“Meh.” She shrugged, as she fingered through a stack of cd cases on her dresser. “It’s been an interesting Valentine’s Day.”
“Yeah, I bet.” Standing bollocks naked in her bedroom, I hobbled towards her door, with every inch of me on full view. “Molloy.”
“Yeah?”
“The door.” Resting my head against the timber, I repressed the urge to roar, and bit out, “You have the key.”
“Ah crap.” Stepping around me, she reached inside her bra and withdrew a key. “Do you want soap?” she asked, with her ass way too close for comfort. “Or a magazine—“
“Just open the door.”
“Got it.”
CALLING A TRUCE
FEBRUARY 14TH 2002
AOIFE
Fifty-eight minutes.
That’s how long the shower motor hummed above me.
That’s how long it took for Joey to tame the beast.
Another ten minutes passed before he finally emerged from the bathroom.
Re-dressed in his school uniform, with his blond hair cocking up in forty different directions, and his cheeks noticeably flushed, he stepped into the kitchen, towel in hand. “Thanks.”
“Better?” I asked, unable to suppress the laugh that escaped me, as I flipped a piece of French toast in the pan. “Feeling relieved?”
“Funny,” Joey growled, but the reluctant smile on his face assured me that he wasn’t mad.
“Did it go down?”
“Eventually,” he admitted, with a wolfish smile. “I thought I was going to have to go to A&E for a while there.”
“Imagine if you had,” I snorted, switching off the hob and plating up the French toast. “We would have needed to hitch a trailer onto the taxi to cart that stallion between your legs.”
“I’m never going to hear the end of this, am I?”
“No, probably not,” I agreed, still laughing. “Here.” I handed him a plate stacked with my homemade goodness. “You need to replenish your life force.”
“You cooked all by yourself.” His brows rose in surprise. “I’m impressed.”
“I have a pretty decent home economics partner who taught me a thing or two,” I replied, moving to the table with my own plate. “He’s an asshole, but he knows his way around the kitchen.”
“So, this home economics partner,” Joey said, following me over to the table. “Is he your friend?”
My heart flipped in my chest. “He was.”
“Was?”
Nodding, I sank down on my chair and took a bite or toast. “He used to be my best friend.”
“What changed?”
“We had a fight.”
“Is that right?”
“Uh-huh. He broke my heart.”
Pain flicked in Joey’s eyes. “Molloy.”
“Joke.”
Relief flooded his features when he swallowed my lie. “Well, I hear this partner of yours feels shit about the fight the two of you had.”
“Does he now?”
“Yeah.” Joey nodded. “He misses his friend.”
My heart flipped. “He should miss her. She’s amazing.”
He smirked. “He wants her back.”
“She never left.” I swallowed deeply. “She just needed a time out.”
“Good.” He nodded. “Because if she did leave, he wouldn’t like it.”
“He wouldn’t?”
“No.” His green eyes locked on mine from across the table. “He wouldn’t.”
Exhaling a shaky breath, I reached across the table and laid my hand, palm up. “Nice moves.”
He stared at my hand for a long beat before slowly placing his hand on top of mine. “Nice everything.”
FOURTH YEAR
I’LL BE WITH YOU
SEPTEMBER 2ND 2002
JOEY
Holding my breath under the water, I remained motionless with my hands gripping the sink, until my lungs turned to fire in my chest and my thoughts became muddled and blurry.
That shitty human survival instinct instilled in all of us, the one that programed us to search for oxygen, forced my face to the surface of the water.
Numb, I breathed slowly through my nose, purposefully torturing my lungs that demanded I gulp in as much air as I could.
Fuck my lungs.
Fuck the world.
The circles under my eyes were darkening to the point where, when I woke up this morning, I actually looked like I had two black eyes.
A million sleepless nights, combined with a million fucking mistakes this past summer had taken its toll on my body.
Cutting a line with my bank card, I leaned over the windowsill that held the mirror – and what would get me through the next six hours – and quickly snorted the powder up my nose.
I had a pain slap bang in the center of my chest.
The ache was fucking terrible, and I couldn’t seem to shake the damn thing off.
I was going out of my mind worse than ever lately.
And I was raging.
I was so fucking mad that I could feel the burning and bleeding from somewhere so deep inside of me, I knew couldn’t be found to be patched up.
I was a mess.
Jesus…
Shuddering, I leaned over the sink for another half an hour, waiting for my stomach to settle, and my brain to cooperate, before I could manage to go back into my room and throw on my school uniform.
The hurley and helmet in the corner of my room taunted me with a whole host of demands and expectations that I wasn’t sure I could live up to for much longer.
"Hey." Shannon's voice filled my ears and I stilled for the briefest of moments before turning to face her.
"Hey.” I offered her what I hoped what a supportive smile. “Are you ready for your first day?”
"No," she whispered, chewing on her lip.
Yeah, me either. “You’ll be grand,” I said instead. “I’ll be with you.”
SPECIAL_IMAGE-images/svgimg0003.svg-REPLACE_ME
“Do I look okay, Joe?” Shannon asked in a small voice, as she hurried along beside me, swamped in her BCS uniform.
“You look grand, Shan,” I told her, keeping my gaze fixed straight ahead. If I looked at her, if I saw the fear in her blue eyes, I would crack.
Jesus Christ, I was a nervous wreck.
Seriously, if anyone that didn’t know me saw me in this moment, they would swear that I was the one starting secondary school this morning, and not my baby sister.
With my palms sweating, and my heart racing rapidly, I had to force my legs to slow down so she could keep up.
Schooling my anxiety, the best I could, I walked Shannon up the path to BCS, while discreetly glowering at every mother fucker who dared look in her direction.
Maybe an offensive strike was the best form of defense when it came to protecting her this year.
Maybe, that way, I could get her through this school year unscathed.
“I’ll always be your brother, okay? No matter what.”
Darren’s voice infiltrated my mind and I balked, swiftly burying the memory of that last time I’d taken this walk with a sibling.
Burying him.
He’s gone.
He’s dead.
He doesn’t exist anymore.
“You okay, Joe?” my sister asked, reaching up to touch my shoulder. “You look sad.”
“It’s okay.” I forced a smile. “Everything is going to be okay.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded. “Yeah, Shan.”
Because I won’t ever leave you.
MEET THE GOBSHITES
SEPTEMBER 21ST 2002
AOIFE
I didn’t want to be here tonight, much less on display like a prettified porcelain doll, but that’s exactly what I found myself doing on Saturday night, as I sat opposite the Rice family at Spizzico’s, one of the more uppity restaurants in Ballylaggin.
“Just bear with me for another hour,” Paul coaxed, giving my hand a squeeze under the table, as Paul’s father, Garda superintendent Jerry Rice, drawled on about his upcoming golf tournament in Kerry. “I promise, we can do something you pick after this, okay?”
I slapped on a smile for his mother’s benefit, when I was screaming on the inside.
I tried.
I really had.
When we decided to try again, I promised myself that I would put to bed any notions of my father’s apprentice and concentrate on making it work with the boy who actually wanted to be with me.
And to be fair, that’s exactly what I had done for months.
I kept it friendly and jovial with Joey in class, but I steered clear outside of school.
For months, I had thrown myself into our relationship, giving Paul one hundred and fifty percent of my time, attention, and effort, only to find myself still feeling empty.
Because it didn’t seem to matter how much I avoided, distracted myself or denied it, my thoughts always returned to the place they shouldn’t.