Authors: Lauren Gilley
Tam’s ocean blue eyes had been staring up at her, his face flushed with the cold and exertion. “Mike can call you a boy all he wants,” he’d said, laughing, “but I’m not tackling a girl, even if you are the fastest one I’ve ever met.”
It had been the first time a boy had acknowledged her as a real, actual girl, in a way that didn’t make her mad. Maybe it should have, but his eyes were too blue to get mad at. She’d cracked up. He’d stayed for dinner and asked her if she knew how to skateboard. When she’d said no, he’d offered to teach her. She’d been a miserable skateboarder, but he’d laughed with her instead of at her.
She’d loved him ever since, in some fashion, as a child and a teenager and, under all the layers of heartache, she did still.
Her reverie dissolved, her conscience slamming back into her running, heavy-breathing body as the game changed.
Tam, a snarl on his face the likes of which she’d never seen before, a glimmer in his eyes like when he’d asked her if Nick Schaffer had raped her, lunged sideways at his teammate. Ryan was heavier, but Tam and he were both running full tilt, and both them went down in a tangle of grappling limbs and curses.
“Jo!”
She chucked the ball to her brother and watched it land like a feather in Jordan’s waiting hands. He took off with a kicked-up spray of water, a streak through the falling sheets of rain, off to score them their first touchdown.
Her eyes, though, were riveted on Tam, who’d managed to ram an elbow into Ryan’s eye during the tackle. Ryan was cupping a hand over it, swearing in a steady, unintelligible stream, as he crab-walked backward over the wet grass to get away.
“What the shit, dude?!” he roared. “I’m on your team! Son of a bitch!”
Tam went springing back to his feet, chest heaving, wet shirt and gym shorts plastered to his body. His eyes were wild as they looked up through the driving clouds of water and found her. His hair was beaten down, rain coursing across his face, and something about his expression left her shuddering. Or maybe that was just the cold water trickling down into her underwear and soaking through her sneakers.
That afternoon, when they were ten and thirteen, he’d been laughing, happy. Today, he was tackling his own teammates to keep them off her. Operation Jealousy had worked. As the others circled up around them, dark and hard to make out in the storm, thunder echoing overhead, she realized it had worked too well.
Jo was glad she hadn’t had breakfast yet because suddenly she wanted to throw up. This was wrong, all of this was wrong. Mike helped Ryan to his feet and then glared at Tam.
“What the hell, dude?”
Tam should have been the one to tackle her: grab the back of her sweatshirt and roll her on top of him, both of them laughing until their stomachs ached. She should have been sharing a room with him, sitting at the reception with her arm looped through his, both of them shit-talking this fancy wedding. Her family would have approved of the match and she’d be so full to bursting with happy that she wouldn’t have known what to do with herself.
Jo was walking away from them, back toward the castle, before she realized that her feet were moving. Someone called out to her – had to be Dad – but she kept going, arms wrapped around her middle, head bent against the rain.
Jordan found her an hour and a half later, showered and changed and curled up on top of her bed, staring at the wall. He was dripping all over the expensive rug, his hair looking like scrap bits pulled out of a shower drain, and he paused to regard her, hands on hips, shaking his head.
“Being a little dramatic, are we?” he asked, brows lifted in a way that suggested he’d only said it aloud for her benefit but that he already knew the answer.
She wasn’t in the mood. “Shut up.”
“You’re not playing this cool. Not even a little bit.”
“I don’t care.”
“Jesus Christ.” He blew out a loud breath, started to push his hand through his hair, and thought better of it. “Whatever. I don’t care. Mope if you want, but if you do, you’ll get stuck doing some shit with Delta instead of coming to the pub with us tonight.”
That perked her up a little. “Pub?”
He nodded. “Shuttle’s gonna take us into Cong tonight. I figure it’s pints in a real bar, or tea and crumpets with Her Majesty.”
“I’ll go,” she said, feeling exhausted all over again. Her stomach quivered at the possibility of more open hostility between Tam and Ryan, but the lure of a proper Irish night out, complete with an alcohol buzz, was too good to pass up. “Lemme go pay my Delta dues so I can slip away later.”
22
Now
Cong was all narrow streets and shops crouched shoulder-to-shoulder along the walkways, looking like a place stuck in the eighties rather than a fairytale village of cottages one might expect after leaving Billingsly. The buildings were all two-story, some stone, some exposed brick, some plaster-over-brick painted pastel shades that clashed garishly with teal and bright blue trim. The odd white cottage was interspersed at intervals, bits of postage stamp yard hemmed in with fence, but most of the residences seemed to be up on second floors, little balconies with pots of flowers and windows propped open with loose bricks marking homes above the bakeries, butchers, cobblers and clothing vendors. The castle brought in lots of tourism, and it had the look of a tourist town, little historical plaques on posts at street corners, business dominated by souvenir sellers and entrepreneurs. This was not a factory town, no thick plumes of smoke belching up to the sky – not that it could have been seen in the dark and in the thick-as-bogwater storm that was lashing all around the countryside.
The castle’s shuttle vans had carried them through crackling lightning and torrential, frog-strangling rains into the town: all the boys save Dennis Brooks, and none of the girls save Jo, Jess and Beth.
Tam picked Talon’s because it looked like a local pub and not a tourist trap, which probably meant that every local within its walls hated them. The exterior was tan plaster, the inside dark, dark wood, heavily scarred, its floorboards scalloped and warped and full of deep gouges the chair legs had made over the years. It was all bar along the back wall, flickering neon signage and cloudy glasses hanging from the overhead racks, row after row of bottles against the back mirror that was spotted with age, chipped glass, fly shit, and spider webbed with cracks. The music – the crooning purr of a woman singing a song he’d never heard rather than the Dropkick Murphys down at the tourist pub – was the perfect volume: loud enough to keep conversations private, but not to keep them from being had. The cigar and pipe smoke smell of the place was rich and old. The windows were dirty, and fogged up with rain. It was wonderful.
Tam climbed up and planted his ass on a stool with every intention of getting staggering, puking drunk. He’d spent the day getting warmed up to it in the castle’s “bar” with Guinness. He’d shrugged into his leather jacket and made a half-assed pass at his hair and he’d been ready.
Two stools down, Atkins was sporting a fresh, red shiner, complements of Tam’s elbow, and it looked damn good on him. Broke up all the perfect his face normally had going on.
That magic spark of the past between him and Mike from earlier, though, that was gone. Mike had gone straight back to his pissy, Delta pussy-whipped state.
Why the hell’d you do that, Tam? He’s just gonna look great in the wedding pictures, Tam. What the hell’s got into your head lately, Tam?
He could ask his friend the same thing; what the hell had got into Mike’s head lately?
Tam cast a glance over his shoulder and saw a table full of local boys, grizzled and red-faced, with chapped hands and wiry beards, giving them the stink eye, of which he instantly approved. Randy and Beth were – good for them – making a date night of it, talking over beers in a corner table. Jo was with Jess, Dylan and Jordan. She looked tired, he thought. Under her makeup, behind the clinging tan sweater and skinny jeans, her Dublin boots, despite the smile pinned to her face, she was exhausted.
She hadn’t used to look that way. Before, nineteen and a freshman in college, breathless laughter bubbling in her throat as she ducked through the rain to meet him up against the side of her building, she’d looked full of electric, unending energy.
It was raining tonight, the sound of it hitting the roof overhead like the steady buzz of a table saw. Tam reached blindly across the bar for his second shot of Jameson’s and couldn’t take his eyes off her, punishing himself with her sad, sleepy eyes and the sound of the rain.
“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” a voice loaded with self-congratulatory pride sounded beside him, stool legs scraping back across the ancient floorboards.
Tam spared a glance to confirm that yes, Atkins had moved his yuppie ass down here beside him, then stared pointedly at the back wall. “How old’s that line?” he asked, throwing back his shot in one swallow. The barkeep, a beefy, neckless tough with arms like John Cena was in front of him the moment his jigger hit the bar and poured him another without a word. “Think I used that one in the third grade.”
Atkins’ chuckle was full of contempt, but he wasn’t about to drop the idea he’d finally dug up and pieced together. “You think you’re a real funny fuck, don’t you?”
Tam glanced at him from the corner of his eye as he downed the next shot, its fire scorching down his esophagus. “You said it, not me,” he said when he could.
In the dim light of the pub, his eye half swollen shut, Atkins looked less like a CK model and more like a suspect off
Law & Order
. “You think that whole bad boy act makes you better than the rest of us?”
It was so absurd, Tam barked a laugh as he watched his next round of Jameson’s being poured. “Trust me, asshat, I’m not better than anyone in here.”
Guys like Atkins who used UFC training as some sort of dick-size supplement didn’t take well to any kind of insult. The rest of his face reddened, trying to keep pace with his bad eye. “Listen, I dunno what your problem is” - and here came the innocent act – “but if this is about Jo” - he pointed to his shiner - “she came to the wedding with me. So you need to back off, pal.”
Tam laughed again – he couldn’t help it; was this guy serious? – and took note of the way the whiskey was taking the sharp corners off his self-control, blurring the lines between gray and red in his mind. “You’re telling me to back off?” He had the giggles like a teenage girl. “Are you
kidding
me with that shit?”
Atkins’ eyes cut out toward the tables, toward Jo, square, stupid jaw grinding, but he scraped up a sneer when he turned back to Tam. He was sitting sideways on his stool and leaned forward, voice dropping. “I know she’s got tits and ass worth looking at, but this week, she’s mine.” He laughed a low, nasty chuckle. “You can have a turn after.”
Tam had spent years telling himself that he wasn’t his father, had worked so hard to control his temper and guard his aggression. But tonight, his mother was at home in a hospice bed, possibly halfway dead with bronchitis, he had a shitty job and no prospects, not enough money to cover the bar tab he was racking up, and here was this guy talking about taking turns at
his
girl. Tonight, Hank Wales was alive inside him as he tossed back his fourth shot, set the glass lightly on the bar, and then attacked Ryan Atkins like a rabid hyena.
**
Jo thought maybe she should have seen this coming – Tam was a powder keg this week – but she couldn’t wrap her brain around the way he tackled Ryan off his stool and then fell on him fists-first. She’d seen lots of fights in her school years, guys puffing up like roosters, yelling “come at me, bro!” and throwing gangster rap hand signs. The physical damage was always laughable; it was more about pride and puffery than leaving bruises.
This was nothing like one of those fights.
One moment, she caught a flicker of a nasty smile cross Ryan’s face from her view over Jordan’s shoulder, and the next, the big pretty boy was on his back on the floor, the stools crashing to the ground loud as gunshots. By the time Jo scrambled to her feet, sending her chair flying, Tam’s knuckles were coming away bloody, and there was a feral, animal gleam in his eyes.