Chapter 2 #2
‘And even though every relative in Ballyshannon has harassed you about settling down and having a family, I have never once done the same. Never. Like Connie, all I’ve ever wanted for you is to be happy and live the life you want and, even though I miss you, I love that you’re having this grand adventure in Ireland. Your dad would have loved it too.’
Ronnie’s voice cracked a little and it was Fin’s turn to swallow. He hoped she was right because those last angry words he’d exchanged with his father had weighed heavily on Fin’s shoulders.
Connie squeezed her friend’s hand and took over, glancing between him and Sweeney.
‘I think you both know we would never ask this of either of you ordinarily. Never. But we’ve obviously been caught in this lie and, really, would it be that much to ask if you could just—’ Her gaze turned beseeching. ‘Back us up here?’
Fin turned incredulous eyes from Connie to Sweeney, who didn’t have to say anything. Her what the fuck was written all over her face.
‘Yes,’ they said simultaneously.
‘Think of it as a birthday gift,’ Ronnie pressed.
‘Mum,’ Fin spluttered. ‘We flew across the planet to surprise you. That’s the gift.’
Ronnie and Connie exchanged a look that left Fin in no doubt that their presence was a very distant second to this proposed fake engagement. He supposed he should be grateful they hadn’t invented a pregnancy as well.
‘We’re not asking you to actually get married,’ Connie said, as though that made all the difference. ‘Just to … pretend for a bit.’
‘For us.’
‘The women who literally gave you life.’
Ronnie nodded vigorously. ‘I mean, I’ve never told you this, Fin, but I couldn’t sit down properly for over a month after you were born.’
‘It’s true,’ Connie concurred. ‘And she couldn’t sneeze without a little bit of wee coming out for much, much longer than that.’
‘That’s right.’ His mother snatched up the crumb her bestie had laid down. ‘It took years for my vagina to recover from the ruination of that big head of yours.’
Oh dear god.
If Fin could have hacked his ears off in this moment, he would have. He’d spent thirty-two years in blissful ignorance about the state of his mother’s vagina, and now he didn’t know how he was ever not going to think about it.
A quick glance at Sweeney told him she hadn’t been prepared for this level of detail either. ‘I’m … sorry?’ he offered, because what the hell else could he say to that?
Ronnie dismissed his apology with a wave of her hand. ‘This is the perfect way to make it up to me.’
Fin groaned. He sure as hell hadn’t had being emotionally blackmailed by his mother’s ruined vagina on his bingo card for this year.
Connie grabbed Sweeney’s hand. ‘I know it’s a lot to ask but, please, just give us this? We’ll wait for a bit after you both leave and announce the engagement is off.’
‘Yes.’ Ronnie nodded, slipping her hand into Fin’s. ‘Please don’t make us look like desperate idiots in front of the whole town.’
And that was it—the clincher. It would be highly embarrassing for their mothers to have to admit they’d lied tonight. As Fin looked at Sweeney, he could see that she knew it too. Her annoyance had morphed into the same kind of cornered acceptance currently snaking its way through his insides.
‘God …’ Sweeney shook her head. ‘I can’t believe I’m even considering this.’
Fin nodded. ‘Same.’
Although he supposed if he was going to be fake engaged to anybody, Sweeney was the logical choice. They’d known each other forever, been friends forever, which gave them a certain synergy that wouldn’t have been possible in another random pairing in this ridiculous scenario.
She shrugged. ‘You’re going to have to keep it up longer than me.’
Fin was really regretting the decision to stay for four weeks so he could be with his mum for his dad’s birthday—but, as exasperated as he was right now, he couldn’t not stay, either.
He sighed. ‘Probably be easier to pull off with just one of us here anyway.’
‘True,’ she murmured.
‘So …’ Connie looked from one to the other. ‘Is that a yes?’
Fin cocked an eyebrow at Sweeney, who shut her eyes briefly then nodded. And that was all it took for their grinning mothers to sweep them into another group hug.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ Ronnie whispered. ‘And we’re really sorry, again, for putting you in this position.’
‘Yes,’ Connie agreed. ‘We’ll never ask anything of you again after this.’
‘Pinkie swear,’ Ronnie echoed.
Fin rolled his eyes. Right now, fake engaged to his oldest friend in the world, he would take that promise with a grain of salt.
‘Okay, okay,’ Sweeney said, pulling out of the group hug. ‘Let’s just get tonight over with, huh?’
‘Of course.’ Ronnie nodded, exceedingly amenable.
Fin, as eager to be done with this as Sweeney, straightened his spine. He glanced over his shoulder at the milling crowd chatting in their groups while pretending not to be remotely interested in the alcove reunion.
He held out his hand to Sweeney. ‘You ready?’
She looked at it blankly for a moment as though she wasn’t exactly sure what she was supposed to do with it. Considering she’d done the same to him earlier outside the pub, it shouldn’t have been a thing. It shouldn’t have felt … odd.
And yet now it did.
He certainly didn’t blame her for her reluctance. She’d offered her hand without hesitancy outside the pub, to a friend of over thirty years. Now that they were thirty seconds into accepting this ludicrous fake engagement, it seemed rather more loaded.
But she took it, and then Connie and Ronnie were ushering them forward. Catherine moved out of the way so all four could stand under the beam, their mothers grinning like all their Christmases had come at once, Fin and Sweeney sandwiched between them.
‘We give you the happy couple,’ Ronnie announced.
Fin suppressed another eye roll at the unnecessary theatre, but the crowd lapped it up. They clapped and cheered, hollering congratulations, all clearly thrilled.
‘Crap,’ Fin muttered to Sweeney out of the side of his mouth, his smile fixed, his voice too low to be heard over the racket by anyone but her.
‘Uh huh,’ she murmured back, her smile also frozen in place.
Suddenly, what felt like a hundred phones were pointing at them, taking photos, some with flashes and some without, their mothers beaming, as though it was a royal balcony appearance. Then came the inevitable calls.
‘Give her a kiss, Fin.’
‘Pucker up, you two.’
‘Don’t let that mistletoe go to waste.’
Something that felt a lot like a lump of cold cement sank to the pit of Fin’s stomach.
He glanced up—so did Sweeney. That fucking plastic mistletoe had been hanging there for longer than Fin had been alive.
Because his dad had been a romantic who believed public displays of affection shouldn’t be limited to Christmas and had never tired of kissing his mother under it, much to the delight of his patrons.
Well, shit …
He dragged his eyes off the offending piece of kitsch, his gaze landing on Marjorie Weaver, who was as imposing as ever and who could Lady Whistledown any piece of news into gossip.
She was the only one in a crowd of beaming faces who wasn’t smiling—at least, not all the way to her eyes, anyway.
Eyes that were narrowed. Speculative. As though she could see the panic in his eyes and wasn’t buying this sudden engagement one little bit.
Double shit.
Because he knew that the ultimate in public humiliation for their mothers lay in the town’s busiest body calling them out. Resigned, Fin turned slightly towards Sweeney, glancing down at their joined hands before meeting her gaze.
‘I don’t know about you,’ she said, her voice only just audible to him over the general hubbub as she turned towards him, ‘but I’m going to kill my mother for this later.’
Fin laughed. It felt good to laugh in this completely absurd situation. ‘Do you remember that time when we were twelve and we played spin the bottle at my cousin Donny’s party and we had to kiss?’
His smile was tight and his voice low. Or at least he hoped it was. Between the clapping and calls from the partygoers and the whoosh of his pulse in his ears, he couldn’t hear much.
‘Of course.’
‘That wasn’t terrible, was it?’ Sure, they’d bumped noses and clashed teeth, but it hadn’t been terrible. Although it had been weird. Not least because, for a while there, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it. But not terrible.
She blinked. ‘We’re not twelve anymore.’
If that wasn’t the understatement of the night, Fin didn’t know what was.
Sweeney certainly wasn’t twelve anymore.
She was all grown up. The dress she was wearing did a fine job of showcasing that.
The trip in his pulse, however, felt the same as it had at Donny’s as his twelve-year-old self had contemplated kissing the girl he’d known forever.
Sweeney sighed. ‘Just do it already.’
Which is exactly what she’d said back then, as resigned to the dictates of an empty coke bottle as she was by their mothers’ big fat birthday lie.
Conscious of the crowd baying for action, Fin took a steadying breath and slid his hands up Sweeney’s arms, aware of her in a way he’d never been before. He was surprised to feel goosebumps stippling her skin and wondered absently if she was cold.
Fin’s game plan—as much as he had one—was a brief, perfunctory peck. Give the crowd what they came for then back the hell away. But that all went to shit the second their lips met.
Something … shifted.
A flare of heat bloomed and, after a beat, she leaned in a little, her body hot against his as the racket from their very appreciative audience faded to black. It was just Sweeney and her mouth and that tiny, unexpected noise at the back of her throat that slid hot fingers into his jeans.
He didn’t know how many seconds had elapsed when he pulled away. He doubted it was many. But it’d been longer than he’d planned. And his breathing was a little too uneven for something that had been essentially nothing more than a press of lips.
It took a beat to process everything amidst the noise of wolf-whistles so he said the first thing that came into his head. ‘You want a drink?’
God knew he did.
Sweeney blinked a couple of times. ‘The biggest one they have.’