When Irish Eyes Are Smiling

by TomNJus

  “Yeah, yeah.” He leaned in, speaking confidentially, “I’ll tell you about Eric. He was blond haired and blue-eyed. Sound familiar? He was smart and funny, and we all thought he was as devoted to Joel as Joel was to him. Then, one evening, Joel comes home from work to find Eric gone. No goodbyes, no explanation, just a note. Three years together and Eric dumps him for a punk barely out of high school.”

  He slammed a fist down on the table.

  “That’s enough, Gabe.” Katie never raised her voice, but there was steel in it. I imagine it was how their mother spoke. “What if you brought a girl for us to meet and we told her all about Fiona? How would you like it?”

  Gabe took a draft of his beer, a long swallow, and then stood up. “I’m telling him for his sake, not Joel’s. Because you know, Katie, you know, if Eric were ever to return, all contrite and sorry, Joel would take him back in a red-hot second. He’ll leave his new love for old faithful, even though Eric shattered his heart to pieces. You can bet on it.”

  He strode away. I felt—I don’t know what I felt. Like I’d just had the rug pulled out from under me, like I’d just been kicked in the nuts. My heart was racing, and my throat was dry with fear. Joel leave me? He couldn’t leave me. I hadn’t done anything to deserve it yet.

  “He’s wrong,” Katie said earnestly. “He’s thinking about himself, not Joel. The break between him and his wife was bad, and almost all of it was his fault. Gabe’s like that. He messes things up then realizes what he’s done too late and regrets it. If he gets a second chance, he’ll more than make up for it, but sometimes he doesn’t get a second chance.”

  That sounded familiar. “They are hard to come by,” I agreed.

  “Hey,” Joel appeared. “You two better not be gossiping about me.”

  “No,” his sister said, with such aplomb I almost believed her. “We’re talking about me. Devlin likes my photographs. So there.” She stuck her tongue out at him, then patted my hand and accepted Joel’s help in getting to her feet. “It was good to meet you, Devlin. I hope we see you again soon.”

  “They’re about to serve the cake,” Joel said. “What say we have some, then make our farewells and get out of here?”

  I forced myself to smile. “You just want to play with my suspenders.”

  *Joel*

  "You just want to play with my suspenders," he mockingly accused.

  "Not just, Muffinman," I parried, grabbing his suspenders and pulling him up to me. Tipping my head to the side, I let my lips brush his as I whispered, "My plans also include riding you into the sunset." My hands slid up and down his suspenders; I felt his nipples stand up through his pretty, green linen shirt as the backs of my fingers brushed over them.

  He shivered, and tried to pull away. Glancing around us at the other people, he said, "We shouldn't—"

  "Hell, if I had my way," I interrupted his objection, "We'd say, 'fuck the cake,' and I'd drag you into the walk-in so I could have my wicked way with you." I drew him back into my chest for a sensual, lingering kiss. He barely resisted— once my tongue slipped past his lips.

  Someone noticed and applauded. I reluctantly left Dev's soft mouth. He looked dazed. "But someone," I finished, "Would come looking for us since I'm expected to be in those family pictures, so we'd better be good, huh?"

  "Uh-huh," he agreed vaguely, while staring at my mouth and smoothing his palms up my shirtfront to my shoulders. Wrapping his arms around my neck, he caught my mouth for another kiss, soft and undemanding, but expressive of desire. I hoped it meant that he was going to be comfortable with my family, even though they'd not been welcoming to him initially. I also hoped that if they saw us acting like lovers instead of friends they'd be more accepting of him.

  More folks started whistling, banging mugs on the picnic tables and catcalling, "Way to go, Joel!" and "Get a room why don'cha?" which only served to fuel Dev's exhibitionistic nature. I knew the kiss was getting too hot when he broke away for a gulp of air, but he dove right back in for more. He was just too sweet to resist. His fingers wove their way into my hair, massaging my scalp as I caressed his strong back, teasing his spine.

  Beside us, Gabe loudly cleared his throat. Devlin nearly jumped from me. Flushed and breathing a little raggedly, he shoved his hands into his trouser pockets in an attempt to hide his partial arousal. With those sexy suspenders and his sheepish grin, he looked like nothing so much as a grown-up Tom Sawyer caught trying to reach under Becky Thatcher's skirts.

  "C'mon, loverboys, Pop's waiting to cut the cake."

  A resounding, "Aww!" issued from the folk at the picnic tables; it was mainly the ladies who were disappointed. "It was just getting good!" they complained.

  Gabe gave Dev and me a sour look that told me he wasn't amused by us making a spectacle of ourselves at Pop's party. He may have shown me my first porn flick, but Gabe was a bit of a stick-in-the-mud about public sexuality, any sexuality.

  "We're coming," I said, looping my arm around Dev's waist and drawing him towards the door. Gabe mowed a path to the table that held the cake. Massimo had outdone himself. The frosting on the sides had been expertly woven so the cake resembled a basket filled with candied flowers and ripe summer berries. It was almost a shame to slice into it.

  Most of the party guests had courteously moved back from the area, giving Katie space to set up and take family photos. She captured a few images of my younger nieces, Bethany and Ariel, and little nephew Conner ogling the cake. Then her husband handed her another camera, and she went to work on pictures of Pop and Rosie in loving poses.

  I shook my head. No one would've ever suspected that Pop and his older daughter had once screamed at each other like banshees over the running of this pub. That'd been back when Pop was sure Rosie couldn't know what she was talking about, being a girl and all.

  "Good Lord, what have you two been up to?" Mam demanded, stepping our way. "Never mind, I'm sure I can figure it out myself, considering you look as if you just climbed out of the back seat after a drive-in movie."

  She turned her basilisk stare on Dev. "You could've kept your hands away from his head, knowing we had a picture coming up," she said, pulling my comb out of my back pocket and running it through my mussed hair. "Although, he does have lovely hair, so I suppose I can understand."

  "Well, you know how it is, Mam, Dev can't seem to keep his hands off me—" I began.

  "What? It was you who—" Devlin protested, only to be interrupted by John's sixteen-year-old twin boys and Rosie's seventeen-year-old son.

  "Good afternoon, sir," Liam said and, along with the other two, smoothly encircled my date. "We couldn't help overhearing. Sounds like you might need something special for tonight..."

  God on high, I thought to myself. What are they into now?

  "We have a very comprehensive stock—" Brendan, Liam's younger twin, added.

  "And if you want something we don't have, rest assured that it can be procured without trouble," Erin, oldest of the grandsons and Pop's namesake, finished off.

  This was sounding worse by the minute. I thought of intervening, but Mam was still fussing with my hair.

  "Take a look," Liam pulled one side of his leather jacket open. I almost expected to see fake Rolexes dangling from the inner lining, "Need glow-in-the-dark rubbers? We've got 'em in five colors." He held up his free hand, fingers splayed, as if he wanted to be certain Dev understood how many the quoted number signified.

  "If you want flavored condoms, we've got the whole fruit rainbow," Brendan continued, briefly flashing colorful packets.

  "We've got ones that heat up with friction, ribbed ones, smooth ones, ones with built in ticklers, ones that play holiday music...you know, for those...special occasions..." Erin recited, wriggling his brows at Devlin.

  I desperately wished that I were invisible right then, for a two-fold reason. One: so I couldn't be seen in such an embarrassing moment, and two: if no one actually saw me do it then I couldn't be convicted of murdering my nephews.


  "Hell, we've even got ones that vibrate," Liam picked up the litany smoothly, flashing another wrapper for Dev to see. "And if you need a special size, we can accommodate that, too. We carry a line that has any size you could possibly need, from petite to jumbo."

  Devlin's eyes bugged when Erin flashed that last one at him. I decided on second thought that if I could truly get a jury of my peers there was no way they'd convict me, even if the DA was present when I cut their throats.

  "Not to mention the one that's pitch black," Brendan piped in. "It makes your boner look like it's been dipped in shinny, black latex," he grinned, holding it so the motto was visible. Never let them see you cumming, it read.

  Dev looked simultaneously appalled and oddly intrigued. I tried to get around Mam, to shut them up, but she blocked me. "Be still, sweetling. If he can take what them boys'er handing out then he can take anything this family can throw at him," she said for my ears only. "Now's the time for both of you to find out if he can." I'd hoped to avoid this sort of trial by fire, but I could see now that it was inevitable.

  Erin continued, smooth as a used car salesman. "Of course, if you happen to be allergic to latex, that's not a problem either. We've got a couple of lines that specialize in latex-free love gloves. We can get those colored and flavored too, by the way, though we don't have any on us."

  "Speaking of which," Liam's voice slipped in where Erin's had left off, "maybe you have sensitive skin or something, and need hypo-allergenic lube? We have access to stuff that's way better than that crap you get in a pharmacy. We could get some that's flavored, or that heats up. Anything you want, man."

  Having groomed me to within an inch of my life, Mam finally stepped in.

  "That'll be quite enough of that, younglings." She grabbed the twins by the scruff of their necks and steered them toward John, busy talking with Matthew and oblivious, as always. "You'll not be told again that you can't sell things you're not old enough to buy. Go stand next to your father before I see to it your clackers never drop." They took their appointed places, grumbling as they did.

  Devlin's head had been ticking back and fourth between the three as they spoke, now he settled on the only one left, Erin, who said, "Give us a call...remember, anything at all." With a conspiratorial wink, he produced a business card seemingly out of thin air, slick as a card sharp. Devlin took the card reflexively just as Mam hauled the boy away, but Erin managed to get in one last offer: "Oh, and if you ever want someone to guard the walk-in door for you, I'm your man."

  "Shut yer cake holes, the lot of ye. If ye set him to stampeding, ye'll have to answer to yer uncle, not me," Pop said, with a gleam of amusement in his eyes.

  "I won't tease him, Granda," promised Molly, John's eighteen-year-old daughter, the oldest of my nieces and nephews. I could tell she was lying by the way she was sidling up to Dev. "I think he's cute."

  "You think he's cute 'cause he looks like a grown up version of that kid who played Tom Sawyer in that stupid movie, Team of Badass Fictional Dudes," Gabe cut in, echoing my thoughts of a few moments before.

  "It's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and no he doesn't," she retorted, planting her fists on her hips and giving Gabe the evil eye. She looked so much like Mam in that moment it was eerie.

  "Sure he does. Look," Gabe snatched my hat up off the rack where I'd set it and plopped it on Devlin's head. "See? Looks just like him, only old enough to shave."

  Her eyes widened and her mouth made an "O" of surprise. "Oh, he does, doesn't he? You wouldn't happen to have a younger brother, would you? Or a cousin maybe...say about twenty?"

  Dev winced and looked like he wanted to drop his head in his hands.

  "Molly, enough of that." Katie pulled the girl into place. She'd centered Mam and Pop right behind the cake with Rosie between them, Gabe and John to either side, older kids in front. She stepped back, chewed on her lip, got the spouses where she wanted them, slapped Conner's small hand as he tried to taste the frosting, and shoved me into my spot.

  Satisfied, she turned to Devlin, "Would you mind taking the picture for us?" Without waiting for a reply, she put her most expensive camera in his hands. "It's real simple, just point and click."

  Poor Devlin looked like he'd just been asked to photograph the royal family...and feared being beheaded if he fucked it up. He stood there, lost. Finally, he brought up the camera, adjusted it for a wider view, and sucked in a breath.

  We all said 'cheese,' and were grinning like idiots waiting for him to take the picture when he suddenly said, "I don't have any siblings, Molly, and my only cousin is like, forty and balding. I suppose we could adopt some kid who looks like me for you to date, but Joel would have to mother him. I'm not really the nurturing type."

  The son-of-a-bitch snapped a picture of gaping mouths and bugging eyes instead of smiling faces.

  "Oh, and I suppose I am?" I demanded in mock outrage, throwing a flower from the centerpiece at him, which he ducked.

  "If the Birkenstock fits..." he quipped cheekily, and snapped a second picture of us all laughing.

  Dev took a few more of everyone smiling then returned the camera to Katie. Pop loudly invited people to gather round, and he and Rosie ceremoniously cut the cake. The band returned and started up again. As the waitresses began serving slices, my mother took a moment to thank Devlin for taking the picture.

  "You're very welcome, ma'am. It was my pleasure."

  "Enough of the ma'ams and sirs, you'll call me Ula, and him," she pointed at Pop, who was handing a plate to little Conner, "Erin. I don't care what you call the others. I'm certain that anything you decide on will have been well earned by them."

  He laughingly agreed, and I relaxed. My family was warming up to him at last. It wasn't long before everyone was happily chatting around mouthfuls of cake. I brought Dev over to sit with my siblings while we had ours. Katie, still taking pictures, insisted on a shot of me giving Dev a chocolaty kiss on the cheek, and another of the lip print left behind.

  It took me another hour to make my farewells. The family didn't care that I was leaving, but the pub's regulars, some who'd known me from boyhood, wanted to buttonhole me, either to get free legal advice or tell me how proud they were of the man I'd become. As if that wasn't enough, I couldn't find my hat. Connor had snatched it and was having a great time putting it on everyone's head, his own included.

  Finally, we climbed into Devlin's sweet, smoky-grey Beemer. As he put the top down and started up the engine, I set my hat on the floor and scrubbed my face with my hands, trying to think what to say about my family, how to apologize for their behavior.

  "I'm sorry about that back there," I began as we pulled out of the lot and merged with traffic. "I know my family's clinically insane, but they're also savvy. They act perfectly normal when they're in a shrink's office, and doctors won't come to see them in their natural habitat, so it's impossible to get them institutionalized."

  "So you're saying you knowingly handed me over to psychopaths?" The wind ruffled his blond hair, and the late afternoon sunlight made it glint like gold.

  "Um, yeah...something like that."

  "S'kay." Dev elbowed me and winked. "I don't blame them for being suspicious of me and protective of you. What I can't forgive is how you just stood there and let them come at me with hatchets and machetes, especially those nephews of yours. Coward. See if I save your sorry ass when the lynch mob breaks down your door."

  "I was going to attempt a rescue, but my mother thought it was a good opportunity to find out if you could take us. She was right, of course. I just wish it hadn't been all at once like that...or that it'd been anyone but Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, I knew my family wasn't going to make this first meeting easy, but I didn't know they were going to pull out the big guns. It wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for—" I ran my fingers through my hair, inhaling deeply through my nose. "I think everyone liked you. I know Katie, Pop and Mam did."

  "What? You're joking,
right? Your mom chewed me out for touching you and—"

  "Not for touching me," I laid my hand on his thigh, "for messing up my hair right before the pictures. If she didn't like you, she'd've chewed my ass for letting you muss me, and she did say she understood why it happened, and she was smiling when she said it."

  "So her chastising me a like a little kid was a good sign?"

  "Very."

  "What about your dad? He barely spoke to me, and said he'd let the boys run me off."

  I sighed again. "Dev, if he wanted you gone, he'd've ignored the boys; pretended to be engrossed in the cake or something. Instead, he told them they'd answer to their uncle if they ran you off, and he didn't mean me, he meant Gabe. Believe me, that's a potent threat. Gabriel's never someone you want pissed at you, especially if he loves you."

  "Especially if he loves you?" He sounded skeptical.

  "Once he's not pissed at you anymore, he feels horrible about what was said or done. He's the most woefully contrite person you're ever likely to meet, and you wind up feeling ten times worse for whatever it was that pissed him off and got you in trouble with him. His remorse is far worse than his bite."