Chapter 22 #2
He turned to Donny. ‘Please tell me you haven’t been teaching these kids how to sign asshole.’
Donny, also a lousy liar, shook his head. ‘Of course not.’
Fin raised his eyebrow. ‘Really?’
‘I may or may not have taught it to the girls, though.’
‘What the fuck, dude?’ Fin wasn’t sure where this sense of responsibility he felt for his kids—his?—had come from but it was definitely there.
‘Some older boy was picking on Tori last week and Nellie got into trouble for calling him a giant poo-poo head.’
Fin supposed it wasn’t appropriate to laugh at this juncture. So he bit it back. But it wasn’t easy as he pictured Nellie fiercely sticking up for her little sister, dredging up the worst insult her six-year-old brain could think of.
‘And because Mai forbid me to show her how to kick a boy in the nuts, I taught her how to sign asshole so she could at least insult him more succinctly. And without anyone knowing.’
Of course, Donny—who’d known how to sign every dirty word in the AUSLAN book by the time he was Nellie’s age—would come up with such a solution. Fin would bet the house that Mai didn’t know about it. ‘That’s very mature.’
‘Hey, he started it.’
Fin sighed. Way to demonstrate the point, cousin. ‘So now your daughters—’
‘And your’—Donny poked his chest—‘goddaughters.’
Fin rolled his eyes. Like he’d had anything to do with their day-to-day raising. ‘Have … what? Taught the rest of the team?’
‘Apparently.’
Donny didn’t seem remotely contrite. In fact, he seemed a little bit pleased with himself. And Fin found himself, once again, biting back the laughter.
*
At nine o’clock the next night, Fin was a little lubed.
Murphy’s was jammed, the booths full, the bar lined three deep, patrons standing around in clutches, beers in hand, leaning in to each other to be heard over the general hubbub and the sporadic sets of music.
His mother was behind the bar, as was his Aunt Catherine, who’d just sent over the sixth round—two pints of Guinness, two glasses of red—in a couple of hours.
Fin wasn’t the only one feeling a little loose tonight, though.
Donny and Mai, completely indulging on a rare child-free night out, were also merry.
Thanks to a booze-soaked three years at the Conservatorium of Music, Mai had assured him that her violin playing only got better the more she had to drink and, if the smoking rendition of ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’ she’d just finished to much applause was any indication, he wondered why she didn’t just always stay a little bit hammered.
Sweeney was also delightfully tipsy. After a week where they’d alternated between performative public affection and a private pretence of normalcy, it was good to hear her laugh and chat and meet his eye without any trace of this weird new vibe making every glance feel loaded.
Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes all sparkly and both her dangly earrings and her lip gloss shone in the overhead light.
She was like a goddamn glitter ball and it was such a relief. It felt like they were back in the BBK (before beach kiss) days and it gave him confidence that no matter what happened the next ten days or so, they’d be alright. They could be Fin and Sweeney, they could be themselves again.
Even if they had to get boozy.
‘I reckon it’s time, Mai,’ Sweeney said as she sipped her glass of red wine.
Lifting an eyebrow, Mai asked, ‘Time for what?’
‘Time for some Pogues.’
Mai had been entertaining the pub on and off for a couple of hours.
She’d played a multitude of Irish jigs and popular songs, from ‘Molly Malone’ to ‘The Wild Colonial Boy’ to ‘The Fields of Athenry’.
A few sea shanties had even made their way into the mix, along with more modern songs like ‘Zombie’ and ‘Galway Girl’—the Steve Earle one as well as the Ed Sheeran.
And everyone in Murphy’s had erupted into song when she’d played ‘Danny Boy’.
Mai sighed dramatically at her husband. ‘Honey, why doesn’t anyone ever ask me to play The Chaconne in D minor anymore? I slay at that.’
Donny grinned. ‘You can play that for me later, baby.’
Quirking an eyebrow, Mai shot Donny an indulgent look. ‘It goes for seventeen minutes. You’ll be asleep in two.’
‘Not if you’re naked.’
Sweeney almost snorted her wine up her nose as Mai grinned and affectionately said, ‘Deviant.’
‘Takes one to know one,’ he replied, kissing his wife in a way that was definitely not suitable for public consumption.
Had he been sober, Fin had no doubt this would have been an exceptionally awkward moment for him and Sweeney sitting opposite in the booth, but it wasn’t. Fin just rolled his eyes at her and she laughed out loud, her eyes twinkling.
Praise be to the makers of beer and red wine.
‘Okay.’ Donny unhanded his wife. ‘If you’re going to play another eight-minute song—’
‘Four and a half,’ Mai corrected.
‘Whatevs.’ He waved a hand, dismissing the extra three and a half minutes. ‘I’m going to hit the head.’
Mai snort-laughed. ‘Okay, Captain Ahab.’
That earned her another quick peck on the mouth as Donny slid out of the booth and headed for the gents. ‘You shouldn’t crack the seal, man,’ Fin called after his cousin, which earned him a cheery middle finger.
‘The man has a Woolworths bladder,’ Mai murmured as she watched him go.
‘What on earth did you ever see in that deviant?’ Sweeney asked good-naturedly, using Mai’s term of endearment back at her, as she picked up her wineglass.
Mai got that faraway look on her face, a small smile lifting the corners of her mouth. ‘He made me laugh.’
‘That’s it?’ Sweeney put the wine down again. ‘No auras? No fireworks? No choir of angels? He just … made you laugh?’
‘If you think a quiet, geeky, only-child, violin protégée didn’t need some laughs in her life you have no idea what it’s like growing up with a Korean mother. Donny was a revelation.’ She smiled dreamily. ‘My parents hated him on sight.’
‘But they love him now,’ Fin said.
‘Yeah.’ She happy sighed. ‘He made it his mission to win them over and he had them charmed within a month.’
‘How?’
‘Persistence, promises that he wouldn’t defile me—’ She waggled her eyebrows. ‘My mother’s words. And eye-watering politeness.’
‘Wait.’ Sweeney frowned. ‘You guys didn’t …?’
‘Oh, he defiled me.’ More eyebrow gymnastics. ‘He defiled me good.’
They both burst out laughing at the lewdness in Mai’s tone as she continued. ‘I think minding his p’s and q’s was probably his biggest challenge.’
‘I bet,’ Sweeney said. ‘You do know he’s taught the girls how to sign asshole?’
‘Hey,’ Fin protested on a half laugh. Boozy Sweeney had loose lips. Also very lovely lips. Kissable lips. But he digressed … ‘I told you that in confidence.’
‘Uff, please,’ Mai dismissed. ‘Of course I do. But being insulted in AUSLAN is a lot less than that little asshole deserves.’
Sweeney raised her wineglass. ‘Amen to that.’
They were all clinking their glasses together as Donny arrived back at the table. ‘What’d I miss?’
‘Me, about to play,’ Mai said as she slipped out of the booth seat, allowing Donny in. She glanced at Fin and Sweeney. ‘Come on, you two. If I’m playing a Christmas song in April, you’re dancing.’
She weaved through the crowd, heading for the small platform in the far corner of the pub where her violin sat on a bar stool. With a mere foot elevation, it was hardly a stage, just big enough to hold a couple of musicians, but when someone was playing, all eyes turned in that direction.
‘Well.’ Sweeney took a gulp of her wine before plonking the glass on the table. ‘That seems only fair.’ She slid out of the booth and held out her hand to Fin. ‘Would you do me the honour, kind sir?’
Fin’s breath caught in his throat as she smiled down at him, her fingers wiggling.
A light overhead tipped the ends of her dark loose tendrils in a golden yellow and she was wearing a floaty skirt cinched in at the waist by a big belt, and she was looking at him like she always had, like he was one of the best parts of her life.
Grinning, he took her hand as he sidled out of the booth, bowing over it as he got to his feet and, swept up in the moment, dropped a playful kiss on her knuckles.
Then one on her wrist. Then two more up her arm before he met her gaze, his lips buzzing.
Sweeney’s eyes were dancing, her lips softly parted and shiny. ‘It would be my pleasure, fair lady.’
She led him through the crowd and he followed willingly as the opening notes of the violin cut through the noise in the bar and the crowd started singing about Christmas eve in a New York City drunk tank.