Chapter 8
I was staring at the same word in my Essentials of Irish Law book for the past five minutes when the sound of a gruff voice at the counter made my shoulders stiffen.
“Americano to go, please Bridie,” Connor said.
I didn’t look up to confirm it was him. I just knew it was, especially from the feeling of a hundred snakes slithering in my stomach at the sound of his voice. Hopefully, the visceral reaction was a tapeworm and not my idiotic heart telling my body we still gave a shit about this man.
I had seen him around town multiple times from afar since I had met him the other week.
He never tried to talk to me but instead gave me a knowing crooked smile, or openly appraised me from head to foot, making me feel like my skin was melting off my body.
He had texted me twice after these chance run-ins. The first read:
Connor – “I love when you wear your hair up, makes it easier to see those beautiful lips.”
I had run past him on the other side of the street with my hair in a ponytail as I finished up a jog, and my head had been redder than a baboon’s arse from the exertion.
The second time:
Connor – “Nice yoga pants...”
I had been mooching around outside Cúpla Cupán waiting for the lunchtime rush to abate and was wearing my UL hoodie and the scrunch-bottom leggings that were the most comfortable item I had ever owned.
The man's arse must get jealous of his mouth with the amount of shite he talked. I didn’t even know where he had been when he saw me, but I was onto his tactics by now.
I had sent back a rolling eye emoji to his first message and just replied with a thumbs up to the second.
The sweet guy act at the beach hadn’t worked, so he was trying to go all Sex God to catch my interest again.
When I had become completely and utterly infatuated with Connor Donelly at fifteen, it had been the Sex God persona that got me hooked first, since he obviously didn’t deign to speak to a little school kid like me when he was three years older.
But when we first started talking that fateful night in Keiley’s on my seventeenth birthday, I realised he was a softie as well as a Sex God.
A softie with some serious charm. He was nice enough to put you at ease, but still had the gruff edge of danger that made you worry he would break your heart.
I think the daddy issues from his loser father hardened him and caused those edges, but when he leaned against the bar beside me in Keiley’s, gave me a sultry look out the corner of his eye and said, “Looking well tonight, Róisín,” I nearly keeled over and died there and then.
I hadn’t even realised he knew my name. And since some biological, fucked up part of us as women seemed to crave rough edges - the bad boy persona sucked me in even more.
Turned out I was right after all, and he was just the type of prick to break my heart, but it made the sweet side of him even more confusing to me.
In the months after we started to see each other, before I gave him my virginity, I saw a completely different side to him that not a lot of people were privy to.
He confided in me, told me his hopes and dreams, how shattered his family was when his dad walked out - a lot of stuff to make me believe I was the only one he trusted, the only one who really saw him. What a laugh that turned out to be.
So now, since pulling me in with the sweet side of him hadn’t worked, he was appealing to my inner horn dog to see if tempting me with the bad boy side would make me crack.
Luckily for me, I had Professor Ride keeping me well and truly occupied.
Ronan made me laugh, a lot! And things were easy and light-hearted with him, as well as being extremely hot and filled with anticipation.
There was none of this deep, bearing our soul crap and that suited me down to the ground.
We hadn’t gotten to see much of each other these past few weeks aside from a quick coffee between lectures last week, an extremely lame date organised by me.
But with exams looming, we didn’t have a lot of time.
And he had still managed to turn a coffee date into almost sinful foreplay, with his wicked innuendos on what would happen the next time we were alone.
He was proving a fruitful distraction whenever I wanted a break from the books, and while we hadn’t gone much further than some extremely loaded kisses, I was gasping for him.
I knew I was starting to get the feels for him, so I had been holding him at arm’s length just a little. But something was going to give sooner or later, especially going by the almost indecent messages he was sending me last night, describing how much he wished I was in bed with him.
I jerked my head up as Connor slid into the chair in front of me.
“Róis,” he quirked a lazy smile at me as he leaned his elbows on the table.
“Connor,” I nodded, leaning away from him and keeping my face impassive. Just because I knew what the fucker’s game was didn’t mean it wasn’t effective, so I needed to keep my wits about me for this exchange.
“Hair up and yoga pants; must be my lucky day.” His eyes travelled down my body as I rolled my eyes at him.
“The tabs you’re keeping on my clothes is starting to become a bit disturbing Connor. When you said you weren’t giving up, I didn’t think you meant to the point I’d need a restraining order.”
“I don’t think you find it disturbing at all, Róis.
In fact, I think it’s made you look over your shoulder a time or two since you’ve been home, hoping you’d find me watching you.
” He leaned closer to me still as Bridie dropped off his coffee and lingered at the next table, pretending to clean its spotless surface in hopes of eavesdropping. I leaned closer to avoid the audience.
“And I think that’s extremely arrogant, even for you,” I snapped back.
“I’m arrogant because I know what we had, and I can see in your eyes that you still feel it. And I’ll be right here when you’re ready to admit it to yourself.” He winked at me as he slid out of the chair with his coffee and left the café, with me scowling after him.
********
I’d finally gotten through the tortuous week of Christmas exams, hopefully with good grades.
I had been there until the last day of term, waiting for the exam in my least favourite subject of politics.
The girls had all finished days before, so the house had been lonely while I waited it out for my Christmas freedom.
I squeezed through the crowd in The Snug pub, elbowing my way towards our table with the pints clasped like gold dust to my chest. Not a fucking hope was I going back through that throng if I dropped one.
Fionn and Shea grabbed their pints the second I put them down.
“I was nearly dead from thirst Rosie; did you go back into town for the pints?” Fionn snarked, while Shea took three big gulps of his Guinness. He only ever drank Guinness on Christmas Eve, some weird tradition he’d set himself that I didn’t understand because my brother did not like Guinness.
“Are you blind or can you not see the crowd at the bar? It’s only Mary behind there, and she just told Peadar to get out and not come back for the night because he rushed her.” I took a big gulp of my own pint of Coors, half choking myself.
Shea snorted. “It’s only ever Mary serving, every single year. Maybe we should mix it up next year,” he suggested, but Fionn was already shaking his head.
“No way, you can’t fuck with the tradition Shea. We come to The Snug on Christmas Eve or I’m not coming at all.”
Jesus was he dramatic. I was with Shea on this one, but I wasn’t about to antagonise Fionn; he was surprisingly nostalgic for someone with the emotional intelligence of a Daddy Long Legs.
The three of us had been coming to our small local pub in Clon na Dara at 6 pm every Christmas Eve since I was seventeen.
We always headed away from the pubs around Kiltee, because we were less likely to end up swamped by our friends and we could spend quality sibling time together.
Or at least that was what Shea told us the first time he brought me and a very underage Fionn to Snug for the first time.
Christmas was about family time, and once we left the pub around 10 pm, we would head home to watch a Christmas movie with Mam and Dad.
They said they used our bonding time to set up Santa.
.. three grown children and they still laid out our presents like they did when we were kids.
Each one of us had a spot in the sitting room with a special “poem” written to us from Santa in front of the pile.
Dad had gotten a lot more inventive (and insulting) with his Santa poems as we grew older.
He had fancied himself as the ultimate comedian, prodding all the teenage hormones in the house.
It was Dad’s year to pick the movie, so we were all about to watch ‘Home Alone - Lost in New York’ again this year.
He was just fascinated by the pigeon lady being Irish in that movie, so he picked the same one on his turn every year despite our protests.
Mary started yelling at someone else to get out of the bar as she tried to deal with about thirty customers, elbowing each other to get her attention.
The woman was in her seventies, sharp as a tack with a tongue to match.
Ending up here on Christmas Eve was the one night we took for ourselves; on New Year’s we headed into Kiltee or the city with our own friends while Mam and Dad always had a romantic night in together.
Mam rushed around to make sure the door was open at the stroke of twelve to usher in the New Year and let the bad luck of the previous year out.