Chapter 13
It gets a little easier after that. A week passes and with it my initial leaving date and suddenly there’s no more pretending that I’m here for a visit but for as long as it takes.
And while a job doesn’t magically fall into my lap, it’s nice not to lie to people anymore.
Nice not to have to pretend that everything’s okay when it’s not.
Louise gives me the old laptop to work from and I throw myself back into the job hunt, reaching out to every contact I have from New York, from London, from friends of friends Jess sends my way.
Some respond to my emails, some even lead to first-round phone calls but the answer is always the same.
There are simply too many of us looking for the same jobs and no matter my experience or my skill, the door remained closed.
I don’t see Luke. He must have meant it when he said he was barely around.
Beth tells me that with the schools off for Easter he’s wrapped up in the sports camps for a bit of extra cash on top of studying.
We ended things well at the fair, but I can never think of an excuse to stay late enough to see him again.
Instead, I take to sitting on the bench in the café, working away while Beth chats to me and the slowly increasing number of customers who come in as the season changes.
The good weather and the Easter break draw families to the village and, as if on cue, a handful of pop-up stores and restaurants join them, meaning the vacant streets aren’t so vacant.
Beth’s slushie machine gets dusted off and I convince her to move the bench back and display it in the window in order to compete with the new gelato place across the road.
One day, toward the end of the week, Rory comes back for the promised beach trip and this time is accompanied by his wife.
Sinead is a petite redheaded woman with a fake tan line up to her neck, who looks at me skeptically as soon as I get into the back seat of his car.
“Rory says you were his first girlfriend,” she says by way of introduction. “I didn’t believe him.”
“It’s true,” I say. “For a very angsty four months.”
“Told you,” he mutters, and she turns to him with an impressed look.
“Look at you,” she says. “Punching above your weight. Do you like the beach, Abby? I hate the beach and yet this is where my husband takes me on my precious time off.”
“I like tropical beaches.”
“You’ll both love it,” Rory dismisses. “Chilly wind, warm beer.”
“Stop,” Sinead says. “This is so much better than the romantic B&B I wanted to book. It’s our anniversary,” she tells me, twisting around again.
“It is not,” Rory says.
“It’s one of our anniversaries.”
“Which one?” I ask, liking her more by the minute.
“The first time he saw me naked.”
I grin. “You have an anniversary for the first time you had sex?”
“No one said anything about sex,” Rory mutters. “And we’re not telling the story.”
“He was sleeping with my roommate,” she explains as he groans. “That’s all he was to me for months. The man who was always in my kitchen when I wanted to cook. And then one morning my roommate’s gone to work, I’m getting out of the shower and he walks in without even knocking.”
“I didn’t know you were in there and your shitty student apartment didn’t have a lock.”
“He sees me. Freaks out. Slips on the floor and whacks his head off the toilet. I spent six hours waiting with him in the emergency room. Turns out I would have spent six days with him if I had to. I thought he was the funniest, most interesting person I’d ever met.”
“Some couples spot each other across a crowded dance floor,” Rory says. “We have that.”
“What happened to the roommate?” I ask.
“She’s doing okay,” Sinead says. “She has a three-legged dog with sixty thousand followers on Instagram.”
“She’s also has her own dental practice,” Rory says. “As well as the dog thing. Remember we talked about putting normal achievements first?”
“And to think,” Sinead sighs. “If I was someone who showered in the evenings, none of this would ever have happened.”
“Please stop trying to make it romantic.”
I smile to myself as we turn out of the village. “Is Beth not coming?” Rory had texted earlier to say that she was.
“The fridge at the café broke, so she’s getting someone out to fix it,” he says. “She’ll catch a ride with Sean later. You remember my cousin?”
I nod. A year or two younger, he used to live up the road from Rory.
“I think his partner, Harry, is joining. Sounds like we’ll have ourselves a little gang.” He grins at me in the rearview mirror. “Hope you enjoy in-jokes you don’t understand.”
It takes an hour to get to the beach. Despite the sun shining overhead, there’s a chill on the breeze and I’m relieved I brought an old school sweatshirt of Louise’s.
I also borrowed one of her swimsuits. And a T-shirt.
She’d handed over all three items with pursed lips before suggesting we take a trip to the local superstore a few towns over to stock me up on the essentials .
Now I take a deep breath, tasting the tang of the ocean.
The horizon seems impossibly far, a misty white line that looks like I can pinch it with my fingers and pull toward me.
Several thousand miles straight ahead is the edge of Canada with plenty of storms and sea monsters and “I’m flying, Jack” icebergs in the way.
But right here are green cliffs and yellow sand and three ice cream trucks competing for customers.
It’s a place I’ve been to dozens of times before, but I’m surprised by the sudden pull I feel for it and look longingly at the people in the water, all of them with big goofy grins on their faces.
“Luke’s not done yet.”
“What?” I glance sharply at Rory as he joins me.
“Luke.” Rory nods to the water where I can just make him out teaching a bunch of children how to stand on a surfboard.
“You didn’t tell me he was joining.”
He gives me a long look. “Is that a problem?”
“No.”
“Mm-hm.” But he drops it. “We’re going to drive to the village and get some supplies. Well, I say supplies. I mean beer.”
I look back to the water. “I think I’ll stay. I want to go in the ocean for a bit before it gets too cold.”
Rory makes a face. “Children pee in there.”
“You mean you pee in there. I’m going to rent a wetsuit and go paddleboarding. Come find me when you’re back.”
“You know they don’t actually clean those things,” he calls after me. “They just throw them into a vat of disinfectant and offer up a prayer.”
I ignore him and head to the little hut where I pay ten euro for an hour with a board and a wetsuit. It’s not exactly top-of-the-range material and I almost twist my arm trying to pull the zipper up. But eventually I manage it and make my way to the shore.
I used to love playing in the water. I spent my summers by the sea in the sun and the wind and the rain and whatever else the west coast of Ireland threw at us.
It was always more fun in the rain. Rain meant bigger waves, more squealing, more frantic movements as I ran from the water to the car where my dad would hold out a towel to wrap me in and not even bother to rub me dry, just bundle me into the back seat before my hands turned blue.
Swimming in the sea as an adult meant brief vacation days with Tyler or expensive weeks away with Jess.
It meant fine white sand and crystal blue water and floating around in a bikini, not whatever survival gear it is Louise has given me.
Picking up my steps, I grab a spare bodyboard from a pile by the edge, catching Luke’s eye as I pass. He holds up a hand in greeting before immediately getting distracted by two kids screaming at each other. It’s the most interaction we’ve had in days.
I enter the water, keeping within eyesight of the lifeguards.
Everyone knows the currents could whip you up strong over here and though there’s thankfully been no accidents in my lifetime, Mam had plenty of horror stories of people swept away.
I’m not sure any of them were true, probably just tales to scare off any intention of straying too far but they still stick with me, so I paddle out only a few meters and practice standing on the board as I wait for the waves to come in.
It’s nothing compared to the surfing in America or even down the coast here, where the white foamy waves draw people from around the world.
This is gentle kids’ stuff but it’s also all I can manage for a few minutes before my body gets predictably cold and my muscles grow tired.
Barely fifteen minutes in I start to get winded and I soon give up, heading back to the beach as literal children move smoothly and skillfully around me.
I’m almost at the sand when it happens. I hop off the board, tugging it behind me as the water reaches my knees but two steps in and I feel it, a sharp pain in my foot, like someone poked me with a branding iron.
I stop where I stand as the stinging grows in intensity, gazing into the water for the offending piece of trash or rock beneath me. But I don’t see either. Instead, to my left I spy a few slithering blobs floating away.
A jellyfish sting. A goddamn jellyfish sting.
The burning sensation doesn’t fade, so I hobble back to the beach where I sit with a thud, stretching out my leg to see a small red rash already forming on the top of my foot.
“You need to pee on it.”
“What?” I glance up to see a boy standing beside me, no more than six or seven.
“You need to pee on it,” he says. “Mum told me.”
“Great.”
“Do you want me to pee—”
“ No, ” I say sharply.
The kid only shrugs and runs off. By now, the beach is starting to empty, cars leaving en masse as the summer camp winds up, but I see Rory walking along the shoreline, clearly looking for me.
I yell his name and he waves, jogging over to my deathbed.
“What happened to you?” he asks. “Shark bite?”
“Jellyfish.”
The smile drops from his face. “Seriously? Are you okay?”
“I can handle it. It’s just sore.”
“Do you want me to—”