Chapter Twenty-Six #2
I ignore him and keep going. ‘I don’t want to be a hedgehog and hide all my feelings and let you go without saying anything.
I can’t let you leave thinking I hate you.
Because I don’t hate you, Art. I really, really don’t hate you.
I get anxious and weird with pretty much everyone I meet but not with you.
Never with you.’ I look directly at him now, at that face I used to find smug and irritating, the face I now wish I could look at forever.
‘I know we drive each other mad sometimes, but working with you and hanging out with you and hooking up with you, I love … I don’t know, I love all of it.
Even the annoying bits. And I know I wouldn’t be saying any of this if you weren’t leaving the country, and I know in a few weeks you’ll be in New York taking the piss out of some cool Brooklyn girl’s clothes, but I had to say something before you go and—’
‘Oh my God, McDermott,’ says Art. ‘I don’t want to take the piss out of cool Brooklyn girls!’
Seriously? This is what he takes from my big speech? I just poured my heart out to him and this is how he responds? Wow. Just … wow. I suppose the girls in Brooklyn are too cool for him to slag off. Jesus, maybe they’re welcome to him.
‘Well, thanks for telling me,’ I say. ‘Okay, let’s leave it there.’
‘What?’ says Art. ‘No, sorry, that came out wrong! I don’t want to take the piss out of any other girls.’ He takes a step closer to me. ‘I don’t want to take the piss out of anyone but you.’
These words should sound like a joke but they don’t. There’s something in his tone I can’t quite read, or maybe something I don’t dare hope for.
‘Don’t you?’ I say.
‘I really don’t,’ says Art. ‘And I want you to keep on taking the piss out of me, because you’re pretty funny when you’re not calling me a dickhead—’
‘I said I was sorry!’
‘And I want you to keep doing what you’ve been doing to me for the last month,’ says Art.
‘I want you to keep making me laugh. I want you to keep calling me on my shit. I want you to keep having incredible sex with me – we haven’t had enough of that yet, not nearly enough.
’ He reaches out and takes my hand. The look in his eyes makes my heart race.
‘I want you, Annie. If you’ll have me. That’s what I want. ’
Is he saying what I think he’s saying? Surely not, because …
‘But you’re going to New York,’ I say.
‘No,’ says Art. ‘I’m not.’
‘But the job …’
‘I turned it down,’ says Art.
I stare at him. ‘You didn’t say that last night!’
‘Last night I hadn’t turned it down yet,’ he says. ‘I told you it wasn’t an easy decision. It took me a long time to make up my mind.’
‘But … but you should take it!’ I say. I say it even though my head is spinning with happiness at the thought that he’s not leaving. Because much as I don’t want him to go, I can’t be selfish. I can’t encourage him to give up this chance. ‘It’s your dream!’
‘It was my dream,’ says Art, ‘fifteen years ago. But my dreams have changed since then. You reminded me of that.’
‘What do you mean?’ He can’t be staying because of me, can he?
I can’t let him do that. Not if this job really means something to him.
It’s not fair and, selfishly, it wouldn’t be a healthy basis for whatever might be beginning between us right now.
And so, even though it causes me physical pain to utter these words, I say, ‘I don’t want you to go.
I really, really don’t want you to go. But if this decision has anything to do with me, and if you really want to—’
He squeezes my hand and pulls me a little closer to him. ‘I’m not going to pretend you weren’t one of the reasons why the decision was hard,’ he says. ‘Because you were. But don’t worry, this isn’t on you.’
‘So why …?’
‘I told you I’d been to therapy,’ says Art.
‘I spent a lot of time figuring out how to be happy with how my life had turned out. I’d moved on.
And taking that job … it doesn’t feel like moving on.
It means working on a script that won a prize my script won thirteen years ago.
It feels like moving backwards. Like, this film is the beginning of someone else’s dream.
And I hope it all works out for them. But last night, when you said I could be the old Art again, I knew I didn’t want to be.
I can’t be. I need to go in a new direction now. ’
‘And that direction is … Northside?’ I say.
‘Well, yeah, right now it is,’ says Art.
‘We’ll see what happens next. Maybe more television, maybe script editing.
Maybe directing. But whatever I do, I know I don’t want to go back to my old life in America.
Dublin doesn’t seem so small to me anymore.
So last night when I got home I rang the producers in New York. ’
‘Were they angry?’ I ask. ‘What did you say to them?’
He grins at me. ‘Well, I told them I’d fallen in love with this angry goth and—’
I stare at him. ‘You what?’
‘Oh, come on, don’t look at me like that,’ says Art. ‘That was a joke! You know I don’t really think you were a goth—’
‘Not that part,’ I say. ‘The other part.’
‘Oh,’ says Art, as if he’s only just realised what he’s said. He looks down at our hands for a moment. ‘That part.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘The falling in love part. Did you … was that a joke too?’
Now Art looks straight at me. ‘No, McDermott,’ he says gently. ‘That was very much not a joke.’
I meet his gaze, more serious than I’ve ever seen him before.
I’ve always been afraid to tell people I loved them. I’ve never wanted to let my barriers down too soon.
But being with Art isn’t like being with anyone else. I may have only known him, properly known him, for a few weeks, but I know I can be myself with him. I always feel like myself when I’m with him.
He’s seen me at my most prickly. And he loves me anyway.
‘Well, good,’ I say. ‘Because I think I’m in love with you too.’
A smile spreads across Art’s face, a smile that isn’t cocky or smug at all. A smile that’s full of happiness and maybe relief and definitely love. The best smile I’ve ever seen. ‘Oh yeah?’
‘Against my better judgement, obviously,’ I say, but I’m smiling back at him as I say it.
‘Obviously,’ says Art.
And then, beneath the lamp post outside Donnelly’s pub, on the very spot where Sean Cusack was murdered, where Rosie Cusack was born, where Mozzer McCaul was hauled away by the police, where Northside legends have died and fought and wept and fallen in love, Art Sullivan kisses me like I’ve never been kissed before.
Our kisses have been hot and intense and hungry in the past, and this kiss is all of those things, but it’s more than all of them too.
This kiss is the start of something, and we both know it.
I bite gently on his lower lip and he pulls me even closer to him, his hands on my waist, his body pressed tightly against mine.
I reach up and cup his jaw and feel myself rising on my tiptoes to kiss him harder because I can’t get enough of him, of his mouth, of his hands, of his heat, of the way he looks at me.
God, I love the way he looks at me.
We pull away from each other and Art says, ‘If I keep doing what I want to do right now, we’ll definitely get fired.’ He grins at me in a wolfish way that sparks a flame of pure lust inside me. ‘And possibly arrested.’
‘I think we need to get out of here,’ I say, my breath heavy. ‘I think we need to tell Susan we’re working from home today.’
Art pulls me in for another kiss. ‘I can promise Susan,’ he says in my ear, ‘I’ll be working very, very hard.’