Chapter Forty-Nine
Marty
The ninth postcard I send to Jenna is from Dubai where I'm visiting Maeve who is there as part of a three-month contract with an influencer agency. Sitting by the swimming pool in her hotel on a warm November day, I don't hide when I'm writing the postcard to Jenna.
“You still love her,” she says, looking over my shoulder.
“Fuck yeah, I do,” I reply.
DEAR JENNA, DUBAI IS A WEIRD FUCKEN PLACE. MAEVE’S WORKING HERE. GOOD TO GET SUNSHINE THOUGH, AND THE SUNSETS ARE DECENT ENOUGH. I WISH I’D KNOCKED ON YOUR DOOR IN LONDON. LOVE YOU, MARTY. P.S. MAEVE SAYS HI!
“I do not!” Maeve exclaims, looking over my shoulder.
“Well, it’s rude if you don’t.”
“Fine, I say hi, but more than that I want to ask what the fuck are you two doing? Are you really going to see this through?”
“Abso-fucken-lutely,” I say as I fix the stamp on the card. “I'm almost halfway there. I actually think I can fecking do it.”
“I can't tell if this is the stupidest idea or the most romantic sappiest shit I've ever heard of.”
“Probably a bit of both,” I say and not in the least bit embarrassed by it.
“But what if she meets someone else? What if you do?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen, at least for me.”
A week later I meet Matthew in the restaurant.
After over a decade of working for my uncle, I've managed to not get tangled up with colleagues for anything more than a few drunken snogs when I first started, but the moment Matthew walks in, I know I’m fucked.
With dark hair, light blue eyes, and sculpted arms that belong on an athlete, he is the new restaurant’s front of house manager and the way he takes his instant nickname of Door Bitch with a suggestive pout and eyebrow raise directed at me tells me I wouldn't be barking up the wrong tree if I decide to bark up his.
The surprising thing is, after a few weeks dancing around him in the kitchen - smelling his cedar, evergreen scent - and watching his tight buttocks march around the restaurant - I realise I do want to.
So I do. I do what I haven't done since Jenna. I flirt aggressively with him. I practically chase him down with my banter. And I then apply for a new job elsewhere so we can do more without it posing problems for either of us. In some ways it’s the push I need.
I’ve been professionally ready for a change of scenery and a new challenge for a while, but mentally and emotionally, it is now time to cut the cord on my attachment to my uncle's restaurant, a place that saved me when I needed it.
Matthew meets me after my first shift as Deputy Chef at Kaiteki, an Asian-fusion soul food restaurant near St Stephen's Green, and we get the bus back to my place.
That night we talk our voices hoarse and drink green tea until our bladders can't take anymore. With AJ snoring at our feet, we fall asleep on the couch, both semi-clothed and semi-erect, promising ourselves we’ll make up for it the next day. And we do.
We make up for it most evenings for the next seven months and every night I feel myself inch closer to falling for him, so close that I don't see the signs he’s not as keen as I am.
He doesn't want to meet my parents. He isn't interested in going away with me, or spending Christmas together, and when I mention throwing him a birthday party, he makes excuses. A couple of weeks later, I realise I haven’t heard from him for a few days so when I meet my uncle for coffee at his restaurant, I ask how Matthew is, and Dermot tells me he has moved back to Cork. It stings. It hurts me, that people could treat someone that way. Then I get angry. Angry that he doesn’t realise how much pain already exists in the world even when you do love someone, let alone when you are trying to love or be loved.
But after a few weeks I stop torturing myself about it and realise I got lucky to know the truth before I did actually fall.
Maybe because I’m still a little heartbroken, I agree to go on holiday with my parents again, just the three of us as Maeve is working in the USA. So it's from a seaside hotel near Biarritz that I send my tenth postcard to Jenna, written the day after an embarrassingly pitiful accident.
DEAR JENNA, I brOKE MY FUCKEN ARM SURFING SO THAT’S WHY IT LOOKS LIKE A 5-YEAR-OLD WROTE THIS. WORK ARE GOING TO KILL ME, BUT IT’S NOT SO BAD RIGHT NOW AS I SPEND MY DAYS IN THE HOTEL SPA. BY THE WAY, YOU HAVE RUINED SHOWERS WITH SEATS FOR ME. I LOVE YOU, MARTY.