Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between

“Okay,” she agrees. “For now.”


“For now,” he repeats, as if getting used to the sound of it, and then he leans forward to kiss her again, and this time there’s nothing showy about it; this time it’s just right: sad and sweet and heartbreakingly familiar.

“Much better,” she says, cupping his hands in hers.





The Gallaghers’ House


8:40 PM


They’re nearly back to the car when Aidan pauses to fish his phone out of his back pocket. He stands for a moment in the middle of the parking lot, his face lit by the bluish light of the screen, before looking up at Clare with a sigh.

“I don’t suppose my house was on the list, was it?”

“Not other than meeting you there,” she says as they reach the car. “But we can definitely stop by again. I should probably say goodbye to your parents, anyway. How come?”

“Riley needs a ride to the bowling alley,” he says, leaning against the trunk. There’s a Harvard sticker on the bumper that’s peeling at the corner, and he chips at it with the heel of his sneaker.

“That’s totally fine,” she says. “Bowling is on the list anyhow.”

“Next?”

“No, but we can switch around the order. I mean, it doesn’t really matter, right?”

He smiles. “Look at you, being so flexible.”

“That’s me,” she says, bending down to brush the sand from her legs, and then opening the passenger-side door. “Rolling with the punches. Come what may. Easy breezy.”

“Oh, yeah,” he says, grinning at her over the top of the car. “Super breezy.”

By the time they turn onto Aidan’s street, it’s fully dark, and as usual, the whole block is already lit up, the windows blazing. When he pulls into the driveway, they sit there for a minute, the engine still ticking, and then he turns to Clare with a weary smile.

“Let’s make this really quick, okay?”

She nods. “Hi and bye.”

“I like that,” he says. “Hi and bye. Quick and painless.”

As they walk up the stone path that leads to the side door, Clare remembers the first time she ever came over. It was just before Christmas, and she’d assumed the giant gold cross and elaborate nativity scene set up on a table in the foyer were seasonal decorations. She’d been wrong. As it turned out, they lived there all year, alongside an impressive collection of cross-stitched prayers in delicate frames and pillows with Irish blessings and shamrocks all over them.

“May the road rise to meet you…” she’d whispered as she read one of them on that first visit, standing in the front hallway with Aidan, the smells of Mrs. Gallagher’s pot roast drifting in from the kitchen.

“And the wind be always at your back,” he finished, stepping up beside her. “Except when my mother is cooking, in which case you have to hope the wind shifts somewhere else entirely.”

They’d only been together a month or so at that point, and she’d been caught off guard by the feel of the place, so crowded and close, and so different from Aidan, who was clumsy and loud, far too big for a house so cluttered.

Even then, he seemed ready to break free.

Now, as they near the side door, they can hear a swell of voices from inside, and Clare glances at Aidan, but it’s impossible to tell what he’s thinking. Above them, a cluster of light-drunk bugs make pinging noises as they bump up against the glass bulb, and a car rushes past on the quiet street, a few people whooping out the window.

“If you hadn’t put so much pressure on him…” Aidan’s mother is saying from inside, her voice rising in a way Clare has never heard before. There’s a clatter of something metal being set down hard, and then footsteps moving across the kitchen, which is just on the other side of the door.