Chapter Twenty-Four
It must be the thoughts of seeing Logan again that has my stomach like this? Then out of the blue it performs a triple-somersault-back-flip-round-off. Of course it is!
‘Grace? You okay?’ Donal sees me again.
‘Fine.’
I smile and nod and we finish our food, polish off our cold beers in easy silence before I start talking again.
‘So Ella was your ex? The cause of the heartbreak you mentioned?’ I have to ask, because her name and Emmanuela’s are ringing in my head and my stomach is still swirling.
‘Yeah. The ex.’ He crosses both hands across one another.
‘Ella dumped me, too. Took me a long time to recover, so I do get it.’ Donal wipes his mouth with the purple napkin.
‘I also had to have that first time seeing her afterwards – but with me, I bumped into her and her new boyfriend.’ He pushes his bowl aside, sips some water.
I’m insanely interested. ‘Ouch. How long were you together?’
‘Ten years.’ He drops the words heavily.
‘Oh, Donal! Sorry.’ I wince.
A high rise of his shoulders. ‘There’s a pair of us in it, it seems.’
I roll my eyes dramatically. ‘Pair of eejits!’
‘She dumped me at that table right there, actually.’ Donal lifts his glass and waves his almost empty beer at the table beside us, drains it and puts it back down.
‘Oh shit, no! I’m horrified I asked you to come here.’
‘It’s fine. I’ve been back many times since – you know it’s my “bury-me-with” food? The scene of the crime has been cleared up and the yellow tape removed. I’m no longer the white outline of a dead body, I’m over it, Grace.’ Donal links his long fingers together. ‘I’m all good.’ A smile that grows.
‘Good,’ I echo. Crazily, I dislike Ella intensely.
‘I’m not saying it wasn’t horrendous, it was.
I was crazy about her. My heart broke into pieces and I hadn’t seen it coming.
That made me feel foolish, too. I pride myself on being a good listener, ya know?
But like I said, I’m well over her now, I promise you that, I wouldn’t be out dating if I wasn’t. ’ He elongates his neck, tellingly.
‘What was the reason?’ I have to ask. I feel so bad for him, that it takes all my strength not to hop up and wrap my arms around his neck.
‘You wanna hear the break-up story?’ He delivers the line in the booming voice of a cinema-trailer voiceover announcer, or more like Alec Baldwin.
‘I do,’ I admit, grinning at him.
He picks up the soy sauce bottle, speaks into it as though it’s a microphone. ‘Donal didn’t see it coming. Ella did. This summer, watch Donal crumble like a big baby blubber boy as Ella crushes his heart. Coming soon to cinemas, nationwide.’
‘Be serious!’ I chastise.
He puts the bottle back on the table. ‘Ah, looking back the signs were there but I was oblivious. Ten years in, we’d discussed marriage and children, obviously.
I was focused on my first proper restoration and reconstruction, a two-up-two-down in Drumcondra.
Anyway, I was sitting there with my sister, having a late dinner – she’d just come back from America and had broken the unwelcome news to me that she was moving to the West Coast and leaving Ireland for good.
I was devastated. We’d ordered a shot of baby Guinness each, so I was late to meet Ella.
I’d texted her obviously, and she was only up the road in Sinnotts Bar, but then, a few minutes later, she walked in that door.
She sat in beside me and just said, “Donal, it’s over between us.
” Just like that.’ He raises his shoulders up so high in his khaki McQueen shirt that it tips his ears.
‘Just like that?’ I think of Logan’s text in Portofino. The one pinned to the top of my messages.
‘Yup. So I said the first thing that came to my mind, “Why?” My sister was flapping and hadn’t a clue what to do.
Ella told her that she didn’t want me to be alone when she broke up with me then basically spurted lots of nonsense that boiled down to the fact I wasn’t enough for her.
She wanted more. Can’t argue with that, right?
I mean, you could, but what’s the point? ’
My heart aches for him, because I know only too well exactly how that feels. ‘No point whatsoever,’ I agree wholeheartedly.
‘So I said goodbye to Ella and our life in Rathmines. I left her in the apartment. Took all my shit out, pulled on my big-boy pants, grew this big badass beard and stopped cutting my hair.’ He tugs at his long hair over his left shoulder. ‘I hid myself away.’
‘Why?’ I lean forward, dying to know the answer to his chosen look.
‘Why? Self-preservation, I guess? Because I wanted to protect my heart. I didn’t want to fall in love ever again, and I thought this look might help me.
In fairness, I was spot on. It worked!’ He drapes his long arm over the back of the seat to look for a waiter.
‘One for the road?’ he asks me over his shoulder.
‘Since we’re deep in dumping-therapy here? ’
‘Sure, a quick flyer,’ I agree. I’m still not ready to see Logan.
A waiter catches his eye and Donal holds up his beer glass with one hand and raises two fingers with the other.
‘That’s why you joined Beyond Looks?’ I sip, but the dregs of my beer are flat and warm.
‘Right. And the fates almost aligned.’ He looks at me as his voice breaks a little.
I have a desire to reach my hand out and place it on his cheek. Feel the hairs in his beard.
‘Ella took me three years to get over, but I did it. I did a bit of blabbing on a couch to a professional and I learned something that blew my mind. Or rather she made me see things as they really were.’
The waiter interrupts with our two fresh, fizzy beers.
‘Cheers.’ I smile up at him.
‘Thanks a million, mate,’ Donal says to him as he clears off our plates. ‘Mind you, you can probably put my plate back on the shelf, it’s that clean.’ Donal chuckles. I love how he always goes out of his way to be nice to the staff in restaurants.
I lean in closer to him across the now slightly damp, clean table. ‘So . . .’ I’m intrigued as the waiter leaves. ‘What did you learn?’
‘That I didn’t really love her as much as I thought I did. I mean, I really thought I loved her.’ He tips his temple with his finger. ‘But I really didn’t.’ His eye contact is intense, the green of his eyes brighter than ever.
I take that in.
‘Tell me this, Grace?’ he says softly. ‘What do you love about Logan? What is it?’
‘Oh, God, really?’ I sigh heavily in a groan, looking at him with an embarrassed grimace. I adjust my tight red dress at the bust. ‘I don’t know . . . now . . .’
‘Try.’ Donal sits back into the bench, lifts his fresh frothy beer. ‘If you don’t mind? No pressure, up to you. But this is the line of questioning that got me over Ella in the end. I know you don’t want to get over Logan, but I’m curious and I think you should know the answer, Grace.’
‘Logan Hunter. Right. What can I say? Why do I love him? He’s so creative, so ambitious, he’s so vivacious in all the ways I’m not .
. . I dunno, he’s just like electricity to me, I think I need him to feel alive .
. . He’s fun . . . no, not fun . . . he’s .
. . he’s so . . .’ I stop babbling. I don’t want to say ‘he’s so sexy’ because it makes me sound really pathetic.
But is that the reason I loved Logan? Still love Logan?
His looks? The chemistry we have? Surely not?
Please, no? Dear God, I’m not that shallow?
‘He’s so what? Go on?’ Donal pushes me, but it’s easy, he’s not forceful. ‘What else?’ He looks genuinely interested in what I’m going to say.
But I’m struggling. ‘Like what?’
‘Supportive?’ he suggests, seeing my struggle.
I shake my head. Stare at him.
‘Giving?’ he tries.
I shake my head again.
‘Loyal?’
I shake once more as the memories come fast, flashing behind my eyes . . .
The night of my college fashion-design showcase. Logan made it all about him and his upset at not getting cast in McNally’s play. He never paid me back the loan I gave him. He stole my thunder that night.
Losing my internship at Ferguson Brophy after I messed up because I was too busy doing Logan’s costumes for Macbeth and I slept it out and took their dress home to finish it. He knew I couldn’t do both jobs. I ended up consoling him that morning.
Working all hours to cover Logan’s share of the rent, and now that I think of it, I don’t recall Logan ever complimenting me on any of the wedding gowns I designed. I only remember him complimenting the costumes I did for his show.
Logan’s moodiness when he wasn’t working, and his good moods only when he was. I was expected to put up with his highs and lows, with no consideration on his behalf about my mood.
How he never thought about where I might like to eat, it was always about where he wanted to eat, what food pleased him. Zero fucks for what I might like!
Logan never put me first. Ever. Loyal? Ha! Well that was self-explanatory. Loyal to himself.
‘Grace? Grace!’ Donal’s voice pulls me out of my doom spiral. He reaches across the table now and takes my hands. ‘I’m sorry, you don’t have to . . .’
I can actually feel myself pale.
‘Let’s drop this. It’s really none of my business, I’m so sorry, I thought it might help.’ He looks perturbed.
I look down at my hands swamped in his. ‘Yeah, um, yeah, look. Look, maybe we’d better get going, we’re late as it is.’ I focus on his Claddagh ring. His open heart. ‘Maybe a cab is best?’ I’m trying to pull myself together, this isn’t fair on Donal. I gulp the beer down in huge mouthfuls.
‘Absolutely, of course, let’s head on.’ Donal knocks back his own pint and leans forward to pull his wallet out.
‘No, no way, you paid in Elephant & Castle,’ I tell him. ‘And if I recall, it was because you said you asked me out? Well I asked you out tonight.’ I fix myself, run my index finger under my eyes and drag my fingers through my poker-straight hair, settle it around my shoulders.
‘I can’t let you pay for me,’ he tells me, drooping his shoulders.
‘Well I am!’ I say.
‘No, honestly, I . . . Please? I’m very old-fashioned in these things, Grace. Unless it’s something you are dead set against – a man paying?’ A strange look comes over him as though he’s just insulted me.
And I get it. I get that he wants to pay for me. And I like it. I like the gesture a lot.
‘Not at all, and well, thank you, then, it was delicious.’ I slide out of the booth and I stand in front of him. I pull the red dress down a bit, check the ties on my footwear are in place and look up at him. In my towering cork wedges, he’s not that much taller than me.
‘You grew. Wow! That Japanese cooking is something else.’ He jokes to lighten the mood as we stand almost eye to eye.
Am I not going to see him again after tonight?
I open my mouth to say something, then the bill arrives and the moment is lost, and he pays as I stay standing.
I’m ten minutes away from seeing Logan again.
But I have an urge to kiss Donal.
An absolute urge to kiss Donal.
What is going on?