31. Mary
Mary
Caitie hugged me from behind as she passed by where I was sitting on the bar stool, on her way back to the bar. She was doing a Friday-evening shift and the place was filling up.
‘Have I told you how amazing it is to have you here? The last week has been so lovely,’ she said into my ear.
I grimaced. ‘Really?’ I hadn’t exactly been a ray of sunshine as I’d nursed my shattered heart with copious amounts of white wine.
I’d called in my holiday days at work to stay another week, and sent them an official email stating my intention to take the redundancy.
The upside of spending the week with Liam and Caitlin had been lots of time catching up, talking and seeing Johnny.
And getting to know Ashling, and Liam, better.
Johnny had taken me to his huge workshop near where he and Ash lived. It was so impressive.
But a big Cam-shaped cloud had hung over everything, and anger at myself for being so na?ve as to fall for the first man to come along in years.
Even Dee had been a bit like, Maro, you didn’t really think it was going to happen just like that, did you?
I’d cut the call off before I’d blamed her for my predicament.
I was due to go back to Dublin in a couple of days. I was going to work out my redundancy and then Caitie and Johnny were going to come over, and we’d clear the family home and put it up for sale, finally moving on with all of our lives. It felt good.
And then it didn’t. Cam. I took another slug of wine.
Caitie was on the other side of the bar now, wiping a glass, looking at me. ‘He was very ridey, Mary, I’ll give you that, but there are lots of rides in Manhattan. Maybe someone will come in tonight and?—’
‘Stop. I’m fine, honestly. Let’s talk about something else.
’ Because the truth was that I was a little shocked at how actually heartbroken I was.
I’d kind of hoped that maybe I’d realise I’d been over-dramatic, but, no, this was genuine heartache pain.
Because I knew that Cameron Delahunt was the real deal and some day someone would come along and make him see how much he was worth, and he’d fall in love and have a family and …
‘Well, you know I was telling you about my boss?’ Caitie said.
I nodded and smiled, and focused on her as if my life depended on it, because I couldn’t bear to think about Cam any more. The absolute gorgeous heartbreaking bastard.