly made our way through the photos, so many with grim and serious expressions. A little farther, and there were some photos of when the strip mining began. When they started to carve out the pit. In one photo was what appeared to be a…
“Feckin’ hell, is that a rollercoaster?”
She looked at the photo that had caught my attention. “Yeah,” she said softly, and maybe a little bit sad. “Columbia Gardens.”
“I had no idea there was a rollercoaster anywhere near here. Where is it at?” I asked.
“It’s not there anymore. My grampa and my dad both would go on about it forever. Both of them spent every minute of their childhood summers there. The Anaconda Company had built it for the miners and their families when things were good.”
“What happened to it?”
“There was this catastrophic fire that wiped it out.”
“What a bleedin’ shame,” I said in a quiet voice,
looking at another photo that showed the Garden in all its glory. As I looked at another, I saw some signs of the strip mining beginning around the edges of the picture. Another showed it encroaching even more, and yet another with the Pit butting right up against the rollercoaster.
“When did that fire happen?” I asked in a hushed tone, as though someone might overhear, not even really sure why I was speaking that way.
But she seemed to feel that same sensation, leaning in close to me and lowering her own voice. Like the ghosts of those responsible could hear. “In the early seventies.” She looked over at me with a raised brow. “Coincidentally, it was in a spot where the Company wanted to strip mine.”
“Hmm, that’s quite a coincidence,” I murmured, thinking it seemed like anything but.
“Yes,” she nodded, “very suspicious. There were some pretty hard feelings when that happened. It’s still something that people are very passionate about.”
I looked down at her right as she lifted her face up to me. For a second, I was a bit mesmerized. Not just by her beauty, but by the depth of her tone. The feeling she conveyed, having lived a life here in this unique town with its unique history. The moment was interrupted as a few other people meandered in, chatting quietly about the photos. She dropped her gaze with a slight smile and turned towards the doorway.
We made our way back up towards the Student Union Building, doing what could only be described as dawdling or lollygagging. Dragging our feet in an effort to delay saying the inevitable goodbye. But it was late in the afternoon, and she really had to rejoin her group.
“So what are ya plannin’ to study?” I asked.
I would be in my third year by the time she started, and it was very doubtful that I’d end up having any classes with her regardless. For the first time in a long while, though, probably in my entire life, I found myself actually wanting to be in school. I’d become sidetracked with life outside of class lately, playing music with the guys, turning metal into art… smoking a fair amount of weed. Things that tend to make a fella a bit lackadaisical about education. And, quite honestly, I didn’t really think that I wanted to be an engineer anyway. It was my major, but I didn’t really feel any drive, certainly nothing like I felt when I focused on the artistic side of my life.
Wild Irish Envy (Copperline #2) Page 2
