Some were from my street, more were from my school, and then there was him.
“Hey, isn’t that the lad who works with your dad?” she asked, voicing my thoughts aloud, as we watched one of the male Gardaí pin Joey Lynch to the side of the paddy wagon.
Instead of keeping his mouth shut like the others, Joey laughed and taunted the Garda, who was roughly patting him down.
Dressed in his usual attire, an oversized navy hoodie that concealed his blond hair, he continued to talk back to the Garda, goading the Gard into losing his cool with him.
“Joey Lynch,” I replied with a heavy sigh. “And yep. It sure is.”
Snatching the cigarette that was balancing between Joey’s lips, the Garda tossed it on the ground before stamping on it.
The move earned him a slew of verbal abuse from my classmate.
“What an idiot,” I grumbled with a shake of my head, feeling sourly disappointed in his behavior, mostly because I knew he could do better.
Never mind do better, he was better, dammit.
I thought that sharing a box of cereal with him two weeks ago had somehow melted those arctic walls erected around him, but I was sorely mistaken.
He had shown up to school the following day more closed off than ever, sporting one hell of a nasty shiner, and an even nastier attitude to match it.
Joey never mentioned it to his friends either, something I knew for sure because Paul would have taken leave of his senses, had he gotten wind of my cereal encounter with our classmate.
“He’s a walking red flag,” Katie agreed, before adding, “Isn’t he a little young to be hanging out with Shane Holland? Isn’t Shane like seventeen—”
“Shane’s eighteen,” I corrected, glaring at the biggest scumbag in Ballylaggin.
Shane was bad news, and everyone knew it. He was in sixth year at BCS and the worst kind of wrong to be knocking around with.
It was common knowledge around here that he was a dealer, and while he might be small time, his brothers were not. Apparently, the older Holland brothers were in deep with some of the big-time dealers from the city.
Joey was only in first year.
If he was hanging around with Shane, then he was playing with fire.
It was a bad move.
A really bad move.
I watched the Gardaí shove three of the older boys into the back of the paddy wagon and released a sigh of relief when they didn’t take Joey – his young age, no doubt, the deciding factor.
"Why do you think he does it?" I asked, verbalizing aloud the question I'd been asking myself since I first laid eyes on him.
Tonight wasn’t the first time I’d seen the boy get collar-boned by the authorities.
It happened frequently.
"Why do you think he self-destructs like that?"
Self-destruction. It was the only way I could describe his reckless behavior.
“Who?” Katie asked. “Joey?”
“Yeah,” I replied, eyes trained on the Garda van, as it drove past my house.
"Because he's a teenage boy?" Katie offered with a shrug.
"Yeah, but it has to be more than that," I replied, my gaze returning to my classmate, who was staring after the Garda van with a look of frustration etched on his face. "You just saw how he reacted with the Garda back there, Katie. It was almost as if he wanted them to take him away."
"What?" my neighbor laughed. "That’s crazy talk. Nobody wants to be taken away by the Gards."
"Most don't," I whispered. But he does.
“I don’t know, Aoif,” she said, worrying her lip. “He seems like kind of a bad guy to me.”
I shook my head. “He’s not a bad guy.”
“How can you be so sure?”
No clue. “I just am.”
“How?”
“Okay, so here’s the deal.” I heard myself blurt. “I know he’s a walking disaster, okay? I know he takes drugs and gets into fights, hangs out with all the wrong people, and can be a real dickhead like we’ve just witnessed.”
“But?” Katie interjected with a teasing smile.
“Just look at him, Katie.” Sighing heavily, I threw a hand up and gestured towards him. “Take a good look.”
“Yeah,” she agreed quietly. “He’s sort of beautiful.”
“More than sort of,” I corrected with a shiver. ”But it’s more than that.” Chewing on my bottom lip, I tried to find the words to explain my feelings. “There’s just something about him that intrigues me. I don’t know what it is, but from the first day I saw him, I was just, sort of…curious?”
“Of course you are,” Katie laughed. “It’s the age-old trope. There’s always a reason why the good girl lusts after the chemically dependent bad boy.”
I smirked. “Funny.”
“Well, intriguing or not, messing around with a guy like that is a recipe for disaster,” she added. “Seriously, Aoif, he looks dangerous. You should steer clear of him if you don’t want to end up getting hurt.”
And just like that, his head turned in our direction; green eyes meeting mine.
And just like every time I felt his eyes on me, my heart, the traitorous bitch, thundered violently in my chest.
He didn’t look happy to see me.
He never did.
He stood on the corner of my street, unmoving, eyes never leaving mine.
Nostrils flaring, he continued to stare at me boldly.
With what I knew wasn’t a cigarette now balancing between his lips, he tilted his head to one-side, eyes glazed over, but still sharp and full of mistrust. “You got a staring problem, Molloy?”
Okay, so we were back to throwing insults.
I arched a brow. “No worse than your attitude problem.”
His brows narrowed. “Enjoying the show?”
“More like a shit show,” I taunted back. “And hey, looks like you snagged yourself one of the leading roles. Congrats. Stellar performance.”
“What are you doing, Aoife?” Katie whisper-hissed, digging me in the ribs with her skinny elbow. “Don’t talk to him. I thought we established that he’s bad news – oh great, he’s coming over.”
I knew he was trouble, or maybe just troubled.
Either way, I knew he wasn’t going to be anyone’s knight in shining armor.
Casey always joked that Joey Lynch would never reach his twenty-fifth birthday. His latest antics only stacked the odds even further against him. It should have been a warning enough. And still, something about the boy made me want to jump off the ledge.
With my stomach doing somersaults, I watched as Joey crossed the road, closing the space between us.
His lips were puffy and swollen. Whether that was a natural attribute or from constantly fighting, I couldn’t tell, but those lips were almost too pretty to belong to a boy.
And so damn tempting…
“You’re out late,” he said, coming to stand in front of me. Because of my height advantage from sitting on the wall, he had to look up at me, and when he did, I swear I felt the air whoosh from my lungs.
Not because he was insanely sexy – something he very much was – but because the left side of his face was a dark shade of purple, with his left eye swollen almost entirely shut.
“Your face,” Katie gasped, voicing my thoughts aloud. “What happened to you?” Her eyes drifted to his hand. “Oh my god, are you smoking a—”
“I asked too many questions,” he interrupted, giving my friend a menacingly cold glare. “Do you do that, too?”
I could feel Katie wilt beside me.