Chapter 24 An Experiment in Learning the Rules of the Game and Also Learning That Knees Are an Erogenous Zone
It was a short, chilly walk to Dick Mack’s. We found a couple of tall stools at the bar. Tadhg said he was going to end the night with a whiskey, and I decided I was too full of beer and dinner to fit in another pint, so I followed suit, allowing Tadhg to choose an Irish whiskey for me.
There was music here too, though it was quieter—only three musicians playing unplugged in the corner. It was nice. I was a little grateful that we could turn and watch them and didn’t necessarily have to make conversation if we didn’t want to.
But the mood had shifted. I didn’t feel awkward anymore. Things were easier between us. Maybe even, dare I say, warmer.
We commented on the neat interior of the pub, talked about the whiskey, had a taste from each other’s glass then decided to trade, we tapped our feet to the music, and Tadhg even made a request for a tune with a tip in the guitar case.
Finn, for her part, was the star of the Finn Show, where everyone in Ireland came to ruffle her ears and talk to her.
And did she bite their insubordinate little fingers off? Did she collect a bloody stack of arms and knuckles under her muzzle to chew on later, when she was peckish? No, she did not. She pretended to be a lovely little dog who loved pats and loved all the humans. Like an asshole.
Eventually, I started telling Tadhg about my dates that day. It felt like safe ground now.
We laughed together. He laughed so hard and so easily that his whole body shook, and it transformed his face entirely.
I hadn’t known this was a Tadhg who was available to the world.
I hadn’t known this Tadhg existed and that this had been a thing he kept from me.
Before I knew what was happening, I was leaning in to tell him every excruciating detail of being asked if I was still waiting for marriage, of Peggy’s horror over the horse poop, of listening to the worrier talk about the importance of flossing, of being advised about Bitcoin, oh so eager to pull more of those throaty laughs from him.
He teased me as easily as an old friend, and I slipped right into my usual comedy routine, like I was talking to Simone, like a comfy, worn-in pair of slippers.
“You know what, Maya Davis?” Tadhg looked at me sideways and drew a sip from his whiskey. “I don’t hate you nearly as much as I thought I did.”
I smirked back. “That so? Verdict’s still out on you, I’m afraid.” His grin stretched a delicious centimeter, and my eyes snagged on it.
We were having such a good time that when our new friend the bartender told us we shouldn’t leave Dingle without checking out Foxy John’s, which was not only a pub but also a hardware store, we made the tipsy decision to go for one last one. We could handle it.
And whoa! The cobbles were uneven here. Absolutely nothing to do with my blood alcohol level.
Tadhg grabbed my hand and put it in the crook of his elbow.
And I kept it there. Also nothing to do with my blood alcohol level.
We arrived intact, without skinned knees or bloodied hands.
As a matter of fact, most of my blood had left my extremities entirely, on its way southward. But I was resolutely ignoring that.
Foxy John’s was cozy as hell, with a counter and loads of tools and hardware for sale, and Tadhg looked right at home set against the manly backdrop.
“Slainte.” Tadhg clinked glasses with mine, and I repeated the word, liking the way it felt on my tongue.
“Crap. Now I really feel like I’m in Ireland.”
This is the trip people dream of. Right here.
“Good. Because this is officially a respectable pub crawl. So you can mark that one off your list.”
“Oh yeah? This makes four pubs in four hours. Is that enough to be respectable?”
He grinned down at me. “Yeah. That’s respectable. Your Simone is going to be proud of you.”
“You know what? I think she will. I’m going to send her a text right now! Actually, even better, could I send her a selfie with the two of us and the tools in the background? Not for professional use or public distribution, of course.”
“Nope. Don’t do selfies.”
“Yeah, but you’d do one for me, wouldn’t you?”
He narrowed his eyes, all grump, but I could tell that I’d already won.
“Ugh. Fine, you big tourist. But don’t embarrass me in front of the locals, will ye? No selfie sticks.”
“Well, you take it, then, with your three-foot-long concrete arms.”
“Fine. But only because I’m half cut. Don’t think I’m going to be making a habit of selfies now.
I hate all this. The whole world would be better off without mobiles!
Look what it’s turning us into.” But his brow was unfurrowed, and he had the ghost of a smile, and I liked this new version of grumpy.
“Bah humbug, Scrooge. Just take the damn photo!”
We smooshed closer together, and he put one huge arm around my shoulder, and we angled it to get all the wrenches and saws in the shot. I cozied in and took a long-drawn-out inhale of his delicious Tadhg scent. Don’t you snuggle! Don’t you dare snuggle!
“Just two tools in front of the tools. Oh my God. Just look at us. Adorable.”
“No showing that to my father, you hear me? He’s never to see it. Under penalty of death.”
“Why not? He’d love it!”
“That’s exactly what I’m worried about.” He looked down, and so did I. My hand was on his knee.
I had braced myself against it when he’d drawn me in for the photo, and I hadn’t noticed that I’d left it there. I did a big gasp and looked at him with huge eyes. “Oh no!”
He took my hand and made a big show out of moving it back to my own knee. “Hands to yourself, Davis.”
I laughed. “What will happen? Will you be totally overcome with lust? Throw me over your shoulder and march back to the hotel and ravish me till morning? Who could have known you had such sensitive knees?”
Theeeere it is. There’s that furrowed brow. I’d almost missed it.
“Don’t talk like that!”
“Oh, come on. I’m just playing.”
“I know you are. But look.” He turned his stool away and stared at the saws. “If this is going to work . . . you can’t say stuff like that, okay?”
“Oh. You’re for real? I’m sorry. I’m making you uncomfortable, aren’t I? I thought I was being funny.” I sobered a bit. “Crap. Sorry, Tadhg.”
He put his head down, rubbed the back of his neck, and sucked a breath between his teeth.
“Look. I’m not uncomfortable. At least not the way you think.
I mean, we’re here, and we’re drinkin’, and you’re touching me.
And saying stuff like that. It’s just . .
. Look. You already know what I’m trying to say. ”
I laughed. “I don’t have any idea what you’re trying to say! I’m no good at guessing feelings. And you’re making a mess of explaining.”
“Come on. Don’t make me do this.”
“If we don’t talk about it, then how am I supposed to know how you’re feeling? And look at you. You can’t even look at me. You’re staring at that saw like it’s your salvation.”
“Okay, fine, goddammit.” He spun around to look at me again.
His face was taut, aggravated. “We agreed to just be friends . . . but when you say stuff like that . . . it makes me.” Something flashed in his dark eyes.
Something consuming. It tugged at my stomach.
Pulled me in. My body leaned a fraction closer without my willing it to. “You’re killing me, Maya.”
That phrase. I finally got it. Those four little words injected red-hot lust into my bloodstream like a drug.
I was killing him? I was making it difficult to be just friends?
This information—the sound of his voice, the look in his eyes—swallowed me whole.
Meteors ignited and soared in my belly. If I just tilt my head and lean in a little farther, I could taste him again. His beautiful mouth would—
“Rules! We should make a protocol!” My voice was way too loud.
“What?”
“Yeah. Rules fix everything. I love rules. We agree that any slipups would be a terrible idea. So let’s set some boundaries. Make sure we don’t have any more. Slipups, I mean!”
He laughed. The moment snapped, a rubber band pulled too tight, and I could breathe again. Thank God.
“All right. I’ll play along. Let’s hear your rules, then.”
“Hmmm . . . I hadn’t gotten that far yet. Let’s see . . .” I grabbed a napkin off the bar and the pen that I’d signed the receipt with. “Right, I feel like Rules Number One and Two are pretty obvious.”
“Go on, then.”
“‘Rule Number One—no sex,’” I wrote as I read aloud and then added “‘under any circumstances.’” Tadhg cleared his throat. “‘Rule Number Two—no kissing on the lips.’”
“On the lips? Sooo . . . kissing in other places . . .?”
My body heated all over. My fingers tingled. Other parts of me also tingled. My mind went immediately to his warm mouth between my legs.
“Nope.” I scratched it out about a thousand times and ripped a hole in the napkin. “‘Rule Number Two—no kissing. ANYWHERE.’” I wrote it in all caps. “‘Rule Number Three—no turning each other on.’”
“Wait. How are we supposed to follow that?”
“Well, for starters—no unnecessary handholding.”
“Come again?”
“No innuendos!” I pointed at him with the pen.
“I wasn’t! You’re the one with the dirty mind. So your rule is no handholding?”
“Yep. You’re a real handholder, and you have these . . . calluses.”
“Calluses? You mean those rough, nasty bits of skin?”
“Yeah. It’s a thing. Don’t ask questions.” I wrote it down. “‘No unnecessary handholding.’ Okay. Anything else? And your rule is what? No knee touching?”
“Rule Number Three B. No unnecessary, lingering touches.”
“Agreed. But I’m not writing ‘lingering,’ because I’m not sure I could spell it under the influence. What else? Anything else? I feel like we can do better than this.” I bit my lip and tapped the pen on the bar.
“All right, then. If you’re askin’. No tossing your hair.” He looked away from me and threw back a swig of whiskey.
“No what?” I jutted my chin out, wondering if I’d heard wrong.
“Ah, come on. You know what I’m talking about. That thing you do.”
I lifted my hand to my hair, flipped it, and gave it a scramble. He can’t mean this. “You mean this?” My face twisted into a disbelieving question. Curls needed to be fluffed every once in a while. It had become a habit I didn’t think much about.
His hand shot out and grabbed my wrist. “Yep. No more of that.”
“What the actual hell are you talking about? This isn’t sexy! Also, no touching!”
He let go of my hand as if it had scalded him.
“Look, it just, your hair smells amazing, and then it looks all . . . Hey! I don’t have to explain myself to you.
Rule Three C—write it down!” He was stern, and he tapped the napkin with a blunt finger.
The sound of his voice made my head swim.
As did the knowledge that I’d been secretly turning him on without even knowing it.
The idea burrowed under my skin and sank into me.
Like a foreplay montage, my mind flew to every little moment I thought I’d seen that same look in his eyes, now that I knew what it meant.
Whooo. Holy crap! Shut it down!
I thought about pouring my glass of ice water down my pants. I was basically on fire. Good thing we were getting all of this stuff out of the way now. This was a really good idea.
“Well, fine, then. No scratching your beard.”
“My beard?” he shouted. People turned around. “Scratching my beard?”
“Yeah.”
“Now you’re just being daft. If you’re not going to take this seriously—”
I moved into his space, locked eyes, and said very slowly, “No. Scratching. Your. Beard. Because when you scratch your beard, I immediately think of your beard scratching its way up my inner thigh, and I don’t want to be hyperventilating about the thought of your tongue inside of me when I’m interviewing a sweet old couple celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Get it?”
“Shhhh. All right, all right! Keep it down. I didn’t—I mean, that’s a weird one. But okay. No beard scratching. But only if you stop saying shit like that to me. I just . . .” He adjusted his seat on his barstool. “Don’t do it.”
Well. Maybe this isn’t working after all. I was so hot that I would have let him take me on the bar right next to the drill bits.
“You shouldn’t look at me like that either,” he added.
“Fine! Three F—no looking at each other. Anything else?” I could think of a million things that turned me on. His face, his smell, his purposeful, straight-shouldered stride, his scowl, God help me, and his oh-so-rare-and-all-the-more-delicious-for-it smile. But this was getting out of hand.
“Okay, last one. You can’t . . .” He let out a long breath. “When you get in the back of the car. It’s . . . a problem.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I was riled up now. “You’re the one who made me sit back there in the first place, like a naughty kid in time-out, you fucking monster!”
He put his hands up in surrender. “You’re right. This one is all my fault. I thought it would be funny to knock you down a few pegs, but honestly, I hadn’t foreseen the whole . . . situation.”
“Situation?”
“With . . . your ass.”
“Well, this is the damn stupidest!” I laughed. Mental note: He likes my ass!
“Yeah. It’s a problem. So, I think Finn has to sit in the back from now on. Effective immediately.” Finn, who had somehow threaded herself under the legs of Tadhg’s stool, looked up at the sound of her name.
“Really? Did I just get promoted?”
“Absolutely not. Your ass got demoted.”
“I just got promoted. Because you ‘don’t hate me as much as you thought you did’! I’m on top of the world!”
“As if you’d deserve a promotion. You’ve been nothing but a pain in my hole since day one! Stop laughing, Davis. That is not a compliment!”