Chapter Nine
Ronin, Age Twenty-One
I’m sitting at my desk when the decorator calls just after noon.
“Mr. Byrne, the house is ready,” she says, brisk and cheerful. “Everything’s been placed exactly as you specified. You can bring your fiancée by anytime.”
I lean back in my chair, already picturing Alannah walking through the front door and seeing the house we chose, finally finished.
She’ll go from room to room, seeing our home the way we’d imagined it, with the colours, the furnishings, and every detail we chose finally put together.
Just thinking about it has me grinning. Tomorrow, I decide.
Better to take her sooner rather than later, so if anything isn’t right, I can have it changed before the wedding. “Tomorrow work?”
“Of course,” she says. “I’ll have the keys sent over to your office later today.”
“Good. Thanks.”
I check the clock on the wall. Alannah went out with my cousin Maggie this morning to pick up her maid of honour dress, but they should be back by now. I dial her number.
She answers on the second ring. “Hello?”
“Hey, doll,” I say. “I just got off the phone with the decorator, and—”
She gasps. “Is the house ready?” The question comes out in a rush, and I chuckle at how excited she sounds.
“It’s ready.”
“When can we go see it?” she asks, like she’s hoping I’ll say right now, and for a second I kick myself for not having the keys sent over sooner.
“Tomorrow,” I tell her, hoping that isn’t too much of a disappointment. “I’ll pick you up around noon. We’ll get lunch first, then head over after.”
“I can’t wait,” she says, and I hear the smile in her voice. Then she goes quiet. “Are you sure you won’t be too tired?” she asks. “With your stag night and everything?”
Right. My stag’s tonight. I still need to get home, shave, and change before dinner.
“I’ll be fine,” I assure her. “I’m not planning on staying out all night, so noon’s fine.
I’ll pick you up then.” I check the clock again and bite back a groan.
If I don’t get moving, I’m going to be late.
“Anyway, I gotta get going, doll. I’ll see you tomorrow. ”
“All right,” she says. “Have a good night, Ronin.”
I hang up, still smiling. It’s hard not to when Alannah sounded so damn excited about the house. Truth is, some of it’s rubbed off on me, and I’ve been looking forward to seeing it finished too.
But first, I have to get through tonight. My da and Seamus are hosting dinner at The Bayside Club with a few of the old guard. There’ll be speeches, toasts, jokes at my expense, and advice I didn’t ask for from every married man at the table. After that, the fellas will take over.
I’d asked Danny to stand up for me at the wedding.
Once Mick realized I meant what I’d said about not going out to the bars with him every night of the week, he more or less fucked off, and Danny was the one around.
We got to be pals, so choosing him made sense.
Still, I was surprised when Danny pulled me aside a few days ago and told me Mick had gone ahead and called Triple O’s, booked a few tables, and asked them to hold the pool tables for tonight.
Danny said he could change it if I wanted, but I told him not to bother.
I wasn’t planning on staying long enough for it to matter where we ended up.
It’s just a night out on the town with the lads before the wedding.
We’ll eat. We’ll drink. We’ll play some pool and have a few laughs. Then I’ll go home, sleep it off, and pick Alannah up tomorrow.
***
I walk into The Bayside Club, and the place is already busy with the dinner crowd.
A few couples wait near the host stand for their tables, and behind it, Tony, the manager, stands in his dark suit, going over the reservation book with the ma?tre d’.
The door swings shut behind me, and he looks over.
When he sees me, he says something to the ma?tre d’ and comes around the stand with his hand out.
“Mr. Byrne,” he says as we shake. “Good to see you again. Congratulations on the wedding.”
“Thank you, Tony.”
He gives me a crisp nod. “Of course, Mr. Byrne. If you’ll follow me.
” That’s Tony, all starched collar and clipped manners, not a word more than he needs.
He starts through the restaurant, and I fall in behind him, past the main dining room and into the lounge, where every stool at the bar is taken and men crowd the counter waiting for drinks.
At the far end of the lounge, Tony opens a door and holds it for me. I hear my da laughing before I see him.
Inside, a long table runs down the centre of the private room, with at least a dozen place settings, and a sideboard against one wall holds liquor bottles, glasses, and an ice bucket.
My da and Seamus are beside it, a bottle of whiskey open between them, with a fair bit already gone from it.
Apparently, Seamus had been at the warehouse when one of our new recruits put a forklift through a dock door, and he’s trying to tell my da the story, but he keeps having to stop because he’s laughing too hard.
When he gets to the look on the lad’s face after he realized what he’d done, my da laughs so hard he misses the glass and splashes whiskey onto the sideboard.
That only sets Seamus off worse. They found it a hell of a lot funnier than I had.
I was the one who had to deal with the broken door afterward, and I’d wanted to throttle the little shit who’d done it.
They both turn when I come in, red-faced and still snickering, and it’s clear they’ve been at it for a while.
“There he is,” my da calls. “The man of the hour.”
I cross the room to them, trying not to smile at the state of the pair of them.
My da turns over a third glass and fills it, but Seamus gets to it before he can pass it over, pressing the drink into my hand and clapping me hard enough on the shoulder to damn near knock me sideways.
“My future son-in-law,” he says, grinning.
“Thanks, Seamus.” I touch my glass to his, then lift it toward my da. “Da.”
My da picks up his own glass and taps it against mine. I take a drink, and Seamus leaves his hand on my shoulder. “Well, lad?” he asks. “You ready for my girl?”
My da snorts. “He’d better be.”
“I am,” I say, and I mean it. It feels like I’ve been waiting forever to marry Alannah. The closer the wedding gets, the more I just want to get to the part where she’s my wife and our life can start.
Seamus gives my shoulder a firm squeeze. “Good lad,” he says. “I knew you were right for my Lana.”
My da gives his old friend a look over the rim of his glass. “Christ, keep on like that and we’ll have to call this a wake instead of a stag dinner.”
Seamus laughs and lets go of me. “Then where are those appetizers you ordered?”
“Didn’t eat lunch, did you, Seamus?” my da asks, straight-faced, though the corner of his mouth is already starting to curl.
Seamus gives him a wounded look. “A man asks one question,” he starts, and I nearly roll my eyes.
With a few drinks in them, the two of them always get like this, worse than lads, taking little digs at each other over nothing and neither one willing to let the other have the last word.
I can see Seamus getting ready to fire something back, but the door opens before he gets the chance.
Paddy Nolan walks in first, Sully O’Malley close behind him, and two waiters come in on their heels with oysters on ice and shrimp cocktail.
Seamus’s wounded look vanishes the second he sees the trays.
While the waiters set them on the sideboard, the men come over to shake my hand and congratulate me before helping themselves to drinks.
After that, the rest of the men start arriving, the room filling with faces I’ve known my whole life.
They shake my hand as they come in, clapping me on the back, and it doesn’t take long for the congratulations to turn into ribbing.
Most of them are married, men who’ve already been where I am now, and they seem to be enjoying the chance to bust my chops.
Advice gets passed around, mixed in with the jokes, the same handful of lines every married man seems to think he invented: happy wife, happy life, don’t go to bed angry, and flowers work better than apologies.
My da lifts his glass, raising his voice over the rest of them. “And never argue with a woman wearing your ring,” he calls. “You’ll lose before you open your mouth.”
Laughter breaks out around the room, and half the men, the married ones at least, lift their glasses in agreement like he’s just handed me the secret to surviving marriage.
The door opens again, and Tony steps inside with a line of waiters behind him, trays in hand. “Dinner’s ready, gentlemen,” he announces.
That gets everyone moving to the table to find seats.
The waiters move around the table, setting plates of steak and potatoes in front of each guest and placing baskets of bread, still warm from the oven, down the middle.
I cut into my steak and find it cooked exactly how I like it, and I’m glad my da chose The Bayside for tonight instead of one of those stiff downtown places he usually prefers.
I’ve never had a bad meal here. Tony runs a tight ship, and no one working under him gets away with being sloppy.
Once we start eating, the ball-busting dies down for a bit.
Bread gets passed, glasses are topped off, and the talk shifts from giving me grief to work, with my da making sure everyone has his orders straight: who’s covering what while I’m away on the honeymoon I still haven’t told Alannah about.
“Two weeks in Italy,” Paddy says, shaking his head in mock disbelief. “Christ, Cormac, you’re going soft.”
My da just smiles and spears a piece of steak with his fork. “The boy’s earned it.”
Seamus leans back in his chair, swirling his whiskey, his eyes on me. “Well, just make sure you come back, yeah? We’ll need you.”