Chapter 10
A few days later, I was cuddling up in bed, ready for sleep, when my phone pinged.
Connor – You doing okay?
I debated what to say back. It was a loaded question, and while he had messaged me after we’d had sex in his car to say he didn’t regret it and he hoped I didn’t either, I had kept it to a brief, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
Róisín – Yeah, just worried about Ella.
I could see the bubbles of his reply immediately.
Connor – We’re all going to be here for her. She’s lucky to have you in her corner.
Róisín – For all the good it did her.
I had been battling with the most crippling guilt since the attack had happened.
I wasn’t such a martyr to try and take any of Tommy’s actions on my shoulders, but I couldn’t shake the sense that had I been with her that night, she never would have left alone and been cornered by him.
It was tearing Niamh apart as it was, and she had just wanted to go home early that night since Dermot was acting a mess, which seemed to be becoming more of a common occurrence of late.
I put my phone down again as I saw the message marked read, but no indication of a reply came from Connor. I fell asleep almost immediately, emotionally drained from the events of the past two weeks.
I woke up in the morning to a message from Connor.
Connor – Thanks to you, she got home safe to Rita, and Mr. Rourke was stopped from doing something stupid. You’re her rock, Róis, just like everyone else you care about.
I smiled as I got out of bed to get ready for my first lecture of the day.
I was loath to admit it to myself, but Connor was starting to worm his way back into my heart just like I had been worried he would.
His gentle words and nature, at odds with his rough demeanour, were so soothing it was hard not to lean in and let him into my heart all over again.
And the chemistry between us that night in the car had been like nothing I had ever experienced before.
I knew he was going back to base soon, and I was disappointed I wouldn’t be on edge around town that I might feel his eyes scraping over me from a distance.
Sara was calling me impatiently from the front door as she waited for me to walk into campus with her, since we both had early lectures in the south of campus.
I sighed as I made my way out the door, shaking off the tingles I felt from Connor’s latest message.
Now that I was back in Limerick, my mood brightened with thoughts of seeing Ronan today, which succeeded in confusing my wrung-out heart even further.
“How’s Freya doing?” I side-eyed Sara as we walked to college - at a leisurely pace despite all her complaining that I was going to make her late.
“She’s doing good. She’s almost completely healed from the surgery now, and chemo and radiation will start in another two weeks.
She’s really nervous how sick they’ll make her, but I think she’s just so relieved she had the lumpectomy instead of the mastectomy.
It's keeping her spirits up before the treatment starts.” She smiled as she finished, and I was so relieved things were looking up for her and her family.
“So, they could confirm they got it all after the surgery?” I double-checked.
“Yep, they got it all, and the next stage is precautionary. So this nightmare will mostly be over in a few months, thank God.” I squeezed her arm at that.
“And only a few months, and we’ll be expected to be functioning members of society with real jobs. I hear drinking five days a week isn’t as acceptable after graduation,” I deadpanned.
“Well, fuck that. I’ll repeat,” Sara laughed, and I thought she might have a point there.
“Seriously though, have you thought any more about what you’re going to do?” I asked.
Even with everything that had happened with Sara and Ella recently, the majority of my thoughts were consumed by what the hell I was going to do after graduation.
Everyone else seemed so confident about what direction they wanted to go in next, and I couldn’t understand how.
We were all between twenty-one and twenty-two years old but were supposed to have picked out what career we wanted to embark on for the rest of our lives after a few years of drinking and sitting in lecture halls?
The pressure made me want to hyperventilate.
I knew the thing that made my stomach flutter with excitement was the idea of journalism, but it also made it clench in terror.
I hadn’t told anyone outside of Professor Walsh that I was considering pursuing it.
But she had been amazing with her guidance through my thesis, and I was looking forward to my 9 a.m. meeting with her to discuss my edits.
We were all due to hand it in next month, and I was so close to having it perfected I could feel the weight ready to ease off my shoulders.
“Yeah, I’m going to have one last blow-up holiday and then try to get a real job, I suppose.
I’ve been asking around, and there’s a good few jobs going in Dublin, so I suppose I’ll have to hit the big Schmoke,” she drawled in an exaggerated Culchie accent.
“What about you? Will we be seeing a new sign over your dad’s office, Tierney and Daughter?
” she joked, then turned to look at me when I didn’t reply.
“Well, what are you thinking?” she prodded me.
I blew out the breath I had been holding. “Actually, I was thinking of looking at journalism,” I muttered, while she gawped at me.
“Seriously? That’s class, Róis. But I’ve never once heard you mention you wanted to be a journalist. Where’s this coming from?”
“I dunno, I’ve always kind of had an interest in it over the past few years, and I’ve been focusing my thesis in that direction with Professor Walsh. I guess it depends on if I’m so shit my thesis fails - that’ll be my answer.”
“Nope, you’re not doing that,” she whirled on me. “The whole; I’ve just told you my big secret desire, but I’m so mean to myself I’ll shit all over it before I can really consider it.” I blinked in surprise at her outburst.
“Sara, I’m only joking. I’ve just been toying around with the idea.”
“Well, stop toying with it and just go for it. If these past few months have taught me anything, it’s that fear is bullshit, Róis.
You’re the most fearless person I know..
. outside of horror movies... and clowns.
.. I can’t bear to see you sell yourself short.
If you think journalism would make you happy, then grab it by the testicles and go for it. ”
I snorted, “Eloquent as always, Sara.”
“I try,” she smirked as we paused at the O’Connell building.
“So, are we ever going to talk about the elephant on the football team?” I turned to face her head on. If I could bear my soul, so could she. And it was about time we tackled the conversation head on.
“I finished it,” she said quietly, looking me in the eye.
I felt a rush of relief at her words. When Sara had confided in me about the affair with her married football manager, I had left every ounce of judgement at the door.
But the concern for her had been paramount.
I had been questioning if this act of lunacy had been some kind of trauma response to what had been happening at home with Freya.
“I’m really happy, Sars.” I gave her a quick hug. “What happened?”
She just shrugged. “He wanted to go away for the weekend together, had this big elaborate plan on what story he’d spin his wife.
And I suddenly pictured it. Him kissing her goodbye while meeting me in some seedy hotel for meaningless sex.
” She gulped a deep breath. “I don’t care about him, I never did.
He was just a distraction from all the horrible shit happening in my life.
But even without his wife knowing it, I’m the horrible shit happening in her life.
And she loves him. I don’t want to be that person.
” She looked at me a little desperately, searching for reassurance.
“Of course you’re not Sara, you never were. You made a bad call when things were crumbling around you, but it wasn’t you that was married. You didn’t stand on an altar and promise anyone anything.”
She nodded, and I could see by her eyes she was latching onto my words like a life raft. She had entered the stage of regret for the affair, and I was relieved she’d called it before anything worse had happened.
“He won’t stop texting me now though,” she said, with a curl of disgust to her lips.
“What’s he saying to you?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes with a sneer, “That he loves me, and he’ll leave her for me. He does in his hole love me; he doesn’t even know me. It was only ever sex. I blocked him last night after he called me eight times in a row.”
“You did the right thing, girl. It’s onwards and upwards from here, okay?” I gave her arm a reassuring squeeze before pulling her in for a hug. She gripped the back of my coat tight before we hastily broke apart and legged it to our respective 9 a.m.’s
********
I sat on the grass by the bridge, on the Clare side of campus.
A coffee in my hand as I leaned my head back soaking in the sun.
I couldn’t bear to spend my study gap in the library when the sun had decided to shine in February.
I was like a woman in a desert, who had seen a mirage, when I came out of my last lecture to see a blue sky.
I adored the sun, and once the hype of Christmas was over, the weeks waiting for the first daffodils to pop their heads up and announce springtime was an event I frothed over.
It was bound to be soon, since the local elderly had been saying there was a grand stretch in the evening.
I mean - there was. But I didn’t announce it to every person I met.