Chapter 6
Lo
That pompous ass. I stomp home, dodging buskers and revelers stumbling out of cafés and pubs. I only agreed to the joint hen/stag party for Lark.
We’ve spent ten minutes together and Aidan’s already pressing all my buttons like Buddy the Elf in the Empire State Building elevator. I’m lit up, and not from holiday joy.
Behind the swishing, gold-tinted foliage of willow trees next door, a figure watches as I approach my apartment building.
“Are you trying to give me a heart attack, lurking in the dark?” I exclaim, clutching my chest when I spot Lark sitting on the iron garden bench.
“You look like you’re on the warpath.” Dim string lights illuminate the sketch pad in her lap.
We often spend time here among the willows and roses, me studying and her reviewing animation files on her laptop.
For the past three years, I’ve sublet the apartment next door to the funeral home where she and Callum live and he’s the undertaker.
It’s close to the university and the cul-de-sac is quiet thanks to the adjacent cemetery.
I wave her over as I unlock the front door. “Aidan was playing a pop-up show at the Hare’s Breath.”
She cringes and follows me inside and up the stairs to my apartment.
I hang my bag and keys in their designated spots.
Lark dumps her pink cowboy boots haphazardly on top of each other in the walkway.
When we lived together in Austin that nonsense drove me crazy, but I swallowed it down because she was in such a dark place.
However, once she healed, I realized that she’s always been a bit of a slob.
I resist the urge to move her boots into the correct spot for guests on the top shelf of the shoe storage unit for about four seconds before I cave.
When I began to sublet the semi-furnished unit from Lark, there wasn’t much here.
Now everything has a place. A decent hi-fi and record player on a salvaged side table.
A bookcase populated by a mix of vintage rock, indie folk, and Latin alternative LPs, and riveting page-turners like Principles for Clinical Medicine and Lippincott Illustrated Reviews: Biochemistry .
Between the demanding schedule of third-year clinical rotations, study groups, and lectures, I’m not home often, but I want a calm environment and decent music when I am.
I drop the needle on a Vanessa Zamora special edition I found crate-digging at a record shop in the Westend.
Soothing, groove-driven music plays as Lark heads to the kitchen.
“Are you sure you’re okay with Aidan being part of the wedding?
” Lark opens a cabinet in search of a glass.
It’s overflowing with bottles of vitamins and supplements sent over by my mom.
I’d prefer if she sent Tex-Mex specialties that are hard to find in Ireland, like yellow habanero sauce, but if it’s not for my health my mom’s not interested.
“He just caught me off guard tonight.” I explain how Aidan got under my skin with that old song from the Cure, then proceeded to steal a bite out of my kebab and dictate my attendance at the joint bachelor/bachelorette party on the water.
Lark hums and plops down on the tiny loveseat. “I think it sounds fun to do it together, but you don’t have to go on the boat if you don’t want—”
“Oh, I’m going. Aidan is not going to stop me celebrating you. And I already decided to wear something ridiculously hot for the boat ride.”
Suspicion fills her eyes. “You don’t…want him back, do you?”
“Not to lure him back—to rub what he lost in his face. If he insists on being in close quarters with me, the least I can do is make him suffer for it.”
When he saw me earlier, I’d just gotten off a twelve-hour shift and looked a little ragged. Meanwhile, Aidan could’ve stepped off a Rolling Stone photoshoot.
“He uses bottled tanner now,” I speculate. “Or one of those booths that sprays you like a car wash.”
“Or he’s just gotten some sun on tour.”
“And he got Invisalign. Or veneers. His teeth are different.”
Every small change is unnerving. I didn’t like the beard covering his dimples or that the gap between his teeth was now closed. His imperfect, gapped smile was so charming. The sweet, genuine guy I’d fallen in love with has been replaced by an airbrushed impostor.
“So? You had braces growing up,” Lark reminds me. Not only braces, but headgear for eleven months.
“We agreed that you’d never mention my snaggletooth again.”
“This isn’t right. I’ve never heard you judge anyone for that kind of thing before. Why are you judging Aidan for it, anyway?”
She’s right. What Aidan does with his own body shouldn’t bother me.
But two years after our breakup, my resentment still burns hot.
Unfortunately, so does my attraction. I need to focus on whatever makes him less appealing.
Right now, all I have is the lack of authenticity.
Lark can pry it out of my cold fingers. “He’s not the guy I fell for anymore. ”
Lark stares at me, her lips pursed.
“What? Stop looking at me like that.”
“You never got over him. I knew it…”
“It was just a six-month fling,” I lie to both of us.
As delicious as our vacation three-night-stand had been, I didn’t expect more with Aidan.
I’d worked too hard and come too far to risk getting distracted and washing out of med school.
But once I relocated here for the Atlantic Bridge study abroad program, we kept running into each other.
Every interaction with Aidan crackled with the knowledge of just how well we’d harmonized in bed.
How easily our conversations had flowed, how satisfying it felt to make him laugh.
How talented he is. The way this confident man had become tongue-tied after our first kiss.
I couldn’t get him out of my head.
After a few group outings with Lark and Callum at the Hare’s Breath, he asked me for coffee.
We talked about our ambitions and passions for hours.
Some guys are intimidated by intelligent women, but Aidan never made me feel like I needed to dull my shine for his sake.
He learned about my family’s culture instead of fetishizing my heritage.
One latte soon became a standing date at the café down the street from the solicitor’s office where he worked at the time, his dimpled smile the brightest spot of my day amid brain-melting lectures and exams.
Before long, I was counting down the hours until our penciled-in dinners and Aidan’s performances, spending the night at his place more often than not because for once I wanted someone’s company more than I wanted quiet.
Suppers with his family came next. Although they didn’t have much, they welcomed me with open arms and offered me a seat at their table; made me feel like I belonged.
I’d thought maybe Aidan and I could be forever.
We were together just long enough for it to feel right.
Long enough for my world to be rocked when he told me he was leaving to pursue his musical dreams without me.
Lark scoffs. “I know things ended badly, but it was more than a fling.”
I don’t need him, but I have missed him. Or at least I’ve missed the guy I thought he was. Mercifully, she ignores the fact that I haven’t directly answered her accusation.
“Hey,” Lark says. “Since we’re on the subject of men you don’t want at my wedding: Your dad finally RSVP’d ‘no’ today.”
Equal parts relief and disappointment twinge in my chest even if we hadn’t expected him to make the trip out to Ireland.
Traveling cross-country as a tech consultant keeps him busy.
Growing up, he was often absent from milestones.
He made it to my high school graduation but missed my last day of chemotherapy.
When I tearfully rang the “last treatment” bell as my mom and doctors looked on with bittersweet pride, he was on the other side of the country.
It was hard to forgive him for that one, even though I now understand it was his tireless work keeping us afloat.
“It’s not that I don’t want my dad there. It will just be less complicated with only one parent to deal with. Our moms will already be kind of a handful.”
“Amen to that,” Lark agrees.
Eager to see me and my dad smooth things over, Lark had made sure it was all right with me before inviting him.
He is her uncle, after all. Before he’d become all but absentee, he’d been a part of her life, too.
Fireworks and cookouts for the Fourth of July (any excuse to set something ablaze and grill carne asada and fajitas, really), Nochebuena celebrations that ran late into the night every December.
He hadn’t always had to sacrifice time with the family to cover my medical expenses.
Everything changed when I got sick, and it’s never been the same between us since.
“Probably for the best, right?” I say. “At least my mom will be relieved he’s not there.”
“I don’t know. Forgiveness is powerful.”
Her words pluck a string in my heart that I’d rather ignore.