Chapter 4
Born a few months apart, Luke and I were friends for most of our early childhood.
We didn’t really have a choice in the matter, the two of us forced together by sheer proximity.
Both my parents worked and Louise and I were often deposited with Susan after school.
Being that bit older, Louise would disappear to do her own thing while Luke and I watched television or ran around doing whatever it is seven-year-olds do.
I don’t know when that stopped. Maybe when Louise became old enough to look after me in our own house.
Maybe because that’s just what happens when you grow up.
People change. And it takes more than living next door to someone to be friends with them.
We grew apart and the only time I ever saw him was glimpses of him mowing the lawn in the summer.
Honestly, between studying and navigating my own teenage drama, I rarely thought about him.
And now I can’t stop.
I exit Dessie’s store, picturing the tight look on his face as I unpack the suspiciously cheap Irish cell phone I just bought.
It’s Tuesday. Three days since the lunch.
Four days since I came home and I still haven’t told Louise the truth.
To be fair, I was very tired for most of that time.
Once the Baileys left I more or less collapsed back into bed, where I stayed for the rest of the afternoon and all of Sunday.
I woke in a panic yesterday and spent the morning applying for every job I could find back in New York and the afternoon making endless to-do lists of all the steps I’d need to take to get myself back to normal.
As bizarre as it sounds, it made me feel a little better seeing my life broken out into color-coded sections and bullet points within bullet points.
No more “get a well-paying position, pay off your debts, and move back to New York.” Now I dealt in the granular.
Get up. Get dressed. Buy an Irish phone.
Offer to help Louise make dinner. Smile pleasantly when she says no. Get a job here.
I wasn’t too sure about the last part. But I needed money and I wasn’t above taking grunt work to get it. But where? Clonard isn’t exactly full of opportunities at the best of times and during the off-season it’s even worse.
I stare down the town’s main street, trying to count the businesses that are still open.
The Irish tricolor bunting and posters are still up from St. Patrick’s Day two weeks ago, making the town look cheery and welcoming and completely at odds with my sour mood.
Without a car I can’t commute anywhere, but short of knocking on doors, I don’t know what else to do.
I don’t even have my own computer to work remotely.
I watch a skinny tabby cat slink across the road, brooding as a phone starts to ring. It takes me few seconds before I realize it’s my American one, tucked into the pocket of my fleece. I answer it quickly in case it’s a recruiter.
A mistake.
“What the hell did you do?”
Jess.
“Why did I have to find out from Alicia— Alicia —that you left New York? I thought you were just sulking.”
“Sulking? Losing my job and my apartment is sulking?”
“I mean, God, if you’re going to be dramatic about it.” She pauses. “What do you mean you lost your apartment?”
“It was one of the MacFarlane lofts.”
“I thought you were moving out of—”
“I said I was going to,” I interrupt as her voice rises with each word. “But I didn’t see the point of tying myself to a lease when I was up for a promotion. They might have relocated me. Obviously, in hindsight, it was not the best decision.”
“But why didn’t you ask me !” she exclaims. “You could have stayed with me!”
I don’t have an immediate answer for her.
Why didn’t I ask Jess if I could stay with her?
Stay in her beautiful Upper West Side apartment with her red brick walls and her many green plants and her expensive furniture designed to look cheap.
She would have said yes in a heartbeat. But even now the thought makes me embarrassed.
I’m not used to relying on other people for help. Even when I need it.
“How long are you staying there?” she continues when I don’t say anything.
“I don’t know. A few weeks? Or until my sister kicks me out. I’ll find some temp work to keep me going.”
There’s a long pause on the other end of the line. And then: “Oh my God, Abby.”
“You’re making it sound worse than it is.”
“You’re going off the rails. I’m going to have to call an intervention.”
“I’m visiting my sister! That’s allowed!”
“Your sister who you hate ? In the town you despise ? To do some freaking temp work ?”
“I don’t hate her. We’re just very different.”
“Screw Tyler,” she says suddenly. “Screw him. This is all his fault. I’m going to beat him up.”
“Please don’t.”
“I’m going to punch him in that smarmy face of his. In that goddamn perfectly symmetrical face.”
“Did you call just to yell at me?” I sit on a nearby bench, suddenly tired again.
“A little bit,” Jess mutters. “I don’t suppose I’ve magically convinced you to come back, have I? You can stay with me, I mean it. I’ll put in a good word for you at work.”
“I don’t want to work in real estate.”
“But you want to work somewhere , don’t you? You’ve gotta keep moving.”
“I am moving. Do you seriously think I haven’t applied for everything under the sun? There’s too much competition. It’s like the Hunger Games out there.”
“Maybe Alicia can get you a job,” she says, sarcastic. “Seeing as you two are so close.”
“She found me crying in the ladies’ room, okay? That’s the only reason she knows.”
“Whatever. The point is I’m coming to get you. I’m coming to get you and take you out of there even if I have to drag you by that pretty brown hair of yours. Why didn’t you call me?”
She sounds genuinely hurt.
“Because I was embarrassed,” I say. “I was upset and I was embarrassed and I panicked. That’s why. I needed to get out of the city.”
She silent for a moment. Then she sighs. “A few weeks?”
“That’s the plan.”
“I’ll come visit.”
“No.” I can’t think of anything worse. “You don’t need to.”
“I do need to,” she says flatly. “And I want to. I want to see you and I need a vacation anyway.”
“You vacation in Bora Bora.”
“But unfortunately for me, that’s not where you fled to. I spoke with your sister, by the way. I looked up that dolphin website you mentioned and called her. She did not sound happy to speak to me.”
“That’s just her general tone.” I smooth back my hair as a cool breeze whips a few curls from their hairpins. “You talked to her?”
“Is that not allowed?”
Not if Jess let slip about Tyler. I stare down at my left hand, where my ring glints tauntingly. I’d put it on the other night when Louise kept asking questions and it freaks me out every time I look at it.
“I needed to get her address because I knew you wouldn’t give it to me,” Jess continues. “I’m looking at it on Google Maps right now. Tell her she needs to retile her roof.”
I put the Irish phone into my bag and sit on my free hand, trying to keep warm. “I have to go,” I say. “I have no idea how much this call is costing me.”
“Are you serious?”
“I was on MacFarlane’s cell plan. I had to buy a separate one to keep the phone working.”
“The year 2002 called. It wants your—”
“Goodbye, Jess,” I interrupt. “And… thank you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Ireland. Believe me when I say it was a last-minute decision.”
“I forgive you,” she grumbles. “I guess it’s like that time I didn’t tell you about my rhinoplasty.”
“Yes, you’re right. It’s exactly like that.”
“Just come back, okay? Come back and we’ll fix it like we always do.”
“That’s my plan.” I gaze at an empty restaurant space across the street. “Bye, babe.”
“Bye, idiot.”
I hang up with an ache in my chest that wasn’t there before.
Jessica Darcy. Deceptively smart and not afraid to work hard, my best friend was punctual, wild, and wealthy.
We started as analysts together at MacFarlane and she took a liking to me.
I’m still not sure why. Maybe she saw me as a bit of a side project.
Help the intensely serious girl with the cheap shoes and the odd accent.
Whatever it was, I’m grateful for it. I don’t think I would have survived the first few months without her.
At least not socially. She’d grown up in the world I was trying to break into and, as they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
I copied her confidence and her poise. I ate where she ate and shopped where she shopped until I knew enough and earned enough to find my own way.
She ended up dropping out after the first year, unable to balance the sixteen-hour days with her penchant for nightclubs, but even after she left we remained close.
And now she wants to come here.
She wants to rock up in her designer jeans and her four-inch heels to see what? This? Me? I barely recognize who I am anymore. And what if she—
“ Are those Red Dots? ”
I turn at the shriek by my ear to see a woman in a long padded coat standing beside me. She’s tiny, her face round and pale, her nose tinged pink from the wind. Her jet-black hair hangs in a blunt bob around her chin as she stares at me, or the bottom half of me, with something akin to awe.
“Um…” I glance down at my clothes. “Yes.”
“They charge two hundred euro for a pair of leggings.”
I wince. “Do they?” I ask as she continues to stare unabashedly at my calves before seeming to realize what she’s doing.
“Sorry,” she says. “It’s just that they’re my happy place.”
“Your…what?”
“You know, some people watch TV bloopers, some read comics. I go on the Red Dots website, fill my basket with all the things I want, and then pretend I’m going to buy them.
Plus, if you wait long enough and pretend you don’t want them?
They email you a discount code. Not that it makes them actually affordable.
Would it be weird if you let me touch them?
It would be weird. I’m sorry. Forget I asked.
Sorry.” She snaps her mouth shut, clutching a takeout coffee cup to her chest. “I’m Beth,” she adds.
“Abby.”
“Abby? Abby Reynolds?”
I’m about to reply when panic strikes. Is this another Luke situation? She might have been my best friend at school, for all I know, but both her name and face draw a blank.
“Oh no, you don’t know me,” she says, reading my mind. Coffee sloshes through the lid as she gestures wildly. “But everyone’s talking about you.”
“They are?”
“Well, no. But a few people are. They said you were moving back.”
“I’m just visiting,” I say as she sits beside me, tucking her coat under her.
“From New York, right?” Her eyes are big and bright, framed by blue eyeliner. “I’m not a stalker, I swear. It’s just so rare we get someone new. Not that you’re new new but I’m the newest person here and I moved a year ago.”
“You did?” I’m unable to hide my surprise. People don’t come to Clonard. They leave Clonard. “Why?”
“True love, of course.” She grins. “My boyfriend wanted to be a farmer. He bought some land on eBay. I’m still not sure it was entirely legal but they showed him this boundary map?
So I dunno. It looked fine. We don’t have it anymore.
” Her smile fades. “Ross did not like being a farmer. Turns out it’s actually really hard.
He’s also not a morning person, which you kind of have to be for that line of work. We broke up.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. He wanted to move back home but I was tired of following him around all the time. Plus… I liked it here.”
“Here?”
“I know.” She laughs. “My friends thought I was just going through that breakup phase where you change your hair color and maybe get a cat but sometimes you just connect with a place, you know? I got a job at the library in Manorhamilton and then sold my apartment in Dublin and now I’m a local business owner!
” She raises her hands, spilling the coffee again.
“I love it. But sometimes, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be a little more stable with my income so I could walk around in a pair of those.”
Her eyes drop to my legs again and, honestly, I’m two seconds away from just giving them to her when she speaks.
“So you lost your job, huh? At McDonald’s?”
“MacFarlane.”
“Right. Sorry. I meant that one. You’re not going to jail, are you?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Good! Phew .” She shakes her head. “You know it was on the news? It was the number one headline. And you lived it. That must have been so hard. I bet you just…” She trails off, her mouth twisting into a guilty frown.
“Hate people talking about it,” she finishes.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know when to shut up. ”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I talk and talk but I don’t think.”
“Honestly, I don’t mind,” I say. And strangely, I don’t. At least not with her. She doesn’t have seem to have a filter of any kind, but after years of coded language and reading between the lines, she’s like a breath of fresh air.
“It’s nice to talk to someone,” I add. Or have them talk at you.
“Well, I’m always around,” she says with a sigh. “How long are you here for?”
“I’m not sure yet. Depends on the money.”
“The money?”
I nod, trying to guess her reaction before deciding to try the whole “honesty” thing. “I don’t have any. I’m going to need to get another job soon if I want to—”
“You’re joking!” she exclaims. “Why didn’t you say? We need someone at the café to do marketing. Setting us up on social media, flyers around town, that kind of thing.”
“The café?”
“Coffee!” She holds up her cup, which I now see has the café’s logo on the side.
“Your café is called Coffee?”
“That’s right.” Beth beams at me. “This is perfect. Why don’t you come in and I can tell you about it. You can meet the team!”
“Oh, that’s so kind of you but that’s not actually what meant when I…” I trail off when I realize what I’m doing. Who the hell am I to be turning down any opportunity? I’ll take what I can get. “Like right now?”
“Sure. We’re not very formal. Unless you want to—”
“No,” I say quickly, rising as she does. “Now is good. Now is very good.”
“Amazing. You see? This is the power of Red Dot leggings. They bring people together.” She gives my legs one last wistful look and then, like we didn’t just meet five minutes ago, loops her arm through mine and brings me down the street.